Hunger Games

Ruth is refusing to eat.

It began on Sunday, when I (as I always do, because I believe fully in the feasting aspect of Easter!) let the girls eat candy out of their baskets before breakfast.

Ruth is kind of a choco-holic.  I mean, she really really loves chocolate.  When I make chocolate-chip pumpkin muffins, she very carefully mines out all of the chocolate chips and eats them, then throws the rest of the muffin on the floor.  I switched to those tiny little mini-chocolate chips in an effort to thwart her, but she has her pincher grip down pretty good and just takes the extra time to excavate those teeny little nuggets of chocolate.

So now that she knows there is chocolate in the house, she is refusing to eat anything else.  On Easter, she refused the delicious ham, homemade bread rolls, marshmallow fruit salad and candied carrots that her Grandma had so lovingly set out.  At home she has refused oatmeal (with chocolate chips, no less, because I'm getting desperate!), bananas, grapes, cheese, peanut butter sandwiches:  all of her favorite foods are being laid  before her, and she is stubbornly resisting it all. 

If any of the girls foolishly leave a basket laying around we can be sure to find Ruth, with a stealthy silence that would amaze an elf, carefully picking out and unwrapping chocolate eggs. 

If I had more time, or was a better writer (or maybe a better mother) I would find some way to connect this to the tendency we all struggle against, to pass over the joys laid before us in our anxiety to reach for some other good that exists only in imagination.  Or something like that. 

Instead, I am going to use the remainder of bath-time (the one time of day, aside from glorious nap-time, when I can do stuff around the house unhindered) to hunt down and hide every last trace of chocolate.  And I am going to hope that eventually Ruth's need for real food will overpower her disordered desire for chocolate, and she will again be in a position to appreciate the feast set before her. 

I believe the technical term for recognizing the value of what is in front of you is virtue. 

Feasting is awesome, but you ruin it when what you're pining for is not what you've been given but the one you've set your heart on.  Or something like that.