Parenting requires patience and kindness and the willingness to put up with the same shit repeatedly, each hour, each minute. Add multiple children into the mix and the repetition isn’t just additive, it’s exponential. The repeated nagging will drive the parent insane first. The children will be next.

They say that will-power is not a constant thing. If you are exercising it a lot then later, your will becomes weaker and wears down. I find this especially true with my children at mealtimes.

I hate mealtimes.

Breakfast. Lunch. Dinner. They used to be my favorite times of day. I love food. I love eating. What’s not to love?

Now? Now I dread it. I hate it. If I could just shove an IV into each of my children or breastfeed them until they’re in college without it being super creepy, I would.

Mealtimes are torture. Not just any run of the mill torture. Chinese water torture. Any type of torture that slowly eats away at your soul and makes you go crazy and ballistic and turns your normal fun self into a screaming, incoherent banshee.

I’m sure the kids don’t like it, either.

I’m ok in the mornings. But by the evening, my well of patience has been all used up. Oh, let’s be real. Sometimes, I’m out by lunch.

My kids would rather starve than give into me. They would rather vomit up nothing but water and bile because they haven’t eaten more than a bowl of oatmeal in two days. They would rather weep, be screamed at, and endure all sorts of threats and indignities than eat.

FFS, what is so bad about my cooking that they would rather slowly atrophy into spacey, listless, weak-limbed blobs than eat their fucking food?

It has gotten so bad that the older children have infected Glow Worm with this nonsense. My ten month old baby now refuses to eat baby food. He only wants Cheerios and baby puffs. Boy loves to snack. All my children love to snack.

I give up. I am going to feed my children only chips and cookies and milk. (Thank goodness they love milk!)

Their bones will crumble into dust (well, perhaps not since they at least consistently drink milk). Their skin will become sallow and be weirdly plasticine due to all the preservatives. Their teeth and hair will fall out. Their nails will be brittle and thin.

Their bodies will be wrecked. But I? I will be much happier.