I ordered Chinese food for dinner tonight. We don’t get Chinese food often, maybe once every six months. We always order sweet and sour chicken so the kids have something that’s easily identifiable. We gave the kids chicken, rice, and some lo mien. Gillian started eating right away. John watched Daddy eat for a few minutes and said “Can I have some chopsticks?” Daddy and I have our own sets of chopsticks we acquired while living in Hawaii. Unfortunately we could only find one set tonight. Daddy showed John how to hold the chopsticks (not easy to help a lefty). John struggled for a little bit. Daddy ended up putting a little football eraser in between the two chopsticks and tying them together with a rubber band. It gave John just enough space to pick up his dinner and the confidence to continue using the chopsticks. He ate all of his chicken and then said “I’m going to try to eat my rice with the chopsticks!” He attempted to pick up some of the rice and gave up. “I’m just going to use my spoon. People that live far away in china, we should bring them some forks. We could show them how to use them. And they could give use food.”

At the end of dinner, John was enjoying a fortune cookie. But Gillian still had more chicken to eat. I told her to eat more chicken so she could have a cookie too. She looked around and said “I need chopstick! Where chopstick?”