closet eating

*

On Sunday morning, Kendall was having a tough time. Everything was getting to her and words floated just outside her grasp. She was easily frustrated and quick to tears. 

She had wandered downstairs while I was getting dressed. From my bedroom, I suddenly heard a full-on wail. I ran down the stairs to find her melting down in front of an open pantry door. The cupboard in front of her was the cookie pantry – a mecca of brightly colored packaging and refined sugars in all their processed glory. In other words, it’s a stock pile of guilty pleasure. But something had obviously gone terribly wrong.

She could barely catch her breath as I knelt down in front of her and asked if she could tell me what she needed.

“Milano. I would get a Milano,” she sobbed.

“OK, sweetheart. We can get a cookie (she’d had a wonderfully balanced breakfast and had just eaten her weight in fresh fruit, so as my friend Drama would say, don’t judge) but we need to get calm first.”

I asked her to take a deep breath with me. “NOICAN”T!” she yelled back through tears. I asked her to slow down with me a bit. I waited with her as she managed to reel it in and calm herself down.

“Great job, little one!” I said, “Let’s get you that Milano!” I turned to the shelves.

Chips Ahoy – check. Nutter Butters – got em. Oreos - front and center. Thin Mints – yup. Random Belgian chocolate left over from God knows when – present and accounted for.

Not a God forsaken Milano to be found.

I turned to face the music. 

Kendall cried with renewed fervor, but managed to calm down again when I invoked the ‘F’ word that she knows so well from school. No, not THAT ‘F’ word for goodness sake – the other one – FLEXIBLE - as in, “Oops, we’re going to need to be flexible”. She took two Chips Ahoy and padded off sniffling to the den to enjoy them alone.

I went back upstairs to finish dressing. When I returned about five minutes later, I found the evidence of what had been happening while I was gone. The cupboard door was wide open. A chair stood guiltily before it and the package of Chips Ahoy lay open on the table.

I hate to admit that I took pride in the scene. Cookies or no, she knew what she wanted and damn it all she got it. That’s my kid!

But the day wasn’t over.

Last night at bed time we had a problem. A big one. All hands were on deck. No resource was spared.

Tasha had gone missing.

Tasha is Kendall’s favorite Backyardigan. She has recently been climbing her way up the social ladder that rules Kendall’s bed. A select few of her ‘guys’ make the cut into the bedtime rotation. Once there, they are like made men – they are IN. There’s no turning back once you’ve been inducted into the Cosa Kendall. Tasha has apparently proven her worth. She’s in the inner circle. And she was nowhere to be found.

We put out an APB. We looked in the cars, the basement, the kitchen, the office where she had last been seen, Mama and Daddy’s room, Darby’s room, the den, the bathrooms. Our house never feels as large as when something so small goes missing. Despite our professed tenacity, we finally had to give up for the night before it turned into morning. Once again, the ‘F’ word was invoked and Kendall had to deal with shifting gears.

She never stopped talking about her missing buddy. She reassured herself that Tasha would be back until the last moment that I left her room, but she agreed to go along with my ludicrous story – Tasha was having a sleepover at a friend’s house and would no doubt show up in the morning. I left her cuddling with Uniqua, who didn’t seem to mind her stand-in status.

This morning, Matt called from home to check in. All was fine; everyone got off to camp without distress. And apparently someone had turned up after all. It appears that little Miss Tasha is a closet eater.

 

Yep, there she is, still at (in?) the scene of the crime.