Everyone’s a Critic

The other night I made meatloaf and sweet potatoes for dinner. Something that I happen to enjoy quite a bit. I’ll admit that I deviated from my mom’s meatloaf recipe- in order to make one pound of beef more filling and nutritious for the five of us (that are eating solid food, sorry Spike), I added a ton of shredded carrots. To me, this doesn’t change the taste at all. Apparently there doesn’t appear to be a consensus on this point. As we sat down to eat, the following conversation took place:

Mini-Me: It’s okay that this isn’t a good dinner, Mommy. I’ll eat it anyway. 

Me: Um, well… I think it’s good. 

Sergeant Handsome (always rushing to my defense): I think it’s great, Mini-Me!

Mini-Me: Nope. I’m sorry, Mommy but it’s okay. 

His tone was something akin to saying, “Sure I’ll go see your one-man show about how your crush on your 6th grade gym teacher affected all your adult relationships, it sounds… great!” Like he’s thinking in his head that I’m delusional if I think this is a good meal but he’s afraid of truly bursting my bubble. And so he ate two bites of meatloaf and two bites of sweet potato and called it a night on eating. Fine. More food for the rest of us. 

A little while later, as he was saying goodnight before bedtime, Mini-Me rubbed my back and said:

“It’s okay, Mommy. I’m sorry dinner wasn’t good but we all make mistakes sometimes. It’ll be okay.”

He really couldn’t let it go. At least he was nice about it because he genuinely felt really bad for me. Do I chalk this one up as a parenting win? After all, it’s the nicest put-down I’ve ever heard. Yay?