Bananarama

Mo Willems began his career as a writer and illustrator for Sesame Street. Since then he's won widespread acclaim for television and, more recently, literature, possibly the most notable of his many accomplishments being inspiring my children to resume eating bananas.

I'd hardly say that everything Mo Willems pens is the gold standard for literature. For example, I see where he's going with the pigeon books, the kids enjoy them, and even for me, the pigeon has his moments, but overall I could live without seeing him for a day or two... or much, much longer.

Elephant and Piggie, on the other hand, have rapidly endeared themselves to the entire family to the extent that they are discussed on a daily basis, mainly as a result of this well-worded quote:

“I have more to give!

More words! More jokes!
More “bananas!””

My kids used to literally eat bananas by the bunch, but then came the dark times: the Great Banana Boycott of 2010. Suddenly no one would even dare lay eyes upon this dreaded yellow menace and at least once a week banana bread was piled high at the Washa House, occupying valuable counter space that Mom was saving for other undesirable items such as excess lollipops and food processor attachments.

Now thanks to Elephant and Piggie, the kids are once again bananaholics and even little Baby Corinne has learned to request them by name. Well, by “nana” anyway. Whenever Logan or Julianne are in the mood for a tasty yellow treat, this is what I hear: “Mom, guess what snack I want? More words, more jokes, more bananas!” at which point I will inevitably look up to see a child gleefully waving a bunch of bananas overhead. Logan has even begun learning how to peel a banana for himself, although he's a bit perplexed by the whole pulling back the stem until it snaps and then tearing it open from the side business.

Julianne normally allows someone else to handle all of that complex peeling business for her, but one day when I was temporarily unavailable for banana peeling but still in the room, I was privileged to witness her own unique brand of banana peeling: She pulled each individual piece of peel (about 5 in total) cleanly free of the banana before ever taking a bite and as each piece pulled free she said, “Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry, Sorry.” Fruit gentility really is an undervalued art, but just for the sake of argument, I asked her why she was apologizing to the banana. Solemnly, she bowed her head and uttered pathetically the words, “I don't know.”

Big brother Logan on the other hand, in one fell swoop proudly whips the entire peel free of the banana, then looks me squarely in the eye and says, “But Mom, I don't want the whole banana.”

Knowing that Baby Corinne will gladly accept the leftovers, I say “That's fine, just eat as much as you want,” to which he angrily screws up his face, stomps his foot, and pouts, “I don't want as much as I want.”

Obviously.

Meanwhile, Julianne has finally completed the unnecessarily arduous task of peeling her banana and proceeds to tear the banana in half. She then gently places the two halves on the table, picks up a piece of peel from her intricately constructed modern banana peel art design, and asks me, “Can I just --- eat the banana?” (She always pauses right in the middle of a question, like she's trying to come up with the right word or something. I can't explain it. There are many things about Julianne that I can't explain.)

I tell her that she can eat the banana, but that what she is currently holding is not the banana, it's the peel. She says, “Okay,” and I foolishly consider the matter resolved and move on to my next task: removing large chunks of smushed banana from the baby's clothing, to be immediately followed by scraping dried bits of slightly older smushed banana from her clothing and face.

Almost immediately, I hear a distressed yell from Logan's side of the table and turn to see Julianne peacefully munching not the banana, but the piece of peel. Returning to what I can only think to refer to as her Banana Station, I point out the actual banana, now decoratively draped in what remains of the pile of banana peels.

Angrily she shoves the banana halves aside yelling, “No! Those are peels. Those are no good!”, then, point made, resumes chomping away at the peel. So the peels are bananas and the bananas are peels. Nothing confusing about that. Technically I'm pretty sure it's safe and maybe even healthy to eat the peels, but for whatever reason, I can't just sit idly by and watch her do it. So I take the path of least resistence and remove the peels. (Technically, I suppose this is more like the path of slightly more resistence than just letting her eat the peels, but less than leaving the peels in front of her and spending half the day arguing about why they're inedible). Without another word, she double fists the banana pieces (the actual bananas, not to be confused with the peels that were previously posing as bananas) and devours every last bite.

Logan also finishes his banana in its entirety. I guess now we know how much he wanted... or didn't want... or something.

By this time, Julianne has wandered off in the direction of the living room, but about 5 minutes later, having “napped” on the couch, she strolls back into the kitchen asking if she can have a banana. I tell her that she could, but for the fact that she and Logan have just eaten the last two bananas. You can imagine that hearing the news that there are no more bananas does not go over especially well. Indignantly she responds, “Yes there are more bananas.” When I ask her where they are, she can't tell me, but there are definitely more bananas somewhere.

Within a few minutes, having finally come to terms with the disappointing banana shortage, she pouts, says, “Logan ate mine!” and storms out of the room.

Logan didn't eat hers. Just for the record.

Book Mania

I have a theory (you'll hear me say this often, usually immediately proceeding something insanely asinine, but no matter) that beyond basic necessary survival instincts, there are a few

other universal character traits that are common to all babies from birth:

1. The ability to love and the desire to be loved.
2. Rhythm. I haven't met a baby yet who didn't love a good tune. Any kind of tune. Babies aren't nearly as discriminatory about music genres as us crotchety older folks are. And babies can rock in rhythm to anything. The faster the music plays, the faster the baby rocks. Sometimes mine rock so hard they tip over, but that helps them learn to crawl – and is entirely irrelevant.
3. Book Mania.

Long preceding the formation of so many of my own largely unfounded and significantly under-researched theories, young Cereal Mom, as a college Psychology major, was made privy to the often questionably founded, significantly over-researched theories of many long-winded Psychologists who came before me. One such theory that crossed my desk during this particular portion of my edification was the theory that heredity may predispose a person to alcoholism. I may have a theory of my own regarding this theory, but fortunately that theory would, of course, be significantly under-researched and completely beside the point - Said point being that, according to Book Mania Theory (oh yes, I used caps; now it's official) universal heredity with regard to the formation of character traits predisposes all children to the development of book mania.

Symptoms of early stage book mania may include, but are not limited to:

• an unceasing desire to eat, flip the pages of, and/or stare intently at the pictures in books, magazines, or other printed materials for hours on end
• requesting repeated readings of a favorite or new or conveniently located piece of reading material from a parent, guardian, or random person who may be unknown to the child but who bears even the vaguest resemblance to someone who is known to be literate
• attributing human characteristics to books; for example, a child may feel the desire to be close to his or her books even while he or she is asleep, watching television, eating, or otherwise engaged (i.e. in the bathroom); he or she may also feel a sense of loss when an unexpected separation from a beloved book occurs such as when a book has been so beloved that it has basically been rebound in some combination of super glue, masking, packing, and scotch tape, until one day it inexplicably disappears leaving a helpless mom with not a clue as to its possible whereabouts.... I said Mom has no idea where it could have gone... She's looked everywhere and yet the book is nowhere to be found... Can we just drop it already?... Oh what's that? No one said anything? Well, nevermind then. Moving on.

The most popular treatment for book mania is parental apathy, but treatment is not recommended and may be detrimental to a child's future well-being.

My children have all had extremely advanced cases of book mania for as long as I can remember. Baby Corinne is still in Stage 1: The book as geometric chew toy, but we expect somewhat rapid advancement within the next 2-3 years. Logan and Julianne give no indication of entering Stage 5: Recognizing relatively poor literature, anytime soon, but they can also tell the gold from the graphite, so to speak.