the orange bandit

My kids love those California Cuties oranges.  Or tangerines?  Whatever they are . . . we love them.  I am kind of stingy with the snacking schedule around here, but the kids are allowed to eat fresh fruit whenever they want.  So they are grabbing these oranges all day. Eating oranges and dressing up in costumes.  It’s what we do. Karis likes the oranges, too.  But more than eating oranges, she loves to master a task that her older siblings can do.  She has been trying to peel her own oranges since she was about 18 months old.  And just recently, she figured out how to do it all by herself. The problem is that her appetite for peeling oranges is greater than her appetite for eating oranges.  She will eat a few, and then she will continue to use a chair to get more oranges to peel.  And then she will contemplate what to do, because her enthusiastic peeling has left her with a predicament.       And then she throws the orange segments away.  And grabs another orange to start peeling. I have scolded her for this time and time again.  I explain that if she opens an orange, she has to eat it.  I sit her down and instruct her to eat the orange before she opens another.  All of this makes her very, very angry.  Because she just wants to peel oranges.  All. Day. Long. She is a smart cookie, though, and figured out that mommy can easily find the evidence of her uneaten oranges, due to the fact that mommy frequently has an overflowing trashcan that doesn’t hide things very well. So she has started hiding the orange segments. All around the house. The other day I went to apply some lipstick, and this is what I found in my purse: Fortunately for me, I discovered this in the privacy of my own home and not in the middle of some high-powered business meeting. Also, I’m pretty sure I’ve never been to a high-powered business meeting. But if I was, I wouldn’t want to open up a lipstick case full of day-old fruit.