The Appetite

After getting every person at the table their food, forks, water, and napkins I finally settle down to take the first bite of my own food. I look down at my plate and think....yum that looks good. I load up the fork, lean over my plate and open my mouth....

"More please!"

My fork hangs in mid-air, my jaw is open and my eyes fly to Gage's now empty plate. How he has managed to eat so much food so quickly momentarily stuns me. After-all he had a bigger portion that me and it's all gone. I look under the table and under his plate just to make sure but what I know to be true is that the child has eaten all of it.

As of late, Gage's appetite is no longer just a small twinge in his stomach it has become a pro-noun. It is...The Appetite. The amount of food this kid is putting away is truly appalling. I have two older brothers so I know how the male appetite works, but I remember them in their teenage years, and trust me it was truly frightening, but Gage is only 6, so I was caught off guard by The Appetite making its appearance so soon.

Last week we went to Red Robin and Gage ordered a grilled chicken breast and if you've eaten there you know they don't skimp on the fries. I was busy talking so I'm not sure if he just hit the power button on some vacuum somewhere but suddenly his food was gone...I mean not a crumb or so much as a grain of salt and he was back to playing his DS. When we got home, less that an hour later, we were working on his homework and he told me he was so hungry. I had to stop making food after two pieces of toast and a glass of milk. This morning Gage got up early and I heard him tell Tim that he needed, "Two pieces of toast with butter, stacked on top of each other and milk and yogurt because that is how mom does it because she knows I'm hungry." I had to laugh.

The kicker of all this is that recently, when he runs or jumps, his pants are starting to fall off. His pants fit at the beginning of the year, and I keep adjusting the internal elastic, but they keep falling off his skinny back-side. He is suddenly so tall and skinny....but all kid muscular. That has to be a cosmic joke on women everywhere. The kid is putting away a loaf of bread every two days and his clothes are actually getting too big.