Nutella and Ritz

When I was pregnant with A, and we had just moved to Zurich, my sister-in-law came for a visit, and introduced me to a comfort junk food that I had no idea even existed. And I tend to know a lot of them. She went off to the little Italian grocery store down the block from where our apartment was, and came back with Tuc crackers, the European version of Ritz, thinner, break more easily, a bit softer, and some Nutella.

I am now sitting at my desk, at home, done with all my morning procrastinating on BBC.com, NYTimes, dooce.com, let's-just-check-if-something-else-happened-on-BBC.com the 5 minutes I was browsing elsewhere, and e-mail. And there is an open packet of Tuc and an open jar of Nutella next to the keyboard. It's a good morning. This stuff goes down way too smoothly, although, due to the flakier nature of the Tuc, you actually have to dip it in the Nutella glass (and it is a glass, not a jar, and can be used as a drinking glass when the Nutella is gone later toda...this week) slowly so as to not break it into 3 pieces.

There is a photo of A, from a daycare trip last year to a pony farm, tacked to the wall near the screen. I've had it there for a few weeks now, and it is one of the few things that can temporarily snap me out of my work-induced nerves in what has been an extremely busy time. I haven't worked this hard in years, at least, not with other people, and on projects that didn't involve a diaper, a rash, or a cold. This photo breaks my heart just a little, though, each time I look at it. And it isn't even the one where she is petting a horse nose, or brushing a horse back. It is a close-up of A, little neon yellow body vest on (that all the little kids at daycares here wear on outings), mouth wide open, eating a cookie. The cookie is wide, her mouth is not, and she's doing her best to remedy the situation. Her eyes look a bit concerned, like she is concentrating. There are crumbs of the first half of the cookie on the side of her mouth. She looks so...innocent. It is a photo that almost makes me want to cry for how not-self-conscious she is. How eating is about getting the food in the pie hole, and not about elbows on a table, do I have a double chin in this photo?, or all the other stuff that gets piled on us as we become adults. It is the kind of photo of of themselves that many people cringe at later, because it isn't about posing and outward appearance. The kind that we all groan over when someone posts it of us, eating something, on their Facebook page. How unflattering! Unpost that! Everyone will see!

But the thing it, everyone already has. In their everyday interactions with you and me. And they don't really care. The people who like us and love us could care less how we eat a cracker, because they are having a great time talking over coffee or a meal. And we look our most human in the very same photos we tend to hate the most.

So there she is, completely engaged in getting that food into her body. And doing it herself, feeding herself, and what a beautiful moment to have been caught on camera. It is one of my favorite photos for the emotions it brings me. I'm trying to remember not to care so much how I look, and that this moment in A's life, preserved on film, is one of those times I realize how much I love that little person.

So who knows how lovable I look right now, eating my crackers and chocolate hazelnut spread, typing away? (One of the things I love about my husband is the smile on his face when I am seriously tucking into a plate of food).

About the only disappointing thing about this morning's snack is that I hadn't realized that the glass has Smurf designs all over it. Well, maybe this is where A start using an actual glass glass at mealtimes. And since our IKEA glasses have been saying farewell to this cruel world at the rate of one per week, I guess I'll just have to get more Nutella-in-a-glass to bring up the drinking receptacle count in the kitchen.