What's For Dinner?

Sometimes I dread 4:30 pm. This is the time when I am forced to think about dinner, what I am going to cook and how I can get out of it. Invariably I cannot get out of it, because I have these 2 little faces that look up at me and ask every single damn day "what's for dinner?" Sometimes my response is met with cheers (taco's) or jeers (meatloaf) but more often than not I respond with "I don't know, what do you want?" This is a ridiculous question to ask a 6 and a 4 year old. Jack ALWAYS answers "mashed potatoes!" while Abbey thinks long and hard and replies "I don't know, how about chocolate and strawberries?" She is much easier to please and sometimes she answers "I don't know, whatever you want me to eat would be good." Jack, on the other hand, is 100 times more difficult. He is such a fan of eating in general that a bad dinner to him equals the end of the world as we know it (hmmm, could he take after his mother??). He wails, he cries, he screams. "Cheeseburgers . . . NOOOOOO, I wanted tacos tonight. This is the worst day ever of my whole life, waaa waaa waaa." He likes things that are yellow, filled with carbs and stick to his ribs (which is why we can no longer see his ribs). I struggle to get him to try new things, eat a vegetable, not sneak over to the pan and scrape the remaining rice out with the giant serving spoon. Then once dinner is served I spend the meal alternating between the two of them. For Abbey to "take one more bite please" and to "stop fooling around and eat your dinner" and "for goodness sakes just sit still on your bum!" and "Jack, slow down this is not a race" and "no there are no more mashed potatoes" and then "no Jack, you may not finish Abbey's potatoes, she is going to eat them . . . eventually"

This morning when I woke Jack up for school the first thing out of his mouth, I kid you not, was "what's for dinner tonight?" Please let's get through breakfast first! By the way, I have NO IDEA what is for dinner tonight. Do you?