muffin girl
“I can’t eat muffins in an agitated manner. . .One should always eat muffins quite calmly. It is the only way to eat them.”
– Oscar Wilde
(The Importance of Being Earnest)
Wonder Puff and I have a bit of a random tradition. . . Dunkin’ Donuts for blueberry muffins!
Random, because there is no consistency to our muffin-getting. We could go once in 3 months or twice in as many days. Our excursions are based solely on a whim – sometimes hers, sometimes mine. But tradition lies in consistency, and so we have that too. First, we always go as early in the morning as we are able. Second, it is always just the two of us (though to be honest we’d bring someone else along if they wanted to come – or were awake!) And third: There must be muffins!
I like our random muffin tradition, and I hope that we can keep it over the years as she gets older.
Muffins are awesome! Puff is awesome, too!
99.9% of the time, Teaball gets a blueberry muffin. The girl is obsessed with blueberries, they’re her favorite. And, as you can see from the image above – the darn things are nearly as big as her head! She usually gets through the top bit down to where the wrapper was (you know, the part with the sugar all baked-on, nice and crusty-delicious) before she’s done (we save the rest for an after-naptime snack), and she totally has a method to her muffin-eating. She always starts off with a big giant ridiculously insane chomp (or 3). Then she figures out that, duh, it’s too big for her little ol’ mouth, so she starts breaking off smaller bits with her fingers and eating those. As her tiny tummy gets all fulled-up with magical muffiny-goodness, she resorts to picking out individual blueberries until she can’t eat another bite.
It’s cute. . . except when the unthinkable happens. Because, you see, on our last muffin-getting excursion, as the blueberries were being wrested from their happy muffin-beds, one of the little suckers got bold. He made a run for safety. Puff and I watched in horror as one lone little blueberry faced the odds and hauled-ass offa’ that muffin and right down onto the napkin we had spread out on the table. I think he was inspired by that old meatball that escaped from the spaghetti so many years ago. . .
Okay, so whatever, right? The blueberry – it rolled out. *shrug* No biggie. But Puff actually jumped when it made its leap for freedom. Jumped like she does when her daddy ‘boos’ at her from darkened hallways. Only this jump wasn’t followed by a riot of unstoppable giggles. She jumped. . . and then she got all skeezy-like and palish, and looked up at me with her big eyes brimming with uncertainty. . .
“Mawmmee,”
she whispered – whispered! As if the blueberry could hear her –
“Mawmmeeeeee, my muffin. . . it gots a BUG on it!”
Now to be honest, my gut instinct was to let the little blueberry go. I’ll admit it – I was rooting for the little guy. I mean, it took real courage to forsake all and leap for it’s life like that. But here was my baby girl, all upset and disheartened because she thought that her most amazing and wonderful blueberry muffin was infested with bugs. . . and lets face it, it WAS just a blueberry after all. So I did what anyone would have done in my place. I picked up the offending berry, and convinced my darling Puffy one that it was, in fact, most decidedly NOT a bug, but a rogue blueberry (duh).
After about 10 minutes of my show-and-telling her how incredibly not bug-like the poor little berry was, T finally accepted my higher wisdom, ate the renegade blueberry, and continued on to finish her muffin top.
But the experience left an impact – a scar on our happy tradition. Because Puff has been randomly outing with things like “But mom, there was a bug on my muffin!” ever since that fateful day. And though I have done my best to reassure her of the decided lack of muffin-bugs in donut-shops, I’m suspect that the damage might turn out to be permanent. We haven’t been back since, but I feel the muffin whim getting ready to strike. . . its been a little while since she mentioned it, so I’m praying that she has put the whole incident behind her and is ready to move on with her life. Because wouldn’t it suck if one silly little event like this one destroyed not only her love of blueberry muffins, but also our wonderful random tradition?
Huginn, Muninn, and me 