apple and radishes

      It was the week of his swimming lessons that my nephew and I spent our lunches at the City Park. I had agreed to be the driver. Every day I swung by to pick up him from daycare. Every day I sat inside along chain link fence of the pool. Watching the group of younger elementary students he was with, as they practiced bobbing their heads below the water, took turns ducking underwater to retrieve weighted rings, and floated on their backs.
     Earlier that day I prepared the sack lunches we would eat after he got his clothes together and the wet items wrapped up in in his towel. This was a kid who usually got a meal at Mc Donald's. Not with Uncle Karl, not this week. So it began.
    On Monday I learned he liked eating peanut butter and he also crunched on carrots and preferred apple juice. Because it looked rainy, we sat under the roof of an open air shelter house. I offered him some chopped up watermelon. He shook his head no.
    On Tuesday we sat at the picnic table closest to the swimming pool parking lot. He noticed the little plastic tub with carrots, and two others that had watermelon chopped up. He told me he was not going to try the melon. He didn't care for it. He did eat his peanut butter sandwich and told me the bread tasted like the kind they ate at home. I ate all the watermelon, both tubs and my sandwich.
    On Wednesday we drove around the City Park in Carrollton, and he picked another open air shelter house, and it had a nearby water spigot. Absent from the sack lunches was the bread. We both got one little tub of peanut butter, one apple, and one spoon. There was also a baggy with radishes. He told me he wasn't going to try the radishes. I demonstrated how to cut chunks off his apple with the metal spoon. A digging motion. Pushing down from the top or turning the apple sideways and digging little pieces off of it. I showed him my pile of small bits and challenged him to try for smaller pieces. The competition worked. Our lids off the peanut butter tubs, we dipped our apple bits, and enjoyed PB on apple. After finishing our apple juice cartons, I had him slowly divy up the one banana. One small piece for himself and one for me and then another small piece for himself and one for me, and so on, until we each had at least four small sections of banana. He figured out how to do it.
    At the end, he carried our trash to the waste can, just like he had done every day this week. Then I pulled out my red handkerchief and showed him how to get water out of the spigot and get the kerchief wet. And, of course, he wanted to do it all by himself so I let him. He got it good and wet. Ha. Ha. Ha. Then we walked back to the cleared wooden picnic table, and I explained how by draping it across his whole palm he could wipe the surface of where we ate -- and he did. Then back to the spigot,
and he rinsed it off himself, and shut the handle down himself to stop the water flow. Then I wrung out the red kerchief with my hands and showed him how to fold a bandana and wear it to look like a train robber. He loved it. Then I showed him how to point his index finger toward me and say: "Reach" or "Get them up." He did and I raised my arms up above my head. He loved it. He tried that out some more. Then he asked if he could wear the bandana in the truck while I drove him back to daycare and I said yes.
     We practiced saying "Ban" and "Dan" and "Dan's Band" and he figured it out.
     On Thursday, our last day to have lunch that week, we sat on a sidewalk at the park near some picnic tables. It was hot out so we sat on the shaded part of the walk. He divided up the one banana into pieces for us both. There was a little tub full of peanut better and there were our apple juice cartons. No spoons. If you needed a knife to put the PB on the banana you used your finger, and he did. I know at his house he is not allowed to lick the butter knife, so it was a joy to see him lick his fingers. Ha.Ha.Ha. I had some large romaine lettuce leaves for myself, which I spread with PB. Delicious. The best, in my opinion. So I asked him what he could call the tub of PB? and he said "peanut butter dip."
What would he call a carrot dipped in PB? He called it: "carrot peanut butter." What about lettuce and PB? He called it: "lettuce peanut butter."
And what about apple in peanut butter? He called it: "apple peanut butter." What a great week it was!!!