Little Moocher

Last night Zachary was in the bath and he was serving up some food to me (not really, but sometimes he likes to “cook” in the bath…guess he’s got a little Kramer in him). He handed me an invisible portion of “hash browns and cheese”. I thought this was interesting because, well, for one, hash browns and cheese sounded awesome, but two, I’m not sure he’s ever had hash browns (it’s just not something we really ever fix at home). So I asked him if he’d ever had hash browns. He said he had had them at school. Hmmmm….now I was even more curious, because we provide his breakfast & lunch – the only thing the school provides him is morning & afternoon snack. I thought hash browns was an odd thing to serve for snack, but I asked him anyway if he’d had them for snack. He said, “No, I had them for breakfast.” OK, now you’re just pulling my leg, right? I know for a fact we’ve never fixed him hash browns & sent them to school with him. Well, as I asked more questions, the truth started to unravel. His teacher, Miss Katie, gets there around 7:30 each morning. She brings her breakfast to school with her too, and eats it in the classroom. Well, Zachary, being the food mooch that he is, apparently asks her for a bite of hash browns every single day…and she gives it to him…every single day!!! Although I thought it was kind of funny, I was also embarrassed. I mean, Miss Katie is like 21, and our kid is mooching food off her. I hope she doesn’t think we encourage that! Because we don’t even encourage it at home. We told him from now on he is not to ask her for any bites of her food. If she offers it to him, that’s one thing, but he shouldn’t be asking her for food. We give him enough food. Even though he sometimes will say he’s still hungry, I think more often than not, it’s really more that he’s just interested in what someone else has. Like, on the weekends, he will usually request oatmeal for breakfast (unless we tell him we’re fixing pancakes). He’s the only one who likes oatmeal, so we usually fix something else when he wants that. Well, if he’s finished his oatmeal, and we’re still eating, he’ll come over, check out what we have, and 9 times out of 10 – no wait, 10 times out of 10 – he will ask for a bite. Usually we tell him no and eventually he goes away. I guess Miss Katie just can’t resist…