Grey Hairs and Starving Children

So, the other day I found a grey hair on my head – and it was mine! I couldn’t quite believe it. I’m only 26. I told my mom, and she jokingly said that where there’s one grey hair, there are more. I told her I probably have four – one for each of my boys.

On another note, yesterday we were at church and I was in the third hour Relief Society class with Camden. Camden just turned 17 months old, and we are looking forward to the day one month from now when he will be old enough to start attending the children’s nursery class at church because he is ready to be with the other kids (and it’s rather difficult to keep him entertained in our classes anymore, so we’ve end up spending a lot of time out in the hallways at church lately). So, yesterday I was in my Relief Society class and I had already had to take Camden out in the hall a couple of times, so I was trying to make him happy so I could stay for at least part of the lesson. He found Ava Lundgren, and little girl who is two or three months younger than Camden, and he was very happy when Cassidy, Ava’s mommy, offered him some of Ava’s marshmallows. The problem is that Camden is just like each of his older brothers – once you give him food he will insist on consuming more and more of it, rapidly, until there is none left (and will likely be very put out once he has finished that you didn’t think to bring more for him). Now, this is not because we starve our children, although I’m sure it appears that way to the innocent onlooker.

I admit that I had forgotten to grab the snack container out of the diaper bag before that church class started, but any normal child would have been content by that time. In the earlier church meetings Camden had already consumed a couple of slices of homemade whole wheat bread, vanilla wafers, some of his brother’s animal crackers, puffed fruit baby snacks, yogurt-covered cranberries, and two cups of water. So, when we went into Relief Society, of course Camden quickly ate all of Ava’s marshmallows, then he motioned to Cassidy that he wanted more. Tiffany Egbert came to his rescue and offered him a packet of fruit snacks, which made him happy for the 2.3 minutes that it took him to finish off the bag. And soon after that we were out in the hallway again. You would think that if a child ate this much all the time he would be overweight (or at least content), but neither is the case. In fact, my three older boys eat as much as (or more than) Michael and I do at almost every meal. I guess they got their Daddy’s metabolism. I keep thinking, though: What are we going to do when we have four or five hungry teenage boys all at once who eat like this?