He also wouldn’t have a grilled cheese, or cheese and crackers. “Yuck!”

But Annie’s mac and cheese? “No!!! Wait, OK, yes, I’ll eat that.”

Huh? How on earth is it possible that when one has said no, no, no, to three virtually identical entrees of bread and cheese, that one would enthusiastically say yes to a fourth? Is he a pint-size follower of the Inuit, who allegedly had hundreds of words for snow? Huh? Am I missing something? This is all just cheesy bread, right?

Of course, I forgot to also offer him some of his other favorite foods, a bagel with cream cheese or Parmesan cheese-crusted garlic bread. He also enjoys an occasional soft pretzel, which can be improved by cheese; cheese pizza; and Pirate’s Booty, corn curls covered in cheese. Oh, and don’t forget farfalle with butter and cheese, which, of course, is vastly different from Annie’s mac and cheese shells, which are nothing like the bunny shapes, which are also served, I dare say,  with cheese.

See, I can rest easy. My child clearly eats a wide variety of foods. With cheese.—Jillian O’Connor

In order to collect my thoughts — and to eat something that is not a Danimal or a peanut butter sandwich shaped like a bat — I’ve had to retreat to coffee shops. And, since I’m a parent, I’ve apparently developed just a bit of a routine, to the point where the staff actually knows who I am.

To someone with a lifelong addiction to the beautiful impersonal nature of living in a city, this was more than a little horrifying.

Earlier this year, the baristas even found it amusing to joke about the short version of my name I use for a paper coffee cup. “Oh, Jill … but you know, look at her credit card. She’s really Jillian.”

This is not what I’m looking for when I want to hide in corner with 600 empty calories and coffee that’s much too strong for me.

I took my red face and fierce anonymity elsewhere for a while, just to show them that I will not be so predictable.

But something worse has happened now. No, they aren’t texting me or paging me throughout the supermarket the shop is attached to. (Clearly, I only pick the classiest places.)

No, that is not happening, because now they’ve forsaken me. I don’t get a hello, or a flicker of recognition. Or a joke. Nothing.

I am now a regular at a place where everybody used to know my name.

And, frankly, I am feeling kind of conflicted.

From now on, I’ll go with my husband’s advice and use a different mildly inappropriate name each time: Walter. Ahmed. Larry. Octavius. Shmul.

That will teach them to forget me.—Jillian O’Connor

Have you found yourself a regular somewhere, despite your best efforts? Do you enjoy being on a first-name basis with the strangers who make you coffee?

In theory, I love the originals of all literature, nothing removed, nothing censored, exactly as the author intended.

Except when I find myself scrambling during a reading for an instant euphemism for, say, your father “was put in a pie by Mrs. McGregor.” Yup, it’s the classic, unexpurgated Beatrix Potter. Too hot for preschool. Stay on your toes.

One heavily edited version of “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” I picked up years ago made no mention of that tasty dish, but also was rendered completely worthless and read like an unfinished Mad Libs: “Once upon a time, there were four little rabbits, and (insert story about Peter) … But Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail had bread and milk and blackberries for supper.” It was almost incomprehensible, but the pictures were very pretty.

However, even the quaint Potter illustrations can get a little too scandalous sometimes. The retiring author, who apparently was no stranger to the concept of rabbit pastries, also included a good smackdown in the other bargain book we scored this week, “The Tale of Benjamin Bunny.” It turns out it’s a bit of a sequel — Peter Rabbit 2: Showdown at McGregor’s.

And this Benjamin character is a bolder, bigger, badder, clog-wearing cousin of the original. Instead of Farmer McGregor, who famously “tried to put his foot upon Peter,” we get the even bigger and badder Benjamin Sr. opening up a can of cute-little-fuzzy-bunny whoop-ass on the rabbit tot:

Well, OK, then. There’s pretty much no way to hide that from a four-year-old. Next time, I guess I’ll just have to remember to Bowdlerize the bunny books. And serve the pot pie on a different night. –Jillian O’Connor

Easter is just full of hazards. The Eldest and I attended a big egg hunt a few weeks ago, where you use the brightly colored, lead-tinged, made-in-China BPA vessels known as plastic Easter eggs.

I found myself surprised that in such an everything-conscious region as the Pacific Northwest, many parents had inserted naked jelly beans directly into the potentially toxic shells. I, oh-so-virtuously, had put only foil-wrapped candy inside, so as not to outrage any other toxin-averse couples.

Then I realized that foil is, of course, aluminum, a known contributor to Alzheimer’s. So that got me thinking about how I want my boys to take their eggs: with mild retardation, cancer, big breasts, or senile dementia?

These issues seem to come up fairly frequently. For instance, we try to never microwave anything plastic in our house. Not just big, bad plastics like polycarbonate. None of them. Not even No. 5, polypropylene, which I feel is a word I shouldn’t even have to read, much less know how to spell. So that brings me back to picking a poison. If I send my son to preschool with a slice of pizza for lunch, and it’s on a plastic plate, it might get nuked. So I put it in tin foil, knowing no one with a brain would ever even accidentally microwave tin foil (well, except that one time in college).

Again, I’m choosing Alzheimer’s over toddler man-breasts and endocrine disruption. And cut-up kids, since I opted not to send my kid in with a big glass container mimicking Tupperware.

This is simply exhausting. Does anyone else miss the days when all that mattered was keeping your kids out of the streets and their ride-on toys off the steps?

And do any of these environmental hazards really matter when I actually let my young children consume Peeps? Many Peeps?  –Jillian O’Connor

They can also pick from cool new varieties of rugby and flag football, but that’s only if they’d like to give up their day of tennis, Mandarin and macramé.

Piano lessons can be fit in in between violin and hip-hop dancing, and let’s not forget cooking, Spanish, sewing and graphic animation.

But I’ve found that leaves no time for The Elder’s real interests, which include panning for gold, hunting for zombies, digging for Yeti teeth, gambling for Pokemon cards, ninja fighting and/or dancing, staring at the book “Monsterology” and looking for signs of some creepy presence known as “Slender-Man.”

Why aren’t these classes being taught? What will he put on his high school application forms? He already passed on Little League this year, so there goes his Major League career and scholarships.

I guess we’ll just have to resign ourselves that he’ll have to pursue those in his (gasp!) free time. In between nightly homework, a half-hour of reading and spelling reviews, that is.

This is, after all, the care-free life of a first-grader.—Jillian O’Connor

I served dinner, and everybody cried.

Well, not me or my husband, or the cat. Just the two little boys with rarefied tastes – who are far too sophisticated for their mom’s quickly improvised baked penne. Yes, it was just a jar of Barilla sauce, pasta and piles of mozzarella, but what kid isn’t into cheesy, saucy carb products? (You know, pizza-flavored pasta?)

My kids. The Elder likes to eat only Japanese foods (primarily nigiri sushi) and school lunches (“They’re just sooooo good,” I’m told, that he “can’t pick one favorite.”) Note to self: Check what drug or candy is being injected into said cafeteria food.

The Younger is your typical kid, who likes only pizza, eggs, peanut butter, cheese, and baked goods, and won’t touch a vegetable.

The problem on Friday was that I neglected to note that, 1: The pasta had a sauce of vegetative origin, but was not, in fact, on a pizza. And 2. This cuisine was not from Japan.

If you see lists of food tips from pediatricians, they generally advise that you serve foods that your kids “can eat.” I’m not sure if this means “can” eat or “will” eat.

We’re talking about a pretty narrow intersection of foods here that both kids “will” eat together: pizza and sushi. (The Younger, rather than bankrupting his family on high-grade fish, prefers to push us to the brink of economic despair by ordering many tiny sushi omelets, and never, ever eating the rice.)

But on Friday, we discovered our new household miracle food. It’s always available here, and palatable to weeping first-grader gourmets and picky preschoolers alike: Rice Krispies.

I’m not recommending anyone else try this nutritionally suspect route, but at least it quelled the shrieks of horror, if only for a little while.—Jillian O’Connor

Do your kids all have different food tastes? Are you also grappling with a child who thinks a grilled cheese is an insult to the very fiber of his being? Have you found a second career as a short-order cook in your own home?

Once upon a time, eating a slice of watermelon was always both a rare, seasonal treat, and one fraught with labor. You had to eat around the seeds, picking them out, to enjoy the fruit, which, if you were lucky, would be as sweet as candy and not as firm as watery Styrofoam (What’s Styrofoam? my kids would ask, but that’s for a different post).

There have been some popular girls clothes lately with watermelon prints, and it makes me sad. No designer could create a prettier piece of fruit. One of the most exquisite botanical designs on the planet — a simple slice of watermelon festooned with big, black, buggy-looking things — has been all but destroyed, deveined, emptied of its essence, for the convenience of picky three-year-old diners.

I doubt I’ll ever see a watermelon dress with no black seeds. It would look like a ladybug with no dots. It’d have no oomph, no je ne sais quoi, no acknowledgment that unpleasantness can exist – and even enhance a situation. Not every chicken is boneless, and apples don’t grow in slices.

And I’ll have to ask the next little girl, I see wearing a watermelon print dress, what are those black things? Ten-to-one she doesn’t say seeds.–Jillian O’Connor

 Yes, yes, I realize seeded watermelons are out there somewhere, but when was the last time you ate from one? Has your child ever had the real thing? Or even seen an orange seed? Comments welcome!

Yes, you read it right.

The latest fad in the three- to six-year-old demographic currently residing at our domicile is for Mommy, i.e., me, to make extremely loud extended raspberries on cheeks, foreheads and scalps. Then they are happy. And then they get into bed.

Why? I don’t know. (Personally, I have different tastes.) But if they like it and are willing to risk falling asleep for it, hell, I’ll do it until they go away to college.

The only danger is when I forget to do it. Two nights ago, I left rather abruptly so my husband could start reading to them, and The Younger was quietly weeping: “Mommy, you didn’t fart on me!”

So, I farted on him. And all was right with the world again.—Jillian O’Connor

Sometimes, he’ll act like an adorable kittycat, as your eldest did. But, due to early exposure to six-year-olds and their rarefied interests, the rest of the time he’ll pretty much be the toddler undead. And quite good at it, actually.

I’m starting to notice that you can always spot the second-born kids on the playground at an elementary school. The first-born children, often a mile away at the more refined public parks, out of the influence of unsavory grade-schoolers, are usually politely eating their Organic Cheddar Bunnies in their free-trade, PVC-free handmade hats and being lightly admonished that “we use our words with our friends.”

Meanwhile, the younger siblings are coatless and sockless, fighting to the death with the siblings of other big kids, making the fighting scenes in “Django Unchained” look like a game of Candy Land.

Or they’re being informed by the more energetic parents that “Zombies, don’t yell! They moan, quietly.” Mainly, though, they’re being dusted off after falling off the play structure – “Oh, again?!” – and sent back up to their doom.

No worries. Zombies just keep coming back.—Jillian O’Connor

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2012/07/02/120702crbo_books_kolbert?currentPage=1