Pot calls the kettle black!

I read to KB while giving him breakfast (Ok folks, I am not good a food training, I have to read and play music to feed him! No TV is the best I can do!). On good days, it goes smoothly and we read book after book until he is done. Some days, there are interruptions to go get him his favorite car for him to thumb on the wheels...a music CD to be changed according to his request, a sudden sneeze and splatter that requires me to get a tissue and clean up - all in the middle of giving him his cereal. I try to be patient - not because it comes naturally but because if I am impatient, it only makes matters worse. But on some days, I just cannot find it in me to be patient and I yell or lecture to him on and on about how he is now a big boy and he needs to really eat fast, eat on his own etc.

Anyways - one of the books he has been reading lately is a book called "Time for bed" - which he calls "Thaachi time" book. In it are pictures of a mother asking her daughter to go to bed, while the kid keeps delaying by asking her mother for this and that. On one page, finally when the child settles into bed, she asks her mother, "What were you like mom as a little girl? Did you like to go to bed or did you want to play instead?". This is one of KB's favorite pages. He always pauses on this page a little longer and says "Did you like to Thaachi mamma?"...

This morning, breakfast was not moving fast. He kept looking at the pictures in his books, narrating stories but the cereal was sitting tight in one corner of his mouth. After nearly half an hour of this, I began my "you should eat fast" lecture and was looking positively annoyed. I told him, "KB nee romba paduthre KB! You have to be a good boy OK!" (you are troubling mamma too much, you should be a good boy. Suddenly, he turned to me and said "Did you like to be a good boy Mamma?"!

Wow - was he really wondering? I don't know what he had in mind when he asked me that. He was just asking in the same tone with which we read that particular book. It's just that he asked me that question at the right moment! Somehow that made me stop. Yes, because I know how much I have troubled my mom about eating. And here I was telling him that he should eat fast/well and not trouble Mamma. No dear, I was not a good boy (well, girl!). But what's a mother to do?! I can't tell him to follow in my foot steps and be a picky eater! I just repeated after him and said, "Did you like to be a good boy? Yes! I liked to be a good boy!"