Food Envy has a Silver Lining

It might not show, but Austin loves his food. He took to solids straight away and has always been a keen and cooperative eater.

He also has food envy.

This isn’t a huge surprise. I mean, don’t we all? At the same time it is something I should have realised earlier. It’s there in the way Austin’s focus shifts from his vegemite toast to my fruit and spice muffin, or indeed from his vegemite toast to my vegemite toast. Whatever he’s eating is the best thing in the world until the second he sees something else.

He has a less subtle version of a trait we all share. Everyone’s food looks better than our own. The grass is always greener. Tastier too if you’re a horse.

There are solutions for this, of course. I’m always careful to keep his next course out of sight and could easily be just as discrete with my own.

At the same time, I’d like to think there’s much to celebrate.

Firstly, he’s not unlike the rest of us and, it has to be reluctantly accepted, when you’re young conformity does breed confidence. More importantly, there’s a decent chance he’ll be like his mother and dining out will, for me, become a degustation affair.

One of the hundreds of ways in which Kate and I fit together perfectly is that when we eat out she almost always, without conferring, orders my second choice. Granted this is usually better for me that it is for her, but with the size of some portions these days there’s more than enough to go around. Even then, I always wait until my sample is offered and then take only the tiniest bit. Well, tiny-ish.

If Austin does share this trait and can instinctively identify my third pick then I’ll be onto a winner. Dining out will be expensive – I’m not wasting this on Cobb & Co or the local Thai – but it will be well worth it.

Alas, parenting is about patience. Like so many other things (blond or brown, drums or piano, off-spin or medium fast) I’ll find out in due course. In the meantime, the Friday lunchtime burger will have to wait until he goes down for his 1pm sleep.