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You would think I am feeding a family of 10 rather than two girls by the amount of food my daughters go through each week.
I may need to get a second job just to keep up with the ever-increasing grocery bills.
You see, they both start their day with a double serving of porridge that would satisfy a person double their size. And if eggs happen to be boiling on the stove, they’ll gobble those up too.
Breakfast is the only meal Maya will eat in under five minutes. In fact, her bowl is pretty much licked clean in the time it takes me to make my breakfast and sit down at the table.
Their lunch boxes are filled to the brim with either a roll, sandwich or zucchini slice, as well as a range of fruit (usually strawberries, blueberries or raspberries) because good old apples just don’t cut it anymore.
Then I usually cut up some cucumber and carrots and throw in a few snacks to keep them going for the afternoon.
But as soon as they walk out of those school gates, they turn into ravenous animals who can’t be appeased until dinner time.
Their first words to me as they walk into the Riv are always the same.
No, it’s not ‘Hi Mum. How was your day?’
It’s either ‘I’m hungry’ or ‘Do you have any food?’
My colleagues and I have bets on what they’re going to say each time.
So I have to come prepared or they’re sniffing around desks and drawers to see what they can devour.
Or my boss will whip out a hidden packet of chocolates or lollies. Which is always fun when they start bouncing off the walls while I’m working on deadline.
Then, when I get home, I have to start preparing dinner as soon as I walk through the door before my gluttonous duo dive into the pantry to see what else they can ingest.
Finally, you would expect their little bellies to be full after a nutritious dinner right? Wrong.
‘‘What’s for dessert?’’ they both chime.
Say what??
Now I know they’re growing, active girls, but what the actual heck? And where does all this food go?
I was convinced they had worms (and actually hoped they did), but no such luck.
A friend of mine told me her mother used to tell her if she ate too much, she would grow up to be as big as a house.
Now that’s just mean. And while in my girls’ case, it would be more like a mansion, I would never say such a thing to a child.
Plus I can just remember when I could eat whatever I wanted without putting on an ounce of weight. I miss the good old days of super speedy metabolism.
I just hope the girls’ accelerated metabolism doesn’t last too long because it’s sending me broke.
But when I think about it, it could have been worse, I could have had sons.
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