You know how when you're shopping with a child they'll ask you to get them random stuff you wouldn't usually dream of spending money on? Z does this all the time. A couple of weeks ago I was shopping with her in the produce section of our local grocery store and she spotted those finger-sized bananas and got all excited. They were about $1 a pound, and they were pretty green, but I figured, why not? We picked out three and I told her they weren't ready to eat yet, but when they were, we'd have a "banana party." I had no idea what that meant, but I meant it, and she found the promise to be absolutely thrilling.

I am not very good at rotating food to ensure things get used before they go bad. Today I noticed that the baby bananas were nearly black. It's hard to tell when bananas are overripe when you're dealing with anything other than the standard variety, so I didn't jump to any conclusions, but I did have a sinking feeling that I have felt on the few occasions where I did not live up to promises I had made to my daughter. At two and a half, Z has not even completely formed what it means to have a promise broken - she simply doesn't have the long-term memory for it - but I am doing my best to get trained in as a responsible father who stands by his word before I face serious consequences for any errors I might commit. So I immediately decided that, ripe or overripe, it was time for our banana party. Luckily, we had 15 minutes to spare, easy.


Z was of course very excited to be recruited for party preparations. I generated instructions for her while they were still forming in my mind, and I got out some yellow construction paper and a black crayon and asked her to decorate it for party hats, which she did in a jiffy. I then stapled, taped and cut the paper to make cone-shaped hats. A scrap of paper became an additional "crown" for a yellow stuffed animal, and with yellow saucers she, Jenni and I all sat down to our feast of tiny bananas. They tasted fine.


Voila - instant banana party!

This post from the ZRecs Archives was originally published on December 18, 2006. We're gradually bringing our favorite archival posts onto our new blogging platform so they can be indexed and cross-referenced in our new system.