Alyssa the Four-Year-Old Discovering Pancakes

This week, my daughter Alyssa tried a spectacular new food for the first time ever: pancakes! In fact, mommy’s Sunday morning pancakes with syrup. Remember when trying a new food was something so impossibly new and exciting? For my four-year-old daughter, this must have been like discovering a new dimension or galaxy. “Delicious!” she exclaimed with a bright glowing smile. How I envy her for experiencing such new things. Yet ironically, she’s extremely finicky about what she eats and it’s often a massive struggle to get her to try new foods, even if they are sweet and yummy. (Yes, I was that same way at her age as well. Like father like daughter, what comes around goes around.) I guess she sometimes finds an acute danger and fear to being an explorer of the unknown. But isn’t that what makes life worth living? Experiencing the new and daringly different…? Because sometimes it leads to something special… even if it is something as simple as the wonderful world of pancakes.