Okay, I get it now.

We’ve all seen them.  Pictures of kids eating spaghetti.  Making a total and complete mess.  Getting more food on themselves and their surroundings than actually in their mouths.

I never understood the concept.  I would just look at those pictures and think, “Well, yeah.  Cute kid and all, but that is a bona fide mess.  I’ll never let my kid do that.”

And I didn’t.  But then Bonny Annie and Dirty Harry have never liked spaghetti.  Never.  So the opportunities for a noodle-and-sauce-free-for-all were limited.  Not that I cared or thought I was missing anything.

Until now…

Oh…when you have a kid who likes spaghetti, and is really getting into it at dinner time…well, it is kinda cute.

You find yourself unconcerned about the stains and the fingernails and the sauce that’s now matted into his eyebrows.  You just keep laughing and snapping pictures and ladling more spaghetti onto the highchair tray.  Like an idiot.

All for the sake of cute.  Sheesh.

And then you wonder, as he slurps noodle after noodle through his rosebud little lips, “Whose the real “sucker” here?  Me or him?”

Don’t answer that, okay?