What Smells Like Onions?

On the way to the bus stop this morning to drop off my son, I detected the odor of what I thought was onions.

"Sweetie, have you been into the chips?" I asked my daughter, while at the same time thinking to myself about whether or not we actually had any sour cream and onion chips in the pantry. I thought I'd been sure to get rid of all such temptations prior to the beginning of Lent. As I pondered this, my son continued on his way to school, blithely ignoring my conversation with his sister.

"Has your sister been into sour cream and onion chips?" I asked my son.

"No," he replied. "But she smells like onions."

I couldn't figure out for the life of me why this was so; she definitely smelled like onions. I began to wonder if she'd had an accident at some point, which I'd missed. Perhaps I'd mistaken the smell of urine for onions? Glancing around at the many parents who'd gathered with their children at the bus stop, I decided I would keep this thought to myself. I quietly inspected my daughter's hands and found what I thought to be the remnants of sour cream and onion chips. Better that than urine, I thought.

"Mommy, I'm thirsty," she told me.

"No wonder. You ate chips! Where did you find chips?"

"I not eat chips," she said.

I began to think of the time she'd eaten sunblock and started to worry; what if she really hadn't gotten into chips? What if it she'd eaten something that might harm her and it just smelled like onions?

After my son boarded the bus, I walked my daughter back to the house and started to look around.

"Show me what you ate," I demanded. She pointed to ranch popcorn seasoning, which I'd left sitting on the end table the night before. I smiled to myself, walked over to the popcorn seasoning, and snatched it up.

"You can't eat this, sweetie. Not for breakfast, anyway."

The events reminded me of what had happened just a few days earlier, when my husband entered the kitchen to find the refrigerator door open and the deli drawer pulled out. He rounded the corner of the kitchen and entered the hallway, immediately spotting our daughter who was happily eating a slice of American cheese.

"I eat cheese," she said, grinning widely.

We allowed our daughter to retrieve another slice of cheese from the refrigerator before moving it to a higher shelf and told her that she wasn't allowed to eat any more slices of cheese unless she asked us first. It was, after all, only nine o'clock in the morning, and she'd already eaten a bowl of cereal.

Later that same morning, as I sat at the computer and checked e-mail for work, my daughter, unbeknownst to me, toddled up to my husband and whispered to him, "Can I have some cheese?" My husband would later describe the look she gave him as that of a crack addict looking for a fix. He, much to her chagrin, I'm sure, denied her request.

We still haven't put the cheese back in the deli drawer. And now, after the incident with the popcorn seasoning, I'm wondering if I need to consider moving anything else. Really, though, nothing is safe.

"I'm thirsty," my daughter repeated.

How on earth she was still hungry after eating four Pop-Tarts in a 30-minute time span, I'll never know. I'm hoping she's more on her way to growing another four inches and less on her way to becoming the pre-, and now post-Jenny Craig Kirstie Alley.