Emily has proclaimed from the early days that she would never become a short order cook. She doesn’t take orders from me or the kids and whip up whatever we want to eat whenever we want to eat it. Instead, she prepares a meal (she’s a great cook by the way), and we eat whatever she prepares.

With the kids, we basically give them a choice. They can eat what’s in front of them, or they don’t have to eat. I know. Some may say we’re bad parents. However, we learned that kids will always eat when they’re hungry. And, by not giving them meal options, they’ve learned to enjoy all sorts of food.

But, as you can imagine, there are still some foods they don’t prefer. Here’s where the second rule comes into play. We don’t allow our kids to say, "I don’t like this." Or, "Yuck." Or, "This food makes me want to vomit." Because we want our kids growing up thinking more about the cook than themselves, we have encouraged them to use the phrase, "This is not my favorite."

This morning, after the three older kids had left for school and Emily and I were getting ready for the day, Brooke had the opportunity to watch her one episode of Dora the Explorer. Brooke is a Dora addict. At times, she’ll just blurt out the word "map" for no apparent reason.

Unfortunately, this morning there was a snafu with the Dora episode that had been recorded on the DVR. It stopped mid-adventure. Emily went into the family room to get things figured out. As she was trying to get Dora going again, the news channel was giving an update on last night’s election results. Brooke soaked in the news update for a few moments and then stated, "This is not my favorite."

With that, Brooke has cast her vote for Dora to be the next President of the United States.

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