Fun With Food

So here’s how it goes at our house.  I buy food.  SB (small boy) either shovels it in his mouth with great enthusiasm, or he acts like I’m serving him a plate full of poison. 
The trick, I’ve figured out, is in the sales pitch.  I can’t call string cheese by its name because he’s decided, at the ripe old age of two, that he hates cheese.  So I call it “silly string” and he’ll eat it.  Those fruity/vegetable bars are called “raisin candy” and he eats those too.  Sucker.
Before I was a real parent, I couldn’t understand what the big deal was.  You cook something, they eat it, end of story.  So as you can imagine, reality has been quite a kick in the _____. 
Mealtime can go one of two ways:
A Good Meal (shoveling scenario):
I cook food, and if it’s something that the dictator in diapers approves of, two handed shoveling begins.  If I’ve really done a bang up job, MORE is requested at an urgent pitch to ensure he doesn’t starve to death and keel over at the table.  
A Bad Meal (poison scenario):
Our dog gets covered in rice/spaghetti/corn, etc.  Then the rest of my evening involves picking food out of a very furry dog.  Hilarity ensues.
Loud, anguished yelling begins.  If he’s really feeling feisty, the plate of terrible awful revolting poison gets shoved across the table, leaving us to intercept it before it hits the floor – a fun family game of table hockey!  Oh boy! 
Sometimes I have him help pick out what he wants (I know…) – we always have a big time at Costco or Trader Joes since they give away samples.  And this is where I get fooled EVERY time.  He loves the samples, so like a dummy I buy whatever it is if it’s reasonably healthy.  Then we scurry home, my heart leaping with joy and excitement over the concept that he might actually EAT SOMETHING NEW, and then at dinner he looks at me like I’m trying to kill him and we start another lively game of table hockey.  I’m now convinced that he likes the little cups the samples come in, not the food.

It’d be harder for him to play table hockey with little cups, so maybe I’m on to something.  Or we could just eat all our meals at Costco

Looking Back

Now that SB and I are sailing through the terrible twos in a very leaky boat,  I’m taking a fond look back at the easy baby days when he couldn’t move around a lot or say the word “NO” every three minutes.

I wish someone had told me the following things when he was little – it would have saved me a lot of time and angst:

1.         Germs and dog drool won’t kill him.  I sterilized everything until SB was a year old – We live in San Diego, not Bangladesh.  What was I worried about?  Ebola? 
2.         You’ll never get your pre-baby body back unless you’re J Lo. Just forget about it.  Do your best and if you’re not happy, only look at your head when you pass by mirrors.
3.         Pinch all those little rolls of fat as much as you can because they do eventually go away (we’re talking about the baby’s rolls now, not mama). 
4.         Don’t make spreadsheets showing when he eats/poops/sleeps – no one cares and it’s not that interesting. 
5.         Breast pumps were created by the devil and everyone hates them.  If someone tells you’re they’re not that bad, they’re a liar and should be slapped immediately.
6.         Travel before your kids become mobile.  Once they start rolling/crawling/walking, it’s not a vacation, it’s simply a change of scenery.  And think about it – do you really want to buy everyone on the plane drinks for five hours because of YOUR kid?
7.                 Laugh.  It’s funny.  Did you ever think you’d shrug off being peed on? Or go to work with baby food in your hair, milk on your shoulders, and Cheerios stuck to you back and not really care?
8.        You’ll never get a full night’s sleep again for the rest of your life.  Get used to it.
But then again – nothing’s that funny when you’re exhausted.  So maybe I’m wrong about all of this.

Bedtime is Hell

Was it General Patton who said war is hell?  Clearly he didn’t have a small boy (SB) because then he’d have known what hell is REALLY like.
Here’s what our eleven step nighttime routine looks like these days.  I actually lied to SB’s doctor when he asked how bedtime was going.  Pathetic.
Step One:  Bath time.  Lots of happy splashing and playing with boats.  So far so good unless it’s a dreaded hair washing night, then there’s lots of yelling and angry splashing (by SB, not us). 
Step Two:  Get into pajamas – Sharks? Dinosaurs? Skeletons? A five-minute debate ensues over bedtime fashion.  Of course during the day he doesn’t care what he looks like, but at night our house turns into Project Runway. 
Step Three:  Milk and a TV show in our room. Easy.
Step Four:  Book time.  Fairly easy.
Step Five:  Lights out.  Now the fun really begins.
*Note – this is the part where our pediatrician says we should be done.  And he says it with a straight face.
Step Six:  Cram myself into SB’s toddler bed and fight for pillow space with 300 stuffed animals.
Step Seven:  The command is given for me to SING.  Do you remember those movies where the king would order the jester to sing or he’d be killed?  That’s how it is around here.  Apparently my horrifically off-key version of Thunder Road is crucial for the King to fall asleep.  God knows why.  
Step Eight:  SING MORE! (by this time my back has cramped up and I’ve lost the will to live…)
Step Nine:  Excuse time.  Some of my favorites:  SB needs to kiss the dog.  The bed is hurting him.  He pooped (liar!) 
Step Ten:  The Jester (me) must sing one more “little song”.
Step Eleven:  Try to sneak out and get caught by his highness.
Repeat steps 6 – 11 until the King falls asleep.
Well played, King Small Boy.  I bow to you.  As a good Jester should.

The Joys of Traveling With a Small Boy

We just got back from a three and a half day family visit to Los Angeles.  Now bear in mind that we weren’t traveling to a remote island outpost, 17 hours from civilization with no infrastructure, we were simply going to the largest city in California.  And also remember that LA happens to have a Trader Joes and/or an organic grocery store on almost every corner, lots of 24 hour pharmacies, and from what I’ve been led to believe, a fairly civilized way of life. 
So here’s what I packed for the SB:
One stroller
One booster seat
Four pool noodles
A hat
Assorted plates/bowls/cups
Four stuffed animals
A garbage bag crammed full of toys
Two blankets (one standard, one just in case SB had a fit because he missed it)
Two pillows
Three different kinds of diapers
An entire pharmacy devoted to keeping SB safe and happy
Snacks:
            Goldfish
            Organic cheddar bunnies
            Organic chocolate bunnes
            Raisins
            Granola bars
            Yogurt pretzels
            Raisin bars
            Organic pop-tart type things
            Cookies
            Juices
Sunscreen
Pool Floaties/toys
Clothes for almost every occasion (because you never know)
Bath stuff – toys, soap/shampoo
Three pairs of shoes
One lunchbox
Here’s what I packed for me:
A swimsuit
Shorts
Shoes
A few tops
Toiletries
Here’s what my husband packed:
Nothing.  Duh. There was no room.

Fantasy vs. Reality

Here are a few things I said before I had SB (small boy) – the good, bad, and the astonishingly clueless:
Smug pre-SB Fantasy:  I’d NEVER let my kids watch TV.
Reality:  TV?  God Bless PBS Kids!  Now I can do laundry/feed the dog/cats/fish/clean the house/go to the bathroom/do some more laundry/take a shower/eat/eat some more/hey, more laundry!/get the mail/brush my hair/teeth/cook dinner/laundry…/water the plants/write my blog.  I didn’t just eat my words, I feasted at the Sunday buffet on this one. 
Fantasy:  Look how dirty that little boy/girl is!  I’d never let my kids out of the house looking like that.
Reality: Dirt?  Whatever.  If I don’t need a chisel to get stuff off of his face, then we’re good to go – and if it were ok to take SB out back and hose him off during the day between baths, I’d do it in a second.  Short of duct taping the rips in his pants, I’ve really lowered my standards on this one. 
Fantasy: How can people just let their kids scream like that at the store/shopping center/beach/park/airport/winery(just kidding)? 
Reality:  Screaming?  I’m convinced that when kids are born, parents develop a “tune out” gland that enables them to not hear the racket small people are capable of (although the gland does have a finely tuned sensor for authentic crying/screaming).  This nifty gland also causes deafness to the word “mama” being repeated 500 times, and fake crying – the kind caused by the dog eating SB’s goldfish, the tragic loss of Mr. Potato Head’s eyes, or Buzz and Woody getting stuck under the couch for the zillionth time.
Fantasy:  Jeez, do people go brain dead after they have kids?  Look at that poor mom, she looks frazzled!
Reality: Since SB came on the scene,  I consider it a major victory if my teeth are brushed and I’ve managed to get pants on that don’t have boogers or clumps of pasta stuck to them.  I find myself wearing work out pants quite often, regardless of the fact that I rarely exercise these days – I’m great at chasing a two year old down the street (I consider it a wind sprint) and that’s about as good as it gets.  And I don’t remember ever going to work without milk on my shoulder or something stuck to my back – goldfish, happy face stickers, etc. Mascara on BOTH eyes?  Victory is mine!
Fantasy:  I don’t understand why parents are so exhausted, babies sleep all the time – what’s the deal?
Reality:  Sleep?  What’s that?  The amazing thing about having SB is that my insomnia is a thing of the past, and it appears narcolepsy has taken its place. 
Now when I see a frazzled mom with a screaming kid at the store/airport/winery/etc.,  I just smile sympathetically at her  – while checking to see if she needs to borrow my chisel.

Weenies. Who’s Got ‘Em, Who Doesn’t

(Caution – this post has the word weenie in it.  More than once – in fact, a lot. Kind of like my life these days).
SB has discovered his weenie, and I guess this is how things will be for the rest of his life.  First off, I have to admit that I’m pretty impressed with what the weenie can handle, what with the tugging, pulling, twisting, and occasional bath toy run over it.  Who knew? 
Then there’s the never ending discussions.  We talk about who has weenies, who doesn’t, why, and I have to say SB looks pretty disappointed that his dog/mama/stuffed panda/fire truck/the lady at the grocery store doesn’t have one.  It’s like there’s a random weenie survey constantly going through his mind, and the questions can start anytime, without warning – in line at Whole Foods the other day, he pointed at the (female cashier) and said, “Mama, she have a weenie?”  I explained that no, she doesn’t (low and mumbled under my breath while madly fumbling for my credit card and wondering which store we haven’t humiliated ourselves in lately or maybe I can just buy everything online and never leave the house again and be THAT lady on the street that all the kids avoid even at Halloween – AARGH!!), and SB gave her a look of profound pity.  Poor weenie-less cashier lady.
He also likes to say the word weenie, especially now that I’ve told him it’s really not a word to use while we’re out and about.  At home, all bets are off – between the weenie and  poo-poo talk, we’re not really in high demand at parties these days, but when we’re OUT IN PUBLIC AROUND NORMAL PEOPLE, we need to cut out the incessant weenie/poo-poo chats. 
So of course he talks about it even more.  If I ask a question and he either doesn’t want to answer or doesn’t know, he says, “weenie-poo-poo”.  Secretly I have to give him bonus points for combining the two Forbidden In Public words, but I pretend to be upset.   When I decide to join the working world again, I’ll have to remember this approach on conference calls when I’m stumped, but for now I believe the hermit/online shopping scheme might be the better way to go.

The Invisible Mama

How is it that the small boy (SB) and the dog (just dog) both have figured out how to totally tune me out and ignore me?  Did my dog train the SB, or am I so annoying that they’ve both conspired to go selectively deaf together?  Have my cries of, “put that down/get that out of your mouth/don’t lick your shoes (really)/SLOOOOWWWW DOWNNNNN” really gotten that boring and repetitive?  
I’ve also tried the whispering/silent approach, which only garnered SB more freedom because then it was even easier to go selectively deaf.  Plus I felt like the Jewish mother version of Dirty Harry.  “Go ahead – make my day – lick that shopping cart.  Are you feeling lucky, punk?”
I actually read in a book that growling gets your kid’s attention.  Sure, so does setting yourself on fire or blowing up the house, but it’s easy to see why that approach isn’t taken too often.  Growling?  Can you imagine being in line at the store and hearing some frazzled mom growling at her kids?  You’d think you ended up in one of those “People of Walmart” emails that floats around.   And then you’d duck and cover until the authorities hauled her away.
I wonder how much I could get a Bullhorn for?  That could make quite an impact at the library when SB’s tearing through the racks and in high ignoring mode (HIM).  But on the bright side, I’m getting pretty good at the wind sprints through the children’s section…

Fears I Don’t Want To Pass Along to SB

    
Genetics aside, and sorry kiddo, this is what you get – I hope I don’t pass along any of my fears/neurosis/irrational hang-ups to SB (small boy).  A sampling of things that scare me include:  slugs, earthquakes, flying, Joan Rivers (and her daughter), grasshoppers, flying,  the Tea Party, pit bulls, reality TV about bored housewives/single people in New Jersey, flying, and very bad fake tans. 

Being a mom to a SB, I’ve had to really put the brakes on my reactions to the grossness factor.  Yesterday he picked his nose, held out his finger and said, “mama, you eat it?”  I call this “When the Sharing Lecture Fails”.  We pick up worms on our walks, which is a minor shudder, but when he saw a slug the other day I had to really go in to full blow lying mama mode (or FBLMM), and tell him slugs have sharp teeth and bite, and luckily this one was sleeping.  He can figure out the truth from the BS when he gets older, I guess.

Flying’s another one.  I’m a paranoid/crazy/much rather take a train but they don’t go to Hawaii white knuckler, to say the least.  I hate everything about the process, especially after 9/11.  The second we park at the airport I tend to become crabby and fearful, and now rather than making everyone with me miserable and homicidal, I have to act brave and cheery in front of SB.  It stinks, this being a grown-up thing.

No more glaring at the TSA employee who’s lecturing me about the tiny little thing of hairspray in my purse (because I’m going to style someone to death?), and no more exaggerated eye rolling when I have to take off my flip flops to prove that I’m not concealing a rocket launcher.  Once we actually manage to get our stroller checked at the gate, beg to be seated together, get on the plane, fight over who gets the window seat (not me), hold up the line putting our stuff in the absurdly miniscule overhead compartment while backing up the line like a log jam,  I then have to pretend that flying’s fun and interesting.  In other words, act like a normal, well adjusted person.  Right.

I can’t subtly check the pilot as we walk by the cockpit to make sure he’s sober/didn’t just put his dog to sleep/ is recently divorced and clinically depressed and fantasizing about pointing the plane into a cornfield and ending it all.  I have to actually listento the flight attendant tell me to put my mask on first.  Honey, if it gets to that point, I’ll already have died of fright, and what good is a mask going to do when we hit the cornfield anyway?

So I pretend flying’s fun.  So far SB hasn’t picked up on my phony smile and scary Disney Teen Perky voice, but I think he’s going to catch on soon.  In the meantime, maybe Amtrack’s building a bridge over the Pacific.  You never know.

Things I’ve Said?!?!?

After seven years in the shopping center biz working with the general public, I thought I’d seen and said it all.  Not even close.  Here’s a condensed list of things I’ve actually said since I’ve become a mom:
Don’t pick your/my/the dog’s nose.
Stop licking the window/shopping cart/railing/plants/sidewalk/that kid.
No, mama doesn’t have a weenie.
Stop painting/pretending to eat/licking the dog.
Don’t put that bead/blueberry/raisin/rolly bug in your nose/ear/mouth.
Don’t draw on the wall/window/dog/car/table/phone/stairs/me.
I don’t think the birds outside want your spaghetti/chicken/banana/chocolate brownie.
No, the dog can’t change your diaper with her paws.
Yes sweetie, I’ve put a sign on the door that says, “No Monsters Allowed”
No, we can’t have a pet rolly bug/worm/bee/moth/cow/gorilla in the house.
Please don’t put your train/panda/helicopter/face in the toilet.
More to come, but for now I’d like to just print out this list and hand it to him for reference.  I guess I’ll have to wait until he can actually read, but by then this list will most likely be 100 pages long…

Being Overprotective. Or Not.

So is it bad that I have SB convinced that if he ever rides on a motorcycle all his hair will blow off?
Being raised by a professional Jewish mother, I tend to lean towards the overprotective side and this really bugs me sometimes.  I’m sure it bugs SB a lot of the time.  I’ve resisted the urge to make him wear a bike helmet 24/7, and so far I haven’t wrapped him in bubble wrap, but it’s a fine line I walk…
As a kid, I always hated having the earliest curfew and having my mom hover at the pool every time my friends and I went swimming, well into my teens.  My grandma, with her charming Viennese accent, always said, “you’ve got to vatch”.  Doors were locked all the time and every terrible news story was discussed at length with a dire warning to us to be careful.  It’s a miracle we survived without cell phones, helmets, knee pads and GPS. 
So now I hear myself telling SB to be careful, stop putting stuff in his mouth, and the hardest – don’t pet dogs you don’t know.  I was bitten three times as a kid, despite my mom’s hovering, so I suppose there’s lessons we just learn on our own.  But not on my watch.  No way, Jose.
So how do you draw the line and not be too overprotective?  What if he grows up to be one of those freaky testosterone laden Outside Magazine kind of guys?  “Sure son, go ahead and juggle those flaming chainsaws while you’re tightrope walking across Niagra Falls.  Big wave surfing?  Why the heck not?  You want to hike across Afghanistan?  Go for it!”  See what I mean?  Boys like to do stuff like that.

I guess for now I’ll work on keeping Mr. Potato Heads eyes out of SB’s nose and try to stop him from eating rolly bugs.  Baby steps.  But I’m not going to give up on the motorcycle/baldness lie, at least not until he calls me on it…