If You Can't Beat Them Let Them Join You - Or How Owen First Learned To Massage Kale

The other night I was trying to cook dinner while Owen was trying to make me not cook dinner. This is kind of how our conversation went.

Owen: (tugging at my leg)  Mama, mama, mama, mama

Me: Owen, mama, needs to cook dinner.

Owen: (tugging at my leg more insistently)  Mama, mama, mama, mama!

Me:  Please Owen, just a few minutes.  Do you want to play with this?  (I try to hand Owen a variety of items from Cheerios to measuring cups, to a puppet.)

Owen: (tugging at leg)  Mama, mama, mama, mama, MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMA!!!!

I become increasingly frustrated as he yells at a higher and higher pitch and tries harder and harder to pull me away from what I'm doing.  This is not the first time this woman vs. toddler dinner battle has gone down. It is also why I usually cook dinner during his naps but sometimes I just have more important things to do, like lay in bed and play on-line Scrabble and watch Ted Talk videos which reinforce the fact that I have done very little with my life.  So, often I end up cooking while Owen is awake. At least this time I am making a raw kale salad so there is no hot oil, or flames or anything that poses great danger to Owen. It's really just a manner of my needing to get this done. But Owen is cook-blocking me like Putin at a Pussy Riot concert and I can feel my blood-pressure rising. I can also feel my "bad mom" growing more and more powerful and realize that something needs to give.  I do not like "bad mom" but recognize she is the less pleasant part of me. Bad mom is the one who forgets that we are dealing with a barely sentient human being and who believes that an 17 month old should in fact understand logic and delayed gratification.  Bad mom is adamant that Owen should fully appreciate that we are making this wonderful massaged kale salad for him (hahaha) and thus respond to our gentle entreaties to "give me a moment"  by saying, "Sure mom, I would love nothing more than to ease your stress and go entertain myself while you make something that I do not even consider a food."  And when this does not occur, bad mom wants to yell, she wants to kick a cat, she wants to go to a yoga class where they serve wine and definitely do not have any children there.

And just as bad mom is about to have her evil way, good mom has a revelation.

I was looking at this situation as if Owen and I had competing and incompatible desires and the only way to get around it was for one of us to give up. And even though I am a red-headed Scorpio who has often been described as "the most stubborn person I have ever met,"  I know I am in fact, no match for Owen.  But while Owen and I do very much have different desires they are not by any means exclusive.  So this is my revelation, "If you can't beat them, let them join you."

What Owen wanted was me.  (Can you blame him?)  And what I wanted was to get dinner done so the solution was simple, let Owen help me.  So I took the pot of kale and put it on the floor and after washing Owen's hands, (okay I might have forgotten that step but at least we weren't having company over) let him massage the kale.  And he loved it.  He was laughing and mixing.  I got creative and added additional ingredients just so he could mix them in with a spoon. He got so excited he decided to try it, though after he put a handful of leaves in his mouth he did shake his head and say, "No.  No, no, no,"  and throw it back in the bowl.  But since I was currently good mom, I understood raw kale is a hard sell.

And after we finished the kale, he helped out with the sliced potatoes that good mom was baking into "chips" because good mom doesn't fry.  He gleefully shook on  pepper, garlic and paprika, mixed them up with some olive oil (this time we did wash our hands) and then lay them out on the baking dish.  Aside from getting a little heavy handed with the garlic powder he did a great job.  But the point is he loved it.  And not only did I get dinner done but I got it done while creating a wonderful memory with my little guy.  And he seemed so proud when the food was done.  He was particularly thrilled with the oven baked potatoes which he ate by the handful and he even tried the kale again.  

Beets Right Off The Bush - Or How My CSA Has Helped Owen Love Vegetables

It seems to be a common agreement among most people in America that kids don't like vegetables.  Unless you are the PR people for Hidden Valley Ranch, then the tenet is that kids don't like vegetables unless they are covered in sugar,cream,salt sauce, um I mean Ranch salad dressing. People are wrong. (This applies to both the general public and the folks at Hidden Valley.)  Kids just don't like gross vegetables.  I think this fear of vegetables originated in the days almost all vegetables came in cans.  Or when vegetables came on a truck, hidden in a dark box, picked before their prime, tasting like cardboard painted with minerals and dirt.  And while apparently that's a good description of what some would consider a good wine, it's not a winner with kids.  When kids grew up on farms and access to good, fresh food, I'm pretty sure they didn't snub their noses at tomatoes.  I read every single Little House on The Prairie books and don't remember anywhere where Laura, aka Half-Pint said, "Aw Ma and Pa, no more lettuce please!"  


And now, having a fresh picked vegetable is not just the luxury of those who garden. It's becoming easier and easier for people to have access to good local food.  (Yes, we have a long way to go to making this accessible to people of all incomes but more on that another time and place.) And I do love vegetables, aside from Okra. Okra, I'm sorry, I will never love you, even deep fried, even hidden in a stew, it's just not going to happen.  But loving vegetables and not having having time or money to buy them is kind of like loving to snow ski and living in Morocco.  Shopping for groceries with a toddler kind of feels like you are on an episode of Super Market Sweep.  (Am I dating myself here?)  Especially in NYC when pushing a stroller down the aisles of most supermarkets is kind of like trying to drive a Hummer down the cobblestone streets of Santorini, except without a view and with lots of people giving you dirty looks as if you're, okay, well driving a Hummer down the streets of Santorini.  But with the CSA, you pay once in the beginning of the summer, and if you play your cards right you can actually trick yourself into thinking the vegetables come for free the rest of the time.  Yes, I'm that good.  So every week I get a huge box of vegetables and then race to use them all by the time the next delivery comes around.  But aside from the stress of worrying if Owen will be napping during the too small window of time, I have to pick it up; I have nothing to do but go get what's there.  And as I have another mom friend at the same CSA if one of our kids is sleeping, we pick up the other one's share .  (It takes a village.) 

And so, we have all been eating tons of vegetables, Owen included. Now, to be fair using Owen as an example for food is unfair.  It's kind of like throwing Michael Phelps in a lake and saying, "hey, tall people can swim." Owen is an Olympic level eater in general; he has sucked down pork belly, Soba noodles, lasagna, meatloaf of every different variety, clapped with glee at his first taste of truffle oil and also chicken parmigiana.  He has never met a fruit he has not liked and would probably run away with a loaf of bread if he could. He learned to say "more" and "please"  for the sole purpose of asking for more food. (see pork story and pumpkin pie stories from earlier posts.)  But vegetables have been pretty hit or miss and if he does eat them, it's often because I have disguised them well.  Yes, Virginia there is a spinach cake! But ever since we have been getting our CSA vegetables have become a thrill.  He sucked down a salad made with sugar snap peas, yellow peppers and mint tossed with olive oil and feta.  He eats plain sliced cucumbers like they were Cheerios.  I made pasta with beets, and beet greens, lots of garlic, and a little ricotta and he actually pushed the pasta away to get to the beets.  (Note to anyone feeding their kids beets for the first time.  Please tell your spouse, partner, babysitter etc.  before they change your kid's diaper the next day. You will save yourself and them a little stress. If you do not understand this, you will.)  With our CSA Owen has even taken to eating salad!  Yes, salad, and sorry Hidden Valley, he eats in naked or with a splash of lemon and oil. 

Last night I made a summer squash and tofu casserole that Owen applauded for. Granted for him I pureed it with a little tomato sauce and parmesan cheese so it pretty much tasted like a pizza but still, it was squash and tofu.  And I'm not going to lie; it's nice to be applauded for.  And I held on to that appreciation because later that evening as I began to happily sing him to sleep, he not very nicely told me to stop, by signing, "finish, finish," repeatedly.  To be honest, I usually get through a few rounds before he cuts me off.  But I guess it's important for everyone to acknowledge what you are good at and what needs improvement.  I did also try to explain to him that sometimes expressing yourself artistically is more important than the quality of what comes out and at least I was in tune.  He was uninterested and just asked for milk.  

Can't win them all. 

Old Enough To Ask For It - Or It's Not Meth It's Milk

I actually started writing this post about nursing before that damn Time magazine cover came out but that is certainly not going to stop me from posting this even if it now just seems like a response.

Owen is now fourteen months old.  We are still nursing.  It's getting to the point that a lot of people are starting to ask me when I am going to wean.  Friends, family members and even strangers seem to feel that this is an appropriate question.  And they often ask it in the same tone as one might query, "So, when are you going to finally quit smoking?"  or "Hey, do you think maybe it's not such a good idea to have onion rings and a chocolate milkshake for breakfast?"  But cigarettes and fried food have the potential to kill you, (or at least fried food on a daily basis, nothing is wrong with an occasional french fry smoothie.) But breastfeeding past one has the potential to do what?  Let a stranger get a glimpse of my boob?  Take a little money away from the milk industry after their great comeback with that "Got Milk?" campaign?  I think at one point, years ago, I would have been in the "Breastfeeding should stop when they are old enough to ask for it," but the problem with that is if you teach them how to communicate well they are old enough to ask for it really early.  And also it's arbitrary, one child can "ask for it" at eight months, another at fourteen, and maybe some never can. But if there is one thing Owen has learned, it is how to ask to nurse.

Owen doesn't talk much yet, he as a few words like cat, dog, wa-ber  (water) and Daddy. Once he said "more" to ask for extra pie at Thanksgiving and once he said "Tara" while holding a Buddhist statue of Green Tara  which freaked me a little since I had NEVER said Tara but is another post.  He hasn't said "mom" yet, because he's clearly holding out just to piss me off.   He also has a few signs which include "finished" and "hungry" and "thirsty" but his most used is the sign for" nursing" aka "milks" or "milkies." (Feel free to judge me for pluralizing milk if you want, that's probably the real crime.) So I guess he now officially can "ask for it."  And ask for it he does.

He is an addict.  He wakes up from a nap and after I take him, and everything single thing that is in the crib out of it, both stuffed animals and his blanket, he is off and signing that he wants to nurse.  He wants to nurse before he goes to sleep.  He wants to nurse if he falls down or gets scared or sick.  He wants to nurse when I take off my shirt.  In fact, he claps when I take off my shirt which is somewhat of a validating response.

To be clear, I don't always let him nurse.  I am in the process of trying to encourage him to cut back.   I am also in the process of trying to discourage him from trying to "self-serve" in public where he reaches his hand inside me shirt to scoop out my boob and drink.  Sometimes I feel like I am back dating a young teenage boy, who is a little clumsy but VERY enthusiastic about my breasts.  Except the difference of course, is for one it is all about excitement and for the other it is about comfort and well, food.  So what's the big push?  To give him something processed to drink just so I don't offend someone?  At some point, we'll stop either because he goes to preschool and it's impossible to pack a boob in a lunch box, no matter how fancy that lunch box is, or because I'll get pregnant and I promised my husband he could have my boobs to himself for at least a few months before the next baby comes.  I have not put the boobs off limit but my husband does not like to share.  In fact the first time Owen slept through the night, I begged him to "just take a little off the top"  so I would not have to get up and nurse but for some reason he was completely un-cooperative.

But for now Owen really loves to nurse so we're nursing.  At some point we'll stop.  We might need professional help.  I see a reality TV show in the making.. MILK REHAB.  Then again we will probably be able to do it our own.  Because people, it's not meth, it's milk.

Owen Says - Or A Lesson On Recovering From Disappointment

The other night I sat down to dinner with my husband, his father and his wife, and of course, Owen.  We try to eat dinner with Owen a lot because eating really is a social thing and I want to make family dinners a part of our life. I want to firmly establish a time where we can ask Owen about his day and he will ignore us, ask to be excused before finishing his lima bean casserole, and roll his eyes when I quiz him on world capitols and revolutionary heroes. But eating with Owen usually means we have dinner when most restaurants in NYC are still serving lunch and when most restaurants around the rest of the country offer the Blue Plate Special.  But since we go to bed at an hour most appropriate to elementary school students or farmers in the middle ages it turns out okay.

Owen has recently developed a love for trying to eat with a fork or spoon though the chances of food reaching his mouth is just slightly higher than the chance of us being able to afford to pay for preschool in New York city. But last night he was doing a stellar job, even spearing the food himself, which was a new (and if I do say so myself impressive  trick for a 13 month old). I think he was inspired by the fresh lamb sausage.  He was so proud of himself.  He was laughing and cheering himself on (yes I have taught my son to clap for himself which could be viewed as self-aggrandizing but I have found to be a great tool on many occasions in my own life.)  Then suddenly right as he was about to successfully convey a juicy bite of meat to his maw, he jammed the fork right into the roof of his mouth.  Happiness over.  First his lips trembled and then he gave way into full body shaking sobs.  Tears poured from his eyes like he was auditioning for a soap opera and he waved the fork at me as he opened his arms for a hug.

We all know the feeling.  It's not just the pain. It's like when you'd dancing around your living room to your favorite song with so much glee that you start to feel like you are just one class shy of mastering the skills of Baryshnikov (or some hip modern dancer that would make be sound less old.)  Every cell  is alive with accomplishment, you are sure that if Janet Jackson (or someone way more hip) were to peer through your window at that moment she would invite you to star in her next video and then suddenly you stub your toe and with the rush of pain, your dream disappears like smoke.

I know that Owen will inevitably experience disappointment in his life and that I will be powerless to stop it but I am floored by how much it hurts me.  I watch him approach the world with so much sheer joy and watch him sadden when the world does not respond in kind, and he is only one.  The other day we were in a playground where all the kids were older than Owen.  He wobbled up to them and try to play and one after one they would shout," No," and walk away.  I watched his face crumble each time and when the third kid walked away after Owen tried to hug him, he started to cry and then crawled over to me and buried his face in my chest.  I love how sensitive and loving my son is but I worry.   I get that for the other kid, having a strange one year old toddle up to hug you could be perceived as somewhat creepy but I still wish he would have hugged Owen back.

All I can hope is that Owen finds people who love him.  I hope that Owen does not learn to close his heart or hide his emotions.  I hope that he still gives hugs and kisses to his friends and to a metaphorical extent, strangers.  I hope that people return these back to him.  I hope that when the disapointment and heartbreak, and sadness comes, that he will have the strength to deal with them and that I have the strength to interfere only when it makes sense.  So while I wanted to tell that kid to hug Owen back, I know that that is wrong, both for the kid and for Owen.  I also know that Owen will in fact bounce back,probably within minutes, just like he bounced back from the frustration of stabbing himself in the mouth with a fork just after learning to feed himself.

Because shortly after the fork incident, Owen discovered the game, "Owen Says."   I don't know how it started it but for some reason when Owen clapped his hands the four of us around the table mimicked him and clapped ours.  When he stopped clapping, we stopped and Owen broke into hysterical laughter.  He then threw his hands in the air and waved them like he just didn't care (sorry) and we did the same.  He laughed again.  Once he realized that we would do whatever he was doing he was beside himself.  He twisted in his high chair, he wiggled his hands above his head, he touched his nose to his plate and after each thing stopped to see if were following.  When he saw that we were he would laugh and laugh and laugh.  And we laughed and laughed and laughed because it was impossible not to experience his joy.

So, I think this is the lesson for me, sadness will happen.  And I have to let the sadness happen and trust my little boy to feel it and move on.  I can comfort him, be there for him, but also let him find his own power.  Because if a one year old can make a table full of adults do the twist in their chairs, clap their hands, and put their noses to the table, and have it end up making them laugh the hardest they have laughed in months, well, I'm pretty sure he's going to be okay.

Why It's Time To Talk to Our Kids About Race No Matter How Young They Are - My Response To Trayvon Martin

In general, my goal for these posts is to chronicle my life with Owen in a funny way, talking honestly about the rough patches of parenting but the murder of Trayvon Martin has made me think more seriously about what it means to raise a son. I have some friends who were recently joking about how the hard part about having sons was that you ended up losing them to a future daughter in law.  I'm pretty sure that I will be an awesome enough mother and mother in-law that this will not be the case but I guess there's always a danger.  I told them I was banking on my son being gay so I just get another son, though I guess their would always be mother to contend with. (Assuming he had one, he could have two dads too. . oops I digress.)

My husband's worry for our son is that he will be so sensitive that the world will be hard on him.  I'm not sure where this fear comes from, perhaps the fact that Owen kisses his stuffed animals on the mouth or blows kisses at people on the television if they are crying, or seems to stop people on the street who look lonely and wave until they smile.  I am not entirely convinced my husband's fear won't disappear entirely when the terrible twos arrives.

I do worry about raising a son in New York City.  From my experience boys can sometimes be the target of other boys just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.  Yes, girls fight too but it generally seems to be personal.  But in the light of both Trayvon's death among other recent incidents I have thinking about how grateful I feel to not have the added burden of having to worry about the effect the race of my child has on his likelihood of being the victim of a crime.  Yes, I still worry about cars and deadly animals and freak storms.  I will probably worry about SIDS until Owen is out of high school.  I worry about traffic accidents and poisoned Halloween candy even though we mostly walk in the city and have yet to go trick-or-treating and even when people thought old men were poisoning Halloween candy it wasn't really happening.  But in general the only time I worry about the color of Owen's skin is when we are outside and he rips he hat off and I have to worry about his super pale baldie head burning in even the modest March sun.  And while that IS a considerable worry as we come from a long line of skin cancer sufferers, to say that that is my "white woman's burden" is somewhat ridiculous.

What happened with Trayvon Martin is devastating but sadly not an isolated case. While our country has come a long way in regards to race, we still have a long way to go.  As white parents, especially those who identify as being forward thinking, who regularly expose their children to different cultures, who talk about politics and morals, it is easy to think that our kids either do not need to be taught about race or that talking about race does not need to be explicit.  But as books like "Nurture Shock" (Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman; Twelve, Hatchett Book Group, 2009) show, white parents are not talking about race, or at least not in a way that changes attitude or behaviors.  (Read the chapter "Why White Parents Don't Talk About Race.") White children still tend towards associating positive traits with people who look like them and negative traits with people who don't. This is a problem.  Sure, eventually this problem will be solved when white people don't exist anymore, and yes this day is coming even if it won't happen in our lifetime.  But that seems like a lazy, irresponsible solution.

The most powerful thing we can do as parents is to make sure that we don't create the George Zimmerman's of the world.  Or even if are to give him the  deepest benefit of doubt and take a step further back, that we don't create the world that gave space for his fear to feel so real.  This is our moral obligation.

I don't purport to be saying anything particularly new or daring.  I don't claim to be above or beyond racism in any way.  I am most decidedly not naive enough or egotistical enough to think that my talking about race will magically make it disappear for my son's generation. But I do think that sometimes as parents, especially white parents who consider themselves 'aware of race' that we do not address it directly enough.  We do not talk about it in a real meaningful way. In general, parents offer vague comments like, 'race doesn't matter' or 'anyone can succeed.' This does little to change children's perceptions. One study in the Journal of Marriage and Family 2007 shows that our of 17,000 families with kindergarten students 45% do not talk about race at all and if you look just at the white families that jumps to 75%  (Bronson & Merryman 2007).

75% is not acceptable.

So while you might not be able to change the mindset of a neighborhood watch person miles away or change the mentality of police who still racially profile, or individuals who do the same, what we can do is teach our children about race.  Use this incident and others to make a difference in some way.   Telling kids that skin color does not make a difference does not make a difference.  We need to be explicit and real.  Kids do respond.  And start talking now. Kids are never too young.

Now to be clear, I don't think I can have a completely meaningful conversation with Owen today.  As advanced as I think he is, he's still mastering words like "water" and "milkies" so I don't know if it makes sense yet, though my mom claims she gave me a very meaningful lecture about the birds and the bees when I was four.  She said she wanted to get it out of the way.  And while I think perhaps her approach was a little off (sorry Mom) I also think that maybe she is on to something.  If we start talking about it freely before kids can really understand, it will not be as hard later because we will be so used to it.

So when the story came on the news again last night, I told Owen what had happened and why I thought it was wrong.  And because I'm still hormonal (yes, I know it has been a year) I explained to him why I was crying and how I hope so much he would be safe always and how I felt so much sadness for Trayvon's mother. I'm not sure he got it but it does not matter.  He will some day.

Once There Was A Little Boy Named Owen - Or How Owen Found His Parents

Once there was a little boy named Owen.  Well he wasn’t named Owen yet and he wasn’t really a little boy either.  He was just a little soul floating around in the universe waiting to find the right home.   He had been looking for quite a while but finding a family was important business and he wanted to do it right. 

Each day Owen would visit different places and people to look for his home.   First, Owen went to visit a farm in Idaho.  There he saw a big family with lot of kids.   And there were all sorts of animals.  Everyone looked like they were having a lot of fun and Owen thought it sure would be neat to get to live near all those cows.   But as Owen counted up the kids one, two, three, four, five, he started to think maybe it wasn’t the best for him. “I don’t think I want to be number six,” Owen thought. “In fact, I’d really like to be the number one, so I better keep looking.”  So off Owen went, after one last look at the cows. 

Next, Owen went to Dallas Texas.  He heard someone say that everything was better in Texas, or was it bigger?  He wasn’t sure but he decided he might as well check it out.  He swooped down into one yard where he saw a couple living in a BIG BIG house, with a BIG BIG pool, and three BIG BIG cars.  Boy, they weren’t kidding when they said things were big.  Even the lady’s hair was BIG BIG BIG.  Owen smelled some delicious things, like BBQ and queso.  The couple looked like they were having fun too, which might have had something to do with those BIG BIG drinks they were drinking.  But all this big, big, bigness made Owen feel a little anxious. “ I’m just a little, little boy”, he thought. “All this bigness is just not for me, I better keep looking.”  So off he went.

After that, Owen went to California where he saw a nice young couple living right near the beach.  Owen was pretty hopeful about this.  He had a feeling he was REALLY going to like the water.  He liked the sound of the ocean and he thought it would be fun to run his fingers through the sand.  Owen watched the couple for a while and they seemed to be having a lot of fun.    They had a garden in back where they grew lots of vegetables and fruit which they used to make a big dinner.   Then Owen heard them talking about their plan.  They planned to move from country to country each year, surfing the big waves and living off the land.  Owen thought it would be nice to travel but changing homes every year seemed like a little much.  “I think I might like to stay in a place a little bit longer than that,” Owen said, “I better keep looking.”  And away he went.

Next Owen went to Alaska.  He had heard that Alaska really was beautiful and boy it was true.  The air was clean and the glaciers glittered in the sun.  He saw a nice couple there who lived in a nice little house right at the foot of a mountain. There was a head of an animal hanging on the wall which didn’t seem as nice as having a live animal in the yard.  He watched the couple sit down for dinner and boy did the food look good.  The table was piled high with fresh fish and bread and a huge salad.  But as dinner went on, Owen noticed the couple did not talk at all except to say, “Pass the fish please.”  They seemed to enjoy being quiet.  Owen guessed that was okay but he thought, “That’s not for me.  I think I need a little more noise.  I better keep looking.”  So off he went.

Owen went from place to place to place and saw so many different people and things.  And so many times he was tempted but something in him wanted to keep looking.  Finally he went to New York City and right away he loved it, with all the different people and sounds, and things to see.  And he was floating around and he saw this man and this woman walking down the street holding hands and talking to each other.  There was something about them that just seemed nice.  Owen moved in a little closer to hear what they were saying.  The woman was talking.  She said, “Hi baby, if you’re out there, we would really like you to come live with us.  We have some really great things to offer.  True, we have a few things that could use a little work but overall we’re a pretty good deal.”  Owen looked around to see who she was talking to but he didn’t see anyone else.  “Maybe she’s talking to me,” he thought. 

“So, baby if you come live with us, we promise that we will have a lot of fun,” she said. “We are creative and a little silly and we love to play.  We’ll sing songs and read books and make art.  We have good imaginations and will try to make magic wherever we can.  Sometimes I have too much of a temper and I’m not so good at organizing things but I can write you stories and sing you too sleep.  Also, I’m a really good cook and I sure know what to do with a banana.  We don’t exactly have perfect jobs and we only have a little apartment and we may not be your most traditional family but we love each other so much and love you too.  We promise to let you be whoever you want to be though we sure hope you’re not a Republican and you don’t join a cult. Please baby if you’re out there, we would love for you to come to us.”  They went on talking a little more about what they had and what they didn’t but Owen didn’t need to listen anymore.  He knew that this was his family.  He liked how they were so busy looking for him and how they talked about what they had and what they didn’t.   But most of all, he just felt like he was supposed to be their little boy.  For him, there was nowhere else he would rather be.  And he decided to stop looking.  He painted a little splash of his soul across their hearts so when he went back up into the universe to wait for the right moment to return, he would be able to make it back to them. 

And that is the story of how Owen found his mommy and daddy.  

Reshaping Shower Games - Or Why Tossing Water Balloons Does Not Prepare You For War

I have played quite a few games at baby showers and heard of many more that I have not had the good fortune to play.  What I have come to realize in my first year of motherhood is that all of these games have one thing in common, they were completely designed to put a rose-colored glow on the dirty part of parenting. They are roughly the equivalent of training future soldiers by tossing water balloons for grenade practice or playing paintball to practice face-to-face combat.  So I propose that we revise these games to retain the fun while incorporating a hard dose of reality as well as some necessary skill building.

Game #1 - Diapering a stuffed animal.  In this game the participants have to diaper a stuffed animal and whoever does it the quickest wins.  Once I saw someone diaper a watermelon.  I can tell you that diapering a stuffed animal does not compare at all to diapering a child.  Even the blindfolded variety does little to help you.
Alternatives: 
a.  Diaper a cat.  I have a cat and I can tell you that he enjoys many things, tuna water, corn chips, baked goods, being scratched under the chin, even broccoli and occasionally being put in a paper bad and swung around in circle but he does not enjoy being diapered.  But then again neither do babies.  If you try to diaper a cat you face rapid movement and squirming and have to avoid being scratched and/or bitten.  This is what it is like to diaper a baby after they learn how to roll.
b. Diaper a rotating sprinkler before it gets back around to you.  This is where speed comes in handy.  You have about 30 seconds to get the diaper on before the water comes back around and hits you in the face.  If you are up for it, and are throwing your shower somewhere you don't have to clean up or ever see the host again, go ahead and fill that sprinkler with pee, or if that's a little too much, just die the water to freak people out a little.
c.  Diaper a cat while playing whack-a-mole.  The goal of this challenge was inspired when Owen found his penis.  Now, I don't care if Owen plays with his penis, pretty much every child will find and be in awe of their genitals at some point and more power to them.  In fact, it makes diaper changing a lot easier when Owen does find and enjoy his mini-manhood because it keeps him occupied.  (And of course by 'min-manhood' I mean baby-sized, not small. In case this blog comes to light in his teenage years I want to make it clear that Owen is exceptionally well endowed.) But the problem with the penis play is that the penis is often covered in poo when I first take the diaper off and playing with a poo-covered penis is where I draw the line. But it is VERY hard to get in there and wipe before he gets to it.  So, hence whack-a-mole. . change a diaper while completing other high speed tasks at the same time, such as wiping the penis down, catching tubes of butt=paste as they sail from the table, trying to get him not to eat the clean diaper before it is on him, or quickly wiping his hand that has just been plunged into the tub of A&D ointment before he plunges that same hand into his mouth.  And that is just the beginning.

Game #2 - Trying to identify the taste of baby food blindfolded.  Here you taste jars of baby food and try to figure out what's in them.  In the first place, baby food is disgusting.  What you will realize when you have a baby is most babies will refuse to eat jarred baby food if they ever get the chance to taste something else because 80% of them are inedible.  So unless this game is a teaching moment to allow you to empathize with your future bundle of joy, skip it.
Alternatives: 
1.  Try to feed baby food to a cat strapped in a high chair.   Here you will find that most cats also don't like baby food.  Even mine who will eat wonder bread off the street won't eat jarred baby food.  Cat's also don't like to be in high chairs and yes I know this for a fact.
2. Make recipe combinations that make anything taste like either a pear or a banana.  In this game, you try to make foods that are not a pear or a banana blend well with a pear or a banana which seem to be like beer goggles for babies, making food they will not eat, look and taste delicious.  To make this challenging include foods like fish, lima beans and brussel sprouts.  And if it is truly successful you will be able to feed it to your husband or partner and they will not realize it is baby food.  Now Owen eats what we eat and has a quite varied palate but I'm not going to lie, in the beginning the only home cooked food was his so we often ate that.
2.  Try to catch finger foods flung off a balcony while eating a sandwich and feeding another sandwich to your friend.  For this game you need a partner, or a cat.  In this game, you try to eat some food, it does not have to be a sandwich, whatever you are serving at the shower will do, the sandwich is just best for beginners because you can eat it with one hand.  With the other, you should try to feed your partner, or a cat if you feel like it.  Then someone will start flinging food, good options are: cheerios, blueberries, pieces of cut up chicken, peeled and halved grapes.  Your job is to catch as many food items as you can.

Game # 3 - Trying to identify what type of candy bar has been melted into each diaper.  Okay, this game is pretty close to being perfect already.  It is pretty gross and has you doing things you think you won't actually do, like examine the contents in a diaper trying to identify its origin.  But the problem is, it's just not gross enough.  There is a big difference between sniffing a melted Reese's Peanut Butter Cup or a Twix and peering at actual poo to try to see if those remnants are peas or corn or cat food.  (as an aside, while cats do not necessarily like baby food, babies do like cat food.) You might ask, "Why would you want to know what was in there poo?"  There are so many reasons, you are trying to see if they digested in properly, they had a bad reaction and you are not sure what it was so you are trying to figure out, or you are just falling into the examining poo as pride trap that many people do to this day, as if getting out a good poo was something your child should be proud of.   I don't really have a game alternative here because it's kind of like that show Dirty Jobs, you might want to watch someone else do something but you don't want to do it unless you have to or you're getting paid for it.

Game #4 - Guess Mommy's Tummy Size - In this one guests try to guess how big mom to be's stomach is.  Now in my opinion this is pretty much no fun from the get go because even though I LOVED my baby bump, I can pretty much tell you at 8.5 months I would have hit anyone who guessed that I was three feet around.  Also, even if the guest of honor is the 1 in 100 women who is happily immune to feelings of body image towards the end of pregnancy, there's just no real learning here.
Alternative:
a. Guess how many months post-pregnancy this woman is.  Here, you show pictures of women post-birth both from vaginal births and c-sections and guests have to try to guess how long it has been since the woman has given birth.  Fact is, I left the hospital after my c-section weighing 3 more pounds than I went in, wearing my husbands shoes because my feet were still swollen and my maternity yoga pants and even larger granny underwear to fit over my still enormous belly plus scar.

Okay, I could do lots more like 'try to keep a cat lying down in a crib, try to punch 'gently', how to make a diaper MacGyver style when you have run out, how to play chess while someone screams in your ear, how to walk on a balance beam after you haven't slept for a month, but those all require too many props and preparation.  Please enjoy these, and let me know if you try them!

There Are Starving Kids In Africa - Or My Sophomoric Moment

The fact of the matter is, I work through things better with sarcasm and self-deprecating humor than with sappy introspection and for the most part those posts are a better read.  So I apologize in advance for the shear indulgence and perhaps banality of this post but I can still blame it on the hormones for at least another month.

My husband and I have spent a lot of time recently talking about the future, if we want to have more kids, if we are in a financial position to do so, if we can even currently provide for Owen the way we would like to, etc.  The only answer where there is a "yes" is the first one, well for me it's a yes, for my husband it's more of a "maybe." The other two are pretty solid nos, or at least for Mitch.  I pretty much live in the world of, "hey, it will work out,"  and he lives in the, "things do not work out unless there is a plan," camp.  And sometimes these camps blend nicely, like a well shaken salad dressing and sometimes they don't blend at all.

This week a lot of this came to a head as we heatedly discussed each of our future earnings, a timeline for having another child, Mitch's income goals prior to having another child, my returning to work or not returning to work.  For me the discussion has the loud background music of a very loud biological clock sounding much like the tell-tale heart beating under the floor boards from Poe's horror story, louder and louder until it practically drowns out Mitch's words. And on top of all of this, Owen got sick again.

As Owen moved into day two of 102.458 fever, I  broke down and took him to the doctor.  I know that that seems like a very specific fever but for some odd reason my thermometer is stuck in Celsius and as I am an American I have a pathetic understanding of most measurement systems.  Each temperature reading was displayed along side either a frown or a smiley face, tokens to my illiteracy.  All of his readings displayed frowns.  But there were no ranges of facial expressions like the ones used on doctor's charts to show pain on a range from "everything is okay" to "my genitals have been lit on fire."  So, I was not sure if it was a, "Hey, he has a little fever but you might as well go to the grocery story and get a bottle of wine," or an, "Immerse him in an ice bath STAT and call 911 type of fever."  So, I ended up doing an internet search after each reading to calculate for me.

But I could tell without knowing an exact temperature that he was not well.  His skin burned beneath my fingers, even his hands which are habitually cold and he was listless, clingy and sad.  He whined, cried, and clung to me and was generally miserable which made me alternate in waves of sympathy, love, and frustration.  The doctor basically said he probably has a virus, keep watching the temperature and let me know in four days.

I went home, bitter about my $30.00 co-pay and not feeling any relief. That night, Owen started screaming in his crib, this high-pitched whine that I had never heard before, and frankly, scared me.  We went and got him from his crib and he was burning up.  We took him temperature, and after a quick search on my IPad, saw that is was 104.256.  We stripped him of his pajamas, and tried to cool him down with a washcloth as he nursed and whimpered.  I put him against me skin to skin because I had a vague memory that this helped regulate body temperature though I had no idea if this worked with a fever. When we picked his arm or leg up, they were completely limp.   After an hour or so, he felt a little bit cooler.  And after another one, we all drifted back to sleep.

In the morning, the fever was back below 101.789 and it continued to drop from there.  I know that these sicknesses will be less scary as time goes on but there is something so helpless about the feeling of having your child be sick and not being able to do so much to change it and being a new enough parent that even what you can do, you second guess at each step.  Am I stupid to take him to the doctor with a cold?  Am I stupid to not take him to the ER with a high fever?  Do I warm him up?  Cool him down?  Use the nasal aspiration?  Not use it?

By that weekend he seemed to be recovered and I took a much needed trip to the gym where I planned to work out and take a long steam.  I took the book I was reading to the gym and as I pretended to go somewhere read it with the enjoyment of a gourmand who now subsists mainly on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches getting a once a week taste of truffle oil or farmer's market greens.   The novel took place in Africa, a fictionalized portrayal of the dubious morals of big Pharmaceutical companies in third world countries.  I read the following line, " . . and the women holding babies to sick to cry."  And right there, on my elliptical machine, in the middle of my fancy gym, I lost it as tears leaked down my face.  As helpless as I felt, I can not imagine what it must be like to be a mother who can not feed your baby, who can not do anything to prevent what probably should be a very preventable death.  To not be able to breastfeed because you are starving, and to have no alternatives.

I came home and hugged my husband and told him this.  I was thinking about our discussion about potentially not having a second child because we could not afford to give them what we wanted, and of course by this we meant summer camp, piano lessons, trips to Europe, etc.  And the fact is, we are so lucky.  I am lucky to be able to take Owen to the doctor when he as a 102.347 fever.  And if this life is really it, then really we are just so damn lucky.  And yes, I know this is very prosaic and pedantic in a way, a sophomoric realization of your order in the order of things but hey, you can not process things as a mother until you are one, or not in the same way, so I guess being sophomoric is okay.