Wednesday, August 29, 2012

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

MeOwen, 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.