These Fickle Little Creatures

We all ate the same thing for dinner on Tuesday night. I know. Cue the trumpets.

I’ll step back a minute. This is a rare, rare thing in our house. It’s an incredibly long and boring story, related to the late hour in which we get home and the even later hour that Erin returns. Sufficed it to say and much to my bruised mom ego, many nights our dinners revolve around Trader Joe’s soy chicken nuggets or scrambled eggs or some kind of “healthy” frozen stir fry bag heated up and served over (ideally) brown rice (and no, the kids don’t touch that with a ten foot pole, they’re scrambled eggs/soy nuggets all the way).

I’d love to be the mom that makes the nightly homemade, whole grain fill-in-the blank, but I’m not. We’ve started trying to make whole wheat pasta and brown rice and quinoa in the refrigerator to make mix or match dinners but it’s not been met with tons of enthusiasm. And most nights it’s an accomplishment if both kids are even sitting down at the same time. Am I the only one with children who stand in front of an open refrigerator door like it’s a Las Vegas buffet?

And don't even get me started on how famished they are when I pick them up at daycare/aftercare. They aren't even strapped into their carseats before the cacophony of pleas for "puffs" (Pirate Booty), or grapes or apples or juice begins (all of this is leftover in their lunch boxes). Seriously, do they starve the children all day? I'm beginning to think they do. And I wonder why they often barely touch their dinners, but that's a whole other post.

The unexpected success was Burrito Night. Erin brought home a surprisingly scrumptious, ready-made pico de gallo from a bodega in SoHo (which she and I inhaled). I put small bowls of the “ingredients” out: black beans, cheese, brown rice and presented each child with a whole wheat tortilla. They were able to add their own ingredients and Erin and I helped with the actual burrito assembly.

They LOVED it. And Ellie only spilled half of her beans on the floor (she hasn’t quite mastered the Burrito Hold yet). I’m not going to get too proud of myself here since I know how kids are and the next time I attempt this I’m sure they’ll look at me like I just served them Nails On Fire. But hey, Tuesday night was fun.

The New Normal

Remember this little girl I used to brag about? How she ate everything? I don’t think I ever wrote the post about how cute it was that she was loving eating everything out of little bowls.


She ate so delicately and with such thought. She brought to mind Albert in one of my all-time favorite children's books, Bread and Jam for Frances:

"He took a bite of sandwich, a bite of pickle, a bite of hard boiled egg and a drink of milk. Then he sprinkled more salt on the egg and went around again. Albert made the sandwich, the pickle, the egg and the milk come out even." (Note to self: Order this book for kids. OK, for myself).

Well, she wasn't sprinkling salt on her egg or anything, but you get the picture. Anyway, it's too bad I didn't write about it because the thought and daintiness with which she ate was really cute. And too bad, because it’s over.

Ellie is in that new stage called Throw Everything On the Floor But First Mix it With Milk on the High Chair Tray. Oy.

I ask you, why do I ever even bother to mop the kitchen floors (truth be told it is barely a monthly occurrence if I’m lucky, but still!)

It seems that she hardly eats anything right now as she is too busy being Jackson Pollack with food. To be fair, she has a few staples: grape tomatoes, dehydrated strawberries (I know, weird), string cheese and her bottle. She’ll graze for a few minutes on the other stuff and then begins the wiping and the sweeping of everything from the high chair tray to the floor or onto the kitchen table. Lovely.

Sometimes I think my children were put on this Earth solely to make me chill the you know what out about the state of my house. I really have been trying to lower my standards. I don’t clean the toys in the living room up every night now. I don’t freak about piles. The one thing I’m a stickler for though is the dishes (I hate a sink full of dirty dishes but truthfully, I can’t go more than two days with out running the dishwasher because I need the little glass bowls and lids and sippy cups and bottles for packing lunches). And laundry. I don’t like to let that get out of hand. I don’t do it every day but I like to at least sort it every couple of days. Having those lovely piles of dark, white and “middle,” lined up neatly in the basement give me a delightfully deceptive delusion of order.

But back to the eating. I know this is typical for 16 months. Leo was a big time food thrower. I think it’s why our poor dog is about 20 pounds overweight. I was secretly hoping we might avoid the throwing with Ellie (as was, I imagine, our dog’s endocrinologist).

In the meantime, I am just not going to mop ever again. I mean, why bother?

Typos, Spills and an End to the Mystery of "What's Leo Singing?"

I found a few funny typos in re-reading my last post. I wrote dog “bowel” instead of dog bowl (what can I say, I have poop on my mind). But even spell check wouldn’t catch that one.

Speaking of that lovely subject, I missed the great “window” last night. After dinner I like to let Leo and Ellie play for a few minutes in the living room before starting the bedtime regime. It looks like that has to end, as that is Prime Potty Time. Makes me sad because this is really the only time of the day (except the hurried morning) during the week that I get to hang out with my kids. By the time I get them upstairs Ellis is whiney and I have to rush through Leo’s books because she is desperate to go to sleep.

This morning started out with a bang. I don’t know what possessed him to do so but Leo decided to reach for an open package (my fault, totally) of Capellini pasta from the pantry cupboard. You know where this is going. Capellini went everywhere. The look on Leo’s face was priceless when that pasta hit the floor. I made him help me clean it up. I thought about taking a picture (it would have made a good one) but I was in the middle of making breakfasts and lunches.

We finally played the CD that Leo’s school sent home last week. I don’t think I mentioned this but in the past few weeks we had noticed Leo singing some kind of song (we couldn’t understand the words) and doing some hand gestures/signing along with this song. I had a feeling it had something to do with the program that he performed in for the graduation. Well when I played the CD last night in the car on the way home from daycare I figured it out! It’s a song about the days of the week and Leo knows ALL the words (in sign language). His eyes lit up when he heard the music come on the stereo in the car and he proceeded to do the whole song for me. It was wonderful! Again, here he goes having this whole separate life away from me, learning songs and signs. I love it. One of the songs is hilarious, though it’s not supposed to be. It sounds straight out of the seventies and suspiciously like Will Ferrell and Ana Gasteyer from that old "Saturday Night Live" skit where they performed as the Culp Family (the singing middle school teachers). In fact, it’s stuck in my head as I type this: “Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you really really ready?”

In Ellie food news, she’s doing great “off” the jars. She loves soy chicken nuggets and soy meatballs, as well as soy bologna and cheese on her wheat pita. We’re not vegetarian (although I was raised one for a good while and I went on to be one for fourteen years-I’m still not a huge meat eater and don’t cook it much) but for some reason I don’t like the idea of giving meat to babies. Leo has had it but he’s not a huge fan. I think he would live on applesauce, waffles and scrambled eggs, if given the choice.

I Told You She Likes to Eat

Look closely. Yes Ellie's eye's are closed in these photos. But not because of the flash. It's because she was eating and sleeping. I kid you not. Now that is talent. I know I talk a lot about how much my daughter likes to eat but you have to admit, this is impressive. It was Sunday night, the end of a busy weekend. She had a very short nap Sunday morning (not her usual 2+ hour snooze.) And no afternoon nap. By 6:30 she was spent (as were we all). But not spent enough to miss out on pears and cheese and pasta and Veggy Booty. By the way, she is doing very well with the cup too.

Speaking of food, Trader Joe's yesterday: got ingredient to make Ellie sandwiches. Apricot jam and cream cheese and soy bologna and cheese, both on pita bread. Also, she absolutely loved the rice cake (brown rice, a bonus). I tasted one and they were pretty good! Saltier than I expected (probably why she liked it). Am also going to try Soycatash (gotta love TJ's cutie names). It's a mixture of soy beans, corn and red peppers. She likes frozen peas so why not soy beans?

The End of Jars

This morning Ellie’s primary caregiver at daycare mentioned to me that they were beginning to have trouble feeding Ellie with a spoon. Apparently the little rebel has been swatting at it and prefers to finger feed herself. The nerve! She does great with cheese, raspberries, blueberries, waffles, Cheerios. I could go on and on (as I’ve mentioned before, the girl enjoys eating). The one thing she will take on a spoon no problem is yogurt. She adores yogurt. She sees it and she shrieks and shakes. This baby must have the cleanest, most in balance G.I. tract on the planet. By the way, the caregiver told me that yesterday Ellie saw her bowl of yogurt and said "Yeah" which I think is her official first word.

I asked the caregiver, when do babies stop eating baby food? She said between nine and twelve months most babies begin to eat mostly finger food.

Oh. Once again, the first time mom thing kicks in. I seem to recall that Leo ate baby food for a long time. But I also thing I have been clinging to the jar food thing out of convenience. Leo did not attend daycare until much later. With him I had a lot more time to plan/cook meals. I mean I made my own baby food for him if that tells you what my schedule was like during his babyhood. It’s so much easier to throw a jar of fruit and a jar of veg into Ellie’s bag (along with string cheese, yogurt, a waffle and cut fruit). I know if she’s getting two jars a day she’s getting A Meal. Also, I do much better with feeding both of them at home. It's hard to get creative when packing lunches. I find myself on auto-pilot. For Leo it's frozen Trader Joe's cheese pizzas. Frozen waffles. Alternating days of Veggie Booty and Veggy sticks. Cut apple. I know there is more out there.

And did I mention I just bought two cases of Earth’s Best?

I asked the caregiver what I should start sending instead of jars (it’s when I ask questions like this that I feel like a complete Mom Moron). She rattled off a whole list: elbow macaroni, cheese sandwiches (as a kid I think I lived on cheese sandwiches for a good five years), cream cheese and jelly sandwiches (yum!), chicken nuggets (ugh). And I know, I know, at this point she can pretty much eat what we eat.

I’ll try to use up the aforementioned two cases of baby food I bought (they are probably sitting on my porch as we speak, ordered from Diapers.com. I had a coupon--hey-for those interested it’s $10 off and free shipping on orders of $50 or more-code: cookie2). I am trying a new diaper, Nature Babycare-in order to get the free shipping I had to spend at least $50. Has anyone tried Nature Babycare? Liked them? They supposedly break down more efficiently than other diapers and don’t use the harsh chemicals.

I guess I need to start getting a bit more creative with Ellie food-wise. For someone who loves to cook as much as I do I feel like Leo eats too much of the same thing. Fish sticks. Scrambled eggs. Waffles. Last night I got him to eat some vegetable dyed pasta with butter and Parm (who lives the life?) but only if I clapped and said “yay” every time he took a bite. Seriously. If I didn’t clap he would wave his hand at me as if to say Hello? Aren’t you forgetting something? Ellie tried some of the pasta but she wasn’t all that interested.

I see a trip to Trader Joe’s in my future this weekend. I needed to go anyway.

Food and Drink

I decided at ten months Ellie really should be at least be considering a sippy cup. I tried it for the first time about a month ago and she had no idea what to do with it. I gave it to her again on Sunday and she was no expert but certainly seemed a bit more interested and skilled. I filled it with watered down apple juice and she managed a few sips when she wasn’t tipping it over and pouring it out on the tray. She was way more involved in the string cheese, matzo ball and pastina (hey, she knows what’s good). Leo is also a good eater though nearing four he is much pickier than he used to be. (I’ll have to search my photo archive for shots of him as a baby with a tray full of kidney and garbanzo beans, tofu and spinach—seriously, he would eat anything). This weekend he was eating oatmeal (yes, oatmeal—I know, not my favorite either) and at one point I looked over and he had his eyes closed as he was chewing. He seemed to be enjoying it that much that he was in some kind of eyes-closed-oatmeal-trance. I love the fact that my kids seem to really enjoy eating.

Food is really important in our family. You know, the whole “food is love” thing. You know who would really delight in their love of eating? Their grandma, Ellie’s namesake. I really miss her.

Pictured above, Ellie tries out the cup while Leo hams it up; also, Leo gets into his oatmeal.