Dec
19
December 19, 2006
First: if you are without power in your home or you have a loved one who is still without power and in need of somewhere warm to stay, please email me. My house is not exactly the Ritz, but we do have the heat on. Plus: cold slimy dog nose! No extra charge!
There must be some residual traffic light outages in my neighborhood because traffic has been a complete nightmare the last two days. It took me an hour and a half to crawl the few miles between daycare and my house last night, with Riley in the backseat crying the entire time. Let me tell you, if I ever wake in the night screaming and clawing out my eyeballs with my bare hands, it will be because the memory of that drive came back to haunt my goddamned dreams.
The storm also delayed a few of Workplace’s various Macworld projects, since some local vendors were out of power and couldn’t print our brochures, T-shirts, etc. My window of time during which everything must be done or DOOOOM (see also: DOOOOOOOOOM!) has shrunk to a nail-bitingly small number of days, and I would just like to state for the record that whoever scheduled the Macworld Expo for right after the holidays should be sentenced to one (1) ninety-minute car ride in traffic with a pissed-off, hungry, tired toddler.
Okay, I need to stop with the whining, so let’s go to commercial:
Hey, good-lookin’. I’m single, attractive, and height/weight proportionate with what my mom rudely calls a “South-Park sized” head. I enjoy pointing at things, refusing to eat, and spinning in circles until I fall down. You be: handy with a sippy cup, prepared to wear stain-resistant clothing, and talented at imitating various farm animals. ISO people to boss around and to throw this weird plastic ball for me.
One of our favorite games to play with Riley lately has to do with – I know, I know – mocking the local news some more. There’s a guy named Jesse Jones who signs off his broadcast with a robust, “This is JESSE JONES…KING 5 NEWS,” and JB repeated it one night in a loud, blustering voice and it seemed to crack Riley up. So now we yell it – “Jessie Jones…KING 5 NEWS!!” – and Riley yells back, “WA ba baaa!”. It’s hilarious, except for the part where I’m not sure if we should really be encouraging him to yell because sometimes, you know, the yelling is truly fucking annoying.
The boy has been a snot/drool factory over the last several days and I have given up on trying to figure out if it’s related to teeth or virus. He refuses 9 out of 10 meals we try and feed him, with great dramatic head-turnings, vicious swipes of his little grubby paws, and hiccuping sobs of Sorrow and Woe. I tell myself it doesn’t matter, that he’ll eat when he’s hungry, and to not make some big flipping deal out of it, then find myself trying to create some kind of elaborate puppet show with a sock in order to distract him for long enough to slip one singe solitary spoonful of food in his mouth for the love of god just eat a little bit please please please please.
He loves saltine crackers, though. Cannot get enough of the Nabisco Premiums. My child is living on sodium and processed white flour, and I am the BEST MOM EVER.
Please, won’t someone give me fruits or vegetables? I am filled with simple carbohydrates. I mourn.
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We’ve had some days subsisting entirely on KFC mashed potatoes and gravy…who knows what they do to those carbs, AND lets smother them in some fat, for good measure. I’d feel much better about the saltines.
I’ve got just the date for Riley! My girl!
And, hey, if you need help with getting things produced, let me know. I can be your East Coast supplier of MacWorld Swag. I wish I could go, but it’s over the girls 2nd birthday, and I would get the award for Worst Mom Ever if I missed that!
Also – first? Wow!
I swear my 12-month-old boy lives entirely on Ritz crackers and cheese. He will not try one cotton-picking new thing. What are we to do?
JESSE JONES…KING 5 NEWS.
Hilarious. I mimick him all the time at work. It’s a running joke with a co-worker. That guy takes his job VERY seriously. heh.
I hear Kirkland/Bellevue got hit pretty hard. We missed it all. Weird huh? Glad to see you have power back, though.
Riley is a cute little guy.
There is a person in our house who eats only saltines, too, and he is me. Sofia likes saltines, but she will only eat about two of them. I give her two, and then the package sits on the counter all throughout dinner preparation. I eat half the pack and then have no appetite for dinner. The End.
How about a little spread of hummus on those saltines? They would still retain their salty crunchy aura, and you might trick the finicky-one into ingesting some protein! There’s other semi-healthy spreads (even veggie ones) in your deli section if you have any luck with the “saltine disguise” strategy… good luck!
Eh, could be worse on the food front. The only thing Gabe will eat these days is Cheddar Li’l Smokies. And they damn well better be cold, or they’re lobbed at your head. *gag*
oh gawd, I miss saltines. The closest thing they have in Scotland (that I’ve found, anyways) is a thing called “cream cracker”, but that just ain’t a Premium…
The kid-eating thing is tough. They seem to just go through random stages. Right now my 11 month old daughter will eat only…MEAT. And in mass quantities. It can be chicken, elk pepperoni, turkey, steak or buffalo – but it had better be meat and not any mamby, pampby fruits or veggies – oh, no Heavan forbid. I think they just work through these wierd periods. I sure hope so. My nose is about to fall off from the meat-induced diapers.
That first picture is killing me. It DOES totally look like something fresh out of Olan Mills.
Stud man. He’ll drop the saltine diet. Charlie lived on carbs only for 6 weeks – cereal, Goldfish crackers and pancakes. Then one day I was eating an ever-so-healthy McDonald’s Bacon, Egg and Cheese Biscuit and he grabbed it from me, ripped off a piece of scrambled egg, and ate it. Now he’s eating everything I give him again. But it doesn’t matter – cuz if you’re like me you’ll be up at 4am mentally beating the shit out of yourself. AUGH!
You think your local news is bad? Try the young, inexperienced Jesse-Jones-Wannabes who spend their embarrassing first years in my town. I can’t even watch, it’s too difficult! Plus, is it just me, or do the newscasters in small towns look, uh, 16 years old?!
If you need some more mum mums let me know! They have the kind here now with vegetables built in. Yum mum.
I love your posts.
That is all.
When my first was a baby-toddler, we kept his most favorite toys in the car. We got a plastic dishpan and put it next to his car seat, and periodically we’d put in a fresh toy. This really helped with drives. We do this with the twins now, but it’s less help because there’s always one Favored Toy and then there are screams as they fight over it. Right now the Favored Toy is a Playskool Dance Along MP3 Player. The music is not too annoying, and they lovvvvvvvvvvvvve it. Buttons! Music!
First time commentor, but have been reading/loving your writing for a few months now. Friends of ours in Victoria are also feeling the pain of those crazy wind storms and have heard there might be another on the way?
I am the mother of two extremely picky children, who at very points we have figured they are subsisting on air and hot dogs. One of the best things we ever discovered and use it every day as almost a dietary supplement is Sun Rype Fruit and Veggie juice. It is a BC company but you may be able to find it in Seattle. There are three varieties and one cup is a full serving of fruit and vegtables. Brilliant huh?? I swear by the stuff and have gotten many people hooked on it for their kids. Good luck.
I must kiss those beautiful chubby cheeks!! God, Sundry, he gets cuter with every photo. (suffering from a MILD case of baby fever. My only baby just turned 9)
In case you missed it, Slate writes about kids’ eating habits. http://www.slate.com/id/2155816
Hey! Jessie Jones is my name too! But I look nothing like the King News guy. Now that it’s my name, I’ve come to find out that it’s a very common name. Although, before I got married I was considering keeping my maiden name because I thought it sounded a bit to close to Jenny Jones, the horrible former talk show hostess.
I have to go lie down. A part of my insides just exploded looking at that superconcentrated cuteness on the screen. The little lumberjack man! THE CHEEKS. I mean, COME ON.
It really is a large head, though. A superdupercute head, but large.
You know what they say about kids with large heads don’t you?
Large hats.
Two of the best captions ever, right there on one pretty page.
Saltines are salt and processed flour and TRANS FATS. But hey, that pretty much describes the three food groups I ate growing up & it didn’t kill me. Nor did all my mom’s drinking & smoking while she was pregnant with me. Nor the X-ray they took of me in utero (I’m not even making this up) because the doctor couldn’t hear a heartbeat with his stethoscope & wanted to confirm it visually. Nor did the phenobarbitol they gave me to make me sleep as a baby. Heh. It’s miracle anyone born in the ’60s survived.
I also wonder which genius scheduled Macworld Expo for the first full week after the holidays.
“Are you missing the insane 16-hour days and endless to-do lists from the Christmas season? Well, we’re here to fix that for you! Come to Moscone center!”
The amount of Woe in that second picture is astronomical. And I too, yearn to gobble those cheeks. So. Damn. Cute.
Hey Sundry,
Have you seen this? At first I was like ‘oh this is going to be something I can’t take seriously’ but I was crying by the end of the song. I was reminded that if I’m lucky, I will be this old one day too. It’s really kind of beautiful.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2u6k-99qcCE&eurl=
Sundry, we’ve had luck with (previously) frozen fruits, like peaches or blueberries–3 lb bag is $10 at Costco, and they eat them like candy.
Victoria? Are you secretly my sister-in-law? Seriously, the drinking, smoking, in utero x-rays (her father was a radiologist, so they did them for fun) and the phenobarbitals were all part of my husband’s upbringing, and he’s . . . uh . . . normal. She went with me to the boys 6-month check-up and asked the nurse if they still give “phenobarbs” to curb the pain of the vaccinations. The nurse was all, “wah? Um, no, we don’t give infants barbiturates.” My mother was not much better, following the strict scotch and Pall Mall prenatal diet. Thankfully, she quit smoking when I was quite young. The scotch we’ll have to pry out of her cold, dead hands.
Bianca, that video DESTROYED me. Snorfle. It’s beautiful. Thanks.
Fellowmom, no, I don’t think I’m your sister in law, but yeah, doesn’t the stuff they did to us just make your hair stand on end? I mean, you’d go to jail today for some of the stuff they did. I once asked my mom if she took DES when she was pregnant and she refused to answer me. Gah.
My daughter only eats crackers but she eats Better Cheddars (dairy!) and Veggie Thins. Maybe Riley will like them? I know it doesn’t count as actual dairy and actual veggies I feel a little better.
Your offer to the local folks chased out of their homes by cold and darkness is so kind. The next time you’re feeling a little self-critical, remind yourself that you are good people. And a lot of people think so.
Power’s back on! Woot!
Riley is absolutely precious!!! I know. You already know that! Merry Christmas!
I can related to you, Sundary, with our children not eating much. Ian is almost 16 months and he, until two days ago, only ate macaroni and cheese (the Krast kind only) and chickern nuggets. No crackers, no chereos, no vegetables, no fruit. Two days ago, I made a peanutbutter and honey sandwich and he wanted sme. He ate half! I was so happy! BTW, Ian would never, ever be fooled with Hummus on crackers. If it looks different, he wouldn’t eat it. Thanks for the suggestion about the juice! I will have to try it for Ian.
Good. I’m glad I’m not alone. Although Butter is living on Cheerios. And only Cheerios. And if you happen to be at the grocery story with only $5 and have to get a loaf of bread AND a box of Cheerios? Do NOT get her the Ghetto-Os (what we call the generic store-brand ones) because she will. not. eat. them.
I’ve tried every craptastic nutritious food I can find. She’s not budging. I wouldn’t care so much if the child weren’t TOO FUCKING SMALL according to the pediatrician’s office. I go back in two weeks for another round of weigh/measure/furrow brows at me and I’m going to say “Gee, she’s had, um, Cheerios. And um, some cookies? They had banana in them. That’s nutrition, right? RIGHT?”
How about Grrrrant Rrrrrampy? That’s our favorite guy to pick on.