Aug
13
I don’t know if I’ve whined about it lately, but Riley’s eating habits have been crazymakingly sparse. He won’t try this, he won’t eat that, he’s pickypickypicky and seems to survive for days on end by nibbling on cheese goldfish and sipping juice.
We’ve had countless fights, sitting at the table arguing about why he won’t eat more of his goddamned sandwich or at least TRY a bite of [something I made just for his ungrateful ass], and I kept telling myself to stop caring, to stop butting heads, that he wasn’t going to starve and if he did, well, it would be HIS OWN STUPID FAULT.
It really has been a challenge, though, even if I try and Let It Go and Zen Out About the Whole Food Thing, but I have stumbled onto something that is actually working, and I am sharing it with you in case you have an irritatingly picky eater of your own: I don’t have him sit at a table to eat. I put his food somewhere he can access it, and let it be, and holy wow I can’t believe how much more he’s eating. Instead of bitching about how he wants to get DOWWWWN, leaving 3/4 of his meal to rot, he just grazes and goes, grazes and goes. Tonight he ate a corndog, half a turkey sandwich, a bunch of grapes, and some cheese — all over the course of about an hour as he ran inside from the backyard for a bite, then took off again.
SHRUG. I don’t know, man, I’m living in the Whatever Works camp. Maybe someday he’ll eat at the table again like a civilized human, but for now, dine-and-dash seems good enough to me.
:::
I’ve been wondering if it’s just my imagination that Dylan seems so much more grinny than Riley did, and I went back and looked at baby photos taken years ago — nope, it’s definitely true that Riley was mostly suspicious, while Dylan is mostly, well, entertained. God, he’s a happy kid right now, and since my older boy is so often treating me like pond scum, it’s an awfully nice thing. I can almost see how people keep having more children, except I’m reminded of that Ogden Nash poem:
The trouble with a kitten is
THAT
Eventually it becomes a
CAT.
:::
See? Happy-go-lucky baby, all the time. I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. ON MY FACE.
:::
One of the really nice and maybe-amazing things about the kids’ daycare is that there’s not much turnover in the folks working there. The lady who rocks, feeds, and plays with Dylan on the days he goes in is the very same woman who rocked, fed, and played with Riley when he was a baby. We sort of love her, as you might guess.
There are some teachers I don’t know as well as others, and I can’t put a face to the name behind the lovely woman who sent home these hand-made cards recently:
They read: I will miss you. I love you. And a psalm, an ode to children, written in Spanish and then translated.
I really, really wish more of our money went directly into these people’s pockets, instead of the corporation that runs the center. These teachers make all the difference. There’s a reason Riley happily yells “SCHOOOOOOL!” as we drive up, and Dylan goes wriggling with joy into the arms of the folks who work there, and it has everything to do with the amazing people that surely are getting a crap paycheck, despite the astronomical monthly fees.
:::
I don’t know if you saw Dooce’s recent high praise for the Furminator, but I pretty much clicked over to Amazon as soon as I read her entry, because DEAR GOD THE FUR. SAVE ME FROM THE FUR. It arrived today and I took it for a test brush on Cat, and holy shitballs, you guys:
That was after brushing her for maybe five seconds, after which she gave off sparks and seemed about a thousand times glossier than before. I can’t wait to try this thing out on Dog, who is to blame for the forty inches of pet-detritus on my floors at all times.
:::
Speaking of Amazon, have I ever gotten some mileage out of this box lately. Screw Toys R Us, all you really need to make a kid happy is a cardboard box. And apparently a length of severed sprinkler tubing.
:::
Lastly, the boys.
These guys. Jesus, these guys kill me.
:::
PS: I put together this video recently for the good people at 3-A-Day, it was a fun project and you should take a look — if only to mock your favorite bloggers for waxing poetic about cheese.
Aug
12
The early weeks after Dylan was born were some of the hardest roads I’ve traveled, and I look back on it and think, well, no wonder: I was roiling with hormones, recovering from major surgery, trying to adjust to life with a newborn AND a toddler, my body had changed overnight from ripely beautiful to saggy and fat, restful sleep had been traded for staccato naps, and every routine we had managed to laboriously carve out bit by bit over the last 2.5 years had been blown to smithereens.
Holy shit, that sucked. That was a good six weeks of OH MY GOD WHAT HAVE WE DONE I TAKE IT BACK MULLIGAN.
Things rapidly improved around the six week mark, and now that my babe is six months — oh, my god. This baby is like a giant sugar cube of deliciousness. Seriously, I wouldn’t shit you with a bunch of malarky about how precious it all is and how I love damn near every moment if it wasn’t true, okay? It’s almost ridiculous how joyous and smooshy Dylan is, and I keep trying to compare him to Riley at the same age and I can’t help thinking this one’s a LOT more festive. He’s almost never suspicious, for one thing, and I don’t know, he’s just a big smiley goobery baby and I think of him as my flirty frat boy child (you should see him go after his twig-and-berries during diaper changes, good lord), what with his Rodney Dangerfield grins and sloppy openmouthed kisses. I wonder if a second child isn’t automatically more entertained, since they’re always watching their older sibling? Dylan cannot get enough of Riley, that’s for sure, and Riley is often eye-wellingly loving towards his little brother.
My boy Riley is almost 3 years old now, and there are times when I cannot believe what a jackass he can be. Three, so far, is tougher than two. But oh my god, the crazily wonderful conversations, the intricate games, the color-me-amazed moments that happen one after another! This boy can count, spell, speak in complex sentences and joke with me! He is a delicious mess of extremes, and his face is a glorious treasure of emotion.
I am saying: this is amazing. I am saying: this can be a fucked-up road full of potholes and setbacks and regrets and I sometimes feel unqualified and undeserving to be on it but oh, I AM here and what a gift, what an unbelievable place to be, and I am so, so grateful.
-
My product review site:
[