Girls and boys

GIRLS

Princess Ginny resting after opening Christmas gifts

     I was a slime monster. 

     Zuzu's friend, a boy, was over. "I'm Spiderman!" he said, and started shooting webs out of his wrists.

     Zuzu also started shooting webs out of her wrists. 

     Friend: "You can't do that! You're Captain America!"

     Zuzu: blank stare.

     Me, helpfully: "That means you have a shield and you can throw it around."

     Zuzu, frowning: "I want to be Cinderella."

     Me: "What skills does Cinderella have to defeat the slime monster?"

     Zuzu: blank stare.

     Me: "How about you dance with the slime monster and then Spiderman sneaks up and finishes me off?"

     This received an enthusiastic response and we performed said scenario with gusto.

     After this Zuzu switched to playing Maid Marian from the Disney cartoon of Robin Hood. If you've watched it dozens of times like we have, you know that Maid Marian's fighting skills are: 1) shout for help, and 2) throw pies. So that worked pretty well.

This same friend came over when Zuzu and I had our foam stickers out, making gingerbread-house ornaments for Christmas. I handed him a brown house shape and told him to join the fun. A minute later he said "this is a gun shop!" and held up his house, covered in exclusively blue stickers. "I want to make a gun shop," Zuzu piped up immediately. She made a new house, copying his but with purple stickers. When Daddy came home that day, I told Zuzu to show daddy her ornament. "Oh, is it a gingerbread house?" he said sweetly. "It's a gun shop!" Zuzu replied, to Daddy's surprise and amusement. But later that night, she said she didn't want it to be a gun shop anymore. She added heart stickers. "It's a heart shop," she said.

I took Zuzu to a class where one week the kids were supposed to hit balloons in the air with foam paddles. The teacher had put a small toy inside each balloon so the balloons would fall straight down again after bouncing up. It was fascinating to watch the way the boys behaved during this activity vs. the girls.
     -The boys began immediately. The girls just stood there until their parents urged them to action.
     -The boys used both hands to perform the steps, holding out the balloon and swinging with the paddle. The girls' first idea was to toss the balloons into the air, ignoring the paddles. Their next idea was to let their parents handle the balloon toss while they swung the paddle.
    -The boys fully understood the concept of taking multiple swings at the balloon to try to keep it in the air. The girls absolutely would not do this. Once the balloon was up, they believed it had to come all the way back to the floor before repeating the process.

I gave Zuzu dress-up clothes for Christmas, because she loves dress-up right now (I don't think I ever in my entire childhood loved dress-up ... ever). I MEANT to include some career-oriented garb like doctor and chef coats. But the princess stuff was a priority, and that was as far as I got. Some high-heeled shoes (ugh, she is going to twist an ankle), a couple tiaras, and several princessy dresses. She picked one especially poofy pink dress and wore it all day long, giving us a coquettish smile as she played with the folds of the skirt, waiting for compliments. And then she had a complete meltdown at bedtime when I told her she couldn't wear the dress to bed. "Not even princesses wear dresses to bed!" I kept saying. "Princesses wear pajamas!"

She wore the dress the next day too, and the next day. One afternoon Daddy took her down to the basement to watch TV with him. They chose a documentary about bears. I saw them upstairs again partway through, a potty break I think, and Zuzu was going around on all fours pretending to be a bear. When they went back downstairs, Daddy told Zuzu it wouldn't be safe for her to walk downstairs in her poofy dress. So she happily allowed herself to be carried, resting her blond curly head on his shoulder, her arms around his neck. "I like snuggling with daddy bear," she said as they went down.

BOYS

We had a couple friends over to play the other day. One was a two-year-old boy who pretended to be a dragon and began roaring. Bear stared at him with eyes that said "I love you," and roared back.

I'm sure all babies and children love it when their parents get down on the floor to play with them. Zuzu does. But Bear loves it in a different way than Zuzu. Roughhousing with us is something that he requires, in order to be happy and to feel loved.

Bear is practicing ball-throwing with diligence right now. He throws balls enthusiastically straight down into the ground, and then looks up at us happily for approval. He also tends to shout with each throw.

The Christmas tree he can undecorate!

I saw this idea on Pinterest a couple years ago: a felt tree with felt ornaments. Bear is pretty good with our real Christmas tree. He usually doesn't go near it if no one else is around it (because he doesn't like to be alone so he just always goes where people are), so his examinations of the tree are almost always under my supervision and usually pretty nonthreatening. But I thought it would be fun to have a hands-on version for him. He loves to swipe off all the felt ornaments, and finally succeeded in making one stick to the tree! He did it three times in a row! He has also made multiple attempts to stick felt ornaments to the REAL tree, which of course doesn't work and is adorable to watch.

Naturally Zuzu is also allowed to play with it, but it's a bit young for her. I'm having fun imagining ways that this tree could be adapted to work for multiple ages. Add buttons with ornaments that can be buttoned on, number the ornaments and make it an advent tree, make a felt nativity, make felt ornaments together as a craft ...

The site where I got the idea uses a cone shape for the tree. I used 5 flat panels instead. I cut triangles out of thick cardboard and duct-taped them together. I stuffed the inside with paper, then taped on a cardboard base. Then I cut the tree shapes out of a huge sheet of green felt. There is enough felt at the bottom of each tree panel to fold under the bottom a couple inches. I sewed all the tree edges together and slid it over the cardboard. I glued the felt to the bottom.

Zuzu's gingerbread party

I don't mind running errands with the kids, because they both do really well when we're out and about. But I do have a limit to the number of times I'm willing or capable to get them dressed and shod, restock the diaper bag, throw snacks in my purse, load the stroller into the trunk etc. This is true even when there's no snow on the ground and the temperature goes above 20 degrees. The hardest part is planning ahead and making sure we leave when we're supposed to, to take advantage of the brief window between naps and meals. (Otherwise we end up hangrily devouring soft pretzels and popcorn at Target at 2:00 for lunch.) I usually reach my errand-running capacity quickly with just our standard weekly activities like the library and the grocery store.

Therefore, I have not yet taken my malfunctioning computer to the Apple store to ask them to fix it. This errand would be higher up on my priority list if I didn't have the internet on my phone. But since I can still read the news online--er, just kidding, since I can still check Pinterest and Facebook--my computer continues to sit uselessly at home, and the crux of this is, that I currently can't upload all the beautiful pictures that my husband took of Zuzu's birthday party.

Zuzu just turned three, and we had a gingerbread house party, and it was frankly one of the cutest things ever. A couple of low-quality phone photos will have to do for now.

First, there was a giant gingerbread play house. Daddy picked up a couple empty refrigerator boxes from Sears, and I made this:

The paper plate roof shingles idea came from here, and the lollipops idea came from here. The kids were pulled in irresistibly toward it, as you would expect.

But that was nothing compared to the joy of watching six children decorate mini gingerbread houses around our table with their mommies. The mommies handled the frosting and the kids handled the candy, and the kids did GREAT and the houses were too darling to believe. (I have heard that transporting the houses back home was problematic--there was a less than 100% success rate with this. Sorry, guys.)

The gingerbread recipe came from here and the icing recipe came from here. If you're going to make a gingerbread house, you won't do better than these recipes, which both yield sturdy building materials, and make the experience fun and easy.

I made the houses in advance and included a surprise: the tops lifted off! And I filled them all with skittles. I figured the kids needed some eating candy in addition to some decorating candy. I'm sure the parents were all extremely happy about this, especially the ones whose houses did not make the home journey intact. You're welcome for the mess and the sugar highs. I also made doors and windows in advance and then the kids could stick them on wherever they wanted.

I didn't know how long the kids would enjoy the decorating process. It was MUCH longer than I expected. We aren't planning to do a birthday party every year, but maybe we'll do a gingerbread house party every year just to celebrate the season. It was so so incredibly fun.

Cute baby boy

Oops, my phone just deleted the blog post I was writing. I was talking about Bear but pictures are better anyway, so here's a couple.

"Probably because I'm cute!"

When Zuzu was younger, before she started communicating, Daddy and I would talk about her cuteness incessantly. And then we'd say, we CAN'T keep saying things like this when she's old enough to understand us, or she will be vain.

Well, YOU try living THIS child and NOT telling her she's cute. It can't be done.

Recently at the grocery store she was riding in my cart. A boy was standing down the aisle from us, older than Zuzu. He stood and watched us for a while, just casually staring for a minute or two until we turned a corner, at which point Zuzu asked, "Why was that boy looking at us?"

"I don't know," I said. Of course I was thinking, "Cuz you're CUTE!" but didn't say it. So she said it for me. She looked up at me with a big smile on her face and exclaimed, "Probably because I'm cute!"

So there it is. The results of our being too liberal with the cuteness comments.

Halloween: an excuse to give and receive

In some ways Bear gets the typical second child treatment. For instance, at this moment there are exactly 15 photos of Zuzu in the living room above the mantel, and exactly ZERO of Bear. And he's now ten months old. (I sure hope I get around to balancing the photo situation by the time he's old enough to look up and notice a thing like that.) In other ways, though, Bear's babyhood has looked more like the first child than Zuzu's, due to the fact that I was working when Zuzu was his age and didn't spend much time on crafty things. So he got a "My First Game" poster to hold up for the cameras at our annual Brewers weekend this summer. It was Zuzu's fifth time to Miller Park and she'd never had a sign.

She also hadn't had a handmade Halloween costume. Well, not a finished one anyway. Last year I did draw some black polka dots on a red shirt with a Sharpie. I was trying to make her a ladybug for the second year in a row. But eventually we gave up on that idea and sent her to daycare in a Packers jersey. "She's Aaron Rodgers!" We also decided she would rather pass out candy than go trick-or-treating. If you're wondering if we were just being lazy, yes, we were. 

Bear, however, got handmade hobbit feet for his first Halloween. And also a ridiculous over-the-top handmade wig (I sorta ran out of time to trim it down to size). He was Bilbo.

This year Zuzu was Cindy Lou Who. I added ruffles to a store-bought pink dress and got an oversized red Christmas tree ornament for her to hold, and made her practice the line, "Why are you taking our Christmas tree? Why??" She said it sweetly, if a bit too cheerfully, but she'd draw out the last "why?" perfectly.

All four of us went out into the freezing night for trick-or-treating, Bilbo the warmest with lots of layers. We watched Zuzu trot up to ring each doorbell, so excited at the prospect of being handed candy, her hair in pigtails, her Cindy Lou Who antennas askew, and I had that familiar mommy feeling of thinking one's child is certainly the most adorable in the world.

Halloween has never been my favorite holiday, but as I watched her I remembered why we go to the trouble. Not just because kids are adorable when they're wearing silly costumes. Some people like the scary part but that doesn't appeal to me. I think we do Halloween as an excuse to give and receive. It is delightful to give to children, who receive so well, easily and happily. We can't spoil them constantly, so we set aside special days to do it.

As I watched our neighbors open their doors to my little girl, big smiles on their faces, their voices warm and welcoming, their hands full of the gift of free candy, I realized that this is what I always want for Zuzu. When she goes up to someone, tentative, smiling, hopeful, I want her to be greeted by a kind-hearted person who will open their arms to give her something good. Life will be harder than that, of course. And that's why we do Halloween. The rest of the time, people may not be nice, or generous, or appreciative of the person a child is trying to be, but on Halloween they are. "Who are you?" they ask. "I love it!" they say. And then they scoop candy into your bag. It's a magical night for a child and that's a good thing.

So, it's dumb, but we did this. Yay!

Half of me thinks Sensory Bins are stupid. As I’ve written before, kids are exposed to textures and scents etc. just by living life. A Fall sensory bin, for instance, is pointless. If you want your child to see colored leaves, look outside. Take a walk. If you want your child to smell fall spices, bake an apple pie with your child.

The other half of me was positively giddy while I put together this Fall Sensory Bin. I couldn’t wait for the kiddos to wake up from their naps and see it and be curious. As expected, it was the first thing Zuzu asked about when she wandered out. “What’s that?” Is it for ME? she was asking. Can I touch everything in there?

 

I filled the bin first with puffed corn cereal. The little white sacks are cheesecloth pouches. One’s filled with ginger, one nutmeg, and one cloves. There are a couple cinnamon sticks in there and the rest is obvious.

Both children were allowed to taste the puffed corn while the bin was still fresh. After a couple days I retired the bin and the cereal is now in a bag waiting to be fed to ducks.

The bin occupied and brought pleasure to my kids for as long as I hoped and expected it would, however long that was—ten minutes, or twenty? Twenty minutes one day, ten minutes the next? The best part was smelling the cheesecloth and the cinnamon sticks. Ginny and I baked together later in the day and we compared the smell of the spices from the sensory bin to the smell of the spice jars.

It was silly but it was fun.

"NO, Bear!"

Fall. My version of shouting ...

This fall has been freaking amazing. People haven't been shouting it enough. People don't shout anything like that. People should walk out of their doors, look at the trees, and SHOUT "Wow!" And then look for their neighbors, and say, "Did you ever see such beautiful fall colors?" To which the neighbors would exclaim, "It is amazing, isn't it?" And this should happen literally every time we walk out of our doors, because the trees are changing every five minutes. It's like watching time pass ... It's like a fairy tale where something important has to happen and the deadline is when the last leaf falls to the ground. At this point we would be getting nervous because many trees are already empty, and many are only half full, and hardly any are yet green. We've lived in Wisconsin for six years and this is the prettiest fall. Normally, you get some trees that turn bright fall colors, and you eagerly watch for the rest to turn, then one day they're all a stinky rusted brown. Very disappointing. But THIS FALL, all of the trees have, at different times, seemingly caught fire, blazing gorgeous red and yellow. When you drive into the country it is jaw-dropping. And another thing about this fall: great, big, heavy, heaving, gray misty clouds have come, the kind that are layered in the sky, clouds on top of clouds, lovely and interesting to look at. This is appropriate for fall, if you know anything about my opinions of the world. Sunny fall days are beautiful but CLOUDY fall days are woooooonderful. If you set those gray billowy layered clouds in the background, and put in front a bright red tree, a bright yellow tree, and an evergreen, and then start a breeze in motion that wafts a continual  shower of yellow leaves across the scene, well that is Fall, and it's meant to be enjoyed with a cup of something hot and fragrant, and it will make you have philosophical thoughts and feel so inspired and alive. Other seasons are nice but fall is when I feel like I can fly.

I'm glad we skipped naps and got dirty

Somehow we ended up taking a walk through the neighborhood, Zuzu in the wagon, Bear dangling from the Baby Bjorn, well beyond nap time. I had decided I wanted to do a Fall Leaf activity when they woke up. So before putting them down, I told Zuzu I was taking Bear out in the backyard to collect a couple leaves. She became enthusiastic, said she'd come too, and dashed to her bedroom, where she retrieved her quilt. She then went outside and climbed into the wagon.

I was immediately on board with the wagon-and-quilt set up, even though I had really planned to just step outside, pick up one red leaf, one orange leaf, and one yellow leaf, and go back inside. A fall leaf collecting walk with a quilt seemed like a better plan. So I strapped Bear onto my chest and we set off.

We discovered that the leaves this fall didn't turn red, or orange, or yellow. They turned everything all at once. We couldn't stop picking up more. Each leaf was a gorgeous myriad of fall colors, all the reds and oranges and yellows together, along with green and purple. Each time we parked the wagon under a tree that had shed leaves, Zuzu hopped out and we both sought the loveliest leaves and ignored the brown crunchy ones. Then she stored them in the wagon. We soon had armfuls.

Then we came to a tree whose leaves were little bitty. They had turned yellow and fallen in piles. The obvious thing to do was to scoop up handfuls of the little soft leaves and let them fall through my fingers. It was a sunny day and the leaves floated and fluttered through the patchy light in a most beautiful way. "Look Zuzu, it's raining leaves!" I said. She squealed laughter and jumped under the shower of leaves. And for one second I wanted to hold back, to cut her off, to keep things clean. But the next second all I could see was the happiness of the moment. The little leaves, and dirt, and maybe bugs that I scooped up with the leaves landed in her thick golden curls and stayed there. Over and over again I scooped leaves and let them flutter down on my daughter's head and all around her, while she squealed and jumped, her upturned face glowing with joy and fall sunlight. And Bear watched all this, kicking his legs against me with furious glee.

I'm glad we did this. I'm glad we are here, disregarding nap time, getting dirty. Come what may, tired children and leafy hair. Those were my thoughts on that glorious fall afternoon.

I don't even remember if the kids napped or not when we got home, but I think not. We sorted the leaves, a great big pile on the kids' little wooden table in the sunroom, and we admired them, and we praised God for the work of art He performed on each of these leaves, such tiny things in the universe, and my brain hurt with trying to contemplate God's greatness and the fleetingness of life.

Often I look at my darlings, my sweet little girl and baby boy, and the love I feel makes my heart ache, and I think, "I want to keep this." I want this moment forever. Every day I want to be able to watch Zuzu trotting around with her curls bouncing. I want to nurse Bear until his eyes roll back, perfectly content with the world. How do I keep this? How do I hang on?

Most of the stuff we do I won't remember. Most of the stuff Zuzu says I won't remember. (I kind of want to leave a voice recorder running all day long every day so when she grows up I can listen to her adorable two-year-old voice as much as I want.) Most moments are like the leaves that grow and change and fall and turn brown and crunchy, that we walked past without admiring. But sometimes we have moments that become Important, because they are so full of wonder, or happiness, or new understanding, and those are the moments that stay in the memory. So I can't keep Zuzu two years old (she's already hurtling toward her third birthday in November, and I CANNOT slow her down), and I can't keep Bear a baby ("don't walk yet honey please"), but I can collect a few moments, maybe an armful, like dazzling green, purple, red, orange and yellow leaves. Zuzu's upturned face, and little yellow leaves fluttering around her. This was one of the Important moments.

I can't make the moments last, any more than I could save our collection of leaves from getting brown and crunchy by the second day. Time slips through my fingers like the little yellow leaves that fluttered back to the ground. What am I to do, other than to be happy in these moments, to skip naps and get dirty, to admire God's beauty and to praise Him?

A is for Apple; H is for Humbling

I drew two dots on the chalkboard. “Now watch,” I told Zuzu. “I’m going to draw a line connecting those two dots.” I drew the line, and then I drew two more dots. “Now you draw a line connecting those two dots.” She picked up her thick piece of chalk and drew a line just as I had instructed her. The line curved and wiggled a little, but it followed a single path from dot to dot. I congratulated her. We continued this until Zuzu had successfully completed the letter A. I was thrilled, and she was thrilled that I was thrilled. So we decided to do it again. I took the dry paintbrush that serves as our eraser, and brushed the board clean.
    This time, Zuzu’s first line was impressively straight, about as straight as my own chalk lines usually are. After she’d drawn it, she picked up the paintbrush and wiped it out. Then she looked at me and smiled. I cried, “No! Don’t erase it before we’ve finished! Now you’ve got to draw that line over!” This made her hang her head, and her bottom lip came out in a pout. She obediently picked up her chalk and drew the line again, but as she did so, tears welled up in her eyes and flooded onto her cheeks.
    I melted. I scooped her up and told her I was sorry and that she hadn’t done anything wrong. Of course she hadn’t done anything wrong—she doesn’t really understand what letters are yet, so the concept of drawing an A is a bit beyond her. As far as she knew we were just drawing lines and erasing them. She thought I’d be pleased with her erasing like I was with her drawing. Such a small incident, but I know how small things can feel big to tender hearts.
    Being a mother takes energy. It takes energy to chase kids around all day, and to discipline kids, and to play with kids; but the thing that makes me the most tired is the humbling. Coming down off my high horse over and over. Asking a two-year-old for forgiveness. Trying to let each lesson sink in, feeling my heart being molded and shaped and softened. I’m not talking about Mommy Guilt. I’m not—the kind that comes with stress and self-doubt, that shrinks the soul. I’m talking about the simple practice of recognizing and admitting my fault, a practice that makes me kinder, more patient, less self-centered; that enlarges the soul. Afterwards I’m worn out and a bit sore, as though I’d been exercising. Maybe it’s kind of like exercising, where being fit is being humble.
    It is possible, given the frequency of humbling moments in my life, that I may someday be in shape!

“Put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” Colossians 3:12b

Vigilance plus inactivity

The activities I like are the ones Zuzu can do entirely on her own, or that I can do alongside her. The ones I don’t like are the ones that require hovering. The combination of vigilance and inactivity is my least favorite combination. Potty training is an example. You have to spend a lot of time standing in the bathroom while your child sits on the toilet, waiting to see if anything will happen. Tooth brushing is another one. You want to let them do it on their own, and you want to make sure they’re doing it right, which for a very long time they aren’t, so you have to be present to bark things like, “Scrub! Back and forth! Up and down! Don’t suck, scrub! No, don’t look at the soap, concentrate on brushing your teeth. NO RUNNING WITH A TOOTHBRUSH IN YOUR MOUTH!” The supreme example of vigilance plus inactivity is the playground. The playground reminds me of stakeout scenes in cop shows. For long periods of time nothing happens, but you can’t read a book or distract yourself in any way, just in case something happens.
    The activities I like best include baking, taking walks, and especially art.

Notes from the plane: traveling alone.

Traveling alone. I canNOT convince myself that it's okay to have JUST a carry-on suitcase and a purse. Where is everything else? I won't make it without a diaper bag, will I? Isn't the diaper bag crucial to my existence? It's full not only of diapers and wipes but of the stuff of life for my kids--SNACKS and TOYS and the nursing cover--and the diaper bag is not here, not on my shoulder or at my feet. There is no carseat, stroller or pack 'n' play. A night away from home can't be this simple.

Last weekend I took the kids to visit friends (omigosh we had such a great time) and packing took ALL DAY and the entire trunk of my car. When I go by myself, I thought, it's gonna be so easy!

And it was. But the quickness of packing was disconcerting. "I cannot be done," I said perplexedly, looking at the little suitcase parked by the door. "I'm sure I won't survive all weekend with just this." I went over it again in my head: all you need is underwear, a change of clothes, a toothbrush, makeup. That is what it's like to live without kids. Remember? You used to do this.

I left without my phone. Maybe my brain grouped "phone" in with "kids," "diaper bag," "pack 'n' play." Very Important Things I'm Not Bringing With Me. I was only a block away when I missed it so I drove back ...

On the road, I looked over my shoulder before a lane change and saw the empty backseat and my stomach dropped. Not because I actually thought, "where are the kids," but just because it looked so wrong. And I'm used to the sight of pink plump arms and legs, and I'm soothed by that sight, and unnerved when it isn't where it should be.

At the airport, I sat at the gate and stared out the window and thought, this is the most I've daydreamed in years.

It felt strange to be seen by people and not recognized immediately as a mother. For some reason I want them to know. I guess the same reason one wears a college T-shirt--pride. When I pulled out my phone and saw my kids' smiling faces on the screen, I wanted other people to catch a glimpse too. "Oh look, she has kids. She's a mother," they'd note. It wouldn't make any difference to them, but I'd still get that boost--see those cuties? SO CUTE, right? Yep, they're mine.

But my motherhood is invisible right now. So what am I right now? I find myself searching my brain ... how did I think of myself before?

Whenever I take the kids out, to the grocery store or doctors office or anywhere, I watch people's faces and I see them break into a smile--not at me, but at the little curly-headed girl holding my hand or the fat happy baby kicking in the Baby Bjorn. I expect this when I go out. And it always happens, always. Zuzu and Bear make the world a happier place.

Do I have any little pearls of happiness to offer these strangers in the absence of my kids? Am I supposed to?

Gosh, being on a plane is a thousand times easier.

Crawling

My Bear boy has been crawling since August 28, the day he turned 8 months. He is still not fast. He plods along, plunking his palms on the ground loudly.

Bear does not like to be alone. I thought crawling would help with this. When people aren't near, instead of wailing as though his heart will break, he can just crawl to go get them. Well, he does crawl to go get people, but he still wails as though his heart will break, while crawling, all the way down the hallway.

He pulls himself up to stand all the time, and he isn't afraid to let himself down again to sit. Zuzu was. She would get trapped in a standing position and we had to rescue her. Bear sometimes doesn't even mind if he bonks his nose or something on the way down.

He wants everything. And he does seem to enjoy things when he gets them.

Zuzu has entered a new and vibrant world of imaginative play. Suddenly, her toys are all alive. And she could play with them ALL DAY. And she can't understand why anyone would do anything besides play with toys.

Me time

Twice, Zuzu and Bear napped at the same time for an hour and a half. Since then, I plan for this to happen every day.

What you imagine "me time" will be like every day:

But what usually happens is that they pass the napping baton back and forth to each other without even a minute of overlap. That is, when Zuzu naps at all, which is about 40% of the time.

Actual "me time" = kids being too absorbed to notice you stopped playing for 5 minutes to just zone out

 

P.S. After watching me draw for a while, Zuzu picked up a pen and drew PEOPLE for the first time! She'll be a better artist than I am in no time!  

Making Your Own Baby Food

I’m a second-time mom but a first-time baby food maker. I bought all of Zuzu’s food. I bought Bear’s too until I finally decided that now that I’m a stay-at-home mom I should cook and mush a few things.

Here’s what you’ll go through when you make your own baby food.

Stage 1: Research. You KNOW that baby food is simple and straightforward: just cook it and mush it. But you’ll still read everything you can find about it. Because you’re psyched out by the rules: no honey! No cow’s milk! This Puffs container specifically says my baby can’t eat Puffs until he crawls! and you don’t want to be the mom who does it wrong. Am I allowed to boil? Or does boiling make all the nutrients go away? I’m pretty sure I’m not allowed to use a microwave … You’ll feel like the biggest dork in the world reading “recipes” for baby food. You’ll read an actual recipe for Peas. The recipe goes something like this: peas. It talks a little bit about cooking and mushing. You read all the recipes because you find it comforting.

Stage 2: Making baby food. “Making your own baby food is so easy!” all the websites say. But is it as easy as putting little Gerbers containers into a grocery cart? NOPE. It still takes time and requires WASHING DISHES. Plus figuring out the storage part. How much to refrigerate and how much to freeze?

Stage 3: Pride. Your heart will swell with it when you stand back to view the fruits of your labor: A bunch of Tupperwares filled with cooked and mushed food, carefully labeled and ready for the fridge and freezer. You’ll feel like you’ve entered a special Mommy Club.

Stage 4: Feeding your baby. Only about five percent of all that food you cooked and mushed and labeled and stored will make it from the baby’s mouth to his tummy. The rest will go on his clothes, his face, and in his hair. And some of it will just get thrown away. Of the five percent he eats, he’ll hate most of it, tolerate some of it, and actually enjoy about two percent of it. When your baby does enjoy it, you’ll believe it’s because you prepared it so well and made it with love.  You’ll tell yourself how silly those thoughts are, but you’ll still think it.

Stage 5: Experimentation. Your baby’s enjoyment of two percent of the baby food will inspire you to concoct delicious combinations that you’re certain will bring him the same pleasure. You add things like quinoa. And dates. He’ll love it! It’s so good for him! How about a sprinkle of cinnamon?

Stage 6: Disillusionment. Your baby hated everything. Your kitchen is messy and you are tired and you have TONS OF THIS STUFF. Besides a baby, who would want to eat this healthy, bland goop? A pig? You don’t have a pig.

Stage 7: Back to reality. Bananas. Bananas are the best baby food ever. Avocados. Apple sauce. You sigh with relief … maybe baby food is easy after all.

Nursing a baby

Baby Sensory Play

Zuzu’s been doing a lot of art and sensory play this summer. I let Bear get pretty close to the action, as evidenced by this picture of him watching baking soda and vinegar eruptions:

 

But it didn’t really occur to me to let him participate, in a hands-on way, until I began seeing posts on Pinterest like 5 Baby Safe Messy Sensory Bins. I started itching to let Bear try. Oh, it would be so cute! But I was a little nervous about it. The clean-up part didn’t scare me; I just wasn’t totally convinced it was in my baby’s best interests. I’m not a super high-strung mother, but, on the other hand, that’s exactly what makes me susceptible to going overboard with things like this. I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt Bear if he sucked on his fingers once. But supposing things got out of hand and we ended up in the emergency room getting his stomach pumped. Then my conversation with the doctor would go like this:

Doctor: “His stomach was full of multicolored cornstarch.”
Me: “Right. That’s what he was eating.”
Doctor: “Any idea how he got access to it?”
Me: “Well, I stripped him down to his diaper, and then put him in a bin full of it.”
Doc: “You put him in a bin full of multicolored cornstarch?”
Me: “Yes. Cornstarch and food coloring and water. You know … just to see what he would do.”
Doc: “Did it occur to you that he would probably eat it?”
Me: “Well, yes.”
Doctor: Considers whether to calmly advise me to stop putting my baby in bins full of cornstarch, or just to go ahead and call child protective services.

Then I’d end up in an article about the dangers of Pinterest convincing idiot moms like me that babies should do finger painting and whatnot. Because, truthfully, ALL OF LIFE is a sensory activity for babies! You don’t really have to do anything other than what pretty much all parents of babies everywhere always do. In fact, here’s MY list of baby sensory activities:

7 Sensory Activities for Babies

1. CARPET

Step 1: If your baby is wearing mittens, remove them.
Step 2: Put your baby on the carpet.

My baby sits on the carpet for minutes at a time. This is one of our favorite sensory activities because there’s virtually no cost and NO CLEAN-UP!

2. WATER

Otherwise known as giving your baby a bath. Oh—was I not the first person to think of this one? Most babies love to splash in the water. And if they don't, they have to do it anyway at bath time, so … suckas! Water sensory activity coming your way!

3. SKIN

This one sounds weird, but stick with me. Babies actually love to touch other people’s skin. All you have to do is hold your baby. And voila! Skin contact! We do this one all the time at my house!

4. FOOD

Materials needed 
Pureed food
Bib
Small spoon
Large tarp to cover the floor, if desired
Sheets of plastic to cover the furniture, if desired
20-30 rags for clean-up
Change of clothes for baby, you, and any nearby siblings

I like to buy a variety of food so that my baby can experience the different flavors. This is one of the messier sensory activities. No, like really messy. Like, if food weren’t necessary for survival I would probably just skip this one.

5. HARDWOOD FLOORS

The most direct way to give your baby a hardwood floor sensory experience is to sit him on the hardwood floor when he is still at the stage where he topples over frequently. Boom! How did THAT feel, baby?

6. FABRIC

When my baby was born, we received a ton of fabric sensory objects as gifts. UPDATE: several readers have commented that fabric sensory objects are usually called baby blankets.

7. PLASTIC OBJECTS

The best kinds of plastic objects are brightly colored and don’t have any sharp edges or small removable pieces. I’ve found a huge variety in the baby food and pet food aisles of Target, the hardware store, the dollar store etc. I like the ones with bells or other noise-making features. You can get them online, too. The common name for them is toys.


Despite my mocking, I still wanted Bear to play with goo. I really really wanted him to. I couldn’t stop thinking about how cute it would be. So I started small. I tinted plain yogurt and put a couple dollops on his tray and it WAS. SO CUTE. He stared at it like some sort of magic had just occurred. Then he slowly touched it, and soon he was smearing it all over the place. So far, so good.

Then I did it. Multicolored cornstarch goo. I didn’t put him directly in the bin like I’d daydreamed about; both kids sat on the kitchen floor with the bin between them. But by the end, Bear was sitting in a puddle of the goo and completely covered from the chest down. He LOVED it. And he didn’t ingest a drop! I gave him a pacifier to have in his mouth while he played, so that helped prevent taste testing.

So yeah, we’re gonna do more. I like the colored spaghetti idea ...

7 Things I Wish Kids Knew About Playing With Adults

When I was a young adult, before kids, before marriage, I didn’t like playing with kids all that much. I didn’t know what they wanted me to do. It all seemed so physical and so chaotic. Now that I have a daughter who’s going on three, I understand what kids want at playtime much better, and I can relax and enjoy taking part in it.

And I can also laugh about the elements of playing with kids that are sometimes stressful. Here are seven things I wish kids knew about playing with adults.

1. Death throes are exhausting. It’s kind of fun to go through the rigamarole of pretending to get shot, like … once. When you shoot me incessantly, I’m very quickly going to start muttering “ahhhh you got me again” absentmindedly while thinking about dinner. Plus, didn’t I tell you I had impenetrable scales?

2. I really want my imaginary characters to influence your imaginary world the way your characters do. This makes it more fun for me. So if I say my character has impenetrable scales, that means shooting me won’t work.

3. Stories are way better when the heroes encounter actual challenges that make them stop and think and get creative. I’ve never understood the fun of the hero winning automatically and immediately. For instance, if the villain has impenetrable scales, try other ways of conquering her besides shooting. Tickle her into a laughter coma? Use a shrinking spell to make her the size of a fly? Etc.

4. Watching is boring. You’re cute and wonderful and it’s super gratifying when you want me to watch, but I’d so much rather be involved or else doing my own thing. So if you want me to watch, I’m gonna grab another adult to be my watching buddy, ‘k? Then I can smile and applaud you while chatting.

5. Rules are rules. You aren’t special; the rules apply to you. Also, the rules are what make the games fun.

6. There’s this thing called Tired. I know you don’t understand what that means. But someday you will, and then you’ll know why I CAN’T push you across the floor in the laundry basket anymore.

7. I’m jealous that you can be so carefree when you play. I’m constantly seeing seven steps ahead of everything you do—hearing a crack!, a stunned silence, tears, trip to the ER, call to parents, Facebook post with a picture of the cast, etc. That’s what makes me an adult. And that’s okay, that’s my role. You just go have fun.

What do YOU wish kids knew about playing with adults?

19 Things Pinterest Has Taught Me About Mothering Small Children

What Pinterest has taught me so far about arts & crafts with small children:

1. You have to buy the neon colors of food coloring. You will get very bored with red, blue, green and yellow, and everyone else has the neon ones.
2. You are going to use a lot of food coloring.
3. You are going to be very familiar with the color that results from blending all of the food colorings. This color should be called “dinosaur skin.”
4. There are 349 recipes for homemade play dough, and counting.
5. Making homemade play dough means grabbing any two common household ingredients, mixing them together, and saying “See! I bet a little kid would think this sludge is awesome!”
6. Next, add food coloring.
7. Next, add glitter.
8. Next, add things like Kool-Aid and spices. This makes the play dough smell incredibly yummy, so good luck trying to teach any youngsters NOT to eat it.
9. In fact, everything is supposed to smell yummy, including paint, dried rice, and slime. So just keep adding Kool-Aid.
10. Your vocabulary will include words like “oobleck,” “cloud dough,” “quiet book,” “sensory bin.”
11. You should probably get a sensory bin.
12. Other euphemisms for sludge, besides play dough, include sand, snow, clay, foam, floam, magic mud, rainbow slush, etc.
13. Use the baking soda + vinegar combination all the time, in everything. Most of your dough, sand, snow, clay etc. will include baking soda anyway. So when your kids get bored, start squirting on vinegar. Now you can add the words “fizzing!” "erupting!" "exploding" in front of dough, sand, snow, clay, etc.
14. Buy a 13-pound bag of baking soda from Sam’s Club, and vinegar by the gallon.
15. Fortunately, the spills that happen during art and sensory play are already made out of the things you would normally use to clean up spills.
16. I can’t believe you BOUGHT that thing from Crayola. Didn’t you see the DIY version using just baking soda and food coloring?
17. You will enjoy the art and sensory activities every bit as much as your kids. Or more. In fact, you might still be sitting on the kitchen floor squishing sludge through your fingers after your kids have wandered away.
18. You will feel out of the loop for a long time while the mommy bloggers keep referencing trending arts & crafts projects with phrases like “you’ve probably seen melting crayon art everywhere,” and “there are a million versions of sharpie tie dye on Pinterest.”
19. You will reach a proud moment where you start to feel in the loop. Yeah, I totally have seen melting crayon art everywhere.

Bear's cuteness (why I'm going to end up in the crazy house)

My children make me crazy. Not in the usual sense. I mean actually crazy, in the sense that when I look at them, I can’t cope with how cute they are and my brain starts to implode, and I start babbling and kissing them uncontrollably.

When Bear is excited about something, he goes taut and shakes. Actual vibrations go through his body. It might seem like some kind of medical condition, if it weren’t so clearly a response to exciting things like pages turning in a book or Zuzu talking to him. Or Zuzu jumping around in front of him. Or Zuzu laughing … or Zuzu doing anything. He watches her intently and expectantly, waiting to be entertained. And when she does something funny, he shouts, shrieks, and cackles.

He’s trying out different vocal sounds right now. I love it when he looks surprised by a noise he just made.

He has two teeth that I know of, on the bottom, and still leaves drool puddles everywhere he goes. And the past couple days have been especially rough, teething-wise:

Oh, I know. Impossibly sad.

Right now he’s more focused on examining objects with his eyes and hands than on trying to get around. He can sit for as long as he wants to, but will still always eventually fall over. If he has something in his hands to investigate, he's too absorbed to care.

We went to the Northern Wisconsin State Fair a couple weeks ago with a friend and her kids. We ducked into the horse barn during a downpour. 

 

The story of this picture is this. I was holding Bear in position to strap him into the Baby Bjorn, and paused for a second to look over at something else. When I looked back, this horse head had APPEARED OUT OF NOWHERE and was snuffling Bear! I laughed so hard at the shock of it and the quietness of Bear while a large beast kissed him. That’s when my friend took the picture. A couple minutes later while we continued to stand in about the same spot, something horrifying happened. This same horse SNEEZED. And Bear and I both got abundantly sprayed with horse phlegm. I wiped us off with Bear’s blanket, began to think longingly of baths and showers, and stepped away from that horse. I reassured myself that people who work with horses probably get sneezed on and couldn’t care less. (?)

Here he is excited about Daddy:

So there you have it. Cuteness overload.

 

Zuzu's language

We have a smart little chatterbox of a two-year-old. Here are some of the characteristics of her speech right now.

Zuzu's had a habit for a long time of not pronouncing the S at the beginning of words (as my sister pointed out, it's words where the S is followed by a consonant). She will say "twinkle twinkle little tar," ask to eat a "nack," and when frightened say that she's "cared."

When asked who-what-where-when-why questions, she will nod affirmatively and say "yep!" or "mm-hm!" repeatedly, which can get infuriating, actually. A typical conversation goes like this: "When?" "Yep!" "When?" "Yep!" "But WHEN did it happen?" "Mm-hm!"

However, she has just learned to ask the WHY question herself. And she asks it ... a lot. I realize that she is not quite sure what the question means, because she'll use it inappropriately ("Zuzu, do you want to ride your bike?" "Why?") and she'll use it even after I've already answered it, and she doesn't hold my responses to very high standards of coherence. Nevertheless, I've noticed that Daddy and I, as adults, are trained to answer the question when asked. It's like a knee-jerk reaction: when Zuzu says "why?" we come up with an answer, again and again and again. I met a mom at the park who also has a two-year-old daughter who has also started asking the why-question. "I LOVE it!" she said, beaming. She explained how it makes her think about the world and how she usually ends up at some universal truth. That part is accurate. At the tail end of asking and answering the why-question over and over, "because God made it that way," is usually the final thing I say.

Sometimes Daddy and I have to fight the impulse to give the why-question its logical answer, and to curtail the exchange with something along the lines of because-I-said-so. You know, to keep the upper hand in our parent-to-child relationship (ha. Ha ha).

This is one of our recent conversations verbatim. We were about to go out. I asked her, "which shoes are you going to wear?"
     "My tennis shoes," she said.
     "Then you need socks!"
     "Why?"
     "Cuz you can't wear tennis shoes without socks!"
     Silence.
     "Do you want to go get socks, or do you want to wear your orange flip flops instead?"
     "Um ... my pink ones!"
     "Your pink crocs?" (Another shoe option.)
     "My pink TENNIS SHOES!"
     "Then you need socks!"
     "Why?"

My favorite word that she says is flip-flops. She says "fip pops," and it just sounds so cute.

For a short time she doubled-up adjectives a lot. "My white white cup." "I'm a big big sister." That transitioned into using "very," but now she doubles "very" all the time. She uses "very" before verbs a lot, which I love. "I was very very singing." "He's very very crying!" (that one is often particularly apt.) And the other day she said, "I'm very very inside."

Right now she's thinking a lot about family relationships, and likes to make jokes by mislabeling people. Poor Bear often ends up as her sister, or as my mommy.

She is also experimenting with time phrases, usually opting for "last night" if it happened in the past, and "in two weeks" if it's happening in the future (I don't know why two weeks). She likes it when I ask her if she remembers something, and describe it to her. She practices doing the same thing, usually picking something that happened about ten seconds ago. "Member? Member mommy?"

It's so fun to have her around.

Flightiness

Have you ever opened the trash can and noticed a fork sitting on top of the trash? Not a plastic fork, but an actual fork? And then realized that you were the one who put it there? And then wondered how many other things you have accidentally thrown away? A coffee mug? Your kids’ pacifiers? Dollar bills? How many items have gone the whole course from the trash can to the curb side to the dump truck, never to be seen again? I often assure Zuzu that something she’s looking for will “turn up.” I should add the caveat, “unless mommy took it out with the trash last week.” Let’s just hope half a ham sandwich doesn’t turn up in the toy box.

The other day I pulled a knife out of the knife block, used it, and then returned it to the knife block. Ten minutes later I looked for the knife in the sink, wanting to use it again. It wasn’t there. I looked on the drying rack next to the sink. I then saw it in the knife block, and as I pulled it out I desired fervently for it to be clean, hoping maybe I’d washed and dried it without remembering. But it was quite obviously dirty.

Whenever I have an experience like the fork in the trash can or the dirty knife in the knife block, I feel nervous about my entire life. Do I run red lights without noticing? Do I RSVP for events and then forget to go to them? Have I shoplifted??

I don’t even have to ask myself whether I forget birthdays—yes, everyone’s, all the time—or if I’ve ever left a tray of cookies in the oven for an hour (you can’t hear the timer beep in the basement, but eventually the smell of burnt peanut butter will waft down).

I’m pretty forgiving of flightiness in general. Even when flightiness results in cost, which flightiness usually does, whether of time or money. In fact, I tend to take flightiness for granted. It’s my opinion that 1.) we’re all a bit crazy and just going to keep getting crazier the longer we live; 2.) mistakes can usually be fixed, or turned into better things, and 3.) all material goods are sort of transient art, like wedding cakes and sand castles: maybe beautiful, expensive, sentimental or important, but not meant to last. Stuff is gonna break or get colored on with markers. Or accidentally thrown in the trash can.

I try not to be flighty. But I have a suspicion that I’m as not-flighty as I’m ever gonna be, and that, despite my best efforts, the only direction I’m likely to go is towards increasing flightiness.

I’m called on as a mom to be patient with my two-year-old when she forgets where she put something two seconds after putting it there. (Children, it turns out, are remarkably flighty. For having young fresh minds, they sure do forget a lot.) Other adults, I call on you to be patient with me. And if you’re feeling flighty, come over to play at our house … you’ll fit in.