out of Kadesh

Noah’s been getting on my ever-lovin’ last nerve. (That’s a southernism, y’all.) I didn’t think he’d ever annoy me. See he’s got those big brown eyes and that dimple and those cheeks that just drip sugar all the time (another southernism for you). People told me it would happen; I was fairly warned that it would happen, yet I didn’t believe. My son? My perfect, sweet, wonderful baby boy? I thought, Maybe your son gets on your nerves because he’s not as awesome as my son. But yes, other mothers, you were right. He has found a way. HE HAS FOUND THE THING.

Our story opens every Sunday or Monday (or Tuesday, when I’m putting it off because I loathe what must be done oh so much). I sit down at my computer with various recipe books surrounding me and I painstakingly put together a menu for the week. I keep in mind things like ease of completion on Lance’s part on the nights I have to work, Lance’s and Noah’s likes and dislikes (and my own of course), variety, healthiness, and tastiness, and I come up with five or six meals that I feel everyone in the family should A) enjoy and B) be able to chew regardless of the state of one’s molars. I also try and incorporate one new dish in to every week. This week, for instance, looks like this.

Monday: Macaroni and cheese with cauliflower and roasted tomatoes, peas
Tuesday: Tempeh tacos, refried beans, guacamole
Wednesday: Black bean and quinoa burgers, baked fries
Thursday (make ahead because I have to work): Pizza margherita, kale
Friday (new recipe): Sun dried tomato, pesto, and roasted red pepper panini, sweet potato chips

I write this out so you will see A) how awesome I am and B) how much effort goes into this. I’m not like Monday: McDonald’s, Tuesday: frozen pizza, Wednesday: Chinese takeout, Thursday: leftovers, Friday: fish sticks and canned corn. You know? I just want you to be proud of me, Reader. That’s all I’m tryin’ to say.

After the menu is planned, I get a little note pad and pen and stare at each menu item until all the needed ingredients come to me. It involves walking back and forth from the pantry to the fridge back to the table to the cookbook to the freezer to the table again to make sure I have certain ingredients and how much, and if I need more. Then I rearrange all the ingredients into a comprehensive list since I so hate grocery shopping. I want all the produce together, all the dairy together, all the baking items together, etc, so I can blow through that hell hole without losing my sanity. I really can’t tell you what happens in the canned food aisle if I have to go down it a second time. BECAUSE NO ONE CAN PROVE THAT WAS ME.

Step whatever this is: The Grocery Store. (DUNH-DUNH-DUNH) Some days, like today, I’m lucky*. I convince Lance that it would be a good idea for us to eat lunch at Whole Foods so I can combine the looming, harrowing task with something I love, like eating. Then Lance can take his computer and work at the cafe while Noah and I do the shopping.

The only other thing about groceries I’ll say is this. Please don’t think I’m complaining because it is our choice to buy food from the local, organic grocer and occasionally Whole Foods and occasionally the Kroger Organic Market (which is one aisle and makes shopping a difficult compromise but at least over quickly). But it is part of the story, so here it is. Buying organic, healthy food is expensive. Like, whoa. Like, thankfully we are able to do it, but it does mean sacrificing in other areas. Just keep this in mind for later. Thank you.

After I have all the groceries I need, I start on dinner. We try to eat between 6:30 and 7 so Noah can go to bed around 8:30. Which means I start cooking around 5:30, or sometimes 5, depending on what I’m making and how long pizza dough needs to rise, etc. Sometimes I even start cooking early in the day, if it requires beans cooking all day or bread baking or something. But on average, 5:30. The kitchen looks crazy by the time I’m finished, but it’s the price I have to pay and I know Lance will clean it up. (Correction: I hope Lance will clean it up. Love you, babe. The dishwasher is empty, by the way. Ready to be filled. Any time anyone around here might want to fill it. Any time, yessir, just any old time. Whenever.)

We set the table and put all the food out and sit down to dinner and help Noah blow on his tiny bites which are on his tiny plate and being speared by his tiny fork in his tiny hand, and he happily eats somewhere in the neighborhood of ONE BITE, and from then on it just goes straight ONTO THE DAMN FLOOR.

And there it is, Reader, the thing with which I do not know how to cope. After every. thing. I. did. to. bring. that. boy. the. food. that. is. currently. being. gobbled. up. by. the. dog. Which would be a compliment coming from anyone WHO DIDN’T LICK HER OWN BUTTHOLE. It is just the most infuriating thing to me. It’s the waste, the money I could be wadding up and flushing down the toilet instead. It’s the time and effort it took me to plan for it and shop for it and cook it. And it’s also the fact that all that nutrition, all the food that needs to be growing his little body, is now down there on the rug and not bringing vitamins to his vital organs. It’s the stereotype of it all, too. You know, the kid covered in spagetti, sauce on the walls, meatballs stuck between his toes, noodles in his hair, noodles all over the mom and dad… it’s that funny little image we’ve all seen. Every parent knows it’s coming when they have kids. They joke about it. Ha! The kid will throw his food. Hilarious. Cute.

BUT IT IS TURNING ME INTO THE SHE-HULK. The stay-at-home, cooking and cleaning, 2011 version of Leave it to Beaver’s mom, friggin’ Hulk. I don’t know what to do about it. He’s too young to know better. To him it’s way more fun to throw food than eat it. I can tell him to stop all night, but it doesn’t mean anything to him. It’s just his developmental phase and I know it will eventually pass but in the meantime, I see a new FLEET of gray hairs popping up at my temple, and my left eye and a vein in my forehead are now permanently engorged and protruding hideously from the rest of my face. I had no idea I would be so utterly annoyed by this seemingly little and certainly normal thing, but for some reason I can’t figure out how to let it go.

Also, does anyone else find it horrifyingly ironic that we go to great lengths to feed our son healthy, nutritious, organic foods that he won’t touch other than to smash with his utensils and hands and that the dog eventually laps up off the floor, yet all day long I’m digging bits of toilet paper and crayon and dried up leaves out of his clenched jaws? WHAT GIVES, KID?

*What I mean is, lucky other than a few moments of blazing un-luckiness. Like A) the moment I completely lost my mind and decided since my hands were full of lettuce and kale I’d just push the cart with my belly, resulting in an out-of-control cart zooming across the produce section with Noah inside looking worried, which then crashed into the potatoes and gave my poor son whiplash and caused him to almost start crying, and I ran over and hugged him and told him I was sorry but I was sort of laughing at the same time, and some guy walked by and said “WHOA, that was a boom” and probably called child protective services on the way out. And B) the moment when Noah dropped his soggy, half-eaten orange slice from the sample bin onto the floor beside the bulk items and I casually walked away after looking around to make sure no one was watching. Oh, and C) the moment Noah coughed and spluttered Rich Aged English Cheddar all across the dairy aisle. And my personal favorite, D) the moment I gave him a bag of black beans to play with while I perused the umpteen varieties of yogurt and he threw it on the floor, it burst open, and black beans went EVERYWHERE, and I just decided, Screw the yogurt, and we ran for it. When we were hiding safely three aisles away I saw a special team of employees with brooms marching over to where the Black Bean-pocolypse had happened, and it was then I decided we’d done enough damage, and we’d better bounce before any other unlucky events took place.

I think, as hard as it is on Lance and Noah when I go to work at night, these memories will be some of Lance’s favorites. And as much as it hurts to leave them every night I work, the videos I get to watch when I get home almost make it worth it. (Also the peaceful house, the sleeping Bubbs, and the plate of hot dinner waiting for me. But mostly the videos.) Like this one. After I passed out and woke again FROM THE SHEER CUTENESS, I watched it about a hundred times. Dear Lord.

I wish that I was Kanga

And you, little Roo, could fit inside my pouch

We’d hop around together.

Daddy’s home!

Yay!

(Photo courtesy of Jeff C.)

I just said goodbye to my neighbors, who are moving to California tomorrow. Luckily it’s raining, which is perfect weather for such a sad day.

***Let me just pause to say that even though I know this is a day for weeping, if Lucy doesn’t STOP THAT WHINING FROM THE CORNER I WILL WRAP UP HER MUZZLE WITH DUCT TAPE. I keep trying to explain to her that we ALL miss Lance, and that shrill sound she’s making isn’t speeding his return one iota. (What the heck is an iota anyway?)***

The first time I met my neighbor Tracy we were walking the dog down to the bakery, my pregnant belly stuck out in front of me like a backpack facing the wrong way. As I huffed and puffed up the hill, we ran into a young woman with beautiful tattoos, wearing Vans and carrying a sling over her shoulder, a teeny tiny baby tucked inside. She introduced herself as our new neighbor and she introduced the baby as Winston, her three-week old.

Over the past year and a half, Noah and I have grown really close to those two. I have admired Tracy from the beginning, and I have learned so much from her. She inspired me to become a vegetarian again, to share sleep with Noah and not expect him to sleep through the night, to gently raise him in an attachment-parenting kind of way, and to try our best to live all-natural, organic lives. She has given me tips on food, nursing, sleeping, parenting, holistic medicine, where to get a tattoo from a gentle tattoo artist, and she was the first person to tell me about the Patterson House, which is a really neat underground bar that’s built into an old house here in Nashville, and I feel definitely not cool enough to be in there.

But Tracy and Chris are. They’re some of the coolest and nicest people I’ve ever met.

It’s going to be so sad looking across the street at their empty house. And even though I took Noah out shopping and bought myself some new pajamas and him a new toy bus (which it turns out he is frightened of, because if you push the driver’s head it takes off across the floor and that is just not natural), when we got back home to this empty neighborhood I immediately came down from that temporary shopping high.

I hope our friends are happy out in Cali, but I’m going to be bitter about it for a long time. I’m so glad they were in our lives, even for such a short time.

I hope someday we meet again.

Today I met a family with a daughter named Chaplain and a newborn baby named Navarre.

It was early on a Sunday morning, and all the unchurched hippie families who have to be up early with their kids who refuse to sleep in past 7am come to sit down with a cup of coffee and a bagel while their kids run around hitting each other with selections from a large, germ-infested toy bucket. I call it Heathen Hippie Happy Hour. (No, I don’t really. I just made that up. But now I’m going to start.)

I’m fighting off a cold, so I was chugging an Odwalla Smoothie (2000% of your necessary daily Vitamin C, y’all) with my morning GODHELPME coffee, and in walks, no lie, a three-year-old wearing tights, Doc Martin boots, and sunglasses. She pulls the shades down her nose and peers over the tops of them like, What have we here? (Alternate subtext: Where my boys at?) Standing in the doorway, she shakes her short blonde locks and saunters to the counter, and I realize that everyone in the coffee shop has stopped talking and is looking at her. I choke on my smoothie. It’s not until she walks past that I see that her tights are GUSSETED to fit around her Pull-Up. And that is when I realize that, oh for sure, this really is a little girl and not a miniature Marilyn Monroe on a casual day. The child had more style than I could hope to have in a million zillion years. What. In. The. World.

It made sense when I saw her parents, though. And then they introduced her to us in Baby Corner. Chaplain. For serious. Well, there you are.

I love East Nashville.