out of Kadesh

Before we were parents, we were such good parents. Kids only EAT chicken fingers and pizza and grilled cheese sandwiches because that’s all parents FEED them, we said. If you FEED kids vegetables, they’ll eat vegetables! We were so smart.

When we had Noah, I was all, I’ma feed him smashed up vegetables and other smashed up food from our own plates so that he will have a wide variety of tastes. Cause I was so smart.

Now Noah is two. Every week I plan a list of vegetable-heavy menu items that I will painstakingly shop for, prepare, and set in front of him. And every week he will ignore what I have set in front of him and ask for “mo’ bread peese.” Every time we sit down to dinner I try to mask a green bean or pepper or vegetable in some rice or cheese and feed him a forkful, only to watch him roll it around in his mouth and spit out the healthy part. He’ll glare at me and say “EW” or “NO.” And then he will refuse to eat another bite.

What happened? We don’t eat fast food; we don’t eat junk. We eat only organic fruits and vegetables, homemade, whole grain breads, organic dairy, and very occasionally, lean meats like chicken or fish. His sugar intake is extremely limited. If we go out to a restaurant and they have all beige foods on the kid’s menu, we just order a healthy side for him and share off our own plates.

But every time, he will pick out the mac-n-cheese. Chicken. Bread, bread, bread. Rice. Pizza. Cheese. A tortilla, PLAIN. Pasta, PLAIN. ICE CREAM. I made vegetable pad thai the other night, which turned out REALLY delicious, I must say, and he spit it out and was all “NO NO NO EWWW NO!” What the??? (And while we’re on the subject, where did this behavior come from? I certainly have never done that when I’ve tasted something. Maybe I’d do that if I accidentally ate poop or something, but I can’t envision ever having such a violent reaction to FOOD.) I had to rinse the pasta and the veggies so that he would eat it because he wanted it PLAIN, for God’s sake. It was ridiculous!

It’s like toddlers just know they’re supposed to be picky eaters who refuse food that is not pure starch. They learn it all during their stay in the womb, and then they send each other eye messages when they’re passing at the playground. I think the bestseller is called the Post-Uterus Bible or something, but I’m not sure because I’m a grown-up and not allowed to see it. (I’ll tell you a secret, Reader: I’m still smart, though. For lunch I feed him frozen “chicken nuggets” which are actually made out of like mushrooms or something. He only THINKS he’s getting toddler food, HA-HA!) (If you see him, please don’t tell him.) (Unless you want him at your house for lunch every day.)

Now here’s where he displays the oddest dinner behavior of all, y’all. Two nights ago we were sitting down to dinner and he was beginning his usual pre-meal protest. He looked at the plate that I set in front of him, which was devoid of pizza and ice cream and full of broccoli and carrots and other things that came straight from Hell, picked up his fork, and began prodding the contents with a look of utmost displeasure. Then came the “Nooooooooooo! No! No! No!”s as he searched, unsuccessfully, for a piece of cheese or bread underneath the offending vegetables. Then, as Lance and I sat down, he set down his fork, bowed his head low over his plate, and held out his hands: one to Lance and one to me.

Lance and I were nonplussed. What the heck was this kid doing now? Witchcraft, to rid his plate of miserable health? Was he prostrating himself before us in an effort to win our mercy? We stared at him for a few seconds, waiting to see what was to come next, but he just stayed still like that, head bowed, hands outstretched. “Um…. do you…. want to pray or something?” we asked him. “Yeah,” came his muffled reply.

Ok, freeze frame. Lance and I pray together over most meals, and obviously Noah is present for those. But our prayer is a memorized one that we say together. We never hold hands, and we NEVER bow heads. We usually look at each other and, in turn, at Noah. So the thought that is flying through both our heads is something like, “What the fuuuuh???”

“You know, Buddy, you don’t have to bow your head like that in order to talk to God…” No reply. No movement. Just chin tucked serenely onto chest, and waiting, outstretched little hands.

He wants to pray! He wants to…pray? Not only does he want to pray, he wants to pray like this? All, fundamental-like? (He saw this in a book, Lance thinks? Or maybe he remembers seeing his grandparents do this?) So… sure, then, I guess? (Yes, that is how many question marks are necessary, because that’s how many were hovering over our heads that night.) We all hold hands to pray and I say something like, “Dear God, Please help Noah to love this delicious dinner and eat it all up, amen.” Just as a joke, y’all. But I swear to God he says, “Ay-mee-uhn,” like he’s from Nashville, picks up his fork, and starts shoveling food into his face.

ZOMG, that prayer WORKED!? IT WAS LIKE MAGIC. Of course, a couple of forkfuls in, he realized what he was doing and starting spitting food out and acting normal again, but at first IT WAS LIKE MAGIC.

It’s been a terrible, awful, no good, very bad… week. (It’s not really that bad, I’m just alluding to a great piece of literature here. Zero points if you can name that book!)

It started with my shitty hair cut on Saturday. I specifically asked for a trim, and I asked her to keep the sides long. I ended up looking like the mom from the Brady Bunch. It’s sort of like a short bowl-cut on the top layer, and a long flippy layer on the bottom. I can’t even put it all back in a ponytail. The sides fall down, which makes me look like a colonial soldier.

I found out at my last midwife appointment that I weigh almost 200 pounds now, which isn’t really that big of a deal to me, but now with my weird hair my face looks even more bloated than before. This pregnancy has given me a bad case of acne, but the weather has made my skin major dry. So I have weird hair that nicely accentuates my fat, acne-covered, flaky face. Try looking in the mirror at that and not bursting into tears. If you’re able to do it I’d love any tips.

Noah decided he never needs to sleep again. He can just whine and complain and cry and whine some more instead. Sleeping is for babies. Big boys piss and moan but stay awake. Big, whale-like mamas with zero energy plop their big boys down in front of Sesame Street while they catch up on their ass-sitting. (They also quickly switch over to Thomas the Tank Engine when they get an earful of pissiness at the lack of creepy talking trains in Sesame Street.)

He’s also decided I should be with him at all moments of the day. “MAMA COMING!” is his constant refrain. I’m all, “Noah, I’m using the potty, I’ll be out in a minute, ok?” And he’s all, “MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMAMA” until he opens the bathroom door, comes up to my knees, and says, “Mama hold you?” And I’m like, “Bubba, I’ll hold you in a minute ok? I’m kind of trying to poop here.” And he’s all like “Mama HOOOOLDYOOOOU!!!!” And I’m like, “Sure thing, just hand me those nail scissors so I can try and mortally wound myself first.”

This clinginess might actually be part of the not-sleeping thing. He finally goes to sleep around 10pm, after utterly exhausting himself. I stumble into bed and then, what feels like a minute later, he’s awake. It’s actually 5:30am, and he wants me again. So Lance brings him in bed with us, and if I’m lucky he falls back asleep with his feet in the small of my back. If I move or breathe, he wakes up and crawls on top of me, moaning “MAMAMAMAMAMAMAMA,” like I’m anywhere but buried underneath his head.

Then my stomach starts growling. Literally, growling like it’s an angry tiger who’s going to kill you. At 5:45 in the morning. What is it thinking?! And then the baby starts kicking my insides out, as if reminding me that my stomach is hungry and that means so is she, and can I please get up and start feeding her now?

If you want to put your marriage through the ringer, which I know EVERYONE wants to do, go a month without sleeping. Also, one of you be pregnant. Fights break out over things like, “Could you walk across the floor any louder? JESUS!” or “Did you just put that tissue in the waste basket? I JUST emptied it, what the hell is wrong with you?” You start tallying up who has had more sleep on what day, too. So when you’re 3 minutes behind your partner, suddenly everything that has ever gone wrong ever is his fault. He’s so well-fucking-rested, why can’t he just…?

And Noah is seriously TRYING to make me crazy. On top of not sleeping, he’s complaining more than ever, which I just really feel is unfair. Today, for instance, I told him we were going to play with his friend. He was all, Yeah! until he realized that entailed putting on pants and socks and (the last straw) SHOES. By the time I had his coat on and he was outside he was seriously pissed off. I’m like gently explaining that he’s being a baby douche bag and he should stop now, but he’s just so mad at me he doesn’t even want to walk down to the car. Also he doesn’t want me to hold him or touch him in any way. He just wants to stand still and scowl. When we’d waited a really long time for him to stop acting his age, and I’d tried every good-parent-who-reasons-with-her-toddler trick I know, I finally picked him up bodily and hoisted him down to the car and wrestled his angry self into the car seat. So now we were both really pissed off (and sweaty) (and my carefully pinned weird hair had come undone) and all I could think was, why is this the treatment I’m getting for taking him on a play date? It’s just not right, y’all.

The cat drank Noah’s leftover cereal milk this morning and then barfed all over the floor. So before I cleaned that up I threw him (jeez, not really, ok?) (nope, can’t lie, I threw him) out the door, then an hour later I let him back in, thinking he’d have gotten all that lactose out of his intolerant little body, but he sure enough barfed again once he was inside. JUST TO FUCK WITH ME.

Then the DOG is like, Let me out let me out! So I let her out and then she’s like, Let me in let me in! So I roll my eyes and let her in and she RUNS into the living room and gets muddy paw prints all over the yellow rug and I’m seriously one thing away from a long, drawn-out, eardrum-splitting scream that sends everyone in the house running outside in terror so I can get a nap.

What I’m saying, y’all, is I’m extremely white and I’m having some serious first-world-people problems here. This shit is real.

Me: “Can you say Noah Roggendorff?”

Noah: “Noah!”

Me: “Rogg-en-dorff.”

Noah: “Rogg-en-Noah!”

Me: “Interesting time-saver… Rogg-en-dorff.”

Noah: “Rogg-en.”

Me: “Dorff.”

Noah: “Doff.”

Me: “Ok now, all together. Rogg-en-dorff.”

Noah: “Rogg-en-doff!”

Me: “Yay! Now can you say the whole thing? No-ah-Rogg-en-dorff.”

Noah: “No-ah-Rogg-en-baby!”

Me: “Close enough.”

Lance: “So apparently there’s some big sports game on tonight.”

Me: “How do you know?”

Lance: “My usually very geeky twitter feed is full of sports talk?”

Me: “Oh, huh. Is it the Superbowl?”

Lance: “Oh, yeah, maybe! That does happen around this time of year, doesn’t it?”

Me: “Wait, no… I think it’s on a Sunday. You know, ‘Superbowl Sunday’?”

Lance: “Oh, right. Maybe it’s like the game that decides who plays the Superbowl.”

Me: “They have those?”

Lance: “Yeah, don’t they?”

Me: “Okay then.”

……..

Me: “Let’s hope to God our son is into theatre or music or computers or something.”

Why the heck don’t kids sleep? If someone turned off all your lights, put on some soft white noise, read you a story, gave you some milk, laid you in bed, and rubbed your back and hummed to you, would you not be all, SHIT YEAH IT’S DREAMIN’ TIME ? I think I would be asleep in point four seconds.

You know what my son is doing right now, at 9:49pm? Sitting on the rug, eating grapes, and playing with trains. Every once in a while he brings me the bowl of grapes, says “done!” and starts doing an energetic little Buffalo Shuffle across the room. And I say “Are you ready to go to bed yet?” and he says “NOPE! Mo’ gapes!” and sits back down with the bowl of grapes.

Do you know what we did for an hour before finally giving up and letting him come out of his room? PARAGRAPH A.

Now there are two schools of thought happening as you read this, and the two schools are currently having a competition to see who can out-judge my parenting. Before I assign the medal to the winner, you should know that I’ve already heard it, so you can cram it.

SCHOOL A) Attachment Judgement: He’s going through separation anxiety. He doesn’t want to go in a crib all by himself and be separated from his parents. If you lived in an African tribe, you’d be with him all the time. You would sleep in the same bed with him. You would never be apart. This is the natural way of things. SUCK IT, SCHOOL A. Noah HATES being in bed with us. He squirms and fusses and climbs me until I can’t take it any more and I say, “Do you want to go in your own bed?” and I hear a desperate, muffled little “yyyeeessss” from beneath the covers. The only time he’s remotely happy being in bed with us is at 5am when he dozes off and on, mumbling things like “bread” and “choca muka” in his sleep, until he wakes me up by putting his nose to mine two hours later. OR if Lance gives up and decides to sleep on the couch so that he can get a few hours without tiny feet up his nose before the sun comes up, and Noah takes full advantage of the empty space by imitating the shape of a starfish. Bubbs needs his space, is what I’m sayin’.

SCHOOL B) Cry-it-out (aka Self-Soothe) Judgment: I disagree with you. But I hear you laughing at me as your peacefully sleeping children snore in the next room, and my wide-awake-ass son begs me to play with his train table and rocks on his rocking horse and sings loud nonsense songs at 10:15pm. I HEAR YOU LAUGHING. (I’ll stand by my convictions, bitches!) (…For at least one more hour.)

The big problem is that as a stay-at-home-mom, I crave delicious alone time, where I don’t have to keep a toddler from harming himself or breaking things. The only time I get that is during his nap, which is shorter and shorter every day, and after he goes to bed at night.

The following is a list of things I can’t do when Noah stays up until 10:30:
1. Watch an adult movie.
2. Watch ANY MOVIE IN THE WORLD that does not feature Thomas, the Fucking Tank Engine.
3. Read a book.
4. Have nasty ass sex on the dining room table.
5. Have quiet, courteous, Christian sex underneath the covers.
6. Take a shower.
7. Eat a cookie.
8. Sit here and stare at the opposite wall in silence.

And now the problem is, Noah is so tired that he has started throwing fits over things like, his knee touching his train track or the dog looking at him. And I have to pick up that sobbing mess from the floor and carry him into his room and repeat Paragraph A for the fourth time tonight, and pray to God that this time it’ll take, not so I can do any of the eight items on my above wish list, but so that I can hurl my exhausted pregnant ass into bed and hope that dawn is somehow delayed by six hours.

Goodnight, fellow parents.

As you may or may not know, toddlers love to read the same book over and over and over and over and over and over and over and…. (elipsis indicates infinity) over again. And by “read,” of course, I mean sit in your lap while you read and stare at the pictures and point out objects that have nothing to do with the story, like “Sock!” or “Car!” “Baby eye!”

There are a couple of good methods for avoiding death by boredom as you read The Very Hungry Caterpillar for the seventh time in one day, and these I share with you today. Lance and I both have used them with great success.

1. Affect a Spanish accent. You can, of course, substitute your favorite accent (I recommend Russian or German for maximum entertainment), but Spanish is our favorite. What but an Antonio Banderas accent could make a statement like “Wake up, wake up, good morning! I’ll try my potty again!” sound sexy and alluring?

2. Replace the main character’s name with your child’s name. When “the Poky Little Puppy” becomes “Noah,” funny ensues.

3. Read the story backwards. Lance tried this method the other night. I admit it’s not one of my favorites, because it bothers me that the story makes no sense. From the kitchen I heard him read “Thank you! That would cheer me up! Then she will say… Would you like some of my ice cream? Then I will ask her…”

4. Read it like a play (partner required). As we read to Noah before bed the other night, Lance and I played the roles of the main characters in a story we’d read no less than 3,000 times in the past week. We got really into it, too. Lance does an amazing squirrel, not to mention a killer elephant with a broken trunk. And I do a mean pig, if I do say so myself. Not for nothing did I get that theatre degree!

5. Beg the child to choose a different story. I must confess, this rarely works. For instance, to my delighted surprise, I was able to distract Noah with a new book from the shelf last night. But as I closed the book and said happily, “The End,” he insisted on the backhoe book again anyway. But this morning he brought me the new, distraction book instead of the backhoe book! It might be a step in the right direction. At least, until the distraction book becomes THE book, and then I’ll be begging him to read the backhoe book, but this is the cycle. You pick your poison, is what I’m saying.

6. Don’t actually read the story. Just flip the pages and let the kid point at stuff and practice his vocabulary. This is a great one for early morning or when you need a nap. It requires very little effort on your part. Just close your eyes, lean your head back, say “Mmm-hmm” every once in a while, and don’t forget to turn the pages as often as you remember that you’re holding a book.

Well those are my tried and true methods. I hope they help you the way they help me. Now if you’ll excuse me, Noah is banging Can I Share My Ice Cream against my leg and saying “AH-GWEEN-BOOK!”, and I can feel myself beginning to channel a French accent already…

Right before Christmas, we switched Lance’s office/the guest room with Noah’s little room, so that we’d have space for all the kagillions of toys we got Noah for Christmas, and so one day he can share a room with his baby sister.

(P.S. A bad idea: undertaking a humungous project three days before Christmas.)

Here are some pics of the Bubbs’s new digs. I gotta say, I’m completely in love with it. His old room was a light green color… very baby-ish. I love how these new dark green walls contrast with the bright colored kid stuff. I made yellow curtains to go in there too, to brighten the room up even more. There are a few finishing touches, like we’re going to be swapping Noah’s crib out for a big-boy bed pretty soon, and we want to get some more bright artwork up on the walls, but here’s what it looks like for now.

Possibly my favorite thing about his new room: these custom shelves. All his books and toys are on display and organized so he can reach what he wants or else point to something higher up and I can get it for him. It’s a far better setup than what we had before: a wicker basket overflowing with toys of every kind in the corner of the living room. The day we arranged all of this I had an organization orgasm.

Mom’s corner.

My labor of love: his finally finished quilt. I call it “Less Than Perfect.”

More than any other room in our house, Noah’s is a display of homemade and hand-crafted. This chandelier is one I made from a string of Christmas lights before he was born, and Lance installed it. So of course, it had to make the switch. His room is bigger now though, so it doesn’t light up the whole space like it did before, but it’s still really sweet and pretty in the room. I also made the bird mobile, that pillow in the rocking chair, and the curtains and quilt, like I already said, and I painted the elephant on the toy chest (which is now full of blankets, now that his toys are organized in bins on the shelves). And our good friend Kelly painted the little canvases.

Think New Baby will love it as much as the rest of us do?

Coming up: Lance’s New Tiny Cramped Office Pics. (If I can fit in there to take any pics, that is.)

1. There’s a load of diapers in the dryer that I haven’t folded and the dirty diaper bag is already full.

2. I look up directions to get somewhere and I have a full understanding of where I’m going and I still get lost.

3. Noah doesn’t nap.

4. Noah throws his food.

5. Noah throws his toys.

6. It’s cloudy, gray, and 34 degrees outside but it still doesn’t snow.

7. The sink is full of dirty dishes.

8. Noah is scared of a new place or new people.

9. I accidentally hear ANY of the asinine words that the GOP candidates are speaking.

10. I’m out of clean underwear.

11. The weekend is so booked it doesn’t feel like a weekend is coming at all.

12. The Zombie Rodents scratch around in the attic.

13. I’ve already had my allotted cup of coffee for the day.

14. Lance has to work at night.

15. Jon Stewart is on vacation.

16. We get mailed a Netflix movie that we put in our queue like four years ago and have absolutely no desire to see, and it sits on top of the mantle for three weeks before we give up and decide to send it back without even opening it.

17. Christmas is over and it doesn’t even feel like Christmas ever happened.

18. Leftovers are on the menu.

19. I forget about/can’t find an essential item when I go grocery shopping, and then I have to go back to the store another day before I make dinner that night.

20. The cat sleeps on top of the couch cushions, squishing the cushion with his fat ass and creating a nest of fur.

I made macaroni and cheese for lunch today.

Noah woke up and wanted “orin joosh, chicken, wafeesh, mac in cheeshe” (orange juice, chicken, waffles, and mac-n-cheese) for breakfast this morning, so I decided to reward his ability to make and express decisions.

It’s hard to believe I ever ate macaroni and cheese out of a box. It was standard college fare, but I could never go back. Rich and creamy, with a bread crumb crust… homemade is so much better, y’all. I used this recipe, with a few tweaks (like onion powder, garlic, and the bread crumbs on top). I halved the recipe also, and we still had leftovers. Make it tonight for lunch tomorrow… you’ll thank me.

On the menu this week are a lot of my sort of old standbys, so I don’t have recipes for a lot of them, but if you would like to know how to do any of this just let me know (and yes I know I’m a day late…):

Monday: Chicken souvlaki with tzatziki, oven fries
Tuesday: Eggplant parmesan, roasted broccoli
Wednesday: Corn chowder
Thursday: Jamaican grilled chicken, hot corn (recipe follows), roasted green beans
Friday: Roasted eggplant and tomato pizza (I’m also roasting a red bell pepper to add to mine)

Enjoy!

Recipe for Hot Corn (I got this recipe years ago from a friend in Huntsville, and every once in a while we pull it out. Not remotely healthy but it’s great for a cold night because it sticks to your ribs. Plus it’s gloriously spicy.)
1/2 package cream cheese
1/2 stick butter
~1/8 cup milk
1/4 cup chopped jalapenos (from the jar) (this is to taste, so add more if you can take it, less if you can’t)
~2 tablespoons jalapeno juice
2 cups corn (defrost first if using frozen)

1. Melt the cream cheese and butter together in a medium baking dish
2. Stir in the milk and mix until creamy
3. Mix in the jalapenos, juice, and corn
4. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes(ish) until set and bubbly
5. Ignore calories. Indulge guiltlessly.

Do it right this year, before the world ends. Here’s my annual list of things I won’t TOTALLY WILL accomplish. Hey, doesn’t starting over just feel so great?

The Year of Living Simply (2012)

1. Spend less
2. Be content more
3. Consume less
4. Give more
5. Eat out less
6. Cook/pack homemade food more
7. Be more creative/frugal with fun activities
8. Buy local
9. Buy pre-owned
10. Walk/bike more
11. Drive less
12. Start Noah’s savings account
13. Start New Baby’s savings account
14. Save more
15. Pay off debt
16. Learn French
17. Read more
18. Host dinner for friends more
19. Study the gospels (including the Apocrypha)
20. Join the Mom’s group and do at least one activity a week
21. Potty train Noah
22. Eliminate stressful situations as much as possible
23. Fix annoying things so we can enjoy our house more
24. Hug more
25. Forgive more
26. Be angry less
27. Write more
28. Make it myself more (sew/cook/build/create)
29. Get another tattoo
30. Social network more
31. Work for the theatre more
32. Renew the Book Club
33. Do yoga more