Evil Mommy Stunts

In my quest to get vegetables into my son's body, I have learned a couple of things: 1. you have to be persistent, but 2. you have to cut kids some slack at the same time. Apparently, from what I've learned, a taste for vegetables often involves having a palate that accepts 'bitter' tastes, but this kind of palate is not typically acquired until many years after a person is born. It kind of explains why kids don't like coffee, spinach, and dark chocolate, but most adults do. That being said, the vegetable component of the diet is all-essential, so we've got to find ways to pack the vegetables into him. A few days ago a Google search led me to this book by Jessica Seinfeld (yes, in case you're curious as I was, she is the wife of Jerry):


More importantly to my story, she is a mother of three children who has worked hard to innovatively sneak vegetables into her children's meals. Her battle tactic is to puree vegetables and mix them into delicious foods that kids will unsuspectingly eat. Her children have played right into her hands! So, on Monday Silas and I marched into the Moore Public Library and I promptly checked out this book, and I liked the ideas in it quite a bit so I ordered it on Amazon last night. Tonight at dinner was our first go-around, and I pureed a delicious butternut squash and mixed that puree right into a delicious pot of homemade mac-n-cheese. Silas went bananas for it. It really WAS good.

Also as part of dinner I whipped up a delicious "Pearnsip Sauce," courtesy of BJ's favorite chef, Alton Brown. I purposely picked a picture where he looks a little psycho. But he's not. Well, the pear sauce has the consistency of applesauce and is extremely delicious, but packs in a whole pound of parsnips, baby! I couldn't even tell. It was pretty great. Silas was hesitant about it, but it wasn't because of the taste...sometimes he just refuses to eat off a spoon no matter what it is. However, when BJ dipped banana slices into the sauce he ate it up, sometimes even sucking off the sauce and shooting the banana back out. Tomorrow I am going to pull even more Evil Mommy stunts by putting the Pearsnip Sauce into one of his empty beloved yogurt containers and fooling him. Although he will immediately be onto my hoax within one bite, I am hoping it tastes delicious enough that he won't care.

If you could read his happy mind right now, I think it would sound something like this. "Those suckahs. I got so full tonight and the only vegetable I ate was my favorite, sweet potatoes. I have them wrapped around my little finger."

Success!

It is stressful to a mama to think about her baby being hungry. When we began the vegetable campaign for Silas over the weekend I figured that we were doomed, and that Silas was going to start going to bed hungry, at least for a while. This was a correct assumption for one night only, thank goodness! Friday night was rough and he did go to bed hungry, a quite unhappy camper as the last post will accurately document. Saturday night, however, was the turning point. During his first go-around at dinner he refused all vegetables, but before putting him down to bed we tried again, this time with BJ's mom Susan providing the majority of the antics that BJ and I had tried the previous two times. To no avail.... until she suggested that perhaps I should mash up the carrots to change the texture of them. Voila! Every carrot and sweet potato got eaten, plus a few green beans (accidental on Silas' part I believe!), and he was rewarded with Pirate Booty, cheese, fish, and fruits, all to his audible delight. I nearly cried with relief and hugged Susan until she probably thought I was crazy, then remembered I am pregnant and hormonal. The next night, mashing the carrots was a no-go, but when BJ tried the old trick of airplane-into-the-mouth, guess who opened wide? Never mind that we had tried that all three nights before and he had screamed at us! Now he will readily eat what we put before him, either with his own hands or off of a spoon depending on the mood and provided that it is not peas or green beans. He seems to be learning that cleaning the veggie plate earns the rewards of other foods. More to come on this, as I am ordering a book that promises to help with our plight of feeding kids the vegetables that they need. And here, my friends, is the proof of success, a picture that I actually delight in posting, unlike the last ones.

Also, have I mentioned how much he loves his big hairy brother?

Taking the Hard Line

Silas used to eat anything and everything we put before him. As of late, his food preferences have gradually turned from foods like vegetables and good fats to things like fruits and grains, which isn't really a huge problem except that lately, he has eaten the fun stuff nearly exclusively. Last night at dinner we began the hard line, as recommended by our pediatrician, of putting down vegetables and ONLY vegetables. If he eats the vegetables, then other tasty things are put before him. Of course, it's a big IF, and we knew it was going to be. The photos will illustrate complete failure and so he didn't get his normal big dinner, but the doctor promised that we're not abusing him, and that eventually he'll get hungry enough and eat those vegetables, and then subsequently learn that, 'Hey, if I eat these things, I get cheese! And turkey dogs! And mandarin oranges! And a graham cracker!' One can only hope. For now, this is mealtime.

Our Traveling Son

One thing that BJ and I have always enjoyed doing together is traveling. As young lovebirds we had visions of seeing the world, and we have managed to get some of the world under our belts in eight years of marriage. We dream of future trips to places we would love to visit; BJ gets pretty excited about the prospects of seeing Italy, and I feel personal callings to Paris and Hawaii as well. I've already told BJ that I would love for our 20th or 25th wedding anniversary to be a trip for us and our children to Paris. Wouldn't that be spectacular?

In keeping with this spirit, we did not let our travel slack off after giving birth to Silas. We always said that, while we understand that children are going to require a lot of flexibility on our parts, we also expected that our children will be joining the lifestyle that WE have created for them. Silas has been an adventurous traveling companion to numerous places now, and one of my friends joked that he likely has more frequent flier miles than she does. Destination trips have been to Kansas City at two months, Minnesota at three months, Dallas at three months, Los Angeles at seven months, Seattle at eleven months, and Maine/Massachusetts/New Hampshire at 14 months, as well as a few different places in Oklahoma throughout his lifespan. Tickets have also been purchased for trips to Portland, Oregon, and Indianapolis (to meet the great-grandparents!) later this year before I say "enough is enough" as a large pregnant woman. Once the second baby is several months old we'll be able to get going again. I made this map to illustrate Silas' travels as they will occur in the first 17 months of his life:

In all fairness, some of these states are airport-layover states, but I still always count those.

He seems to have a lot of fun with us on our journeys, which is exactly what we hope for.

Except for when he falls into the water.

Or gets toted around on the shoulders of Dada.

But it can't all be fun and games, right?

Bossypants

There is a lot of ridiculousness going on in the world these days. Sometimes I pay attention to it and get really upset, and sometimes I would really rather just bury my attention in things that make me laugh. This week has been a mixture of acknowledging crazy politicians with rants to my husband and my poor friend Sara, who happened to walk into my house at the wrong time, and also performing the latter feat of happily ignoring insanity and instead reading Tina Fey's Bossypants during Silas' nap-times and in the evening after he goes to sleep. I've had some extra time on my hands this week since BJ was traveling for work. I've got to say, I do recommend this book! I laughed out loud so many times, and it was a quick and easy read for these hot summer days. My personal taste for humor has always relished the likes of comedians like Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, and Molly Shannon (can you tell I love a great female comedian?), so I absolutely wasn't surprised that I took delight in this read. Fey's humor is honest and self-deprecating, as always, but Bossypants has the serious undertone of the celebration of women despite her joking. Perfect recipe for Jenny-happiness.
I've included one of my favorite quotes below. The book itself kind of jumps back and forth, chronicling everything from early childhood to SNL days to 30 Rock, but she also includes these random short chapters, one of which is entitled "The Mother's Prayer for Its Daughter." In this brief chapter she prays for things like her daughter to be protected, to consume beer instead of crystal meth, etc. and I particularly laughed at this part:

"And when she one day turns on me and calls me a
Bitch in front of Hollister,
Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a
cab in front of her friends,
For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it."

A good day to all.

Cheerios and Beach Times

Okay a random assortment. I'm back to blogging (I hope) and am thinking I'm slowly pulling out of the fatigue and nausea of this first trimester. Honestly, each night when we finally sit down between 9 and 9:30, I think of all the things I want to do: finishing "Bossypants" by Tina Fey, knitting a blanket for Baby Question Mark (our friends refuse to share the sex or name of their expected little one, so Baby Question Mark it is), blogging, etc. Instead, all that seems to happen is I space out on the couch until I can't stand it anymore and go to bed at what feels like 3AM but is actually 10:15. Spacing out on the couch doesn't even include watching a 30-minute comedy. I can't even muster the brain cells for that. It's sad.

So here is my first entry in a long time. BJ, Silas, and I spent a long, lovely vacation in New England with some extremely wonderful friends, and I can't tell you how refreshing and happy that trip was for us. I will certainly post more pictures from our adventures in times to come, but for now, we will limit it to the beach pictures from Bar Harbor, Maine, where we visited Andi. As you can see from the pictures, Silas is having quite the time! He takes after his mommy a bit, as every time I see the wonderful, wonderful ocean I make a point to go down to it and bellow my delight out to the crashing waves. Silas, unaware of his mommy's uncontrollable urge, incidentally did the exact same thing. Of course, I immediately encouraged it by joining in, which kept the chorus going for a few minutes. It was wonderful.

Another random tidbit: For those of you who missed my husband's incriminating Tweet/FB status the other night about my pregnancy cravings, I will graciously share it with you now:

I had to make a 9pm run to get my wife honey-nut Cheerios (the regular Cheerios in the pantry were not acceptable). She got goose bumps upon tasting them. If she wasn't pregnant she'd be crazy.

Well, let's be honest. The man wasn't fibbing. In the words of the great Cheri Oteri, "The story is as told." The funny part is that BJ got a tweet from a lady at General Mills the following day, asking him for his address because she noticed his tweet and had something to send him. We got quite the kick out of this, particularly because she was calling from Minneapolis, where the General Mills Headquarters is situated. The building itself is quite large and is about three blocks from our second apartment. And oh, did it ever smell lovely. Every day we would make statements to each other on our nightly walks, such as "Must be Cinnamon Toast Crunch Day today," and "Mm-mm-MM, smell those Cheerios!" It was divine. So, in the mail today comes our package from Minneapolis, and it includes two of these shirts! Luckily they are size Large so I still fit in them, even with a growing Baby Oot.

 It's the little things in life, isn't it?