Fixin' Supper

  The finished creation 

I ran to the store this afternoon to pick up some Diet Coke and the 2yo noticed the bananas. He’s at that age where he both a. comes up with new words every day and b. surprises you constantly by appropriately using his new words in context. So as we wheeled by a stand in the middle of an aisle, he gleefully shouted out [there's a lot of shouting when you're 2, apparently], "Bana!" I like to reward the language usage whenever possible, so I put some nearly-not-green ones in the cart, and then got a sudden inspiration. I got one ripe banana and some squirty whipped cream.

We think ran down the street and stopped in Pied Piper, where we got them to pack up some chocolate ice cream for us. At home we already had strawberry from Pied Piper, and some Cherry Garcia from Ben & Jerry’s.

So we piled up the banas, three scoops of ice cream, chocolate sauce, caramel sauce, squirty whipped cream, some candy sprinkles and four cherries.

Wow.

We took it outside to eat it. Though it melted faster, it was a lot easier for the 2yo to manage outside. Despite some impressive spoon work, he still ended up covered with chocolate — face, hands, shirt, shoes. So then I got the hose out and sprayed him off. Y’all, there’s no happier person in this world than a 2yo playing with a garden hose.

We’re here in Florida, this time for quite a special occasion. My parents have been married 40 years today, and tonight they’re going to renew their vows on the beach! NYC sister and her fiance are here, and supposedly, Nashvegas sister and her boyfriend arrived late last night. I wouldn’t know for sure….I fell into bed exhausted at 10 p.m., long before they were projected to arrive. [And of course, no one except the kids and me is up yet today!]

I don’t know what it is, but just being here with kids wears me out. We did go swimming yesterday for a couple hours, but I don’t know why that would sap all my energy.

Today, everything is going to be planned around getting the Hungry Toddler fed and ready for the 6:30 ceremony, so that hopefully we’ll get good behavior long enough to have a few family photos made, too.

Well, it’s time to make the doughnuts as they say. In this case, that means give the kids Chocolate Lucky Charms for breakfast. EEEK! Yes, my mother bought that for them. They don’t get that at home. But they appear to be very, very excited about consuming their monthly allotment of sugar all in one sitting.

For my whole life, allergies have been an altogether annoying presence. Frankly, I’m now convinced that when they find the genes controlling immunological response, mine will have a couple of critical mutations, since my immune system’s favorite target is the rest of my body.

So when the 7yo was born, I was a real freak about potential allergens in food. I don’t have food allergies personally, but some researchers now believe that food, respiratory and skin allergies are all related. Which makes sense if you think about it. And given my troubles in the later two categories, it seemed prudent to be careful about what the 7yo ate.

I had her on a strict schedule. No eggs til she was a year. No fish. No chocolate or strawberries til she was two. And, most critically, no peanuts til she was three.

We pretty much hit all those targets with the 7yo, and she ended up able to eat everything, whether through good fortune or careful planning. Either way, it seemed a small sacrifice for the first three years.

Now, the Hungry Toddler was adopted, and he was born in Guatemala. We don’t know his birth family’s medical history. [Many adopted children are now fortunate to receive such information. You may never realize what a blessing it is to know your medical history, until you meet someone who doesn't.] At any rate, since we didn’t know, again, it seemed wisest just to be careful about his foods. The funny thing about it is, when HT came home, though he was only 7 months old, his foster mother insisted—and was obviously right—that he would eat anything. This child could chew things with his gums that grown people gag over. So, how was I to know that he hadn’t been enjoying peanut sauce on top of all his veggies for the past few months?

Still, we embarked on the no-peanuts campaign. Have you ever tried to keep one member of the household from eating something that everyone else eats? Or from touching it? And it happens to be sticky?

I’m making it sound like we’ve painted the house in peanut butter, but it is true that the 7yo practically lives on the substance. So it was a pretty big effort to ensure none of it crossed his lips.

Last week while we were in Florida, the 7yo and I made one of my favorite childhood snacks: peanut butter sticks [more on these later]. We had them out on the meatblock to set while HT was napping, and I neglected to pack them away before he got up.

You can see what happened: He’s tall enough to reach to the top of the meatblock, whether I think he is or not. :) And I found him chowing down on a peanut stick, standing right behind me with a big grin on his face.

I snatched the peanut stick away from him and washed him off, but the damage was done. My only question was, was there any benefit to waiting until he was three for the second dose? It would make my life a lot easier if we could get this over with. So I called his doctor today and they said, once he’s eaten it, he’s eaten it. He’s either made the antibodies or he hasn’t. So they recommended I give him a little and see what happened.

So tonight, HT got his second taste of peanut butter, just a little on some graham cracker bits. He found the texture quite amusing. And he wanted more.

Best of all, no rash! No wheezing! No nothing!

I realize that’s the regular outcome, but you have to understand the paranoia. We have several friends with kids who have deadly peanut allergies. And it does change your life, and that of everyone around you, to have to avoid such a common food. We’ll try some more peanut stuff over the next few days, but I’m hopeful in saying, Jif all around!

Tonight the 7yo and I were enjoying an appetizer while dinner [leftovers] was microwaving. The appetizer was a delightful spread from The Moosewood Cookbook called "Walnut Feta Paté." [OK to be honest, she was enjoying a cracker, while I enjoyed a cracker with the spread. More for me.] I’m seriously addicted to the stuff….have been for about 10 years now. Good night, do you realize 10 years ago it was the late ’90s???

At any rate, tonight, for some reason, I had this thunderbolt about the walnut-feta spread. It tastes almost exactly like deviled ham. Salty, rich….mmm.

I asked the 7yo if she knew what deviled ham was. No idea. Looked at me like I was from Mars.

I told her that I remembered deviled ham as the mainstay of my school lunches….I took my lunch a lot during certain periods of my childhood and I would take a can of deviled ham and eat it on crackers, or have a plain deviled-ham-and-white-bread sandwich. Just thinking about it now makes my mouth water.

I tried to tell her it was for me like peanut butter is for her, but I really don’t think she could appreciate it. [You know, something terribly bad for you that you just can't help but eat.] I may have to get some and let her try it.

Am already behind in my blog. I have had so many posts in my head the past couple of weeks, so few on the computer.

A few random notes:

* We have an upcoming trip to New York. Terribly exciting, but especially if you’re 7. Please do not expect any awesome restaurant reviews after this trip, unless you’d like to know about American Girl Cafe. [If we can get in. We're looking at standby status.]

* Does everyone now want an iPhone, or just me?

* We’ve just had a couple days of cold weather and I’m already sick of winter.

* In my ongoing quest to eliminate chicken nuggets entirely from my kids’ diet, we had a home-cooked meal tonight. [Barbecue chicken; even the 7yo ate it! I am not a particular fan of barbecue flavoring on foods other than barbecue. But she really is. So I figured it was worth a try.]

I really thought it would be a pizza night….I came home from work early with a roaring headache and promptly fell asleep. I woke up later feeling much better….maybe having a toddler wake you at 4 a.m. screaming really is detrimental to normal mental functioning.

* On that note, other food updates will have to wait til tomorrow, just in case we have another 4 a.m.’er.

So the Hungry Toddler is at an age [as has been previously mentioned in this space] where he wants his food Right This Minute. Rarely is anyone [me] able to provide food fast enough for this child.

I have been saving a critical weapon in my arensal for just the right moment. Tonight seemed like the time. After we got home, all three of us [me, the 7yo and HT] went on a little exploration into the deep-darkness of the shed to find the Ball Party. For the record, HT was not a fan of the pitch-black shed.

  Ball Party 
 

Its virtues were made real to him a short few moments later, when we assembled the Ball Party in the den. When the 7yo was a baby, my good friend Sarah [HT's godmother] assured me how much happier everyone would be if we procured the Ball Party for her. She was right. This is the perfect toddler toy. I see from the versions I found online tonight that Tomy has changed the setup in the intervening years. [If I were buying today, I think I'd go with the Bounce version.] When we bought it, Ball Party was a set of three ramps and several whirl-arounds that you could assemble in a variety of ways. Then, you could send the hard plastic balls careening down the ramps [to much loud effect] and out the bottom of who knows which chute. A toddler’s delight. It was the 7yo’s favorite toy for at least a year.

So, it’s been packed up in our shed for years now, and tonight was the night. HT loves it, and the 7yo has already helped him reconfigure it in new and fun ways. And look, I’m cooking, blogging and cleaning the kitchen all at the same time. This is a successful toy.

OK I realize this follows along every year right after Thanksgiving. But every year, I have the same panic attack, usually about this time. Good night! It’s time to hang lights on the house! Get a tree! Make cookies! Have a party or two! Finish buying presents! Celebrate Christmas!

I am trying to breathe.

This week I’m trying to get through a major Junior League fundraiser [at least the opening of one], a big party, another party, paying bills, laundry, and have you seen the dishes in the sink, and I am tired now, and there’s a lot going on at work all of a sudden; how did that happen?

Next week all I have is a school fundraiser, office holiday party, friend’s party and opera tickets. That’s better because I’m only responsible for one thing really [school fundraiser]. The rest is show-up-and-have-fun.

So, we’re postponing holiday prep around here until next week. Don’t worry; there’s lots of cooking involved.

I will share that I, a person who never makes New Year’s Resolutions, have already made two for 2007:
* I will actually attend the book club at my church. They have faithfully continued to invite me every month and it sure sounds like I am missing a lot of fun. In 2007 I’m going to go.
* I’m going to strive to eliminate the phone-it-in dinner from our family’s menu. I don’t mean literally, like, phone up a pizza. We don’t do that all that often. I mean, where I’m phoning it in by fixing mac & cheese from a box, or chicken nuggets, or something to that effect — ie., something I know the kids will eat, something that takes 5-10 minutes, and in the end, is absolutely rotten for us and does nothing to expand their palates.

People ask me all the time if it’s hard being a single mom. Oddly enough I don’t remember lots of people asking me that several years ago when I got divorced. Hell, that is so long ago who knows what people said or what I said? And I’ll agree that a single mom going out and adopting another child is not exactly commonplace. So everyone likes to know how it’s going.

I guess something you should know about me is that I’m one of those crazy people who likes to take on extra challenges just for fun. So when I already have three volunteer committees working full speed ahead, I’ll see if I can’t chair something at church or at the 7yo’s school. That kind of crazy. The better-dead-than-bored crazy.

I don’t mean to make light of it. Sure, it is a lot of work. But the rewards — of motherhood [or of volunteer work] are always greater than the hassles. You don’t remember the hard parts after the fact. But to all of you to whom I’ve ever said, "Things are perfect," I thought I would hold out tonight as the occasional example of when they are not.

So I am tired. I figure, since I really need to go grocery shopping before we can eat anything half-decent, instead of dragging the kids along to do that, we will just go out to eat tonight. This begins well enough. I pick them up fairly early and we are seated at one of our favorite Mexican restaurants by 5:45 or so.

Unfortunately, we are seated around the corner from where the servers can see you when they wander out of the kitchen. I think service is always slower in this little nook. It was slothlike tonight.

By the time the food arrived, the Hungry Toddler was ready to lose his mind. Though he had earlier amazed me by holding the styrofoam-cup-with-lid all by himself, by the time the food arrived he had already tried to throw all the chips into the floor, about 10 at a time; tried to destroy his water cup; and also committed various other infractions, shrieking in anger each time I stopped him.

Food mollified HT for approximately seven minutes, perhaps a world record.

Now, our favorite Mexican place has one major problem: television. I don’t care what’s on, from the time she was say, the age of HT, if there was a TV in the room, the 7yo was hypnotized. So of course she was just watching TV during this whole circus, taking an infrequent bite of her taco. Finally I said to her, "Eat now. We are leaving because your brother is at the end of it." [Translation: We are leaving before I lose my mind.]

We made it out just fine and on the drive back home, I reflected that "taking a night off" by eating out was just as difficult, if not more so, than cooking, even if I ostensibly had nothing to cook at home.

I suspect that by the time HT is 3 or 4, this will all be over because he’ll have that slightly increased patience level — and more than the 15-20 words he can currently sort-of say — than will enable all of us to make it through dinner out a little more frequently. At least, that’s the plan.

I have been excoriated recently for my Scrooge-like comments about International Talk-Like-A-Pirate Day, and I am sure this is going to rank right up there with that, so I’ll be prepared for your jeers.

And until I had kids, I never realized what a problem this is. In fact, I don’t remember having this problem when I was a child. I have talked to other parents and I really think it may be an only-child issue — so I’m hoping as Hungry Toddler gets older, this problem will disappear.

The issue is not the massive haul of candy that the child brings home from Trick or Treating. I’m all for a good sugar high now and then. Hallelujah for the Christmas stocking of treats and toys, the Easter basket of chocolate. My problem is the four-month-old Ziploc bag of stale candy shoved under the bed — or is that a 16-month-old bag of candy?

As the oldest of three, I remember stealing candy from other people’s bags, trading candy, and being sad when all the candy was gone — usually in a week or so if memory serves. I do not remember making it last for months. I’m just wondering if the everlasting candy bag results from a lack of a competitive spirit, best fostered by a healthy sibling rivalry. As it is, the 7yo’s dad and I have ended up sending this Gideon’s lamp of candy back and forth for weeks until one of us gets disgusted and throws it out — which you have to be sneaky about because she keeps careful track of her possessions, candy possessions in particular.

Thoughts?

Metro schools open tomorrow for the fall. This announcement is being greeted by great happiness [me] and great whining [7yo] and great indifference [1yo] at our house. Me, despite being adamently a "non-planner" and loving summer like I do, I do enjoy the return to routine that school offers each fall. Probably it is a holdover from having loved school so much myself. And also the fact that now, I’m not the one actually attending school.

The school thing affects my life most significantly by forcing us all to get up at what you all probably consider a normal hour and I consider to be a time when no one, not even 1yo’s or dogs, should get up. Really, life would be awesome if we all could get up around 9 a.m. every day. In Nashville, high school actually starts at 7:15 a.m. — SEVEN FIFTEEN. It wasn’t a typo. So I am trying hard to enjoy the relative "luxury" of only having to meet the 8 a.m. start time of elementary school for now.

Of course our biggest challenge remains lunch. Sometime around the age of 4, the 7yo decided that she had to take her lunch every single day. Compound this with her diet [I only like peanut butter, Mom. And chicken nuggets.] and you can imagine, I’m just not all that inspired to make her lunch every day. By Tuesday, I’m over it. If I could get her up earlier I’d have her start doing it. Maybe that is my goal for the year….you take it, you make it.

Last year she started eating in the cafeteria on rare occasions, so I’m also trying my best to encourage that behavior. Frankly, I am a huge hypocrite….I took my lunch for years because the school lunches were so awful to me. However, she assures me that her school lunches are great–she just likes mine better. I think I’m going to take up marketing for the school cafeteria right now.