Food Challenge 101

My daughter is one of the pickiest eaters I’ve ever seen. She tops my childhood antics sevenfold. She’s four years old and a real prima donna when it comes to her taste buds.

So what does a persnickety princess eat?

1. Macaroni and cheese… but only if it’s from a box and the pasta is not stuck together (nix those leftovers!).

2. Chicken nuggets… but only if they’re nuggets, not those imposter chicken fingers or mommy’s camouflaged chicken cutlets.

3. Eggs… but only if they’re scrambled and not too firm or too soft.

4. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches… but only if they don’t get messy (ie., go light on the PB & J).

5. Indian food… but only if it’s plain white rice with a carrot-free raita yogurt sauce on top and some naan on the side.

6. Sushi… but only if it’s a crab cake roll (seaweed wrapped around crab stick with a spicy mayo sauce on top) and it’s cut in half but not starting to unroll.

Generally, she eats dairy products and breads and cereals without issue so I make sure to do my wicked healthy-food-sneaking business with those staples. For instance, white bread has not entered my home in years. Whole grain pancake mix (mixed with fresh fruit or canned pumpkin in the autumn months), whole grain bread (often with some sort of high fiber/high protein seeds), and even frozen whole grain waffles (Kashi brand) are products I invest in. And often, instead of a simple glass of milk, I make yogurt smoothies with vanilla yogurt, fresh fruit (berries, bananas, peaches, plums, nectarines, etc.), and sometimes a little Fibersure mix.

The one green vegetable my daughter eats is celery (thank you WonderPets!). Although it is not leafy, it’s still green and I accept it readily. Lunch is often celery sticks with peanut butter, a yogurt smoothie, and one or two cheese sticks with some crackers. I do try to supplement her diet with “green juice.” Odwalla and Bolthouse Farms (Green Goodness) make packaged refrigerated bottles of juice/puree that includes such odd though nutritious things as spinach, artichokes, and blue green algae.

My husband and I tried a reward system where we tracked how many new foods our daughter ate and gave her a gift when she hit the 5 food mark and the 10 new foods mark, etc. That worked for a while and I do recommend trying it to jumpstart your little one’s adventurous streak, but it’s certainly not a cure-all. In fact, it often backfired because she’d take one teeny-weeny, itsy-bitsy nibble of something, expect it to be marked, and then proclaim it inedible and never try it again. But it did work on occasion to introduce some more child-friendly foods.

My Children Are Rotting My Brain

I don’t know where to begin. I had very simple goals for today.

1. Clean up around the house
2. Do some laundry
3. Do a quick grocery trip
4. Let the kids play outside

Sounds simple, right? Any non-parent looks at that list and says, big deal. Where’s the problem? Alas, my dear, sweet, innocent adult, you have not thrown children into the mix. Take off your rose-tinted glasses and see the little demons for who they are.

Take the first item on my list. Clean up. Doesn’t sound hard. Make the beds. Tidy up the bathroom and kitchen. Maybe vacuum the living room. Ok, now drop a poopy-filled, yogurt-splattering, toy-throwing, book-crashing toddler into the house. Suddenly, the room you just cleaned is a disaster zone off the Richter scale.

Laundry? You know that load you just threw in the front-loader? You need to add three more things that got slimed during breakfast. Guess that means a second load.

Grocery trip sounds easy enough. IF you can make it out the door. Because after you clean up every room twice, feed the kids, change clothing, put on sunscreen, do both loads of laundry, change the baby’s diaper a third time… you notice the kids are cranky. It’s time for lunch, which means the kitchen will once again need to be cleaned. So you feed the monsters, set them loose on the rest of the house while you clean up in the kitchen, and then turn to discover that they’ve ransacked at least two of those tidy rooms you cleaned twice already. Plus, lo and behold, you’re exhausted and the little guy needs a nap. What to do? What to do? Playtime outside goes out the window.

It’s times like these, you want to drink a margarita at 1 in the afternoon.

What Mommy Really Wants for Mother's Day

Kids in quiet mode.

Whether it’s Christmastime or Mother’s Day, the inevitable question before any holiday is always, what do you want? My husband made that query the other day and, instead of him making an effort to really think about what I, a housebound mother of two who is often sleep deprived and anxious, would really want, he brushed it off by saying he’d go shopping with our daughter and find “something.” Well, it takes no mind reader to realize that all a Mommy truly wants for Mother’s Day is to forget she’s a Mommy for one day.

We spend 365 days a year hearing Mommy chants and cries and screams, dodging hard inanimate most likely battery-operated objects, cleaning all sorts of nasty unmentionables from every crevice of our children and our home, having our hearts bent out of shape when our kiddies yell out that we’re mean or that “Daddy does it better,” answering every form of philosophical and inane question (usually over and over while trying to fall asleep), and performing countless other self-sacrificing acts to help our children develop into responsible, well-cared-for, loving, intelligent adults. So for one day a year it would be nice to have a reprieve from that heavy load.

I propose that the marketing industry has made a grave error by promoting Mother’s Day as a holiday when our children spend the day with us gushing about how much they love us.* Instead, I suggest they break their bonds with Kay Jewelers and the florists of the world and instead roll Cinco de Mayo and Mother’s Day into one happy-go-lucky drink-binging ladies’ night out. Women everywhere will flock to hotels on Mother’s Day Eve where they’ll stay up late, drink fruity cocktails, dance the night away with their girlfriends, sing karaoke, hire a stripper, and forget what’s waiting for them at home. Then they’ll crash until noon, have brunch in bed, and go shopping the whole afternoon. Evening includes dinner and some spa treatments and then back to reality.

Now that is what most moms want for Mother’s Day. But we’ll settle for a card and some flowers because, honestly, our bodies can’t take late nights like that anymore and we’d be in bed by 9pm if we could.

*Please note: Mothers of grown children who they hardly see will probably prefer the traditional visit with flowers and jewels.

Rainy Day Blues

Feeling the blahs? Or how about the “help-me-my-children-are-frying-my-last-remaining-brain-cell blues”? With all the rain we’ve been having lately by me, my kids are stir crazy and I’m itching for some cocktails. So what should a gal do with the tykes before she commits herself to a rubber room with a bottle of Jack Daniels? Here are a few ideas.

1. Log on. No, not to Facebook for the millionth time. But turn to one of the gazillion awesome kid-friendly Web sites that feature colorful graphics, music, videos, games, and more. A few of the gems that my little ones love (that are also free!!!!) are Noggin.com and its sister site NickJr.com, SesameStreet.org, and SproutOnline.com. These are the bigwigs with commercial ties to all those lovable/hateable characters your kids adore (Dora, Backyardigans, Elmo, Barney). So be prepared to pull out your Barney repertoire of lyrics and deal with the “Mommy more” requests. A couple less commercial ones are Up to Ten (www.uptoten.com/kids/boowakwala-navigation-games.html) and Speakaboos (www.speakaboos.com).

For the older kids, a few sites I’ve bookmarked for the future are Learntobehealthy.org, an online health education site, Exploratorium.edu, an interactive science portal featuring info on everything from space exploration to optical illusions, Storytelling Alice (www.alice.org/kelleher/storytelling/), a junior version of the Carnegie Mellon Alice program that teaches computer programming through movie animation, and Wingedsandals.com, where kids click through the ancient world of Greek mythology (at time of writing, this site is offline for “spring cleaning”).

2. Head to the shelves. The bookshelves I mean are located at your local library. Many times they have programs you can sign up for last minute so call ahead or check their Web site. Otherwise, go there with a plan to pick out some books, CDs, and videos and read a magazine while the kiddies play some computer games or assemble puzzles. The bookstore works nicely, too, but you most likely will buy that mocha latte with yummy frothy cream and get elbowed into buying the books you were perusing.

3. Paint away your blues. If you’re terrified of your toddler getting red paint on your beautiful, newly installed Berber carpet, rest assured there are mommy-friendly options. For one thing, there’s water painting. No, not waterpaints, just painting with water. Put some water in a shallow cup or bowl, hand your kiddo a paint brush or two (one will surely get its bristles destroyed in minutes), and pull out some construction paper. The water will dry off and the artwork will disappear, but your carpet and nerves will be saved and your kids will be entertained for at least 10 minutes.

4. Get baked. No, not like that. Pull out the flour, cookbooks, chocolate chips, and pans. Or, if you’re like me, keep some Pillsbury stuff in the fridge for just such an emergency. Not only will the promise of cookies buy you a few moments of quiet time (and perhaps good behavior), but the kids will enjoy spending some intimate time in the kitchen and associating warm memories with those delicious scents.

5. Shake that groove thang. While those cookies are baking, time to work off some calories. Put on some funky music (kid-oriented or otherwise, though I do advise steering clear of Eminem) and get movin’. The kids will love seeing mom dance around the living room and you’ll feel good knowing everyone got some exercise.

The Birth of a Blog!

Ooooooooooo! Eeeeeeee! Plop. *Wipes the sweat from brow.*

This blog has been ruminating and culminating in my mind for quite some time, so it’s good to finally get it out of me and into the world! As with any birth, this is just the beginning and I have no idea how far my baby will go.

So, welcome, Net travelers. Say hello to the newest member of my family. Whether you’ve clicked through pages and pages of links to get here or just happened by chance to find yourself in my domain, you’ve just exposed yourself to a new spot to gather reinforcements and collect little gems in the daily pursuit of childrearing. You don’t have to be a mommy to need a little “Mommy Force” in your life. We all need just a little humor, some cute anecdotes, interesting photos of far-off places or mundane items, and any other flights of whimsy to help us cope with life, deal with stress, and make the most of our experiences. Here, you’ll find links to educational Web sites that I’ve roamed cyberspace to find, curious news bits, reviews of books and media, and perhaps some opinionated rantings.