By beanma, on October 29th, 2010
Or, for that matter…
hoods.
She hates sweet potatoes and won’t let me give her medicine or supplements in any way shape or form (not even mixed in water); in fact, she won’t even drink water now that I’ve “poisoned” it once before. It’s imprinted. She’s like that.
I can’t take her temperature. She screams.
She insists on holding a spoon and “stirring” whatever food is in front of her while I feed her.
Temps are in the 40s today and we couldn’t go for a walk because she refused to wear anything on her head.
A good forty percent of her halloween costume is something to be worn on the head. I guess not this year.
Tell me this doesn’t last.
By beanma, on October 24th, 2010
Just a regular foot in her mouth. Like, all the time. And today she did it while wearing the new slippers BeanPa bought for her.
Since the Beannut doesn’t much like keeping shoes on her feet, these have been the perfect solution. They stay on, and they have a sturdy bottom. I’ve let her walk around the library with them and we go out with them.
I guess this is what they call building immunities.
By beanma, on October 17th, 2010
He finally got me.
Roughly two years ago, the BeanPa and I went on our first date. We almost never went on another one because, apparently, as the story goes, I wouldn’t let him rub garlic on my mosquito bite (which was on my toe).
Two years later, on vacation, and perhaps a little more malleable … he succeeded.
Sorry about this photo. My ankles aren’t half-bad, but the angle of this shot gives me a weird “cankle” look.
Thanks, y’all.
By beanma, on October 15th, 2010
What is this racket?
My child, dare I say, looks like she’s thinking about walking pretty soon. She’s taking her time, but I’m glad she is. Cause soon we’re going to be out of house and home to keep her in a constant supply of shoes. The guy at the local shoe store tells us they go through about 4 pair a year. Crazy.
And of course you can’t just go to target and by fake baby crocs. This is something important to the DEVELOPMENT OF TINY FEET. Who wants a 4-year-old with mangled feet and a crooked gait cause you got all cheap on them with shoes?
So her first pair are going to cost somewhere in the field of $45. FORTY-FIVE-DOLLARS!!!
I just bought myself a pair of fake crocs off Amazon for $9.99.
Stuff no one bothers to tell you.
By beanma, on October 6th, 2010
Had I fed it to her back in the day. She might have eaten a small gopher. A maple tree, a tortoise shell …
But then she turned one.
And we night weaned (and are still …)
And she decided to be one of those kids.
Thing is, I grew up in an Italian-esque family. Not a right-off-the-boat Italian family, but one who’d inherited the classic obsession with food. A passion for eating. If you didn’t eat anything and everything, including fish with several types of winged fins and squid with tentacles as long as shoelaces, there was something wrong with you, plain and simple. The word picky wasn’t used. No one in our house was picky. Picky was a word reserved for those little blond children whose ethnic backgrounds really couldn’t even be considered “ethnic” … their moms fed them white bread with butter and ham and called them sandwiches (whereas my mother sent me to school with sauteed broccoli rabe on a hunk of Italian bread) and they did things like scrape the tomato sauce off of pizza because it had “green things” (oregano) in it.
For our family, there was pride in eating whatever as long as that whatever wasn’t American junk food. My grandmother would practically stand up and cheer when she found me stealthily extracting chunks of raw garlic from her arugula salads to horde them on my plate and eat them all in one bite. While I may have occasionally preferred a sliver of pink boiled ham on a slice of white bread with a pat of butter, I received a great deal more love and attention by preferring cavatelli and broccoli with a good dose of crushed red pepper. Though of course I was intrigued by Wonder bread, Lipton’s chicken noodle soup … in a packet … spam and Tastycake Krimpets with that layer of butterscotch icing that covered the spongy cake like a bad toupe … but my encounters with these foods were few and far between.
So why, then, after all this good food karma–after not only eating my broccoli, but admittedly enjoying it–have I ended up with a kid who purses her lip and operatically turns her head at any sign of incoming food other than that which comes from my nipple?
I’ve withstood a year of waking a dozen or more times a night with her. And I never got angry … at least not at her. I have nursed her seemingly incessantly for fourteen months now. She has altered the course of my life–I have temporarily given up my career to care for her. I have given up breasts that were pretty unsaggy for 37 and all that hair that fell out of my head, all those stitches in places that I’d rather not mention. None of it has ever once made me resent her, has angered me … has made me want to take her rubber-coated BPA-free Gerber baby spoon and pry her stubborn little lips open …
The BeanPa has witnessed it. He’s seen me lose my cool. I spend money on organic foods. I cook each stupid meal. I let it get to the right temperature. I put it through a food mill. I sit her down, and then. This. Rejection.
I always told myself, my childless self, that I would never be one of those mothers–who complain about how their kids don’t eat, who beg, bargain, and negotiate, who give up their own meals to fruitlessly invest in feeding their kids just about anything they’ll put in their mouths. But I understand now. I understand the heartbreak and frustration. The worry and the struggle.
We’re down to bread and applesauce, people. And the applesauce has to pass through a series of trials involving the tip of a skeptical little tongue that pushes out just enough to determine whether I’m trying to poison her with something reasonable and healthy, or if it’s more of the acceptable applesauce or bread.
Some have suggested I just begin giving her table food. But she has no teeth, so our choices are limited. And on the occasions when I have taken the time to soften the carrots just so and cut them into non-life-threatening chunks, she’s found ways to single-handedly smash them onto every surface within a ten-foot radius. It’s a worse than those pursed stubborn lips. And never worth the effort.
I’m just letting you all know that I refuse to raise the child whose diet consists of star-shaped chicken nuggets and ketchup, of milkshakes for the sake of “calcium” – right now, I can at least sneak olive oil onto that bread. And that alone keeps the hope alive.
By beanma, on September 10th, 2010
We’ve lived here a year and a half now–about six months short of when we first met.
It’s been quite a year … and a half. If there were a dialogue bubble over our house, it would contain in it words like “hormones” “sleep deprivation” “rage” “frustration” “anger” “boobs” “poop” “tears” “laughter” “mayhem” … you get the idea.
Sometimes I walk through our well-to-do white-people neighborhood and I look over the houses around us and imagine words like “luxury” “relaxation” “serenity” “rest” “comfort” “joy” … and I want to wave them on over; maybe a strong wind will come and blow them in our direction.
But the only thing a strong wind has done is make perilous branches from the dead tree in front of our house threaten my dear Beannut’s life as they fall over wires and into our front yard.
Fun.
So while our landlord isn’t in love with fixing things around our apartment (thank god for our handy BeanPa!), I used all my hormonal sleep-deprived breastfeeding and exhausted mommy power and wrote him a kind letter, letting him know just what I might do if one of those dangling branches got the idea of falling onto my dear beannut’s head.
Today a pile of men in a truck with a woodchipper showed up and the Beannut and I watched as each branch went down, safely, one by one.
Things around here this summer have been hectic. Beanpa’s job continues to support us but also be a source of stress because of the long hours away from home, and my functionality as a human has been steadily declining as the Beannut insists on waking hourly at night to nurse and fuss and scream heartily in my ear. We’ve all been a bit gloomy.
But this week, the ship seems to have begun sailing in some new directions–Beannut’s new baby girl cousin has arrived safely into this world. The BeanPa has graciously accepted the role as “nighttime parent” to our wakeful one and is allowing me to sleep in the back room, getting some full nights of rest that haven’t happened in over a year. We actually moved furniture to places in our apartment where it seems to have belonged all along, but perhaps we were all too bleary eyed to notice that our dining table was in the wrong room. And now we have a “normal” living room and a “normal” dining room and are working on getting the office to the back of the house and a nursery–a whole separate Beannut cave!–so that the BeanPa and I can be bed partners again.
In two weeks, we go on our first real vacation together as a family. And then we start our discussions about what we want to be when we grow up. Travelers? Renters? Homeowners? Married folks? People with houses that have word bubbles over them that say things like “slightly crazy but maybe happy most of the time” “content eating eggs for dinner as long as I get some sleep” “nursing but not insane” …
Right now, I know, when I look out the front of our apartment, there is no longer the fear that one of us will get impaled by the wayward branch of that bad dead tree.
The beannut and I watched it come down. And we cheered when it was over. I wonder if she’ll remember this or if it will just take up some small place in her psyche so that one day she’ll have some faint association with dead trees and hope.
By beanma, on September 8th, 2010
By beanma, on August 11th, 2010
We’re turning one here, folks. And we’re all about to drop dead from the amount of “stuff” we have going on in our lives … work, a baby cousin on the way, planning another party, on and on … we’ll be back soon with tales of vegan cupcakes and birthday toasts. In the meantime, get some sleep for me!
By beanma, on July 28th, 2010
Because then you end up home on a Saturday night, pulling your hair out trying to get her back into her routine, which was never really much of a routine, but much more of a routine than this … whatever this is. She’s been waking every twenty minutes at night, due to a double ear infection, and from a weekend spent out with her morning until night … and now she’s just one very very tired child, almost to the point where you start to wonder if she might just be a little … “off” somehow.
It’s past midnight, and she has her arms out in front of her like a baby zombie, and she is bouncing up and down on the bed. Then she stops, squints and smiles big, and starts to pant. She’s delirious, this baby of yours. Never again will you let her get off her schedule.
And those childless friends of yours who say unnerving things like, We’ll, you can’t be a slave to her nap schedule…. to hell with them! Wish them many many months of the wrath of a teething baby.
You’re in a short pink cotton nightgown trimmed with lace. You get up, take the baby, call for the BeanPa and put on your crocks. “Let’s go,” you tell his almost-sleeping body.
“Where?” He looks at you, one eye shut. He is wearing plaid pajama pants and some dorky t-shirt.
You ignore him and stumble out the door with your breast exposed, just in time for him to ask you if you’re “Going out like that?”
You shush him and flick the strap of your nightgown back over your shoulder. The baby is looking amused in a way that suggests she might think you are taking her to an all-night playground. You strap her in the car, and the BeanPa drives.
The shadows of trees from streetlights pass over the Beannut’s face, and she watches you, eerily, from the confines of her rear-facing toddler carseat. You are getting car sick and ask the BeanPa pull over. So you switch to the front seat. Dignity is clearly not a priority here, but you are trying to recoup … something of a sense of being an evolved adult person.
“What if we get pulled over?” the BeanPa asks, eying your “outfit.”
You say nothing and look out the window. The moon is full and the Beannut begins making “Wild Indian” noises. Her hand over her mouth “ow ow ow ow” … it’s too much. This isn’t real life, you think.
The BeanPa puts his hand over yours. It’s an act of support, perhaps; you are in this together. You are now those parents. And that’s fine. Just please God make this child sleep already.
Then it starts to rain. It rains so hard that any efforts you might make to have this kid fall asleep will be dampened. Yes. That’s the word.
You return home and take her inside again under the cover of your arm. She has realized there will be no all-night playground and she starts to fuss. You hand her to the BeanPa the minute he sets foot in the door and stubbornly fall to the couch, which says, this is no longer my problem. Take her.
And he does. And she sleeps. You all do…
But it’s that wakeful, restless sleep of an overtired child and you swear … never again.
By beanma, on July 21st, 2010
Well, here it is. I’ll admit, it’s not the most exciting banana bread out there (the title of this post might have already clued you in on that) but it’s great for those with sensitive babes like the beannut.
I pretty much introduced egg to her through this recipe (you can always replace egg with oil) and she did fine with it. I’m also a bit of a neurotic around white flour and white sugar … while she’s fine with gluten, I’m not, and—as a whole—I just like to avoid refined flours and sugars. I haven’t given her nuts yet, so I took those out.
The original recipe, as given to me by another momma is as follows:
2 Ripe Bananas (1 cup)
3/4 Cup Sugar
1-3/4 Cup All-Purpose Flour
1 Tsp Baking Powder
1/2 Tsp Baking Soda
1/3 Cup Olive Oil
2 Egg Whites
1 Cup Chopped Walnuts
1/2 Tsp. Salt
Cream together oil, sugar, egg whites …. combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a separate bowl, then mix with the wet ingredients and stir well … add bananas and walnuts.
Put in a greased 9 x 5 x 3 loaf pan and cook 350 degrees for 50 minutes until you get a clean toothpick.
Okay, well I pretty heavily modified this original recipe. Here’s the beannut tailored one:
2 Ripe Bananas (1 cup)
3/4 Cup Sugar (I replaced with 3/4 Cup of Apple Sauce)
1-3/4 Cup All-Purpose Flour (I replaced with Bob’s Red Mill Brown Rice Flour)
1 Tsp Baking Powder (Beware this has cornstarch in it for corn-sensitive ones)
1/2 Tsp Baking Soda
1/3 Cup Olive Oil
2 Egg Whites
1 Cup Chopped Walnuts (I skipped the nuts)
1/2 Tsp. Salt
Cream together BANANA oil, sugar, egg whites …. combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a separate bowl, then mix with the wet ingredients and stir well.
Put in a greased 9 x 5 x 3 loaf pan and cook 350 degrees for 90 minutes until you get a clean toothpick.
Bob’s has great gluten-free flours and a white rice one is available; I just chose brown for no particular reason. I also learned that because of the applesauce, this takes FOREVER to bake without it seeming still raw. I can cook it for 90 minutes and still get a bit of “rawness” in it but I like it like that, gives it a moistness and I know everything is cooked. The rice flour does give this banana bread a brick-like quality and some, I realize, prefer fluffy banana bread to brick-like stuff, but you can experiment with suitable flours. I’m okay with a banana bread brick. The top will get pretty golden by the time you take it out.
I haven’t tried it, but I think it can freeze well. You might also want to experiment with muffins.
All that matters is the BeanFamily loves this bread! Hope you do too!
Feel free to let me know if you have any questions or suggestions for tweaking.
And if you have any links to your own EVERYTHING-FREE recipes, we’d love to hear them!
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