The other day, Carla had a very specific request for dinner: “May I please have a bowl of white [iceberg] lettuce and a separate bowl of [shredded] cheese and another bowl of tomatoes so that I can put them together and make a salad?”
Sure, child. Why not.
I mentioned a while back that we are trying to increase Carla’s calcium intake. And by “we” I mean “me” because my husband seems wholly unconcerned by the issue. Not in an “I’m a Physician and Am Unworried” way, but in a “this is not my problem” way ARGH. And a teeny bit in a Thwarting Efforts way. My father (ALSO a physician) suggested we simply give Carla some Tums (calcium carbonate) and so I suggested to my husband that he grab a roll of Tums next time he was at the grocery store. He said a) we already have Tums at home and when I brightened and said “Oh! We can give Carla those!” he said no, that those Tums were for acid reflux. Blink. Blink blink.
All of this is to say that I am continually working on getting more calcium into Carla.
Smoothies, as I think I mentioned before, seemed like the perfect vehicle. Especially considering that Carla likes smoothies, and dislikes most other things.
But there have been two problems.
She hasn’t been in the mood for smoothies. Almost every day I say, “You’re going to have a smoothie for breakfast!” and she says, “No.” And then I argue with her a little bit, and make pleading noises about calcium intake, and she remains firm, and I give up. Because I am not going to waste a smoothie on her when she is clearly going to Stand Firm. And I get it! I like… chili, but I don’t want to eat it every day. If you told me chili had specific life-extending properties, I would still have a hard time drumming up enough enthusiasm to eat it every day. So I get it. I do. But also: JUST DRINK A SMOOTHIE.
Smoothies do not contain as much calcium as I think. I made one for her with 1/4 cup of yogurt, 1/2 cup almond milk, 1/2 cup calcium-fortified orange juice, and 1 cup frozen mango chunks. That makes a LARGE cup of smoothie. And it contains about 40% of a person’s daily calcium. Sigh. It’s a big swoop forward on the calcium-intake-o-meter, but it’s not even halfway, and HOW do I get the rest of the way EVERY DAY?
I wonder if I could mix Carnation Instant Breakfast (200 mg calcium per packet) into her smoothies?
I found a recipe for frozen yogurt treats that I might try. I broached the idea to Carla and she was a little suspicious, but it would be worth trying at least. Maybe I could mix some Carnation Instant Breakfast into some yogurt and pipe it onto cookie sheets and freeze it? I may give it a try.
I have been Googling like crazy, but the food sources of calcium seem to have so little (50 mg here, 125 mg there – and that’s for a FULL serving of foods she DOESN’T EAT), that it seems impossible to get them to add up to 1300 mg per day. And there is a lot of pooh-poohing of calcium supplements. I get it. I understand that most vitamins don’t have a whole lot of calcium anyway, and that you need to be taking Vitamin D as well so that you can properly absorb your calcium. But it would be really useful to just give Carla a chewable something and be done with it. There are Reasons that I don’t want to get the Viactiv chews (650 mg calcium per chew), but maybe I need to get past them.
I know I tend to catastrophize. I know I do that. But I keep picturing Carla as an adult, with bones that shatter at the least provocation, and her wan little face asking the heavens, “Why, God, why did my mother not force me to get enough calcium when I was small? Why?”
Now I understand why my parents were so adamant about me drinking a FULL GLASS of milk every day. (A cup of milk is only 300 mg!)
Last week was a call week, which are just… awful. This one was particularly rough – really hard on my husband, who already finds call extra stressful, and hard on my kid, who still finds it strange and unsettling that her father is suddenly unavailable for a week. And, although it is the least hard on me, it is harder on me than normal because it is seven days of solo parenting and taking care of all of the day-to-day stuff my husband usually shares with me. On top of call week, today was a school holiday. So I just experienced three active, full, wonderful days with my daughter, and one of those days included a dental appointment (mine) and all three days required an hour-plus of driving, twice on the freeway which I loathe. I also made a phone call I have been putting off (please clap) and had to leave a message (argh). There is somehow copious amounts of dirty laundry in To Wash piles on my floor AND copious amounts of clean laundry on the guest bed waiting for me to fold it. (Don’t hold your breath.) (I did manage to wash everyone’s sheets and make the beds.) None of this sounds particularly trying, or worse than normal, but I am exhausted and ready to get back to our non-call week routine.
Because it was a call week, we did a lot of on-the-fly meal decision making, and I did last-minute trips to the store to pick up pre-made foods a couple of times. We ordered pizza last night. We only made a few of the things on my meal plan last week. That’s fine. That’s how it goes.
As I type this, Carla is watching TV (which I don’t usually allow on school nights) and eating a snack dinner. Snack dinner is one of my biggest parenting “hacks” (if you can call it a hack instead of “being lazy” which clearly I am choosing to do) because it allows me to put together a quick and easy no-cook meal in minutes, with things I have lying around. Pepperoni or ham, cheddar cheese or Babybel cheese, fruit, tomatoes, broccoli, sugar snap peas, mini bagels and cream cheese, capers, olives, guacamole, crackers or chips or toast. It’s not a long list, but we usually have most of those things lying around. Snack dinners also allow me to give Carla “just a taste” of things that she might not otherwise consider edible. For instance, we bought a watermelon radish at the store today because Carla was curious about it. Curiosity means opportunity to extend Carla’s list of acceptable foods, so I bought one. It can go in the salad I am making this week.
Yes, that is a My Little Pony plate. Carla now prefers the regular china, but I still try to give her the cute kids’ plates when I can get away with it. I have asked her, and she is not ready for me to dispose of the cute kids’ plates. She just doesn’t want to use them all the time.
I also added mini cucumbers to her plate. She LOVES pickles (although we are no longer going through them a jar per week), so why does she not love cucumbers? This baffles me, even though I LOVE pickles and do not like cucumbers; I do, at least, keep forcing myself to buy and eat cucumbers because it makes no sense. They are THE SAME THING. Also in cucumber bafflement, why is it that you can either buy an enormous English cucumber that will feed you for a week, if you eat the cucumber every night of that week, or feed you for a meal or two and then slowly disintegrate into mush in your crisper… OR you can buy a package of teeny cucumbers that will definitely get soft and squishy before you can eat all of them… but you can buy a single “one-serving” zucchini, which looks identical to a cucumber but is not, no problem? WHY. I demand choose-your-portion cucumbers! I demand it!
As long as we are being devil-may-care with the rules, I am having a glass of wine, which has nothing whatsoever to do with my cucumber demands. Holidays/days when the kids are off of school still count as the weekend, right? Right. I am drinking Kirkland brand Prosecco rose from Costco and I love it. It is bubbly AND pink. Doubly fun. I have been avoiding going to Costco, even though we are rapidly running out of the things we buy exclusively there (kitchen garbage bags, dishwasher detergent, microwave bacon yes I know, butter), but perhaps I can use the promise of MORE Prosecco rose as a carrot to get me to go. I am annoyed that rose doesn’t have the appropriate accent but not annoyed enough to fix it.
Oh. Right. Dinners.
Dinners for the Week of February 21-27
Chicken Romano with Parmesan Roasted Broccoli: I am just OFF chicken. Urgh. I think I am off ground beef, too, which is unfortunate. Thank goodness there are so many fish in the sea, and on the grocery store counter! If I start being squicked out by fish… maybe I become a vegetarian? I like beans well enough, although they don’t particularly care for me.
Asian Salad: Once again, I will be eating salmon. I bought my husband a pre-marinated teriyaki chicken breast. We will add mandarin oranges, sugar snap peas, red bell pepper, scallions, and the aforementioned watermelon radish.
Carnitas Tacos: This sounds yummy. (So far, pork and I are still friends.) And I could totally use a crockpot meal this week.
Shrimp with Zucchini Noodles: I have a hankering for shrimp scampi, but the last time I made it, it was a disaster. So this is NOT shrimp scampi. It is “garlic butter shrimp with zucchini noodles.” (Or, as I first typed it, shrim with noddles, and then I corrected that to shimp with nooooodles. I am tired.)
Takeout: This is the week of my birthday, so I am planning to order Mexican takeout and stuff myself with enchiladas and cake. (P.S. Colleen and I share the same birthday! If you are up to it, head on over to her blog and give her some birthday love.)
The verdict on the watermelon radish is that it is TOO SPICY. (She ate the smallest possible sliver and spat it out. Sigh.) And I STILL don’t want to go to Costco.
Welcome to the first week of dinners for the new year. An entire year of meal planning and shopping for those meals and cooking those meals (or not cooking them, in favor of something that sounds better/easier in the moment) and eating those meals and cleaning up those meals stretches before us.
While that doesn’t sound particularly appealing, I am feeling a tiny burst of energy about it all. The transition from indulgent holiday food to lighter, more regular meals feels refreshing. I spent a bunch of time this weekend looking through recipe blogs for new possibilities; it sometimes helps to have something New and Exciting – or at least New – to keep me out of the meal planning doldrums. I am going to lean into it while I can, before the inevitable drudgery of making meals day after day after day until death settles over me like a weighted blanket.
We did not make sticky toffee pudding yesterday, so that is back on the list for this weekend. (We did get food from my favorite Indian restaurant for dinner, and it was especially delicious. I would rather have chicken vindaloo ten times over than sticky toffee pudding, so it was a win for me. Plus, leftovers for lunch!)
This week, with Carla doing remote school (and therefore getting to sleep in a little later each morning), I am going to make an effort to have us all eat together. Normally, Carla eats dinner by herself at about 5:30 or 6:00, and my husband and I eat dinner around 8:00 or 8:30. Yes, I hate it, thanks. In an ideal world, we would eat together more often, giving us more family time together… and also giving us opportunities to model things like table manners and conversational skills and “trying new things” to Carla. I’m hoping my husband will get home early enough (people are canceling appointments right and left, which is Not Great Bob) that we can all eat together. This doesn’t mean I will be able to make one dinner for us all, of course, because I want Carla to actually eat something. But I can at least make similar foods (chicken nuggets or fish sticks when we have a saucy chicken or fish dish; raw versions of the veggies we eat) that I know she will eat, and add small portions of whatever my husband and I are eating to her plate. It is very challenging to have a picky child, especially since I am a picky eater myself, and I know how upsetting it can be to try new things. Plus, I know that deciding what to eat and what to refuse is one of the few things that Carla has autonomy over, and I don’t want to rob her of the ability to say no for so many reasons. But I also want her to eat more things than chicken nuggets and frozen peas and plain white rice, FOR THE LOVE OF COD.
Parenting quandary detour over.
There are only five meals on the plan for this week, to give us some wiggle room for last-minute additions or cravings.
Dinners for the Week of January 3-9
Chicken and Zucchini Stir Fry: You know by now that this is one of my favorite dinners. Plus it has a lot of vegetables, which means it fits in nicely with my “more veg” aspiration. Plus my husband suggested it; whether as a peace offering for not making the sticky toffee pudding or because he genuinely is in the mood, I don’t care because I love it. (My spell checker thinks that “peace” is misspelled in the previous sentence… though not in this one. Why are you messing with me, spell checker? Underlining a word I KNOW how to spell is making me question everything I thought I knew.) (It’s definitely not “piece offering,” right? RIGHT?)
Steak, Pepper, & Sugar Snap Pea Stir Fry: I guess I am in a stir fry mood today? This is a new-to-me recipe and sounds different and yummy and veggie packed. I will probably ignore the steak, but my husband will eat it, and we have a package in the freezer at this very moment. Carla likes steak and (raw) sugar snap peas… I wonder if I can persuade her to eat this? Unlikely but I will try.
Follow Up: I loved this — it was such a nice change from our usual stir fries. My husband said it was too salty, though, and I don’t know how to change that since the sauce contains soy sauce. Carla ate a piece of the steak and a piece of the pepper and voted them too spicy (there is sriracha in the sauce as well), but she tried them! (She also ate a slice of beef tenderloin, a pile of raw sugar snap peas, a few slices of raw red pepper, and a big heap of rice.)
Honey-Garlic Glazed Salmon with Air Fryer Brussels Sprouts: Another aspiration is to get my family to eat more fish. I love fish. Carla used to LOVE salmon. But now she and my husband turn up their noses. Well, perhaps if I slather it in a sweet glaze?
Oven Baked Pork Chops with Steamed Broccoli: We will probably have some couscous alongside this old standby, which, incidentally, is another Husband SuggestedTM Meal.
Another week, another complete lack of dinner-planning motivation and meal-amnesia: what do I eat? what have I cooked in the past? what is food? Literally the only thing I can think of is the soup I made yesterday. (It was delicious and produced enough leftovers for several days. I hope.)
Well. We have to start somewhere. Maybe if I keep clacking my fingers on the keyboard, a miraculous idea for something edible will erupt onto the page.
Burritos: Good. Easy. Hopefully won’t make my tooth hurt too much.
Chickpea Curry: We haven’t had this in awhile and it’s super easy. Done.
Bolognese: My husband requested this specific meat sauce for his birthday, and who am I to deny him something he wants, even if it does require simmering meat in milk? I will probably make myself some Gigi Hadid vodka pasta instead, because of the milk and also the tomatoes and also the meatloaf mix, which squicks me out. Hi, yes, I am very picky about weird things.
Oven Roasted Chicken Shawarma: I have some broccoli hanging out around the crisper, so I’ll steam that and make some couscous to sop up all the delicious sauce.
The exterminator just called and told me one of his other clients has an emergency and would I mind please changing our appointment to next week. Um, no, of course not?! I don’t even want to THINK what might constitute an extermination emergency, so please, go help the poor people who need you. We can live with our silverfish for another few days. Anyway, now that I don’t have to flit fretfully around the exterminator while he does his work, I have an extra free hour or so in which I should be writing to kill, so let’s chat a bit, shall we?
It’s ironic that I should use the word “chat,” because I just left a lengthy complaint on Swistle’s latest post about how my wonderful, beloved child has been extra chatty in the mornings lately. To counteract the bad karma of complaining about my cherished daughter, I will effuse to you a bit because she is just SO FUN to talk to these days. (When it is not six-forty-five in the morning and when we are not trying to get out of the house to be somewhere on time.) She has so many questions and it’s fun to a) discover what’s going through her brain and b) see if I have a reasonable answer, or will have to leave her with the unsatisfying-for-all-of-us response of “we’ll have to look it up.” (My favorite chats take place in the car, so we cannot look it up just then.) She likes to ask about word origins, which can be fun to discuss, especially if I have a little insight into the etymology of whatever she’s got in mind. For instance, she might say that “rhinoceros” is a funny word, and I can point out that “rhin” is from the Greek word for nose and we can marvel over how appropriate a name it is for that particular animal. The other day, she asked me why singers use curse words in their music, I assume because she has been listening to some Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber songs that have lots of bleeped-out words. So I got to teach her a new word (“profanity”) and talk about why some people choose to use profanity, and why it’s not always a good choice, and then she got to say some curse words in the guise of asking me questions about them which is always fun for a seven-year-old to get away with. Our conversations are a delight. And fill me with confidence in her curiosity and intellect that I hold up as a talisman when I overhear her and her friends changing “Old Town Road” to “Old Town Butt” and then every other word of the lyrics is “butt.”
This has been a good week for writing. I was feeling, last week and over the weekend, Extreme Self-Pity (the book is terrible, I’m never going to finish, I’ve wasted my life, I’m a failure and everyone knows it, etc. etc.). Maybe indulging in my own personal pity party spurred an overcorrection because I’ve been writing my little fingers to the bone all week. (This round of revisions still isn’t finished.) (But it’s eking ever closer.) Or maybe it was written in the stars…
Astro Poets is the one true source of all my cosmic guidance.
While this is nearly a decade too late to be an “update,” yes, we still have silverfish. Usually they pop out once or twice a year, springish and fallish, but we’re having a little burst of them right now. Four sightings in the past week, plus a Very Unpleasant Incident in which I went to squish a silverfish that was chillin’ above my daughter’s bed right where the wall meets the ceiling, and instead of squishing obediently, the silverfish JUMPED OUT of my Kleenex and disappeared into my daughter’s bedding. And then, after my husband and I jointly and confidently assured Carla that no self-respecting silverfish – especially one that had recently been the victim of a near-squishing – would stay on the bed near the sight of said squishing, and if by chance it WAS on her bed, it was assuredly DEAD… and after we carefully took apart her bedding, piece by piece, examining each stuffed animal to ensure no silverfish, it was of course under her pillow, very much alive… and then after I attempted to re-squish it, it AGAIN leapt from my Kleenex, causing me – the person trying to be calm and unperturbed about something as harmless as a silverfish – to shriek in front of my daughter. (I did get it, in the end, and squished it and flushed it so it is doubly dead.) Don’t get me wrong – I’d MUCH rather have silverfish than many other creepy crawlies (or whatever constitutes an exterminator emergency; I really can’t stop thinking about what that may be). But I can’t say that we co-exist peacefully: they are so wiggly and have so very many legs. The exterminator – who is the same lovely sixtyish/seventyish-something gentleman who has been coming out to our house two to three times a year for a decade now – blames the silverfish on the number of books we have. I guess they like paper? But I have lived in homes full of books all my life, and this is the only house that has ever featured silverfish, so I’m skeptical and have not done anything to pare down our home library. I am looking forward to seeing the exterminator, for the reason of the silverfish, of course, but also because he is older and has been visiting people’s homes in a pandemic and I’d like to put eyes on him and make sure he’s okay. Aside from the microwave installation people, he is the only non-immediate-family-member who has been inside my house since last March. Which is weird.
In bragging news, I went to the grocery store today and scored ANOTHER bottle of bleach spray. My supplies were depleted a little because I scrubbed the grout last weekend and used up most of a bottle of bleach. (I also gave myself pretty serious chemical burns on two of my fingers, though they are mostly healed now.) I also picked up (we are back at the grocery store now) a bottle of different new-to-me Lysol (I still can’t find the lemon scent I prefer). This one has more of a typical antiseptic scent to it, with maybe a slight hint of orange, and I bought it because I need an occasional break from the mango-and-hibiscus Lysol I bought last time. I’m still going to use the tropical one of course; in a pandemic, one shouldn’t look a cleanser horse in the mouth, even if it is very sickly-sweet and gives me a headache. The grocery store seemed to be almost entirely back to pre-pandemic stocking levels. The only aisle that had anything resembling bare shelves was the cleaning products aisle; even the paper products aisle had shelves bursting with paper towels and toilet paper. Of course, no Grape Nuts or bucatini, but we will survive without.
This one gives off real no-nonsense cleaning-expert vibes. Unlike its frivolous, perfume-loving counterpartwho would totally blow off work to go get daiquiris.
Most days, I am okay with our pandemic way of life. I mean, I don’t LIKE it, and obviously I would prefer that everyone would wear a mask and vaccines were abundant and distributed quickly and efficiently so we could return to a pre-pandemic way of life. But mostly, I am getting used to it. About time, since it’s been going on for nearly an entire year.
I feel very fortunate that the isolated nature of our lives these days suits my personality and lifestyle. I already worked from home; I’m socially awkward; I’m an introvert. Once in awhile, though, I so start feeling lonely. And I want to figure out some way, any way, to interact with other non-immediate-family humans. I used to go through that cycle in The Before Times, too, where I’d go for long stretches without seeing anyone… and then I’d overcorrect by setting up a coffee date AND a dinner date AND a family get together all in the same week… which would completely exhaust and overwhelm me into swearing off human interaction ever again. Still happens, even now that there is really no such thing as having a social life. Carla and I are going to our outdoor sport tomorrow and will see a bunch of her friends and their parents, which will be good. And then on Sunday, my little family will be doing another outdoor activity with friends we haven’t seen since Halloween. Which will ALSO be good. But I am pre-exhausted and pre-overwhelmed by the thought of all this socializing. At least I’m not the only one.
My husband just got his second-round vaccine. This is such a HUGE relief; in a few weeks, he should be (mostly) protected from Covid-19 and I will worry about him MUCH LESS. Plus, my parents’ state has opened up vaccine registration to their age group, so they are on a list and should get their first round soon. Woo hoo! My brother and sister-in-law already got vaccinated because they are both front-line workers. Which leaves only six near-immediate family members to continue worrying about. I mean, I always worry about ALL my family members, but I can downgrade the threat level for a few of them now.
The asparagus is gone. But not eaten. It looked fine, but at some point I started to notice a faint garbage-y smell emanating from our fridge so I threw them away. Sorry asparagus. Wasn’t meant to be.
Speaking of vegetables, I am continuing to work on increasing Carla’s vegetable consumption. In the car after school yesterday, she announced, with great conviction, that she HATES vegetables. (She is discouraged from using the word “hate” except in cases where she feels most strongly.) I had to remind her that she likes lettuce and sugar snap peas and green beans and red peppers and tomatoes. (“I only EAT green beans and red peppers, Mommy, I don’t LIKE them,” she informed me. “And bell peppers and tomatoes are FRUIT, not vegetables.”) Getting her to eat veggies, especially NEW ones, requires creative thinking. The other day, I decided to renew my efforts to get her to like broccoli. She only likes the broccoli “floof” (relatable) but claims not to like broccoli at all. (When she was younger, she would eat it frozen OR cooked with cheese sauce! I don’t know when she stopped liking it!) “You just haven’t found a preparation you like,” I said. So we did a taste test. One floret of raw broccoli; one floret of raw broccoli dipped in ranch; one piece of roasted broccoli with salt and olive oil; one piece of roasted broccoli with lemon juice; one piece of roasted broccoli with parmesan. To increase the Fun Factor (wood board my life is sad), I made a survey for her to fill out as she tried each candidate. The results were not promising.
Carla has her own food priorities.
I think I am in a bit of a book slump. After my gloomy post the other day, I decided the best remedy for Feeling Down was to pick up a good book.I finally, after many, many months, downloaded The Heir Affair to my kindle and read it. I knew it would be exactly what I needed – funny, fast-paced, engrossing, well-written, totally removed from the real world – and indeed it was. Everything I hoped it would be and more! I LOVED IT. But I finished it in two days and am now casting about for what to read next. See? Book slump. And it’s not for want of books! (See above re: silverfish vacation destination.) I have SO MANY books both on my kindle and on my bookshelves/nightstand just waiting for me to read them! I am, in fact, in the middle of three separate books (a trait I get from my mother, apparently), each of which is very good, and each of which is completely not what I’m looking for at this particular moment. Which is The Heir Affair again. Or its prequel, The Royal We. Or The Holdout, which was another book I could not put down. That’s what I want: something completely absorbing and unputdownable. But it also shouldn’t be sad. Or… deal with anything too heavy. What is the most unputdownable, semi-light-subject-wise book you’ve read? Or, if that’s too specific, what is the most absorbing book you’ve read recently?
A mix of books I have and have not yet read.
Well, it’s not actually SUNNY outside right now, but the clouds are high/thin enough that there is something approximating light streaming through the windows. And I can’t tell you how cheering it is, in all its diffuse dimness. I will take what I can get!
Our trip to visit my parents is coming up, and with it four very long flights on an airplane. Carla has a tablet for just this kind of occasion (also for going out to restaurants when her parents cannot stand the thought of cooking/washing dishes), and so I am on the lookout for some new apps. Is it apps? Suddenly that’s making me think of appetizers. Or aps? It’s not apse, I know that. (Although I still couldn’t tell you which is the apse and which is the transept or how they are related except by “church.”)
Carla’s favorite apps include:
Toca Pet Doctor (My husband and I recently got into a nearly-heated discussion about why it’s “pet doctor” instead of “vet.” My husband’s explanation is that the “healing” has nothing whatsoever to do with veterinary medicine. My retort is that nor does it have anything to do with any sort of “doctoring.”)
(Image from Tocaboca.com)
Toca Hair Salon
(Image from appsplayground.com)
Sago mini Ocean Swimmer
(Image from googleplay.com)
Sago mini Road Trip
(Image from itunes.com)
Dr. Panda Restaurant
(Image from smartappsforkids.com)
Dr. Panda Airport – I love this one because it requires simple counting and number/letter recognition, as well as understanding of matching concepts. Plus it’s fun.
(Image from topbestappsforkids.com)
Sago mini Toolbox
(Image from gabdar.com)
We also have Sago mini Monsters, but I don’t know if she’s ever played it. It seems a little simplistic. And we have Toca Boo, which Carla likes in concept (scaring people while dressed as a ghost), but is a little advanced for her, so she gets bored quickly.And there was a Sago mini Friends app we had on our ancient second-gen iPad, which Carla loved as well.
We are always on the lookout for fun apps for Carla. Especially if they are free or very low-cost. Any apps that your toddler loves?
Brushing Teeth
Speaking of apps, I was thinking that it would be SO GREAT if there were an app that was connected digitally to a child’s toothbrush. The image on the screen would be of a mouth with lots of gunk on the teeth. And the child would be able to remove the gunk by brushing his/her own teeth. AND the gunk would come off only after two minutes of brushing. HOW COOL WOULD THAT BE?
Because brushing teeth is becoming a HUGE power play around here. My husband and I have exhausted our collective creativity on the subject. For a while, Carla liked being A Big Girl and brushing her teeth. For a short while, she liked me or her father to brush her teeth for her. For a short while, she would “compete” with one of us to see who could brush their teeth most quickly. For a shorter while, she accepted the dentist’s recommendation that we be the ones to brush her teeth. There were a few days when she would enthusiastically “teach” her baby doll or one of her stuffed animals to brush their teeth by watching her. Of course, my husband or I had to narrate the entire time. There were a few days when she thought it was hilarious for me to brush her teeth while she had her thumb in her mouth. Then two thumbs. Once in a while, she will brush her teeth to a toothbrushing song or video on YouTube. Lately, I have been allowing her to watch Elmo videos while I brush her teeth.
Every day, it’s something new. You never know whether she’ll be game for whatever stupid game you’ve dreamed up or you’ll end up feeling like a teakettle about to boil over.
It’s a NIGHTMARISH ORDEAL, is what I’m saying.
HOW in the WIDE WIDE WORLD do you get a stubborn, control-enthusiast toddler to brush her teeth?
Eating (again)
Last night for dinner, Carla had two tablespoons of peanut butter and 12 slices of pepperoni.
I mean.
She can’t SURVIVE like this, right? How is she surviving?
As usual, I served her a meal that had a variety of things. AND, the variety was things that she LIKES and has eaten with gusto in the past. (Read: no guarantee she will ever eat again.) I gave her fish sticks (with plenty of ketchup), cheesy noodles, and cheesy broccoli. But no. She put a tiny bite of fish stick into her mouth and then spat it out. “I don’t LIKE it,” she said, beseechingly. SIGH.
She asked for rice off of my plate, then didn’t eat it.
We THREATENED. She has presents to open from the party this weekend, and we said she MUST eat three fish sticks in order to open them. Nope. Nothing more than the teeny little taste that came right back out.
So. Peanut butter and pepperoni it is.
She used to be GREAT about yogurt. And I felt fine with giving her a (whole milk, full fat) yogurt anytime, anywhere. But now she is finicky and not interested. Oh! That DOES remind me that she and I made some yogurt “popsicles” that I should try and get her to eat.
Breakfast used to be a fair guarantee that she’d eat: a pancake or two, a French toast stick or two, plus some fruit, plus an applesauce pouch, plus a yogurt pouch. Lately? She’ll eat a handful of berries, a bite of a starch… and some Cheez Its.
This morning she had twelve Frosted Mini Wheats (she’s very into counting things; there were 20 to begin with, and it took about 890 minutes to eat the twelve and then we were late) and about a half cup of blackberries and raspberries. And an applesauce pouch in the car.
And that’s the other thing. Meals drag. On. For. Ever. I wake her up at 7:00, and we’re “eating” by 7:15… but it takes until 8:30 to be done. And even then, it’s only by setting timers and urging her to KEEP EATING FTLOG and then we have to be finished even if she’s not done. Dinner time is a series of ups and downs and “I need water” and “I need a spoon” “no a different spoon” “no a BIG GIRL spoon” and “I have to go potty” until we strap her into her booster seat. And then it’s eating nothing and trying small bites and arguing and wheedling and negotiating until finally I set the timer for bath time. And then she wants something else! That she doesn’t eat! And something else! And something else! Until I am ready to throw in the towel and all the bedsheets and a canopy besides.
I know – I know – that EATING is one of the few ways she can exert control over her universe. But it is driving me mad. MAD.
And also nervous. Because how is she surviving? She eats less than a bird.
Do I just… continue along this path – offering good food, then when she refuses it, give her an alternate option? (And please keep in mind that I asked her what she wanted for dinner – between two options – and she chose fish sticks so it’s not like I haven’t tried THAT tack.) I cannot put her to bed hungry. I know it’s an option, and it’s one that we’ve tried. But it just doesn’t work for us.
For the second time in recent memory, Carla woke up at 4:00 am last night and crawled into bed with me and my husband. She did not fall back to sleep, but stroked my back and hair in a nice but un-restful way until I finally scooped her up and put her back into her room. The whole time I was tucking her in, she was sobbing about how hungry she was.
And I wasn’t surprised! She barely ate anything for dinner last night. The other time she woke up in the middle of the night, hungry, she’d eaten nothing – literally not a single bite – of food. That time, I’d carried her down into the kitchen, refusing to turn on the lights, and plied her with a yogurt pouch and an applesauce pouch and then put her back to bed.
I am trying to be very zen about the eating thing. I tell myself that Carla eats a good breakfast and a good lunch (according to her teachers), so if she picks at dinner, it’s not a huge deal.
But it’s getting more difficult to feel okay about that plan, especially if her empty stomach is waking her up in the wee hours.
To add to the trouble, my normal “she’ll almost always eat this” go-to foods aren’t working that well anymore.
We typically cook a separate dinner for Carla. This was long a function of timing – she and I would arrive home at six, and I couldn’t get a proper dinner on the table quickly enough to stem the post-school crankiness and hunger. But it’s also a function of Carla’s out-and-out rejection of 90% of the foods my husband and I enjoy.
I have long been a picky eater – even the idea of certain textures and tastes turn my stomach – so I have a hard time forcing Carla to eat things she isn’t interested in. We’ve been trying to encourage tasting – one taste, and if you don’t like it, fine. But most of the time, she won’t even try something new. Won’t even LICK it. So I do plenty of offering – asparagus, zucchini, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, chicken, steak, hamburger, pork – but rarely get any interest. Sometimes I will put these things on her plate – especially if my husband and/or I are eating with her at the same time, so she can see us eating and enjoying them – but they inevitably go uneaten. Or worse, pushed off the plate onto the table or the floor. (We are working on that. Drives me batty.) And I HATE wasting food.
She also shares my dislike of foods mixed together – albeit to an extreme degree. (She will eat tacos, but only if they are deconstructed: meat in one pile, shell in another, tomatoes in another, sour cream somewhere else.) So chili and spaghetti with meat sauce and lasagna and soup and ravioli and casseroles etc. etc. are pretty much out.
So I fall back on these stand-bys:
Fish sticks
Meatballs
Chicken nuggets
Pierogis
Pizza
Noodles
Peanut butter and jelly
Yogurt
Taco meat
Any and all chips of any kind
On rare occasions, she will gobble up a piece of salmon or a bowl of chickpea curry. Some days, she will gulp down a bowl of green beans or broccoli. Noodles and rice are usually a good bet (although macaroni and cheese has been ignored a lot recently). She sometimes eats corn. She usually eats pickles (but never cucumbers – I get it; I’m the same) and sometimes baby carrots. She’s never met a berry she won’t eat by the truckload, and eats lots of other fruits – although she goes through phases with bananas, sometimes eating two a day, other times eating a bite and then maddeningly throwing the entire rest of it into the garbage before I can stop her. Cheese is a mystery – I can never tell when she’ll eat it or not; the same extends to grilled cheese sandwiches. She seems to eat hot dogs if I send them in her lunch, but won’t touch them at home. She used to LOVE yams, but hasn’t given them a second glance lately.
Driven by a desire to instill some sort of “well-rounded” eating habits, I offer her protein and veggies for every meal. (I don’t know how “breaded meats” fit into “well-rounded eating,” but we take what we can get.)
Now, though, Carla claims she is bored with these foods. And who can blame her! But I have, it turns out, no imagination when it comes to kid-friendly dinners. And I just don’t know if moving to a full-on “we all eat the same meal” will… work.
I’ve tried to google “kid-friendly foods” and have even looked on pinterest, but the number of options so overwhelms me that I find myself right back where I started, offering fish sticks that she used to devour but that now languish coldly on her plate.
My kind mother tells me, when I fret to her, that my cousin ate only noodles and butter for years and he turned out okay. So I know – I KNOW – it wouldn’t be the end of the world if she ate only peanut butter sandwiches for the rest of her childhood, but man. I don’t know if I have the stomach for it.
I am a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program, which means that if you click on a link to Amazon and make a purchase, I get a small commission.
life of a doctor's wife 