Two weeks ago we went to Legoland in San Diego. This was the first time that we have been to a touristy family destination outside of the San Francisco area. It was shocking how many really obese people – and even very young children – there were. I’ve read about the obesity epidemic, but the average person in the bay area is pretty fit (at least compared to what we saw at Legoland) and seems to eat fairly well (there’s no fast food in my neighborhood), so I just haven’t seen it up close and personal.
But the folks working at Legoland don’t seem that concerned.
We ordered a kid’s meal which contained a grilled cheese sandwich, potato chips, rice crispy treat and soda! I confess that I drink a lot of soda, but that doesn’t mean I want my kids to! Of course they loved the meal. We hid the treat and the soda, but let them share the sandwich and chips. My fourteen month old screamed as if someone was trying to kill her every time her brother came near the chips. I’m glad my kids were happy but really, couldn’t they have thrown in some carrot sticks or an apple?
They also had an have an apple snack that was heavily promoted around the park -- Granny’s Apple Fries - fried apples, dusted in sugar and served with a vanilla sauce.
I was obsessed with my weight in high school and alternately starved myself and ate whole boxes of Pepperidge Farm cookies. I don’t want to obsess any more than I already am about my kids’ food. And I don’t want to pass any obsessions along. I want my kids to have healthy body images, no matter what body type they have.
My son loves his legos. We have spent many happy hours building fire stations and houses for Bob the Builder. And more importantly, he has spent many happy hours with them WITHOUT ME. But I can't help wondering whether I should support a company that doesn't care....
Thursday, June 30, 2005
Letting Go
I admit it, I’m a control freak. I had a timeline for the week of our wedding that was color coded for different family members. I maintain separate lists in a small notebook for different grocery stores. I create a packing list for each family trip in Microsoft Excel. So it has come as kind of a shock that I can’t have complete control over my children too.
I guess I should have figured it out during my first pregnancy when my due date arrived but my baby didn’t. My son was 8 days late. Night after night I ate spicy food, went on long walks. But on each visit to my doctor she said “no progress.” And each time I cried.
Now my son is 2-1/2 and once again I’m experiencing a lack of control. This time it is over vegetables. In April he quit eating them full stop.
I tried everything. I threatened, I cajoled, I begged. I never ever gave him leftovers. I introduced new varieties of vegetables – he’d never had red peppers or edamame, had he? I refused him dessert. I pretended broccolis were trees. I offered condiments – ketchup, ranch dressing. I let him eat with chop sticks and made tiny green pea shish kabobs. I hid them vegetables in other foods, like spinach and bacon quiche. I made meatloaf with carrot and zucchini inside. I tucked shredded zucchini under the cheese in his pizza. I sautéed carrots in butter and brown sugar. I poured maple syrup on sweet potatoes. Nothing.
I grew obsessive, and increasingly emotional. One night I fixed chicken, sweet potatoes and avocado. And he didn’t eat one bite. Once again I cried.
So fine. If he wanted to live on macaroni and cheese and booty, that was his business. I would keep offering him vegetables but I wasn’t going to take it personally if he didn’t have them.
It isn’t easy for me to let go, and I wish I could say that after I did, Miles magically started chowing on broccoli, stuffing green beans into his mouth with two hands. It hasn’t been so neat. But if I can sit quietly while he is eating his dinner, chances are better than fifty percent that he’ll eat at least some vegetables. And at this point I’m calling a couple of spoonfuls of peas a victory. But I’m proud to report that last night he ate an entire corn on the cob, and three pieces of broccoli besides.
Three's Company or Three's a Crowd
It seems that lately everyone I know is having a third kid. I thought it was just a San Francisco thing, but a friend told me that it is more widespread. “Three is the new two,” she explained.
“Not me, not ever,” I said. I’ve spent a lot of time over the years with my sister and her three kids. I’ve seen the mountain of luggage that’s required for even the shortest vacation. Mike and I have always felt that we need man-on-man defense. “I’ll have another kid after I grow more arms.”
And, frankly, I’m not sure my marriage could take it. Our son is 2-1/2 and our daughter is 14 months, and my husband has yet to take both kids to the playground alone. Maybe it is because they are so close in age, or because our son is a wild man, or because we’re too old or because we both need a lot of time to ourselves. But we found two to be exponentially more difficult than one. Wouldn’t three put us over the edge?
Then I held my neighbor's little baby. She felt like a little bird in my arms, and her hair was soft and feathery under my chin. She grabbed my finger in her little fist. She smelled divine. How could we not have another one?
My secret, treasured name for a girl was always Eloise. I could picture her blue eyes and blonde bobbed hair. When my daughter was born she was lovely, perfect beyond belief. But she wasn’t Eloise. This girl was dark-skinned, dark haired, Italian (like her father) and the name Mia - a “runner up” on our list -- seemed to suit her perfectly. Still, I felt a lot of regret that after carefully guarding the name Eloise for all those years we didn’t use it. We named Mia’s first doll Eloise, but I can’t help wondering sometimes if the real Eloise is still out there somewhere, waiting. Waiting for us to forget a condom. Waiting for us to change our convictions.
One day soon we might be able to take a family vacation to Hawaii and all be able to go snorkeling. I might be able to tell our children to “go outside and play” without having to watch their every move. Mike and I might actually have some time to ourselves. It is optimistic, but still within the realm of possibility, that we might be completely out of diapers in a year. And yet, I’ll always look at little babies and feel an ache in my chest as I miss baby Eloise ….
PREschool or preSCHOOL
In May the Yale Child Study Center released a study which found that preschool children are three times as likely as primary school children to be expelled from their school programs.
According to the New York Times, the high expulsion rate may be due to a new emphasis on academics at preschools which is coming at the expense of focusing on socialization. Are today’s toddlers learning their ABCs, but failing in sharing?
After I got over my initial panic at the word “expelled” (my 2-1/2 year old is active and willful and I’m sure he will be the first one out the door if his preschool starts handing out pink slips), I found the article reassuring.
When I visited my first preschool, when I asked about the curriculum, the director explained to me that it was play-based. The focus is on children learning to develop self esteem, self confidence and social skills – without which they will find it hard to learn anything else in the future. To the rational side of me this sounded great.
To the other side, the one that I try to keep hidden from the light of day, this is very, very scary. And it isn’t hard for my paranoid self to make it even scarier. What if Miles doesn’t learn his alphabet? What if he is one of those people who says “I should have went”? What if he doesn’t get into the Ivy League?
We’re moving ahead with a play based school. But when a friend recently visited the local Catholic preschool where they have a “play based academic curriculum” and HOMEWORK, I’ll admit a moment of panic. Will Miles be able to read at the same level as Isabella in elementary school?
Ok, I buried the thought. Now, thanks to the New York Times, now I only have to worry about him getting expelled….
According to the New York Times, the high expulsion rate may be due to a new emphasis on academics at preschools which is coming at the expense of focusing on socialization. Are today’s toddlers learning their ABCs, but failing in sharing?
After I got over my initial panic at the word “expelled” (my 2-1/2 year old is active and willful and I’m sure he will be the first one out the door if his preschool starts handing out pink slips), I found the article reassuring.
When I visited my first preschool, when I asked about the curriculum, the director explained to me that it was play-based. The focus is on children learning to develop self esteem, self confidence and social skills – without which they will find it hard to learn anything else in the future. To the rational side of me this sounded great.
To the other side, the one that I try to keep hidden from the light of day, this is very, very scary. And it isn’t hard for my paranoid self to make it even scarier. What if Miles doesn’t learn his alphabet? What if he is one of those people who says “I should have went”? What if he doesn’t get into the Ivy League?
We’re moving ahead with a play based school. But when a friend recently visited the local Catholic preschool where they have a “play based academic curriculum” and HOMEWORK, I’ll admit a moment of panic. Will Miles be able to read at the same level as Isabella in elementary school?
Ok, I buried the thought. Now, thanks to the New York Times, now I only have to worry about him getting expelled….
Love, Honor and Ayelet Waldman
Ayelet Waldman is the wife of Pultizer-Prize winning Michael Chabon and the author of the Mommy Track Mysteries and recently published an article in the New York Times that said, “I love my husband more than I love my children.”
From the discussions I’ve had with other Moms around the sandbox and what I’ve read on other blogs, this seems to be a polarizing issue. (Although people seem united in snickering at her description of Chabon’s face inspiring her with “paroxysms of infatuated devotion.” I must be missing out in life.)
Who am I to judge Ayelet Waldman? Clearly we are living in two separate universes. In hers you can have four children, an active sex life with your husband and still find time to write a few novels, a weekly column on Salon.com and drop in on Oprah. In mine you can only scratch your head in wonder at how the other half lives and then go back to cooking dinner, wiping snotty noses and peeling your son’s foot off of your daughter’s face.
Watching my kids can be really, really hard. I’m not saying that it is every day, but some days it is. And on those days when Miles throws his breakfast all over the floor because he wanted blueberries, not honeydew, and then rolls around when I’m changing his diaper so that both of us are covered in poop, when Mia cries for an hour for no apparent reason and shrieks whenever I try to put her down, when I have to strap them howling into the stroller so we can get out of the house before I hurt someone, when I’m pushing them down the street and they are both screaming and grinding their elbows into each other as hard as they can, when people in passing cars are slowing down to look -- I have to love them more than absolutely anything else on the face of this earth, because if I didn’t, I might just leave them there on the corner. I might just leave them there while I sashay down to 24th street where a latte and a yoga class and a mani/pedi and lots of cute boutiques where the clothing has tags that read DRY CLEAN ONLY await me.
From the discussions I’ve had with other Moms around the sandbox and what I’ve read on other blogs, this seems to be a polarizing issue. (Although people seem united in snickering at her description of Chabon’s face inspiring her with “paroxysms of infatuated devotion.” I must be missing out in life.)
Who am I to judge Ayelet Waldman? Clearly we are living in two separate universes. In hers you can have four children, an active sex life with your husband and still find time to write a few novels, a weekly column on Salon.com and drop in on Oprah. In mine you can only scratch your head in wonder at how the other half lives and then go back to cooking dinner, wiping snotty noses and peeling your son’s foot off of your daughter’s face.
Watching my kids can be really, really hard. I’m not saying that it is every day, but some days it is. And on those days when Miles throws his breakfast all over the floor because he wanted blueberries, not honeydew, and then rolls around when I’m changing his diaper so that both of us are covered in poop, when Mia cries for an hour for no apparent reason and shrieks whenever I try to put her down, when I have to strap them howling into the stroller so we can get out of the house before I hurt someone, when I’m pushing them down the street and they are both screaming and grinding their elbows into each other as hard as they can, when people in passing cars are slowing down to look -- I have to love them more than absolutely anything else on the face of this earth, because if I didn’t, I might just leave them there on the corner. I might just leave them there while I sashay down to 24th street where a latte and a yoga class and a mani/pedi and lots of cute boutiques where the clothing has tags that read DRY CLEAN ONLY await me.
You Say Hello, I Say Goodbye
I went back to school when my first baby (Miles, now 2-1/2) was four months old and I always worried that he was somehow deprived of the special experiences that children with stay-at-home-Moms had.
We live in San Francisco, where enrichment classes are abundant. Practically every family I know takes swimming (sometimes private) and music classes. Some take gymnastics too. One friend has her 2-1/2 year old son signed up for soccer. In my neighborhood, there’s a studio which offers art classes for 2 year olds. There’s even a woodshop class.
I might work, but perhaps I could fit a whole week of enrichment into a couple of classes. When Miles was six months old, I signed up for swimming and Music Together. I had to sandwich swimming into lunchtimes on a work-at-home days and knock off early on Friday afternoons for music. After my daughter was born, I had to bring her along too. Even before the book A Perfect Madness, my Mom said we were crazy.
I guess we are. I found our fun filled activities weren't so fun. Miles was incapable of sitting still at music class. He did practically anything except music. While the other kids sat on the mothers’ laps and sang the Hello Song, Miles wanted to pour water from the water cooler, or unpack the supply closet, or climb up the shelves. Sometimes I’d sit with Mia and try to pretend that he wasn’t with me, but when he started throwing tambourines at the other kids I had to start chasing him. I'd leave Mia propped into a sitting position holding (translate: sucking on) an instrument. Sometimes by the time I'd saved Miles she’d toppled over on her maracas.
At the same time, I started noticing that he wanted to spend more and more time at home, building endless Lego houses or going on road trips in the Cozy Coupe. So I said “enough”. No more music class. It was freeing, not to be racing across town, trying to find a parking spot, worrying about being late, threatening Miles or plying him with treats to be good. Sometimes when my friends talk about their latest classes, I’ll have a twinge. I’ll worry that he won’t make it into the right kindergarten, the right private school, Julliard.
Then I’ll think about all of things that we’re doing – riding the bus, talking to the guys in the bagel shop, watching the diggers on Dolores Street -- and I’ll know that he’s experiencing things, learning things about the world.
The irony of the whole thing is that now that we are staying home, the game that we play most often is the one in which Miles gets out his guitar, gives me the maracas, and we sit in a circle (of two) while he sings the Hello Song.
We live in San Francisco, where enrichment classes are abundant. Practically every family I know takes swimming (sometimes private) and music classes. Some take gymnastics too. One friend has her 2-1/2 year old son signed up for soccer. In my neighborhood, there’s a studio which offers art classes for 2 year olds. There’s even a woodshop class.
I might work, but perhaps I could fit a whole week of enrichment into a couple of classes. When Miles was six months old, I signed up for swimming and Music Together. I had to sandwich swimming into lunchtimes on a work-at-home days and knock off early on Friday afternoons for music. After my daughter was born, I had to bring her along too. Even before the book A Perfect Madness, my Mom said we were crazy.
I guess we are. I found our fun filled activities weren't so fun. Miles was incapable of sitting still at music class. He did practically anything except music. While the other kids sat on the mothers’ laps and sang the Hello Song, Miles wanted to pour water from the water cooler, or unpack the supply closet, or climb up the shelves. Sometimes I’d sit with Mia and try to pretend that he wasn’t with me, but when he started throwing tambourines at the other kids I had to start chasing him. I'd leave Mia propped into a sitting position holding (translate: sucking on) an instrument. Sometimes by the time I'd saved Miles she’d toppled over on her maracas.
At the same time, I started noticing that he wanted to spend more and more time at home, building endless Lego houses or going on road trips in the Cozy Coupe. So I said “enough”. No more music class. It was freeing, not to be racing across town, trying to find a parking spot, worrying about being late, threatening Miles or plying him with treats to be good. Sometimes when my friends talk about their latest classes, I’ll have a twinge. I’ll worry that he won’t make it into the right kindergarten, the right private school, Julliard.
Then I’ll think about all of things that we’re doing – riding the bus, talking to the guys in the bagel shop, watching the diggers on Dolores Street -- and I’ll know that he’s experiencing things, learning things about the world.
The irony of the whole thing is that now that we are staying home, the game that we play most often is the one in which Miles gets out his guitar, gives me the maracas, and we sit in a circle (of two) while he sings the Hello Song.
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