Things You Wouldn't Eat: Beef Stew and Crispy Smashed Roasted Potatoes

Ash brought it to my attention over dinner, when I remarked that someday Noah will be eating cafeteria food somewhere and wishing he hadn't turned down so many lovingly, homecooked meals, that Noah may have no recollection of such meals. Instead, he may accuse me of feeding him only cereal, Panera Mac n cheese, pizza and plain noodles. Noah may be up all night in the dorms in a big group of college kids reminiscing about the failings of their parents and he may firmly let his friends know that he will never feed his toddler chicken nuggets and fries every day.

Noah may only remember being hungry and devouring cereal before bed. Maybe he'll remember the pancakes I make for breakfast most days, but he may not even have any inkling of the other foods he was offered.

And so I bring you the latest new addition to this blog. Things you wouldn't eat. Because one day when I get a snarky call asking why Noah doesn't have memories of lovely homemade foods, and if the Internet still exists, I will have somewhere to send him for proof.

Tonight, my friend, we had old-time beef stew and crispy smashed roasted potatoes.

  

The Artist

Today Noah decided to make a mural on our livingroom wall with a black washable crayon.  

"No!!!!" Ash looking very upset. 

I run in the living room and see Noah's giant mural.

A whale in water crayon mural

"Look Mommy!  A whale in water!"

A whale in water by Noah, age 2.5

 "Wow, it does look like a whale..."

"Amanda, don't encourage him!"

I wet some paper towels and asked Noah to help me clean it up.  He stood there beaming, holding his toy camera, pretending to take pictures of his artwork.  We talked about coloring on paper and asking before he redesigns the house.  I always hated that white wall anyway. 

Cleaning it up

The day you were born

Sometimes when I'm cuddling Noah to sleep at night we talk about random things and we tell stories.  Every so often, I listen to him talking and I remember the day he was born.  Last night, like many nights before, I decided to tell him the story about the day he was born.  I made it to the part where he and I were about to look each other in the eyes for the first time.  

I laid there with my two and a half year old with my heart swelling with love for him thinking about how I still see that tiny little adorable baby staring back at me when he looks me in the eyes now.  The little boy that would change my life forever.  The little boy that would teach me to reach to places in my heart I didn't know were possible. 

"And then Mommy lifted you up and looked at you and our eyes locked..."

Noah came in close to me and my eyes started to tear because here we were all this time later.  All these sleepless nights and belly laughs and firsts and happiness and here we were face to face again.

He smiled, got so close to my face I could feel his warm breath and then he yelled at the top of his lungs...

"Mommy, make cookies now.  I'm hungry make food, NOW!  Please Mommy."

Parent blamers: You suck more than I do

If parenting is an art, parent blame is the act of taking up random data points and chance happenings and calling them scientific fact.  I often read articles explaining why American parenting sucks and tiger moms are great, french moms are great, conservative parents are great, attachment parents are great, naked dancing parents are great, and everyone else is setting their children up for failure.

Oftentimes these articles find one or two data points and then run with the idea that an entire parenting style is amazing or sucky.  

I've always been cautious and skeptical of the advice I get from other parents.  9 times out of 9 times the advice I've gotten has been from a parent that is feeding me what worked for their child or children or if they aren't parents some parenting technique they read about or grew up with.  9 out of 9 times, I smile or ignore or gossip to my husband later.  Sometimes, if my child is similar the advice works.  Oftentimes, it's not applicable.  There is nothing wrong with finding something wonderful that works for your family and being proud of it.  There is something fundamentally wrong with expecting it to work for everyone else.

I have news for you, parent blamers who secretly or openly shake your head at parents like me, you're not any more amazing at parenting than I am.  I know this is going to be hard to swallow, but just because your kid sits quietly eating Tilapia and broccoli at a restaurant while my husband and I switch off trying to bribe our toddler to eat pizza and cookies as he runs away from us doesn't mean you have the magical answer to parenting.  It also doesn't mean that he didn't sit quietly at restaurants all around the country and in London when he was younger.  It doesn't mean he wasn't exposed to restaurants.  It doesn't mean we give him keys to our Prius and ask him to guide us through life.  Although I wouldn't mind having a chauffer.  

We too used to consider ourselves magic parents.  Our toddler has been on something like 30 round trip flights and never once have we been those people with the screaming child.  I'd love to tell you that it's because I rock as a parent.  But a lot of it has to do with the fact that he's been on tons of airplanes, the pressure doesn't seem to bother him and he finds strangers completely entertaining.  He's a social being so seeing 80 people that have to sit there and stare back at him has always kept him quite entertained.

He's always super happy and loving, and at times, I would love to say this is all our parenting.  As a stay-at-home-mom who doesn't get raises, yearly reviews or surprise bonuses, I'd love to say that my child's heart is full of love for the world because I am that amazing.  The truth is, I really am.  I have talked to him since the day he was born and I have told him and showed him how loved he is every day.  Even on days where when he was 20 months old he held me hostage in the car because he was smart enough to get out of the 5 point harness on the car seat no matter how tight it was.  Ever been driving 50 miles an hour and had a toddler climb into the front seat?  Scary doesn't even begin to describe it.  After I composed myself from the frazzle of that experience he still went to bed the way he has almost every day of his life.  Being told he was loved and being shown that my husband and I will love him no matter what.  We are not completely responsible for the love and light that illuminates from him although we try our hardest to make sure we keep him on a path that supports his wonderful spirit.

There are times, where my husband and I have patted ourselves on our backs as our child represents all that is right and good in the world, and then at 3 am when he is running circles around our living room we have said to each other, "Doesn't he know we're magic parents and this isn't supposed to happen?"

We're just like anyone else.  Except we have a very bright, very spirited child.  Our goal as parents is to set boundaries without breaking his spirit.  Have you ever met an adult with a broken spirit?  Nothing in life is sadder than someone that once had light and love beaming from their body only to be bitter and broken down later in life.  

I have two data points so I feel really confident asserting to you parent blamers of the world that you're full of self indulgent dog poop.  My first baby had to be held all night because he had reflux and it was horrible if he wasn't held upright all night and the only way for me to sleep too is if I sat up holding him.  Crib slanting be damned, nothing else worked.  At two and a half he still has really bad reflux that sometimes means he doesn't eat as much as he should and it wakes him up at night or sometimes when he does eat a lot it wakes him up too.

Our two month old has a mild form of reflux and can be put down as long as I wait about 15 minutes after a feeding in the night.  Sometimes she wants to be put down to kick and play or fall asleep on her own.  She's her own person with the same loving mother as my son.  I still respond to every cry she makes, but sometimes she wants to soothe herself.  Neither child means I rock or suck.  They are each proof that I am trying with everything I have to raise to loving, open-minded, and internally beautiful children.

So suck it with the parent blame.  I'm sick of reading about how parenting this way or that yields results A or B.  As I've said before on this blog about parenting Noah, "I know ultimately if he turns out to be an amazing person, his genes, schools, and chance will be credited. If he turns out to be a delinquent, my inadequacies as a mother will likely be the first point of blame." So when one of my children is President and the other is an Astronaut you better be ready to give me mad props for my stellar parenting skills that managed to show them love and boundaries without breaking their spirits.  You better be ready to give me a shout out for waking up and cuddling them no matter what was going on in the middle or the night.  You better be ready to sing my praises for making them any meal they request despite what we were already having for dinner.  Or you better be willing to shake your head secretly in the privacy of your own home when they both end up in prison. 

Eating Glass

This morning Noah, Maya and I spent some time hanging out on the couch.  Ash was upstairs because he got a stomach bug that our family has been passing around to each other.  

Right after this, Maya got hungry so I started to breastfeed her on the couch.  Noah cuddled with us for a minute then he ventured across the livingroom and stood on our swivel chair and began to touch the christmas lights we have up because they set a nice mood when we hang out as a family before the kids bed time.  

"Please stop touching the lights, Noah." 

"Okay Mommy!"  Then he sat down and got very quiet for a second.  A few seconds later, I heard a loud crunching noise.

"Noah, what are you eating?"

Still chomping, he began to smile from ear to ear as I put the baby down and ran over to the chair because I knew he bit one of the lights off of the string of lights.

I was a bit frantic knowing my toddler was chomping on glass.  I picked him up with my hand in front of his mouth and began yelling, "Spit it out, now!"  He spit some out into my hand and then continued to crunch.  I ran into the bathroom with him, swept his mouth with my hand and instructed him to spit into the sink as I flushed his mouth with water.  

"Noah, did you swallow any of the glass?"

"Uh huh.  My eat glass!"

The baby was crying in the other room so I grabbed both kids and tried to call our pediatrician.  I couldn't hear the instructions for who to call.  Eventually, I spoke to one of the pediatricians.  They asked if Noah's mouth was bleeding.  I didn't see any signs of sores in his mouth, but according to Noah he swallowed some of the glass.  The pediatrician asked me to take him over to the emergency room and to bring the lights because I didn't know when we purchased them and there's a chance they're 10 years old and could have lead in them.  

I left the baby with Ash with instructions to bring her over to me if she got hungry because we live across the street from the hospital.  

We headed over and they took us back into the pediatric ER right away.  I brought along some of Noah's favorite toys to entertain him.  When the nurse took his temperature he cried and told her she hurt him and he needed an ice pack.

The doctor came in.  

"Hi Noah, did you eat something before you came here?"  

"Uh huh.  My eat glass!  Mommy cried in the kitchen."

The doctor was great and asked him what flavor the glass was.  He ordered an xray right away and since Noah is so young and they were concerned about what would happen inside his stomach if he had swallowed glass we were taken in for xrays ahead of all the other patients at the hospital.  

Noah was so scared about the xray, and I had to hold him down for it.  He screamed for me to hold him and take him home, and as a mother it was one of the worst experiences of my life.  But I knew he needed the xray so I told him I loved him and that it would be over super fast.  Before I could say that twice it was over.  They told me right away they didn't see anything.

We headed back to our room in the ER and the doctor came in holding two red popsicles.

"I thought you both could use a popsicle.  Since Noah ate a red light bulb, I assumed red is his favorite flavor."