Author: Sheila Quirke

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Feeding Jacob

This is a guest post by Carolyn at Fumbling Toward Naptime.  I hope you enjoy her writing as much as I do!

By Carolyn Rabin

My son, Jacob, can eat me under the table.   Okay, maybe I’m not a huge eater.  But I’m not that picky either.  And the child is only four years old.

We got our first glimpse of Jacob’s voracious appetite the day we introduced solid foods. That was just the beginning.  It seemed that as soon as Jacob got a taste of . . . well, anything, he was hooked.  And wanted more.  MUCH more.  So, for the past four years, I have had the same conversation with Jacob’s (incredibly patient) pediatrician at each and every well visit.  It has gone something like this.

Dr. F: Do you have any questions for me?

Me: Is it possible for a human being to be born without the ability to experience satiety?

Brief, slightly uncomfortable pause.

Dr. F: The important thing is to just keep offering Jacob healthy foods.  No child ever became obese from eating too much broccoli. He can have as much broccoli or as many carrots as he wants.

I get it.  But sometimes there is just no end to it.  Even before Jacob mastered spoken language, he found a way to communicate his desire for more, and more, and more food.  I don’t know if he was truly hungry.  Or just enjoyed eating so much that he didn’t want to stop.  “I think he’s just bored,” my husband Dan would say.  Then Dan would try to distract Jacob with something really stimulating– like opera or Japanese literature or watching Dan program in Java on the computer. Oddly enough, Jacob was more interested in food.  This never ended well.  Jacob’s initial euphoria at being put in his high chair would inevitably turn to utter despair when (after his eighth helping) we finally cut him off.  So, we began luring him away from the table with the promise of watching Sesame Street videos.  I know, I know, AWESOME parenting.  (We. Were. Desperate.)

On the positive side, even as a toddler, Jacob was as delighted with broccoli and string beans and tofu as he was with sweets. He would eat nearly any vegetable.  And, of course, he just loved fruit.  So, we started calling fruit “dessert”. Which, honestly, made me feel a little dirty.  Because fruit is NOT dessert.  I love fruit too. But it is not dessert.  Full disclosure: I am addicted to ice cream.  I must eat it.  MUST. EAT. IT.  Every day.  (Don’t judge me, you latte addicts.)  A nice, creamy vanilla with chunks of cookie dough?  That’s dessert.  A nice apple?  NOT. DESSERT.  But since we didn’t want Jacob to even know that ice cream existed, out came the apples at the end of each meal.  (GAH.)  We would have been able to maintain the charade much longer, if Jacob hadn’t been in the 90-bazillionth percentile for height (thanks entirely to Dan’s genes) and able to reach the freezer door before the age of three.  If it hadn’t been for this, he might not have known about ice cream until, say, kindergarten . . . when he heard about it from some bad seed on the playground.

But I digress.  Because we have never wanted to tempt Jacob with sugary foods, we never eat REAL desserts in front of him.  Let me just say that nothing will make you feel more like a junkie than having to hide your ice cream habit.  Usually, I just wait until Jacob is asleep to break out my stash.  But sometimes, I just can’t wait. So Dan covers for me.   And distracts Jacob.  While I skulk off to the kitchen and rapid-fire-scoop a bowl of something.  Ahhh, that’s the stuff.

Of course, there were times, even when Jacob was still a toddler, that he did have sweets. For instance, when my friend Joe came to visit a few days after my birthday and brought a box of cupcakes.  I didn’t want to be rude, so I served them.  To everyone.  Including Jacob.  The next thing I knew, crumbs were flying. Frosting was smeared all over Jacob’s face.   And all that was left of Jacob’s cupcake was a crumpled wrapper. Suddenly, Jacob slid off of his seat, threw himself on the ground and started wailing.  LOUDLY.  Joe (who does not have children) looked panicked.  “Did he hurt himself?  Is he okay? What’s WRONG!?!” Joe asked.  WHAT’S WRONG IS THAT I NOW HAVE TO EXPLAIN TO YOU THAT MY CHILD IS HAVING A CUPCAKE-IS-GONE MELTDOWN.  Joe got a terribly pained look on his face.  And tried desperately not to laugh.

Nom nom nom.
Cupcake Exhibit A (nom nom nom)

Around this time, I had another well visit with Jacob’s pediatrician.

Dr. F: At this age, children’s appetites can vary quite a bit day to day.  Don’t be concerned if there are days when he seems to eat and eat and then other days when he hardly eats anything.

Me: Okay, I’m following your first point.  But could you explain the “hardly eats anything” part again . . .?

Jacob had a stomach flu once and didn’t miss a meal.  Seriously.

Of course, as Jacob has gotten older– and taller– he has become more aware of things.  As I mentioned, he can now reach the freezer door.  (Curses.)  So, he now knows that we (ALWAYS) have ice cream in the freezer.  But, we call it a “sometimes” food.  (Lies, lies, damn lies.)  Occasionally he will say, “Mommy, can I have some ice cream?  It is sometimes NOW.”  I hear you kid.  Mommy could use a fix too.  We’re not as restrictive with Jacob as we used to be.  Sometimes we give in.  It’s hard not to.  Jacob has become quite the negotiator.

Jacob: For dessert tonight, I think I’ll have ice cream with animal crackers on top.

Me: That’s not a choice tonight, Jacob.  You can have an apple or a pear or a banana . . .

Jacob: I WANT ICE CREAM WITH ANIMAL CRACKERS.

Me: I’m sorry, Jacob.  That’s not a choice.

Jacob: FINE.  (Eyeroll.)  Then I’ll just have ICE CREAM.

Me: Okay.

Wait a minute . . .

At Jacob’s four-year-old visit with Dr. F, the good doctor again reassured me that Jacob might be finicky about food at times.

Dr. F: Don’t worry if there are days when he hardly eats anything, he–

I cut him off.

Me: Dr. F, you’ve said this a number of times.  The child is now four years old.  There hasn’t been a day-  NOT. A. DAY- when he hasn’t wanted to eat as much as possible.  Some days when I ask him what he wants for lunch he says, “I want A LOT of food”.  I’m not making this up.  I know there are four-year-olds who barely eat anything.  Jacob is not one of them.  Is this normal??

Dr. F looked at me, stunned.

A few months after that conversation, the tide suddenly turned.  I’m not sure why.  Maybe it was something internal, like a shift in his metabolism.  Or maybe something more intentional.  Perhaps Jacob just realized that he prefers the food at preschool (pizza, chicken nuggets, waffles . . .) to what we offer at home (veggie burgers, baked chicken, quinoa . . . ).  Whatever the reason, suddenly we were seeing more and more left on Jacob’s plate at the end of a meal. And Jacob turning his nose up even at some old favorites.

The day before Thanksgiving, my sister was visiting. Jacob was so thrilled to have his auntie at the table that he could barely sit still.  Or eat.  As Jacob danced around the dining room, I pleaded with him.

Me: Jacob, can you please try to eat a bit more.

Did I just utter those words?

Jacob: No, thanks.

Me: Jacob, if you don’t eat any more you’re going to be hungry later.

Jacob: That’s okay, Mommy.  I have a plan.

Me: What is it?

Jacob:  I’m going to have a big dessert.

Me: Oh.

Wait a second . . .

Carolyn Rabin is the mother of two lovable but exhausting children (Jacob, age 4, and Emma, age 1).  Despite having a degree in clinical psychology, she is clearly no match for their antics.  You can follow her blog here or find her on Facebook here.

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WTF, OMFG, GTFO, and Other Mothering Mantras

Here within the Mary Tyler Family we place a lot of importance on knowing and understanding our feelings.  I attribute it to my training and experience as a clinical social worker.  It’s so important in today’s busy and modern families, amirite? But knowing your feelings can be a challenge these days, what with small children running around our ankles all the time.

That’s why I’ve devised a new system for helping the whole lot of us get better at knowing and understanding our feelings, all the feelings.  I call it the WTF System — What’s The Feeling?  It’s so easy, you and your family can do it, too!

Here’s how it works . . .

Let’s say you come home from a busy weekend day of holiday shopping only to find your kids still in their pajamas, leftover food and dishes all over the coffee table, and your husband in his boxers watching the football game with a beer in his hand.  What might be running through your mind in that moment?

This is the time to say, WTF?  What’s The Feeling?  See how that works? Are you mad?  Aggravated?  Frustrated?  Angry?  Well then, saying to yourself WTF will help you identify those troubling feelings.  Saying it out loud will only add to the experience.

Here’s another example.  You’ve just spent a busy day with your extended family.  You’re tired and ready to head back home.  As you’re gathering up your kids and things, the munchkins decide it’s time for a meltdown.  Your older maiden aunt says out loud to no one in particular, “Sheesh!  In my day, we were able to control our children!”  You know what’s coming — WTF?  What’s The Feeling?!  While you might be railing inside your head — What in the Sam Hilll does that old bat know about raising kids?, it’s really important to identify the feeling. Instead, just say to yourself, WTF?!  You can even say it out loud!  Here, let’s do it together — W T F?

See how well that works?

In employing my WTF System, I learned that a frequent mommy feeling I was having was guilt.  You know what I mean, moms, don’t you?  I’ve got an acronym for guilt, too.  I call it OMFG — Oh, Mom’s Feeling Guilty!  This happened just yesterday to me. I was wanting to give my older son a special treat after a long day at school.  Ususally, chocolate is reserved for dessert after dinner, and just a bite, but he had had a rough day on the playground, so I says to myself, “Go ahead, mama, give the boy a thrill and offer some chocolate before dinner.”

So I did.  And then he proceeded to bounce off the walls with a sugar high. Screaming and hooting and hollering, waking up the baby from his nap!  This is when I screamed out loud, OMFG!  Oh, Mom’s Feeling Guilty!  See? If I hadn’t changed the rules and offered the boy chocolate, he would probably just be sitting quietly enjoying a book.  But no, I had to offer the kid some contraband chocolate, probably, unconsciously, in an attempt to curry his favor.  GUILT!  OMFG!

And when that guilt hits, I know it’s time to take stock of my parenting and let my feelings all out, or what I like to call LMFAO — Let My Feelings All Out. It’s just astounding what a good LMFAO session will do for your soul!

Another positive feeling method I use comes in really handy when house guests are visiting.  You know what they say about fish and house guests — three days is what all are capable of before going rotten.  For instructive purposes, I will share a personal story with you.  The in-laws were in town, and well, let’s just say we were on day seven — well past our collective expiration.  We all got into it over the pot roast, and I knew it was the things unsaid that was causing the bickering — those dreaded feelings.  Well, I popped right up and gave an inspirational GTFO (Get Those Feelings Out)!

I think it worked, cause the next morning, they couldn’t leave quickly enough. I am sure they just wanted to get home and talk about their feelings!  Mission accomplished.

One last tip works really well in large settings.  This past weekend I took my first trip to a Chuck E. Cheese establishment. Oh my.  Well, there sure were a lot of folks there, and where there are a lot of folks, there are certain to be a lot of feelings. Too much stimulation can cause lots of confusing feelings, too.  Why just in a brief snippet of that visit I witnessed about seven melt downs, foot stomping, bells ringing, and crying galore.

I stood up on a table and screamed STFU.  That is a great method in a crowd to alert the folks you’re with to Start Those Feelings Up!  There’s nothing better for creating calm out of chaos than to stand on a chair and shout STFU to all within hearing distance.  Before you know it, dozens of blank and quiet faces will be staring up at you, grateful for your intervention and the opportunity you gave them to look at their feelings.

I hope all you gals learn from my hard earned mothering experience.  Some days, us moms just gots to say WTF?  If we don’t, well then, OMFG, the guilt will consume us.  If we could all just learn to LMFAO, our whole lives would be so much easier.

I hope you, too, learn to use my handy dandy system for feeling all the feelings and when you do, say, “Thanks, MTM! Because of you I can say WTF to my husband, OMFG to my kids and LMFAO in a healthy and productive manner!”  And whatever you do, don’t forget to GTFO sometimes.  If you don’t, someone will be reminding you to STFU.

And, just because I like to be helpful, I made you a cheat sheet so you can practice feeling all the feelings at home!  Happy feeling!

WTF

Note:  Grateful thanks to my husband for both helping with and inspiring this post.  Whenever I’m feeling down, I ask myself, “WWJD?,”  cause I know my Jeremy has all the answers.

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The Santa Question: When Your Kid Stops Believing

Cue the carols and the jingle bells and the egg nog — all the folks are getting their Christmas on this time of year, including four year old Mary Tyler Son. Except, little logical thinker that he is, he’s been asking a lot of questions about Santa. Hard questions that lead me to believe he will lose his belief in Mr. Kris Kringle a hell of a whole lot sooner than I thought he would.

What on earth is a Mom to do?

Seriously — what do you do when your kid, at four, is outgrowing the magic, or as some (but not me) would say, myth, of Santa? Kids need magic. Adults need kids to need magic, cause, let’s be honest, we live vicariously through them for that kind of thing.  I was a little shocked and heartbroken to hear his questions repeated over a few days this week.

  • Where are Santa’s elves, reindeer, and sled when he is visiting with all the kids?
  • How does he make reindeer fly?
  • Why does he say HO HO HO?
  • Is he (the guy at the mall he takes his pictures with) just a person dressed up like Santa?
  • How can he see me when I am all the way at my house?

For better or worse, Mary Tyler Son is a bright, inquisitive child.  He wants to know how, what, why, when, and where and doesn’t take “because I said so” as an appropriate answer to his questions.  And, as a rule, we love to entertain his questions, to see how his mind works and is processing everything the world throws at him, including Santa Claus.

You see, I think my boy wants to believe in Santa, it’s just that the evidence doesn’t really stack up and he’s too literal and logical a thinker to ignore that evidence.  Are you real, or just a man in a suit?

I posed my concern on Facebook the other day and got more than a few comments encouraging me to respond with the dictum, “You have to believe to receive.”  No offense, but what works in your house might not work in mine.  For my husband and I, that answer doesn’t match our style of parenting.  More power to you if it meets your needs, but I was still struggling.

This morning a friend reached out and asked if I wanted to go visit Santa together with our kiddos.  Why yes, yes I did.  I had been encouraging Mary Tyler Son to keep track of his questions so that he could ask Santa himself. Way to pass the buck, amirite?  I thought maybe the Big Guy himself could solve the problem.

Lo and behold, he did not disappoint.

Mary Tyler Son has visited with the same Santa for three years now.  This man is a gem and is the real deal (Northbrook Court, yo, for all you locals). Thick beard, shiny white hair, big belly and an accent that is hard to place. British?  Actor? More than anything, sort of an oratorical voice, but familiar, warm, comforting.  I kid you not that every year I have wanted to crawl into his ample lap and pour out the sob story of my life.

Santa makes everything better.

My boy timidly approached him.  There was no one else waiting to visit or have photos snapped, so Santa was very generous with his time.  I’m not joking when I say that he spent 10-15 minutes talking with my boy, explaining things like astrophysics and how they apply to reindeer flight.  The circumference of the earth was mentioned a time or two.  Mary Tyler Son posed his first question:  How do reindeer fly?

Sure enough, Santa had an answer.  Mrs. Claus feeds the reindeer magic corn one night a year — Christmas Eve.  The rest of the time, he said, they are just regular mammals, eating regular food, and walking around their pens on the North Pole.  Next question!

Where are your elves and sled and reindeer?  Well, at the North Pole, of course!  Someone has to build the toys.  Santa explained that Mrs. Clause keeps an eye on things and keeps everything running smoothly while he is away meeting children.  Next question!

How do you get all the toys to all the children?  This is where the astrophysics came in.  Santa very creatively and patiently explained the speed with which reindeer who have ingested magic corn can fly.  Mary Tyler Son was mesmerized.  He was eating it up, just as those reindeer ate the corn.  Honestly, I lost track of all the details and numbers that were flying around, but not my boy.  He was in seventh heaven.  Next question!

A star will always adorn Mary Tyler Son's face in these posts, as he is my light, my star above, that brought me out of the darkness after his sister's death.
A star will always adorn Mary Tyler Son’s face in these posts, as he is my light, my star above, that brought me out of the darkness after his sister’s death.

This is when things got serious.  My boy, brave as he is, asked the question that might have held the answer he didn’t really want to hear.  You see, I think my boy wants to believe in Santa, it’s just that the evidence doesn’t really stack up and he’s too literal and logical a thinker to ignore that evidence.  Are you real, or just a man in a suit?  I held my breath, and was grateful I wasn’t alone to field the question.

Santa bent down close to my son and looked him straight in the eye, “I’m not real.  I am what you call immortal.  Do you know what immortality is?  It’s when you live forever and real people don’t live forever, do they?  I am not a real person, I am a spirit, an immortal spirit, a miracle of wonder.”  Well, there I was blubbering away, because of course we know, more than most, that real people die and there Mary Tyler Son was, nodding and agreeing.  He, too, knows that real people die, and there was Santa, confirming his belief, he was not real — he was better.  He was a spirit, a wonder, a miracle, immortal.

Good God.  All this wisdom from a mall Santa Claus.  Forget it.  I am a believer.  In that moment, right there, I became a believer.  Because somehow, some way, that beautiful man knew exactly, I mean exactly what to say to my son that would enable him to maintain his belief.  Hell, that would enable me to find my belief, lost long ago.

Thank you, mall Santa, thank you.  You reminded me of the importance of hope and belief in not only our kid’s lives, but in our own.  And hell, if I didn’t believe, would this have been possible:

The anchor is an ancient sailor's symbol of hope. Mary Tyler Baby will always proudly wear the anchor in my posts, as he is my own little anchor, proof of what can happen when you hope.
The anchor is an ancient sailor’s symbol of hope. Mary Tyler Baby will always proudly wear the anchor in my posts, as he is my own little anchor, proof of what can happen when you hope.

Post script:  When you’re a mom blogger, you learn that there is just about anything that can cause controversy.  Last year, naive gal that I am, I learned that there was a whole anti-Santa platform of parenting.  No disrespect intended, but there is a school of parenting that tells you if you encourage your child to believe in Santa, you are dealing in lies that will harm your child.  I was honestly a bit shocked, but to each their own, you know?  I vacinnate, I circumscise, and yes, I want my children to believe in Santa.  To each their own, indeed.  Merry Christmas to all! 

LOUD AND PROUD, BABY!
LOUD AND PROUD, BABY!

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