Compare & contrast: 8 months

    

    

Dance 'til you drop

So you’re cooking for a 2-year old…

That’s the working title for my new reality TV show idea.  There are all of these cooking shows that pit chefs against one another, but not one of them has a judging panel that can give a 2-year old a run for his/her money.  I’d like to offer Z up as a cooking judge.  He’d made Gordon Ramsay look like a softie.

My approach to feeding Z has always been to provide healthy options and hope he eats something.  If he doesn’t finish a meal, I don’t argue (why turn meals into power struggles when you know you can’t win?) and I don’t rush to find something he’d like better.  I’ve found that if he’s not pressured, he will usually try everything and will often finish whatever is in front of him.  He also likes to have company when he eats, but only if you pay attention to him.  If you are distracted (i.e. on the phone, reading a magazine, watching TV), then you may as well leave him to his own devices – he’ll do much better on his own.  But if you chat with him and remain fully engaged with him, then he’ll eat things that he refused 5 minutes earlier.

However, Z definitely has his preferences and I do try to work within them to a point, especially if he hasn’t been eating well for an extended time.  He’s never liked cooked cheese or most meats, which is fine with me since those aren’t very healthy for him anyway.  But getting protein into him has always been a challenge so I keep a supply of plain yogurt, cottage cheese and tofu on hand just in case.

Lately, he has refused to eat anything with color (other than fruit) and he’s gotten even more sensitive to textures than he was before.  He has even rejected his old favorite vegetable – green peas – because he doesn’t like the skins.  (Have you ever tried to peel a pea?  It’s not easy.)  This has made it especially challenging for me to feed him a healthy diet, since nutritious foods are generally brightly-colored and pretty much everything is textured.  Today I did pretty well at lunch (whole wheat english muffin with hummus and havarti cheese, and a side of butternut squash that I baked, pureed, and then mixed with a bit of applesauce), but I’m already worrying about what I’ll give him for dinner.

Luckily, he still eats breakfast and snacks like a champ so I know he’s not starving.  And he also loves to eat Mei-mei’s food, so I’ve been able to get a few portions of pureed peas in his belly.  I just wonder what he’s going to come up with next.

I somehow managed to keep a straight face

I posted this in a “mad chatters” Tweet already, but I wanted to write about it anyway.

Since Mei-mei has started eating solids, Z hovers around in hopes of getting a bite or two of her pureed sweet potatoes (I’ve started making twice as much so that Z gets to finish off what she doesn’t eat).  He’s also in a sharing phase, so he keeps trying to trade some of his food for hers.  I tell him, “Mei-mei can’t eat your food yet.  She’s very small right now.  She doesn’t have any teeth, so she can’t chew like you do. But she’ll grow all of her teeth as she gets bigger.”  And now that she has one tooth, I show it to him and say, “See, Mei-mei’s starting to grow her teeth!  Soon she’ll be able to eat the same foods you eat.”

Today, Z was watching as I changed Mei-mei’s diaper.  He asked, “Where’s Mei-mei’s penis?”  I said, “Mei-mei doesn’t have a penis, honey.  She’s a girl and girls don’t have penises.  Only boys have penises.”  Apparently he didn’t hear the second part of my explanation, because he said, “Mei-mei no have penis now.  Mei-mei too small.  Mei-mei grow teeth, grow penis.”  He said it in the sing-song way he uses when he recites a list of things, “Mei-mei grow teeeeeeeeeeth….grow peniiiiiiiiiis….”

Before and after

Now he can really use those eyebrows to full effect.

Separated at birth?

Chris is a huge fan of the band Oasis, and as such, wanted to name our children either Liam or Noel (after the band’s Gallagher brothers) or Lyla (the title of one of their songs).  Although the band broke up following one of the many brawls between Liam and Noel, and Chris did not prevail in his efforts to honor them through the naming of our children, it looks like Z is paying tribute to them after all.

Liam Gallagher on left, our little man Z on right:

St Patrick's Day Photo Shoot

This is what it takes to get one decent photo of the two of them together...

Happy St. Patrick’s Day

It’s remarkably difficult to get a decent picture of Z and Mei-mei together.  The first picture is the only one (out of 138) that doesn’t have at least one of them with eyes closed, face covered, looking away, scowling, or super blurry.  The next two pictures were a little easier because I only had to worry about one of them at a time (on top of worrying about Mei-mei eating the beads and Z getting strangled by them).  If you look really closely at the picture of Mei-mei, you can see her tiny little tooth poking through!

Hands and feet

Hands and feet, courtesy of Pattycake Prints

What do you need to eat pie?

Why, teeth, of course.  So in honor of pi day, Mei-mei has cut her first tooth!  Anyone who has experienced her jaws of steel will understand why I’m a bit nervous about this development.  When she was born, the lactation consultant said, “She has the strongest clamp-down reflex of any baby I’ve met in over 15 years of doing this job.  You, my dear, have the pit bull of babies.”  And now my (sweet, adorable, darling, lovely) pit bull baby has teeth.  Great.  I was kind of hoping that she wouldn’t cut any teeth until after she weaned.

Happy Pi Day!

Yes, I’m a nerd.  And for further proof of how nerdy I am, note the time this post was published.

mystery solved

A couple weeks ago, we were stumped.  The media cabinet was locked to keep button-loving preschool fingers off of the stereo equipment.  However, we couldn’t find the key.  Finally, Chris noticed that the key was right in front of us:  inside the locked cabinet, taunting us through the glass.  We had no idea how it got there, but we were relatively sure of who was responsible.

After we puzzled over it for awhile, we decided to chalk it up to another inexplicable side-effect of parenting.  I used a wire hanger to jimmy open the cabinet and we didn’t think about it again.  That is, until this afternoon when we heard Z announce, “Fachary has key!”  He ran over to show me the key to the media cabinet, and then he trucked on over to the media cabinet itself.  It was locked, so he stuck the key in the keyhole to wiggle it around a bit.  Then he carefully slid the key into the crack at the top of the cabinet door.  AH HAH!

So there you have it.  That’s how a key gets inside of a locked cabinet.

(And that’s not a typo up there.  Z pronounces his name with an “F”.)

My kitchen is my personal runway

I have neglected anything resembling “style” in my life since having children.  This is for several reasons, but it generally comes down to a combination of laziness and the fact that I don’t own much that fits me anymore.  Plus, I like to dress in activity-appropriate clothing, and how stylish can you be when you spend your time at playgrounds or with a baby chewing on your sleeve?

Well, a large portion of my time is also spent in the kitchen (who knew toddlers had to eat so much and so frequently?), and Kristy has pointed me to a wonderful opportunity to actually look stylish while I’m cooking!  I know that very few people will be able to witness this potential stylishness of mine, but it’s a start.  And I do believe that feeling good, even in privacy, goes a long ways toward making you feel good all around.

This opportunity for domestic style is sponsored by “Bringing Lady Back” – a blog dedicated to freeing the world from “insipid insults and protruding panties”.  Personal integrity, dignity, and a sense of propriety are qualities that are in dire need of a revival, so I am in full support of it!  And I’m looking for the male equivalent, which I would call something like “Banishing the Guy” (in favor of the Man).

Now available in 3D

After nearly 7 months of existing primarily in a horizontal plane, Mei-mei is very close to inhabiting vertical space as well (this is just a really geeky way of saying that she’s sitting up)!  Kind of.  She’s still very bendy and she supports herself with her arms, and if her head moves anywhere off of the z-axis she tips over, but it’s a start!

In addition to sitting up, she’s already an expert at rolling over.  She rolls her way around the room pretty quickly (she’s usually got her eye on a toy), so I have to keep tabs on her before she disappears under the couch.

This is starting to feel dangerously close to mobility.  I’m not sure I’m ready for that, and I know Cowboy isn’t.  He’s already got his paws full just trying to stay out of Z’s way!

Friendly reminder: mamarazza is your source for photos!

Chris told me I should put out another reminder about my mamarazza site.  That’s where I post my favorite pictures, so if you don’t see many pictures on this page in awhile it’s probably because they are over there.

If you look on the sidebar of this page, there is a section called mamarazza underneath chatter box.  mamarazza lists the five most recent mamarazza posts, so you can check that to see if it’s been updated since you last visited.  To see the new posts, you can either click on the post title or click on mamarazza (the title of the section).  If you click on mamarazza instead of an individual title, you will get to the main page.  that’s where you can see all of the new posts at once.

I tend to post pictures in batches (I usually do one picture per post), so you will see a whole bunch of new posts show up at once.

With these eyes, I thee own

Introducing: Chatter Box

As I’ve mentioned before, Z likes to talk to himself when he is in his crib.  Actually, he does a running commentary all day long, which makes it easier to keep track of him and stop him before he does something dangerous.  (“Mommy say Zachary no touch outlet…no touch!”  or “Zachary climb…jump!”)  But the crib chatter is the cutest, because he doesn’t know we can hear him (via the monitor) and he uses that time to practice new words or sing songs or reminisce about things.  I don’t want to forget all of the funny things he says but I can’t catch them all on video, so I’m going to start keeping track of as many as I can on this blog.  I’ve added a section to the sidebar called “chatter box”, which is where his latest ponderings will be posted (via Twitter).  Enjoy!

Tinkle Tinkle

Tinkle Tinkle, originally uploaded by Wenmei.

Our budding American Idol finalist (with support from his high-kicking backup dancing sister).

Happy 5th Birthday, Cowboy!

 

 

Happy Chinese New Year Valentine’s Day!

As with many things, the third time is the charm when it comes to taking pictures of the Hillions.