Why? on Wednesday - Celebrity Edition

I was really stressing out because I haven't really been inspired to write anything lately.  But I was determined that today I was going to post SOMETHING so I opened up the interwebs and I was blessed when THIS shit graced my home page...

"Actress and vegan diet enthusiast Alicia Silverstone has a strange way of feeding her 11-month-old son Bear Blu. In a video posted on her healthy living website thekindlife.com, Silverstone chews a bite of food and then passes it straight into her little boy's mouth mama-bird style."

When I saw the headline, I had a moment of thinking "Wow, that kid is NEVER going to live that down. Elementary school is  going to be difficult for him."

Then I saw his fucking name. 

BEAR BLU?  BEAR MOTHERFUCKING BLU, ALICIA SILVERSTONE!!! 

Clearly she hates her kid.

As if it isn't bad enough that she named him BEAR fucking BLU, she POSTS A FUCKING VIDEO of her feeding him like a fucking bird. 

I am not offended that feeding her kid her chewed up food is kind of bizarre and gross (because CLEARLY it is).  I mean, I let my kid eat chicken nuggets and hot dogs and really, when you know where that shit comes from it's kind of just as gross. 

And before you go yelling at me for my ignorance, YES! I do realize that before blenders and baby food, mothers did this shit all the time.  And that tribal mothers and mothers in less "western" parts of the world do this all the time.  But seriously, Alicia.  SERIOUSLY...Does he have to fish it out of your mouth with his tongue?  Couldn't you use your fingers or a pair of tongs or something?

What really bothers me is that celebrity parents have no concept that when they make their personal random proclivities public (and SERIOUSLY, what IS it with the ridiculous names) they give their kids just ONE MORE THING that their mean classmates will be able to dig up and torture them with.

I just don't understand what the fuck is it with celebrity parents who purposely set their kids up for a disastrous life of mental illness.  I mean, seriously.  Children of celebrity parents tend to have the deck stacked against them sanity-wise WITHOUT making out with their mothers in a video posted on the internet.

Please, Alicia Silversone.  Think about your son's future. It's fine if you want to practice "alternative parenting techniques" and emulate some !Kung bush mother.  FINE.  Keep it to yourself and your (future serial killer) son.  But for the love of GOD, change his fucking name and stop posting your freaky hippie parenting techniques all over the interwebs for his friends to usen someday as ammunition to bully him into snorting a brick of crack and killing a hooker. 

Unless, of course you are purposely trying to create a superhero (because they all haven horrible traumatic events in their childhoods), and in that case, YOU'RE DOING IT RIGHT.

Battlefield: Dinner

I am a firm believer in family dinner times. And experts seem to agree that family dinner time, where the ENTIRE family sits around a table for dinner and communicates and enjoys themselves is essential for a happy, functioning family.

This is how I imagine dinner time should be.

But what do you do when no one enjoys it?  My kid has turned dinner time into this drama-filled temper tantrum and by the end of it, her dinner is not eaten and Ben and I are the ones flailing on the floor kicking and screaming.

Lila does not like to eat.  At least not actual food.  I refuse to call her a picky eater because it doesn't really matter if we serve her the one food she is willing to eat this week (which is usually either mac and cheese or chicken nuggets) she still refuses it.  She's more like a non-eater.  Not that she isn't hungry.  As soon as dinner is cleared from the table she asks for ice cream or cake or cookies and cries because she's "starving".  We offer to heat up her chicken nuggets or mac and cheese and she cries and goes to bed hungry.  We don't give in.  But for some reason she STILL doesn't get that eating crap like ice cream and gummy fruit snacks are not acceptable dinner time foods. 

This is what I actually see at dinner time.

And this is almost entirely a dinner time problem, when we are all sitting down at the table.  At lunch time, when it's just her and I, she usually eats with no problem (although she isn't a big eater and has never finished an entire meal) and at breakfast, when she is usually eating alone, it is no problem at all.   It's as if she is completely against it, which I don't understand because this is what we have always done, and it's always been a problem for her.

In addition to refusing to eat and generally being totally bitchy about it, she also has to go to the bathroom as soon as the food is set on the table and has hundreds of excuses to get up every 45 seconds.  Even when we order pizza and eat in front of the TV, something about sitting together with us at dinner time causes her to not be able to sit still or concentrate on the task at hand, even though when there's no food in front of her she can sit catatonic for an hour and a half watching Alvin and the Chipmunks.

For me, not having dinner together isn't an option.  This is important to me.  My parents made every effort to have dinner at the table whenever they could and as an adult I really appreciate those times where no one was too busy or preoccupied with work and we got to just sit and focus on chatting. 

There is one train of thought that says that you should never force your kid to eat and should just let them do what they want and eat when and what they want and they will come around.  But honestly, I don't believe that we should work around her and her whims.  She's FOUR.  If it were up to her she'd want nothing but Lucky Charms and Popsicles and would eat dinner just after brushing her teeth, hearing a story and turning out the light at bedtime.  She refuses to "snack" when I just leave decent foods like carrot sticks out for her to nibble on and seems to only want to eat something when I am in the middle of a task that I cannot drop to prepare something for her. 

There is the other faction that says that the eating habits they learn early such as eating a variety of foods (my kid doesn't) and viewing eating in a healthy way (she obviously finds it stressful) will be carried on for life.  If this is the case, my kid is going to be either a "food is comfort" over eater or processed food junky.  Perhaps she will develop an eating disorder since her entire goal in life seems to be to use what little control she has to refuse to put healthy food into her mouth.

What do you guys think.  Should I just stop with the family dinner times? 

I aim for some kind of middle ground and it just isn't working.  I fear that my kid is going to have some serious food issues if I don't get this under control.

Lila's eating disorder

"MY BELLY'S FULL!!!"

I am tired of doing dinner time with my kid. If I have her tell me her belly is full after 3 bites of lettuce one more time I am going to lose it.

I am seriously tired of it.

I am tired of telling her to stop playing and start eating.  I am tired of listening to her cry because I wouldn't make her chicken nuggets or mac and cheese because those are the only two things she is willing to eat.  I am tired of trying to get her to sit still for 5 minutes and eat and I am tired of the whining and crying about it.  I am tired of her telling me she's full and her belly hurts only to have her ask for ice cream or cake or a snack 15 minutes later.  I am tired of explaining OVER AND OVER that if she's got room for ice cream, she has room for carrots (or chicken or mashed potatoes or whatever).



Lila ALWAYS has room for dessert. 



I am tired of not being able to have a conversation with Ben at the table without Lila banging things or throwing something or getting out of her seat 200 times.

Trust me when I say that the whole "fine, go to bed without dinner" thing does not work.  She says that's fine, gets down and plays, and then cries for the next 4 hours because she is hungry. Then she is awake every 2 hours through the night.  The last time she went to school and told her teacher that I wouldn't feed her when she was starving.  I am even less willing to deal with that bullshit.

I refuse to be one of those parents who lets their kids have lax table manners and I truly believe that dinner time is important family time.  My parents say that I behaved at the table when I was her age.  I ate whatever my mother put in front of me (with a few exceptions) and I never expected dessert every night. 

I want to just stop feeding her altogether for a week.  Then see how she does when I say, "let's sit down and eat, shall we?" I bet that she'd be ready to sit and eat then.  

I don't bribe her with desserts.  She always brings it up.  I have stopped telling her "if you eat your dinner" and started saying "we don't have dessert so this is what you have to eat."  She cries EVERY SINGLE TIME.  I give her tiny portions and she still won't eat them.  In fact, I would argue that the less I put on her plate, the less she actually eats.

WHAT THE HELL DID I DO WRONG HERE???  Am I breeding a kid who is a shoe-in for an eating disorder later?  Should I just take her to the shrink now and get that inevitable process started?  And when did mothers start worrying so much about what and how much their kids ate?  I am pretty sure my mother didn't give a shit if I ate or not.

Ba-Ba Blues?

What the hell is it with the older women and their total refusal to allow modern moms to do what we think is best for our kids?

Yesterday I was at a family barbeque (and I won't even get into the thrilling experience that I had) and was talking to my aunt, whose first grandchild has just turned one.  She and her son were discussing the bottle and the aunt was APPALLED at the idea that he would even THINK of taking the bottle away from her at a mere 1 year old.  She defended her stance saying that the pediatrician said "15 months at the latest for a bottle, 18 months for a pacifier."  She acted like it was flat-out child abuse to even consider depriving a kid of a ba-ba so "young".

"Once you pop you can't stop," says Grandma.

This is not the first time I have encountered this kind of outrage from an older woman in my family.  My mother completely lost her shit when I suggested that Lila was not supposed to have a bottle to go to sleep since that is what parents had done for 50 years previous.  She told me that this was basically the cause of all the problems I had with Lila's infancy and that if I just gave in all those problems would disappear. 

I finally DID give in.  And guess what, a year later when Lila was 2 and still wanting a bottle to go to sleep my mother acted like I was talking about murder when I suggested that it was time to stop.  Even though the doctor had told me to do it a year before.  Even though every parenting book ON EARTH says that they shouldn't have a bottle to go to sleep, my mother thought it was simply cruel. 

Believe me when I say that it was one of the worst transitions I have ever had to make.  Lila was never a good sleeper to begin with and this just made her worse.

All that being said, why do these women think that we modern mothers are so mean and cruel for trying to do exactly what all the pros tell us we need to do?  Are they offended that their way may have been wrong? Or is it actually mean to take a comfort item from a baby?  Are we no good at going with our guts or is it just a matter of them trying to keep the babies as babies for as long as possible?

What do you guys think?

Parenting Fail?

Am I a terrible mom?  I try to stay on top of things.  I want my kid to eat well and get enough sleep and say please and thank you.  I want her to be smart and capable and independent and well-behaved.  And so far I have failed at all but the part about her being smart (assed) and independednt (3 going on 13). 

In trying to come to terms with just how to handle this problem of Lila being the sassiest little bitch on earth (yeah, I said it), the only thing I can come up with is that I am just too fucking tired to discipline her EVERY SINGLE TIME (which would literally be about 3 times per minute) that she does something that pisses me off. 

My kid yells at me.  She throws things and she refuses to eat.  Then she throws a huge asshole fit about the fact that she doesn't get any snacks because she refused to eat what I put in front of her (No, I don't give in and she still does not GET it). She refuses to poop on the toilet still and when I refused to buy any more pull ups, she held it for 4 days until it was so painful for her (even with the laxative) that she will probably never want to shit on the toilet again (thanks to the doctor for that award-winning advice).  She acts like an animal when we go to a store.  She manipulates me by crying and telling me she hates me (remind you, she is not a teenager - she's 3). 

In between the 3 minute hugs and the 2 and a half moments of happiness is all this SHIT.

I am at my wits end.  And all I can do is blog about it. 

Fucking kid.

Day 7 and also a little rant

When I was growing up I had a friend (who we’ll call Britney to protect her identity and in case she is reading my blog) who refused to eat anything that wasn’t name brand. I would pull out the grocery store brand “W” cola and she would turn her nose up and tell me she’d just have water. She told me over and over how much better REAL Pop Tarts were compared to the generic ones that my mother bought and faked illness when my mother dared to offer her GENERIC PEANUT BUTTER sandwiches for lunch. But I liked Britney and we were friends even though I never owned name-brand sneakers or drank REAL Minute Maid orange juice. Somehow though, this ALWAYS made me feel inferior.

An artist's rendition of
my friend "Britney" as I
remember her.

Perhaps this is why I have refused to jump on the “organic foods” bandwagon. As far as I can tell, there is no point is serving Lila organic breakfast cereal, organic frozen dinners, organic cookies, organic yogurt, organic popcorn or pretty much any snack junk food that is labeled as organic.

First off, let me say that for this kind of stuff, the fact that it’s processed is far worse for her than the fact that it’s not organic. Processed foods have all the good stuff taken out and a bunch of other stuff put back in. These are not actually FOOD as people a hundred years ago would understand it, but more like “foodstuffs”, which is like food but with less actual nutrition involved. If Lila wants this stuff, (and because I want to choose my battles because she is a total fucking warrior who will win) she eats the generic stuff. And usually there is no generic organic stuff.

The second thing though, is more rooted in the mentality that I experienced as a kid. I don’t know if I believe that “organic” is necessarily any better quality than “name brand” is. I know there are a bunch of you out there who want to explain to me about chemicals and pesticides and nitrates and all kinds of other things, but truly, that was the same kind of argument the name brand girl gave me, telling me that the factories that make name-brand foods are cleaner and pass a higher standard than their generic counterparts.

Here’s the thing. I am worried that this is going to be a problem when Lila gets older and has her little friends over, just like it was to me. There are so many parents out there who would never let a “regular” apple touch their children’s lips and I worry that someday Lila will feel the same kind of inferiority that I did at the fact that her mom doesn’t buy into the bullshit marketing campaigns and that honestly, generic regular popcorn slathered in butter and salt is just as bad for you as name-brand organic popcorn slathered in hormone free butter and sea salt.

For the big stuff, I am on board. I like grass-fed meat better, I am all for not giving my kid hormone-filled milk and I truly think organic produce tastes better. But if it comes from a package and has a shelf-life of more than a couple of months, I just don’t buy it. And I just won’t BUY it.

.........................
30 Days of Books Day 7
A book that is hard to read

This could be taken two ways.  But my selection for this one made me have to stop because it was seriously disgusting me, which I am sure is NOT the intention of the author:

First off, I want to let you know that I watched the movie.  As bizarre and disturbing as the movie was, it was NO WHERE NEAR as fucked up as the book. It is NOT easy to upset my sensibilities but Bret Easton Ellis managed to completely destroy them.  I squirmed and gagged and finally gave up because it was so graphic and twisted that I wanted to slit my own throat. 

The writing is beautiful though and in some parts I was actually touched.  Like this passage:

"My personality is sketchy and unformed, my heartlessness goes deep and is persistent. My conscience, my pity, my hopes disappeared a long time ago if they ever did exist. There are no more barriers to cross. All I have in common with the uncontrollable and the insane, the vicious and the evil, all the mayhem I have caused and my utter indifference toward it. I have no surpassed. I still, though, hold on to one single bleak truth: no one is safe, nothing is redeemed"

But Ellis's ability to capture this character's total depersonalization was too much for me. 

Thank you, captain obvious...

When did shit that is completely obvious become "news"?  Today I opened up my interwebs to find this fucking brilliant headline shocking me to attention:

Parenting can take a toll on health, study shows

Oh, really?  Tell me more!!! 
 
Health declines, particularly in moms, due to poor diet and less exercise.

My kid's idea of a balanced meal:  all the colors are there!

First off, I am shocked that it took this long for any science-y person to look around and think to themselves, "Is it just me or do mom's seem to age like 15 years in the first 5 years of their children's lives?"  Part of my not really being particularly desperate to pop a baby out had to do with the simple observation that the mothers I saw around me (not including assholes like Angelina Jolie or Kelly Ripa who can pop out 12 kids in 6 months and be back on the beach in someplace like Bali in their bikinis the next month) did not look good.  They were fat.  They were tired.  They looked pale and/or greasy.  In fact, I theorized that that glorious "glow" that pregnant women had was like the big finale at the fireworks show.  They'd never have that youthful vitality again.

Kelly Ripa on her way
home from the hospital
after the birth of her 3rd
baby.

So onto the obvious details.  As soon as I had my kid, I lost all ability to function for myself.  When she was a newborn, I never ate.  I certainly never slept.  Hell, I didn't shower. The life upheaval involved in having a baby is as stressful as the death of your former self and no one looks good when they're grieving.  I had a child that I was convinced was probably the Anticrhist because her only goal seemed to me to push me to murder.  She cried non-stop for about 6 months (that's how I remember it).  And the doctors all just said, "it's colic.  She'll out- grow it".  Well you know what?  I didn't.  I never got over it. 

As she got older, she took on the attitude of "if Mommy is standing, then I need to try harder," and her entire purpose seemed to be to wear me out.  From the running around, to climbing all over me, to demanding 4 different drinks because each one was "wrong", to refusing to eat anything I put in front of her, to needing to change her clothes 6 times because of one spot of water, to never sleeping through the night until she was 3; everything she did was designed specifically to make me into a zombie.
 
Who can exercise when they can barely get out of bed?  And who the hell are these mothers who work all day and come home and find it possible to spend an hour making a nutritious (and organic and meat-free) meal that their kids will just love rather than just throwing a frozen pizza into the oven? 
Fuck those moms. 

More importantly, besides the "news" that this study reveals and common-sense advice (because don't we all KNOW what we SHOULD be doing?) to take better care of ourselves, this article DOES offer one useful suggestion.  Unfortunately, it is buried at the very end of the article and as far as I can tell has not been repeated in subsequent articles that have been posted on the web:

...Berge said she hopes that the results will push health care providers to pay additional attention to parents.

Community initiatives could also be part of a solution, she said.

“You can’t extend the hours in the day, but by working with others in the neighborhood we can make sure that the parents are taking care of themselves, too..."

Shit..If I had a village of nannies (or even just a village of Mommy friends), I am sure I would have more time to shower and exercise and eat well too. 

To me, this "study" was simply a piece of information that serves absolutely no purpose except to remind me of how unhealthy I am.  Because realistically, until my kid goes off to college or at least becomes a bit more agreeable than the pain in the ass preschooler that she is now, I will likely continue to be too emotionally and physically drained to bother with the necessary chores of meal planning, local vegetable buying and hour-long daily workouts that would be required to get me even remotely into a condition that can be considered healthy.

Because playing WII bowling with my kid while chomping on Goldfish crackers is just not going to cut it.

A Little Squeeze?

My kid is the Goddamned Ketchup Nazi. 

She insists on ketchup with every meal.  Eggs with Ketchup for breakfast. Grilled cheese with ketchup for lunch.  Pasta with ketchup for dinner.  And although I cringe to think about the sheer amount of high-fructose corn syrup she ingests every day, I am happy that there is something that makes her eat carrot sticks or non-nuggetized chicken.  Plus, I hear that in school cafetierias they actually consider ketchup a vegetable. 

But this new phase is really getting on my nerves.

Lila refuses to share her ketchup with the rest of the family.  We rarely eat foods at home that ACTUALLY require ketchup so in that way, I guess we're lucky. 

But we go out to eat a lot.  I realize I should be ashamed of how often we eat out but I just wrote a piece for Band Back Together about accepting that I am not perfect and not eating at home is one of those things that I just don't give a shit about, broke or not.  I WILL eat out twice a week.  It's my guilty pleasure. 

So as I have mentioned in a previous post (see here) we go to Friendly's a lot.  The last time we were there, I ordered a burger (which I never do because I am terrified of raw ground beef) but I was premenstrual and needed some iron so I ordered one.  When the server brought our meals, Lila snatched the ketchup and happily squeezed several small dots around her plate of Friendly Frank and mac and cheese.  I waited until she snapped the top back on and set it down so that I could ask her politely to "please pass the ketchup."

The look on her face was one of utter disgust, as if I had just asked her to pass the kitten entrails.  She just stared at me.

"Um...Lila...can I have the ketchup, please?  Now?"

She leaned forward as if she was considering my motives.  Did she think I was going to molest the ketchup or something?  Did she think I was going to use it for evil?  Then she slowly picked up the ketchup bottle and set it on the seat next to her.


This is what I saw in my head.

"Lila.  GIVE ME THE KETCHUP.  SERIOUSLY.  KETCHUP NOW OR NO ICE CREAM!"

Of course, through all this, her father is just sitting there next to her blissfully (purposely) ignoring the ridiculous power struggle that was taking place right in front of him.  When Ben reached over and helped himself to the bottle of ketchup, completely oblivious to the fact that I was asking for it just seconds ago, Lila snatched it out of his hand and clutched it to her chest, having rescued her "Precious" from the grip of doom.

"Seriously, Lila?  Really?  You can't just share the ketchup?  That's fine.  The next time I am having something that I really like, I will refuse to share it too.  Hey, guess who isn't sharing my french fries?  Guess who isn't getting my Reese's Peanut Butter Cup off my sundae?  Guess who is never, ever, EVER getting a sip of my soda again?"

She just clung to her ketchup bottle.  Ben, in the meantime, had simply gotten up and gotten another bottle of ketchup from the next table.  He never gets the underlying POINT of making her do things she doesn't like to do.  He tends to believe that these stupid power struggles are best left unfought.  I (obviously) tend to get sucked right into them and turn into a kid myself saying stupid things that just make her think it's funny to upset me.

After we were all finished with dinner and had put in our order for ice cream (because it is seriously just MEAN to not allow a kid to have ice cream at Friendly's no matter how unable to behave they may be), Lila put the ketchup back on the table and said, "You can use it on your ice cream if you want.  Can I still have your candy?"

"Mother Fucker!" I thought.

Don't say you weren't warned.

Today I read a fantastic post from a fellow blogger about how they never tell you the truth about parenting and how it's partially a matter of forgetting and partially the fact that we're sort of sworn to secrecy about the truth.  And I walked around today thinking about this and realized that I WAS actually told on several occasions.  But not directly. 

(Here is a link to the post)

So for all you parents to be and new parents out there (and those of us who are still working out all the details), I am going to provide this little handy interpretation of what was told to me, and what I now realize they meant when they said it.

1.  Motherhood is the hardest job in the world.

The Truth:
It is the WORST job in the world.  I would be lying if I said that I know what it's like to be a worker at a third world sweatshop, but I suspect it is a lot like being a new mother.  First off, the hours will kill you.  You are basically ALWAYS on call, even when you are sleeping. And then for the first few years you are lucky if you get to sleep for more than 3 or 4 hours at a time.  There are NO BREAKS.  You do not get a lunch break where you can take off for an hour and run errands, you do not get to go to the bathroom (at least not by yourself) and you do not get to sit down without having someone scream at you.  There is no vacation or sick leave and the pay is pretty much nonexistent. 

2.  Colic is really awful but it does end.

The Truth:
It ends.  But while it is happening, COLIC IS THE WORST THING YOU WILL EVER EXPERIENCE.  It seems like it is going to go on forever and  you are trapped with this little helpless being who you can do absolutely NOTHING to make stop screaming at you.  And before the colic ends, you will realize that you are the worst parent that has ever walked the face of the earth because your only job at this point is to keep the little one alive and comfortable and you become convinced that you cannot manage to do this.  Colic will make you want to die.  Colic will make you realize that those posters all over the hospital and the reminders everywhere about how you are not supposed to shake your baby are serious business.  Because there will be at least one moment where you think, "now I understand why people shake babies".

3.  Having a baby will fundamentally change you.

The Truth:
Yes.  Completely.  But not in the ways you think.  You know that you will love this little one in a way that you never imagined (something else they tell you that is only half true) but you will no longer be able to watch movies that involve kidnapped children without becoming EXTREMELY uneasy.  You will want to avoid any books or episodes of CSI where awful things happen to children and suddenly all those jokes about punching babies and kiddie porn will not seem funny (yes, I used to have that kind of sense of humor).  Real actual news stories about children who are hurt or taken will terrify you and you will need to repeatedly check on them while they sleep at night. 

You will tell anyone who will listen about your child's poop.  There will be at least one hilarious poop story that every friend and relative hears at least once.  You will know all the words to every song Dora the Explorer (or your kid's hero of choice) has ever sung.  You will allow things that you always said you wouldn't (sure, let's have Fruit Loops for dinner).  You will beg your child to eat.  You will bribe them to behave in public even though you hate that kind of thing.   People who don't have children will tell you that it's all terrible and bad parenting and that they will NEVER be "that parent" but trust me, they will.

4. All kids throw fits.  All kids aggravate their parents.  It's how they learn limits.

The Truth:
There will be moments where you completely understand why wild animals eat their children.  You will have moments of sheer anger where you have to force yourself to walk away because if you stay in the same room with your child, you will end up hurting them.  This does not make you a bad parent (actually staying put and hurting them makes you a bad parent).  You will be amazed at the manipulative ability of a three year old, who has the ability to read your weaknesses better than any con artist ever could.  And you will fear that you are going insane because you will seriously consider the pros and cons of checking yourself into a mental institution "for the vacation".

You will have days where you really don't LIKE your child.  It does not make you a bad parent. On at least on occasion (and probably on many), you will think, if not actually say this:

5. They don't call it "the terrible two's" for nothing.

Truth:
My kid went through this phase from about 18 months until she turned 3. Then she was a normal kid who could behave for about 3 months, then came this bizarro 3 and 1/2 year old thing.  Most of the parents I talk to tell me that 3 is WAY worse than 2.  And it is.  The terrible twos are defined by the word "no".  They will tell you NO for everything, even if they mean YES, and then they will get mad at you when you think they meant NO because they said it.  The terrible two's want things to be just so.  They get frustrated and throw fits if the ketchup isn't on the right spot on their plate.  

But three and a half is KILLING ME.  Suddenly no matter is too small for a full blown, screaming, yelling tantrum.  Bath time = tantrum.  Bedtime = tantrum.  Getting dressed = tantrum.  Time for dinner = tantrum.  It isn't the big things that bring on the fits.  It's the regular routine things that you do at the same time EVERY SINGLE DAY.  Why bath time after dinner and bedtime after bath is always a huge ambush to my child, I will never know.  But every moment of every day seems like a terrible surprise to her. 

6. Listen to your gut.  You know your child best.

Truth:
Don't read every parenting book you can get your hands on because every one will tell you something different. Parenting "experts" seem to never have their own children at home.  Instead, you should call your mommy friends and/or relatives who have experience with kids.  When I listened to my gut, I thought Lila was just bright red because she was hot.  She had a cold or something and she should just sleep it off.  My mother told me that it didn't seem right and encouraged me to call the doctor and it turned out she had Scarlet Fever and a nasty strep infection.   


7. Your child will want to watch the same movie/listen to the same song/read the same story over and over and o
over.  It's perfectly normal.

Truth:
You will come to want to murder the creators of Dora the Explorer and you will fantasize that all the Disney Princesses (or whatever the boy equivalent is) are being maimed, tortured and executed.  If you are LUCKY, your kid will take to a movie, song, or character that you LOVED as a child and you will encourage this because you think it will be more tolerable.  But after the first 4,000 times, you will hate your childhood and everything you associated with that memory because your child will have worn it out beyond imagination.  Mine actually made me hate Joan Jett.

8. Motherhood is the most rewarding job in the world.

Truth:
This is totally true.  You will likely never be as proud of anything in your life as you are when someone tells you how smart/beautiful/well-behaved/creative/talented/incredible your kid is.  Seriously.  Your kid will do things that make  you want to pull your hair out.  They will make you scream into pillows until your throat hurts.  They will disappoint you and make you question your worth as a person.  But there are those moments where you look at them and your soul swells with happiness and you think, "I made that!"

Why don't I own stock in this?

Lila's favorite place in the entire world to eat is Friendly's.  For those of you in places where they don't have them (one of the many things wrong with Arizona) basically, it's a family restaurant that is actually better known for their fantastic ICE CREAM.  Basically, if Baskin Robbins and Denny's merged and then got WAY better food at pretty reasonable prices, it would kind of be like that. It's pretty awesome. 

For the first two years after we moved back from Arizona, we lived about 4 blocks from a Friendly's and because it's pretty affordable (and just too fucking easy) we went there ALL THE TIME.  Seriously.  I should be embarrassed by the fact but in the interest of being totally honest with all of you who take the time to let me into your heads, I will just fess up: There was a time where we literally went there AT LEAST once a week.  I say "at least" because for a lot of the summer months, we would go one day a week (usually a Friday or Saturday evening) and have dinner, and then another week night (or two or three) we would walk there after we ate dinner, just to get ice cream.  Some weeks, we would also have lunch there.  And although they do have fantastic (and cheap) breakfasts, we only went for breakfast twice (both times meeting some friends with children).

If this sounds totally excessive, I want you to know that you will find no argument from me.  It IS excessive.  And I have the gigantic pants to prove it.  And although I would love to tell you that when we moved to our new house in October and started needing to budget our money a little better that dinners at the Friendly's have stopped, I cannot do that.  Our new house is less than a mile from our old house, and so I can safely say that the walks for ice cream are probably in the past.  And since it isn't QUITE as convenient, we are eating at home more.  See, now that we are in our own house, we only go to Friendly's when we have a coupon, which is pretty much every week because I have signed up for their email list (I'm a BFF - Best Friend of Friendly's) and they send them out pretty often. 

And there's another component to the fact that Lila BEGS for Friendly's all the time.  You see, last fall Lila became somewhat "enamored" with one of the servers there, a 20-something named Corey.  Corey is tall and handsome and has a giant diamond earring in his ear.  And Lila calls Corey her best friend.  Lila makes cards and colors pictures for Corey and we bring them on our next visit.  It is a very difficult dinner to get through when we get all hyped up to go to Friendly's and then it turns out that Corey took the night off.  Generally, Lila will cry and refuse to eat her food until the server properly engages her in conversation, and then she will spend the rest of the meal looking for "her new friend".

We went there tonight and it struck me just how much we actually go there because Corey said to us, "I haven't seen you guys in a while," and I thought about it and realized that "a while" was about 2 and a half weeks.  Then I started thinking about how much money we must actually spend there and I think I can safely say that I may single-handedly be the reason they were able to buy snazzy new carpets...

And just as I was getting tired of their food, they introduced a new seasonal menu with like 8 new items and they're fucking fabulous.  They're so good that I actually took the time to email Friendly's corporate office to tell them how fucking incredible the food was, especially considering that Friendly's isn't somewhere you go to have a mind-blowing meal (these are the people who created the giant cheeseburger served between two big grilled cheese sandwiches).

I seriously need a life...

I wonder if I wasn't exhausted all the time if I would feel a little less like having someone else do the cooking and cleaning up.  I wonder if my kid ate at home HALF as well as she eats at Friendly's (because of the incentive of a ridiculously fancy sundae at the end of the meal if she actually eats) if I would be more inclined to cook healthy food at home.  Because no matter how much I plan and make lists and stock up so that we can eat at home and save money, there inevitably comes a day where I am just too tired after work to cook, and Lila is begging and I just don't have it in me to say "no". 

I should just look into buying a Franchise.  I mean, who wouldn't want to take some credit for this fucking brilliant idea:



See the vegetables in there?



Starving for Newtons

I've been told it's just her age.  But I swear to God, every regular routine part of every single day is a huge dramatic nightmare for Lila and she makes all of it pure hell for me.

We eat dinner together every night.  I am a big fan of "family dinner time" so I insist that Ben be home from work and we all sit together at the table WITHOUT the TV on and talk.  I gave up a LONG time ago on eating foods that Lila is unlikely to eat.  So we rarely have steak or roasts or basically ANY grown up food because I just know that she will refuse to eat it and additionally make a big deal about the fact that she can't eat Popsicles for dinner.  And since I am no short-order cook, I only make one meal per night and so we eat a lot of hamburgers and pizza and tacos.  I try to make "healthier choices" when it comes to these things and so we use lean meat and whole grain and that kind of thing. 

In most families, this is enough and the kids generally shut up and partake in the dinners, but not in my house.  Not for the queen.  Lila just refuses to eat.  She just will not eat.  At least not what we are eating and not when we do.  Lila's entire MO for the last couple of months, is to take two bites of dinner then begin to play.  Usually we "suggest" that she eat some more and she says she will after she takes a break.  But she doesn't.  And she starts to do annoying things like bang her silverware or make obnoxious noises.  After a few minutes we tell her to either eat or get down.  She always gets down. 


It's the four food groups.

As I am sure you can guess, as soon as we clean the table off, Lila asks for a snack.  At first we tried giving her a " food you didn't finish at dinner" snack but this only caused convulsion-style tantrums so we stopped.  We began simply telling her that if she got down from the table without eating her dinner she could not have a snack.  Although this seems like a perfectly reasonable statement it fills me with fear and dread.  Because inevitably, as we are lying in bed and I close her story book for the night, she tells me she's hungry.  Then she can't go to sleep because she's too hungry and she ends up crying until well into the night until either we give her a snack or we drink ourselves unconscious.  I am not exaggerating when I say that she has cried in her room from 8:30 until close to 2 am until I finally gave in and brought her a cereal bar. 

We have tried allowing her to eat her dinner later, if she chooses.  She refuses, saying that at bedtime you can only eat snacks and not dinner.  I have tried offering her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches or carrots and dip for snacks so that she can get some nutrition but then I realized that she was just holding out for these things.  Then I began trying to give her these things at dinner time, just to end the hassle of it all and GUESS WHAT???? She suddenly didn't like them anymore. 

I will not battle with her over eating.  She does not understand why she can't skip dinner and just eat 8 Fig Newtons at bedtime every night.  This is a battle of wills, and the only way to win the battle of wills with a 3 year old is to not let her know it's a battle.  I just tell her I really don't care if she's hungry.  She can eat what I give her or not at all.  And although I say these things, I have to admit that when she turns into a total asshole because she's hungry after refusing to eat lunch and then she refuses to eat anything other than whatever random food item she deems necessary at that moment (it Alvin and the Chipmunks gummy snacks, today) I just send her to her room until she can chill the fuck out and act like a human child again.  Sometimes I can get her to eat normal food, sometimes I can't.  Usually, I compromise on a bowl of cereal or yogurt or something and about half the time, she still refuses to eat it, but I still feel like she holds out for these snack foods that she likes better than actual meals.  It's not the fact that she only wants to eat a few foods.  Its the fact that the few foods she wants to eat are cookies, chips, and ice cream.

I know the old adage that a healthy kid will not starve herself.  But no one ever says she won't maker her mother completely insane in her quest to only eat the 3 items she wants to eat so that she can prove who is in charge.

That BASTARD!!!

Yesterday, we were having dinner at my mother's house and Lila was in the form she always is in at Grandma's... "Total Brat Mode" (TBM). During dinner Lila starts whining and crying about something and since she probably didnt really know what it was that she wanted she couldnt tell us and it turned into a fiasco of whining and screaming and trying to wiggle out of the high chair.

My aunt was there and gave me a sorry look and I said "welcome to my whole day, every day". Ben had the fucking nerve to say to me "Really? How do you think I feel? I had her all day today and most of the day yesterday. I am sick of hearing you bitch about how hard it is."

Now besides the obvious "FUCK YOU," which I couldn't say in front of everyone there, I wanted to clarify something. BEN DID NOT HAVE HER ALL DAY. We were both home with her. We both took her to the grocery store. He thinks that just because I am in the next room doing the dishes and he is responsible for making sure she doesnt crack her skull on anything that he "has her all day" and I find that fucking offensive. Like I was out of town on a spa date for the weekend and it was just him alone with her for days at a time (I fucking WISH!!!).

During the week while he gets to be a productive member of society, I get to tend to her every whim (and believe me, there are millions of them) and try to stay sane while watching Calliou for the 400th time before noon. And because a couple of days a week my mother keeps her while I work part time just to have some grown up time, she is spoiled and has no sense of boundaries or rules. When Lila falls down or cries dramatically for 45 minutes because her doll fell off the couch, there is no one else there so that I dont have to drop everything and comfort her. There is no second parent to keep an eye on her so I can take a quick shower. There is no other parent there to give her lunch so that I can get a few things done. And that is the luxury that Ben has when he claims he "has her all day" on Sundays.

I shouldnt complain too much. I realize that most people dont have the help I have with Lila. I realize that Ben helps more than many Dads and that he tries to participate as much as possible. But we are FAR from equal in our parenting and this kind of traditional arrangement is something that I vehemently protest because I figured that I was more evolved than that.

And yet, he has the NERVE to tell me he's tired of hearing ME complain about how hard it is? Maybe I need to take more time for myself to show him what it's really like to have her ALL DAY.

Dining-in, forever.

It's not very often that Ben and I feel brave enough to take Lila out to eat. But occasionally, insanity strikes and we decide that it may be okay.

Yesterday was Fathers day and Lila and I went to breakfast with Daddy. We chose a hole in the wall little diner thinking that if nothing else it would be quick and quick is good when you have a kid that only sits still for about 15 minutes. It was trouble immediately. We should never have gone. Lila woke up extra early which meant she was extra tired and grumpy and by the time we arrived at the diner she was already fighting us about our choice of music in the car ("Duck song! Duck song!" she yelled over Led Zepplin).

We alowed her to sit in a big girl seat (booster) instead of the high chair and for about 45 seconds that was thrilling. Then the whining started. Then the yelling. We are not barbarians, we have established rules and for several minutes I tried to ask her "What do we do when we go out to the store?" "NO yelling, No running, no screaming," she reported back to me. "Then why are you yelling?" "NO MOMMY!!!!" She relplied and then let out a mind blowing shrill scream.

The waitress saw our struggle and brought over a big box of crayons and a coloring book which appeared to save the day...For the moment. We ordered our food, and Lila sat contentedly coloring until the food came. She actually ate like 7 bites and then decided that good-girl-time was over. Nothing could get her to stop the yelling and screaming and whining until finally, half-way through my meal, I picked her up and took her out to the car and Ben got our remaining breakfasts to go.

Here's my question...What's worse? Being that parent who yells at their kids in public or being the one that tries to talk to them in public? Either way, people look at you like you are doing it all wrong. I would love to be the kind of parent who just throws Lila a look and she KNOWS that it's time to knock it off. But instead, I try to talk to her. No negotiation. No pleading. Just simple "Stop it." But when she doesnt listen, and I am sitting there and everyone is being made to listen to my kid yell at me, all I want to do is be that parent who nobly stands up to her 2-year-old and says, "I AM NOT TAKING THIS ANYMORE," and have her understand that I mean business.

Since I dont spank her, I am left to wonder (along with Lila) what "meaning business" actually means. Leaving is often what she wants so to get up and leave isn't really a punishment. And sitting there isn't necessarily an option.

Sometimes, like yesterday, I sit there with my head in my hands and think, "I hate being a mother."

The kid has made her decision

The kid has decided that she no longer needs to sleep. No naps, no rest periods. And certainly no need to sleep for more than an hour or so at a time at night. It appears that she believes that there is just too much going on for her to waste her time unconscious. She confided that her new mantra is "I can sleep when I'm dead."

This is challenging to me to say the least. The fact that she vehemently hates naps is something that I am trying to work on, although there are a lot of days where I just don't have it in me to fight about it. Sometimes I just let her bounce off the walls until she wears herself out. But the nighttime thing is a new phenomenon.

After about 3 hours of sleep she wakes up to eat. She drinks her bottle and goes back to sleep with little problem. But an hour later she wakes up wide-awake and ready to party.

Lila can outscream my patience in the middle of the day. There was a time where I took the advice of the so-called experts to let her cry herself back to sleep and she would do so after 5 or 10 minutes. But lately she has been on streaks or 30-45 minutes, at which point I am wide awake anyway and so I just go try to get her back to sleep.

Last night she woke up screaming. I assumed she was hungry and got her a bottle and rocked her. She took two sips and was out cold. So I eased her back into her crib. I then went back to bed. A few minutes later, she was screaming again. I assumed she was ready to have her bottle so I gave it to her and what do you know? Two sips and she was out. We did this three times. Then I decided that since she was just wanting me, I had to put her back to bed. A few nights earlier I brought her to bed with me and she thought it was play time and kicked and giggled and stuck her hands into her sleeping daddy's mouth repeatedly. That wasn't an option. And so commenced the crying.

After 30 minutes, Ben went to get her. He picked her up, tried to give her a bottle but she refused. She wanted to play. He rocked her and she realized he was trying to get her back to sleep and that was the start of the battle of wills. She cried for 30 minutes in his arms. She just did not want to sleep. We traded.

I decided that we really do need to let her learn that night time is not play time and we aren't going to reward her antics by getting up and hanging out with her. We put her in her bed. She screamed for another 45 minutes before she finally wore herself out.

I lay there thinking what a terrible mother I am for doing this to her. If she wants me shouldn't I be there? The emotional side of me says I should. But parenting is also about teaching hard lessons, and lesson one for her is "at night, mom needs some sleep or else she won't be able to deal with your daytime antics without medication and caffeine."

More fun from the front lines

I am tired of fighting with my daughter. This is really sad because she is only 7 months old and already wants to NOT do whatever it is that I need her to do. Whether it's eat or sleep or play or scream...when I want her to do it, she refuses.

I was afraid of this. I was terrified as soon as I heard I was gonna have a girl that my mother's curse ("someday, you'll get it all back one-hundred-fold") during my troubled teen girl years would come to fruition. To say that I was difficult is like saying that Hurricaine Katrina was a "rain storm" and I expected to have a kid that was stubborn and contrary. But I didn't expect it until after she talked.

Lila fights me. She hates to be tired so even if she can barely keep her eyes open she growls and grunts and wriggles around trying to stay awake. Even when she's starving and chewing the lead paint off her toys, as soon as I try to feed her she spits and frantically waves her hands until I leave her to her own devices. When I put her down, she yells to be picked up but when I hold her she tries to get down.

She wants to play and then when I try to engage her she looks away. Then she screams for attention.

Everyone says motherhood is the hardest job in the world but no one REALLY told me how hard it is. I feel like there is some conspiracy out there trying to force women into reproducing by talking about how WONDERFUL pregnancy is, and how GLORIOUS motherhood is. Both are lies. Straight out bald faced lies.

Remember that girls the next time you think about having unprotected sex.