Mom wars. So I've made it no secret that I am a message board addict. I have had to take some self imposed breaks, but like a true addict, I keep going back for more. I really don't post that often, but I do get my kicks on reading posts that attract a lot of controversy and comments and get all riled up about them. I'm always seriously just SHOCKED at how worked up people get about some common mom debates - the most recent being cloth versus disposable diapers. Hey, I know cloth is great and better for probably everyone involved, but it's not for everyone. This post on babble, while really condescending and pretty lame, had some comments that were seriously astounding to me. I find it REALLY sad that people actually took the time to say this author is a bad mother and lazy and stupid, etc, for not cloth diapering. However, she was being a brat in her original post too - so I guess that's what you get. But really. Over 250 comments?!?!?!?!?!?! Insane. There are so many of these wars and we are honestly so privileged to get to even fight about them. Our kids all have food, shelter, and ANY diapers to wear. Chilling out would probably be beneficial. So would me just.... stepping away from posts like this in the first place! I'm glad my blog is in no way controversial because I'm pretty sure I couldn't handle reading comments like that directed at myself.
Baby gets a try at Dad's shoes
Annie has recently been holding up baby to say cheese for pictures - Ben has also caught her holding her hands at her eyes like she's holding a camera and saying "click" and then "cute!" when taking fake pictures of her baby.......... hahaha
Since I was gone for the majority of the day on Saturday at prenatal yoga and my little tea gathering, Ben took Annie to the Children's Museum with Nate and Mia. They decided to go to McDonald's for lunch after (Ben did discuss this with me first) - yeah I know we all grew up going to fast food (or I did at least) but it still makes me uneasy introducing food like this to Annie. Ben and I had a little discussion about this and came to the conclusion that it's fine in moderation (as in, maybe 2-3x a year) and that we feed her whole, unprocessed foods at home (even if it does include a lot of cheese) so to let it go. She enjoyed it greatly, apparently - Ben got her the milk and apples option and didn't get the toy, but then you apparently STILL get fries. Great! :) I'm not sure why in my head I make a distinction between "fast food" places like Chipotle, smashburger and Panera, but I definitely do. Those places are okay to me (well, smashburger is debatable) but McDonald's just seems so... dirty. But yet... I still love their Sausage McMuffin with Egg something fierce....
A little worn out - when they got home she took a 3 hour nap, so one of the 3 longest naps OF HER LIFE.
Apparently kept tapping the wrapper asking for ketchup here. We barely ever have ketchup. Really, how do they learn these things?!
On the eating front, in the past week Annie has been really annoying at dinner time - just not wanting to eat, even things that are pretty tasty, and really picking at her food and playing with it. Pretty typical stuff. I had a discussion with Sue about limiting her snacks at daycare (we rarely give her snacks at home, especially in the afternoon) so I thought that would help, but it hasn't. Mostly I think we need to stop ANY commentary about eating and food during dinner - no more "don't you want to try this?", "can you take a bite?" type of crap. If she wants to eat, she will eat. If she doesn't, there is very little we can say or do at this point in her life to make her - I don't want to bribe her with dessert and even if I did, she doesn't get that concept yet. So, basically dinnertime will be practice in zen meditation and deep breathing exercises for Ben and I :) I included a story about one dinner time in this post on the cooking blog - it was both maddening and completely hilarious. Another would be when we made this meatloaf - Annie ate it really well (pointed at her plate several times asking for ketchup though, which is annoying to me for some reason) but then kept the last few bites in her mouth for seriously probably 30 minutes. I sat there with her at the table, since I didn't want her to leave with food still in her mouth - previously she has spit it out and we very sternly tell her no, and then she freaks out - so she was keeping it in her mouth but not swallowing. I kept telling her to swallow her food (not sure she even REALLY knows what that means since it's just a reflex to her) but she'd just start crying.... finally Ben had to just take her and take the food out with his finger. Thankfully that hasn't happened since! SO weird though - just..... why?? WHY?? Which reminds me of this article, and the first tip of what you SHOULDN'T do with a toddler - ever ask them why, or in general try to reason with them. So true, and something I find myself doing way too often! "Why aren't you eating?" "Why are you holding food in your mouth?" Oh what? You can't speak in more than 2-3 word sentences? Oh, I guess I forgot :)
But see how cute she is?!?!!
Oh also, sometimes when Annie is having a meltdown at the table, she points at her room saying "room?? room??" because she wants to go in there, slam the door (her version is just pushing it closed for now, thankfully), and throw herself on the ground to have a little tantrum before coming back out. It's alternately disturbing that she's freaking out that much, and awesome that she knows she needs a little alone time to chill out - she usually comes back out in a minute or two for a hug and to resume whatever we were doing. One time she was in there for a bit longer, so I went in there too and found her curled up on a pillow with a blanket - so I laid down with her, and she got all excited and jumped up, saying "pillow??? pillow??" until she found me one, and then, "blantet" (blanket) and then got me a stuffed bunny too :) It was quite cute.
Crazy hair in the mornings
But see how cute she is?!?!!
Oh also, sometimes when Annie is having a meltdown at the table, she points at her room saying "room?? room??" because she wants to go in there, slam the door (her version is just pushing it closed for now, thankfully), and throw herself on the ground to have a little tantrum before coming back out. It's alternately disturbing that she's freaking out that much, and awesome that she knows she needs a little alone time to chill out - she usually comes back out in a minute or two for a hug and to resume whatever we were doing. One time she was in there for a bit longer, so I went in there too and found her curled up on a pillow with a blanket - so I laid down with her, and she got all excited and jumped up, saying "pillow??? pillow??" until she found me one, and then, "blantet" (blanket) and then got me a stuffed bunny too :) It was quite cute.
Crazy hair in the mornings
On that note, I do sometimes really miss eating just with Ben, and not having to account for a toddler at all when meal planning, and mostly just when eating. I LOVE making and eating things that we all enjoy, but it was nice to be able to make stuff that was a little more adult oriented... however, family meals are really important to me, and since we are able to do them easily with our schedules, we will forge ahead :) I was looking back through the main dish tag of my blog last night and just reminiscing about the days of eating sans toddler..... how relaxing... and .... clean :) I know by most standards, we are pretty adventurous with what we eat as a family anyway, so I guess it's really not so bad.
We had a little playdate on Sunday with Adelaide, Abby and Nathan - Adelaide looks really excited to play with all the little kids :)
Adelaide gave Annie these frozen peas to help her when she "hurt" herself and cried for a second :)
Their little makeshift train
Now after all that semi-complaining about Annie, I also want to share just how awesome she has been lately - so much fun! She seems again like she's just grown and changed overnight. This whole weekend she was in such a good mood, and so playful and funny. I have been trying to get a few videos of her lately so I can capture some of her cute ways of pronouncing words - here are a few pics and videos I got lately.
She really is in LOVE with coloring now - she asks to color pretty much every single day!
Enjoying the fort that Ben made her!
So this photo is what I was showing Annie in the video below... just for background :) because I wanted her to say glasses and smoothie on camera
Seriously my favorite video yet. I LOVE her pronunciations and will be a little sad when she figures out how to say them correctly!
Another awesome one - Annie loves the book Corduroy, so we read it a lot - her way of saying Corduroy is adorable. No clue how she came up with that one, but whatever!
14 comments:
Love the videos. Annie is just adorable!
Last week we decided we weren't offering Ry anymore of the stupid Gerber meals anymore, and she has been doing alright. But man, it really does stink to have to consider her preferences as well.
I really like the book How to Get Your Kid to Eat, But Not Too Much By Ellyn Satter. It's hard to just let go of some of the control at meals for us because we have an underweight almost two year old and we really would like him to eat more.
Oh she is so cute! Love those videos.
I feel you on getting bored of kid-friendly meals... I also feel strongly about eating as a family. I aim to make 3-4 dinners a week that I KNOW M will like and eat, and roll the dice on the others. If he doesn't eat anything, I don't sweat it, and he doesn't seem to be starving at night when he skips dinner (has a glass of milk at bedtime always).
I grew up eating mostly healthy home cooked meals and we'd have fast food a few times a year, pretty much only when traveling. The healthy eating definitely stuck with me much more than the yumminess of fast food. I did LOVE BK chicken sandwiches as a kid but don't dig much fast food now. I think your fast food "policy" is very reasonable.
agh, the hiccups are too much. Love her little lingo. I'm glad my toddler isn't the only one with words that sound sort of like words, but not really. :) She is so cute!
True Confession: I'm pretty sure I saw you today walking along 3rd Avenue in downtown Minneapolis. I was in my car, but I almost rolled down the window and yelled, HI ERIN - I READ YOUR BLOG! That probably would have freaked you out considering that we have never met in real life. Anyway, just wanted to say that seeing you today was kinda like a celebrity sighting. And that is awesome! Thanks for the bright spot in my day!
Ha, Robyn, that's awesome! I WAS walking along 3rd Ave today because I parked in a different spot. If you do ever see me again, not from the car, definitely say hi :)
I totally agree... McDonalds makes me cringe more than all the others and I have no idea why.
She gets cuter every single photo. The binoculars is almost too much! I need to video more... these are so cute.
I love everything about this post. Her little language!! Too much.
We were at the Museum on Saturday too, but we go around 1:30 after M's nap, so I bet we just missed Ben & Annie. That would've been funny though - I would've walked up to Ben, acting like he should know who I am. ;)
And I think McDonald's is OK once and awhile. Salty, but OK.
I read that comment thread when you linked to it on twitter, and hilariously, I thought the original poster obnoxious and most of the cloth diaperers normal-ish with some ridiculous outliers. But then again, we cloth diapered Kiernan, and I got used to people apologizing and justifying their choices before I'd ever judged them (because obviously I do not care how other people diaper their kids). I gave up reading the comments halfway through, though, so I probably missed the more ridiculous of the pro-cloth diaper people. But when I read your paragraph, it struck me as hilarious that we could read the same thread and come to the same conclusions (seriously who cares and why are we judging people about this) but because of a totally different orientation towards the reasonableness spectrum. :)
Love the videos! They're at such a fun age right now! Zachary has gotten so weird with eating, too. He had a phase where he refused to eat meat for like 2 months. Then he got back to normal eating, and now he's just not eating a whole lot at dinner, even when it's his favorite stuff. The kid used to eat like a lb. of sweet potato fries and yesterday he barely ate 3 little fries. Vegetables end up on the floor now. :P
Just wanted to say hi and introduce myself - I'm Julia's friend, Erin, who has 2-year-old Henry, Truman's good pal! I've seen you comment on her blog a lot so I finally added you to my Google Reader and I really enjoy your blog!
I'm a fellow working mom and I'm due four days before you with #2! And re: this post, I agree that moms fight over the DUMBEST things, and I hear ya on the mealtime thing. It's a battle at least half the time, and I do sometimes miss the days of just eating in peace! Oh well. ;)
The ridiculous mommy war posts are so compelling in a sick way. The hole I fell into on the internet last week - that I don't even want to tell you about because it might suck you in, but ask if you want to know - was basically a site bashing certain blogs and seriously criticizing every little thing about then. I had trouble turning away, especially since I knew of a lot of the blogs they ridicule, but WOW. So mean. Anyway, the icky feelings I'm left with after spending time reading dumb comments/message boards tells me it's not good for me and yet it's hard to cut it all out of my life entirely.
All that aside: Annie's such a cutie!
LOVE the coloring pics - so Cute! mamie
www.dearbabyluhmann.blogspot.com
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