More on Food

As an answer to anyone who might have read my last post and thought that I just need to offer Pumpkin more vegetables, here is a list, probably incomplete, of the vegetables she has been offered but refused to eat. Each thing on this list has been offered multiple times. Some things, such as carrots, have probably been offered close to 100 times by now.

• zucchini (sliced and shredded, steamed, fried, and grilled)
• broccoli (a.k.a "little trees", raw and cooked with cheese sauce)
• carrots (raw and cooked, with and without sauces, ad infinitum... she'll nibble them, but spits them out)
• corn (on the cob and off)
• asparagus (steamed and grilled)
• green beans
• red, yellow, and green peppers (raw and cooked)
  
• spinach (raw and cooked)
• tomatoes (raw and cooked, chopped, as a soup, and in sauces)
• butternut squash (in soup and cooked in pasta dishes)
• potatoes (mashed or baked)
• peas (frozen or cooked)
• hummus
  

And here is the sadly complete list of vegetable-like things she will actually eat:

• sweet potato fries (this took about 10 tries, but now she'll eat them >75% of the time)
• carrots when shredded and cooked into carrot cake pancakes (but not always)
• ketchup
• french fries
• refried beans, but only at day care
  

Hubby and I try to eat a vegetable with every dinner. I am building quite a collection of ideas about how to quickly prepare vegetables in a way that I can stand to eat (remember, most green veggies taste bitter to me). One of my current "go to" recipes is to put a bunch of green beans in a microwave-safe dish, plop a little bit of butter on them, pour on some orange juice, and sprinkle on some thyme, salt, and pepper. Then I microwave them for 3-5 minutes (depending on the number of beans), stirring once.

We've had better luck with fruit- Pumpkin likes grapes, strawberries, bananas, pineapples, applesauce (but not whole apples or apple slices!), raspberries, and sometimes tangerines ("tangeringes") and mandarin oranges. We've also tried pears, blueberries, kiwifruit and several different stone fruits, but those have yet to meet with success. We can get away with just about any fruit when it is blended up into a smoothie, though, particularly, if we add strawberries to the smoothie.

It is just like sleep, in my opinion- you can do everything "right" and still not have great success. However, I think it is interesting that the article I found on supertasters says that most kids can taste the bitter compound, even if they will eventually become "non-tasters". So maybe we're all just fated to have to struggle to get our kids to eat their vegetables.

Anyone have any suggestions for more vegetables we should try?

On Food

I have finally figured out why Pumpkin's potty regression is bothering me so much, and no, it is not because I'm cleaning up a lot of poop (although I wouldn't say that I enjoy that aspect of it). It is because it is taking me back to the way I felt when Pumpkin was a baby and just would not sleep through the night. It is making me feel like I must be doing it all wrong. Surely something as simple as going potty (or sleeping) shouldn't be this hard?

Rationally, I know that yes, indeed, sleeping and pottying can be this hard for some kids. Just because something seems easy to us as adults (and actually, sleep, at least isn't that easy for some adults), that doesn't mean it will be easy for a kid. The amount of brain development that is going to occur between now and when Pumpkin is an adult is staggering, so why should I expect her to be rational about the potty? But on an emotional level, my gut wrenches a bit every time some one asks me how the potty training is going, because admitting the truth feels like admitting that I've screwed up.

So it is killing me to suddenly be reading all of this guilt and angst from people about feeding their kids. I'm not going to link to the blog posts that I've read, because the last thing I'd want to do is make anyone feel even worse about this by somehow implying that they shouldn't feel what they do. Eating is another thing that seems so simple, until you try to feed your kid. And just like some kids are easier sleepers than others, some are easier to feed than others.

The proximal cause of all of this angst is Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution TV show. I've never seen the show- TV is so low on my priority list right now that I might as well replace our television set with a potted plant- so I only know what I've read about it. Therefore, I have no feeling for whether Jamie Oliver would be pleased that he's making people feel guilty or horrified. (If you have been living in an even deeper cave than I have, you can read Marion Nestle's write up about the show to get an idea of what it is about.) I, for one, think that making people feel guilty is never a good way to bring about lasting change, so it saddens me to read guilt-ridden blog posts about food from women whose good motherhood practically oozes from the computer screen.

It doesn't surprise me, though- just read the comments on Marion Nestle's follow up story about an evaluation of the results of Jamie Oliver's show to see why parents might feel guilty. If our kids won't eat their vegetables it is clearly all our fault and all we need to do is sit them down with a plate of spinach for dinner and tell them that is all they are getting and/or that they aren't leaving the table until they eat their greens.

I call bullshit on this idea. I think that these strict, inflexible approaches to vegetable eating probably do work for some kids. Heck, they may even work for most kids, I don't know. But I know for a fact that they didn't work on me as a kid, and I'm grateful that my parents recognized that pretty quickly and switched tactics. I am still a picky eater, but I now eat a variety of vegetables, and I'm a fairly healthy adult. I don't seem to have suffered any lasting harm from my "white food years", and we can all look back and laugh at how I once stopped eating pizza because my parents told me that the spaghetti sauce I wouldn't eat was the same as the sauce on pizza. (Yes, this is a true story.)

I suspect that temperament and other genetic factors play a role in eating, just like they do in sleep. For instance, a supertaster is unlikely to ever eat unadorned green vegetables, because they taste very bitter to her. Perhaps the strict approaches work well for your average everyday toddler food defiance, but I don't think they are likely to work well on a really picky eater. The cry it out sleep training methods don't work on some kids (as anyone who has had a child cry until she throws up can attest), so why should we expect strict "eat it or starve" approaches to feeding to work on everyone?

None of this should be taken to mean that I think our food system is all hunky-dory. I think there are some serious problems with how we approach food. Long time readers might remember that I went on a little food reading kick when I was pregnant with Petunia, and came away wanting some changes in both my own approach to food and my country's approach to food. I may even agree with Jamie Oliver's goals- since I didn't watch the show, I don't know. But I also think we are prone to looking for silver bullet solutions to our problems with obesity and the like. We vilify certain foods- high-fructose corn syrup and "processed" foods are the current targets- but don't stop to think about what the real problems are (too much added sugar of any sort and too much salt and fat, respectfully, in my opinion).

We seem to have a hard time thinking about food issues sensibly. I have yet to see any evidence that convinces me that my body can tell the difference between the glucose and fructose in HFCS and the glucose and fructose in sucrose. But the evidence that my body doesn't need all that extra refined sugar is pretty strong. So I won't scour the grocery store looking for cookies made with "real" sugar to give to Pumpkin- I'll limit her intake of cookies.

I also don't think the vitamins in the food I serve my children can tell whether the food was made with love or for profit. Food is not inherently bad for us just because someone else made it, even if that someone else is workers 2054 through 2078 in some giant company. I think we should judge our food on its ingredients and not on how it was made. Take the sweet potatoes that are currently Petunia's favorite food. I could make these from scratch. I could cook up some sweet potatoes and puree them with water. But I can also buy "processed" sweet potato baby food. The ingredients in this are sweet potatoes and water. Does it really matter who does the pureeing? Similarly, I rely heavily on preshredded cheese to make it easier for me to get dinner ready in the limited time I have after we get home from day care. The ingredients in that are cheese, some starch (to keep the cheese from lumping together in the bag), and natamycin (to inhibit mold growth). I'm not too concerned about either of these "extra" ingredients, so why should I feel bad that I'm not the one who shredded the cheese?

Am I thrilled that Pumpkin will only eat chicken if it is formed into a nugget and breaded? No. Do I wish I could get her to eat a vegetable other than sweet potato fries? Of course. Am I going to feel guilty about her eating habits because of what somebody who has never met me or my (extremely stubborn but really quite wonderful) little girl says? No way.

A Transference of Guilt

Before Petunia was born, in the final months of my pregnancy, I would often sit on Pumpkin's bed after she had (finally) fallen asleep and feel an overwhelming wave of guilt for the changes I was about to bring to her world. I assumed that the new baby would bring abrupt and significant changes to her beloved bedtime routine. I thought that Pumpkin would feel left out in the new family dynamic.

That is not what has happened at all. Pumpkin has adjusted really well to having a new baby in the house, perhaps because the baby is so easy-going as to barely disrupt her routines. She still has the same bedtime routine- Petunia is sound asleep before Pumpkin's routine even begins, having gone down ridiculously easily at about 7 p.m.

In fact, most of the time, I feel guilty for Petunia, who is not getting the same sort of babyhood as Pumpkin did. Pumpkin played on the floor with me every morning, while I ate my breakfast. Petunia gets this sometimes, if she wakes up early and Pumpkin wakes up late, but mostly she sits in her bouncy chair and chews on a teether (or "teeter" as Pumpkin calls it) while Pumpkin and I eat our breakfasts. Pumpkin got our undivided attention when we got home from work, since we postponed our own dinner until after she was in bed. Petunia sits in her bouncy chair after I get home from work, while I rush around the kitchen trying to get dinner ready so that we can all eat together before Pumpkin's bedtime. (Pumpkin watches Dora during this time, an arrangement I no longer feel bad about at all, although I do still have to reappear to dance to the "We Did It!" song with her.)

Petunia is such a laid back little baby. She often gets left on her mat to play on her own while we tend to Pumpkin, our intense little girl. I sometimes wonder what Petunia must think of the whirlwind of activity and the often screeching little girl at the center of it all. ("No! I don' want to go potty with you Daddy! Mommy goes potty with me!")

Petunia does cry out if she is left alone too long and gets lonely, and as often as not, it is Pumpkin who goes rushing to her to cheer her up. And the sight of Pumpkin almost always does cheer Petunia up. Petunia smiles at me when she sees me at day care, but bounces with joy when she sees Pumpkin. If Pumpkin sleeps in (a rare event), Petunia gets fussy when her usual wake up time passes and she has not appeared, then calms down and smiles when Pumpkin comes running down the hall.

Hubby and I try our best to do right by Petunia. We make a point of reading her bedtime stories every night, even though she would happily go to sleep without them. We try to split up some on the weekends, to give Petunia some one-on-one time with a parent, without the noise and distraction that is always around when Pumpkin is present. But the fact is, Petunia demands less of us than Pumpkin does, and so, sometimes, she gets less. I am very glad that she had 5 months of spending her days at home without Pumpkin (Pumpkin was in day care), when her needs and wants could dictate the schedule, and I feel guilty that she almost never gets time like that now.

So the guilt I don't feel about Pumpkin isn't gone- it is just transformed into guilt for Petunia, and this probably explains why I worry that maybe I should be doing more to challenge her to learn new skills.

But last week, the tables turned a little bit, and I got a glimpse of what the life I had expected would have been like. Petunia was going through her 6 month growth spurt, and waking up far more often than usual in the night. By Saturday, I was exhausted during the day. I longed for sleep so badly that I could taste it- a sensation all too familiar to me from Pumpkin's baby days. Pumpkin, in the meantime, continued her potty regression at home, despite her return to using the potty at day care. I could clearly see that what she needed was a patient and playful Mommy, who would help coax her to go potty more often. What she got was a tired, grumpy Mommy, who demanded that she go potty! Right now! This approach didn't really work, resulting in more accidents. And it wasn't like Petunia was getting quality mothering, either- she mostly got a bleary-eyed Mommy who either fumbled around and nursed her or waved a rattle in her face.

Then, starting Saturday night, things returned to normal. Petunia only woke up once. (For some reason, Pumpkin woke up once each night, too, but not until almost morning, so that wasn't too disruptive of my sleep.) Today, I felt better, and after work, I was able to turn Pumpkin's sudden obsession with her play phone into a game and get her to the potty before she had an accident. We even took a post-dinner walk around the block with both kids. So I guess I should stop feeling bad for Petunia- any slight she is experiencing is due to birth order, and not her personality. If anything, things could only be worse.

Zenbit: Teenage Fun

A school group arrived at our hotel not long after we did, and had the requisite fun in the sand and surf.

Location: Langkawai Island, Malaysia
Date: February 16, 2006

Maintaining my Mommyblogger Cred

After I wrote last night's post, I realized that it has been a long time since I told y'all about how cute and wonderful my kids are.

Pumpkin will be three in a week and a half. She is growing up in so many ways. Santa brought her a scooter for Christmas. She was a little unsure about it for a long time. But recently, she's been riding it more- my parents gave Hubby a scooter of his own for his birthday, and seeing Daddy ride his scooter renewed her interest in riding hers.



There are very few vestiges of baby speak left in her speech. "Bobbin" is long gone, replaced by "bottom". However, she still sometimes says "stank you" instead of "thank you". And the beads my sister brought home from her recent trip to New Orleans are Pumpkin's "neck-uh-lace".

Petunia is still doing great at day care. She is an extremely smiley, laid back little baby. Today, I got to day care when she was 20 minutes into a nap. I woke her up to put her in her car seat. She didn't cry or complain at all about being woken up. She looked around, a little bit confused, and then gave the room a big smile.

I sometimes wonder if she is a bit too laid back, though. She rolled over from her back to her tummy a few weeks ago. Once. She has shown no real interest in doing it again. She can sit up on her own for a little while if we put her in that position, but gives no indication that she is in a hurry to learn how to get there on her own. This is so different from Pumpkin's behavior at this age. Pumpkin was always pushing for the next skill. I don't really think there is anything wrong with Petunia's more laid back approach (and I certainly appreciate the relative rarity of crying), but I do wonder if we should be doing more to encourage her to master new skills. It is becoming clear that the parenting techniques that worked with Pumpkin may not be right for Petunia.