Plugging In The Pop-Tart

feet

We had been putting off the acquisition of a high-chair because I didn't like the idea of yet another clunky baby item draining the apartment's tranquility.  That's how I was able to rationalize feeding squeezy food to Poppy whilst seated on the floor like some kind of savage....

this is poppy's squeezy food.  you just squeeze this
stuff into your baby's mouth; no spoon required-

...Until last week when I discovered that there's this device known as a Lobster  that allows you to stick your baby right there on your table - suspending it in the air.  And once that baby is installed, she's not going anywhere (this thing is solid).  I feel fairly confident in making the claim that this Lobster seating arrangement may literally be the best thing ever.  It's like our table has a USB port!

'who moved my juicebox?'

'how's your love life?'

http://www.shopbabybliss.com/index.php

Misspent Dreams of Fire Retardancy

Whilst purchasing some clothes for The rapidly growing Pop-Tart at Baby Bliss  (an unparalleled baby stuff store in Snider Plaza), I kept seeing these tags on baby clothes:  

exhibit number 1
Let us not give into the temptation to second guess this claim-

In fact, I've seen this warning on lots of Poppy's clothes: 

exhibit number 2

During my pregnancy, I was supremely interested in hearing all about how modern mommies were playing the game.  I listened to almost anyone who seemed to be doing a good job raising their own offspring.  Naturally, I didn't buy everything  that the other parents were selling, I simply listened and took the bits that I thought would work well for my new little family.  I received lots of information - some was helpful and some wasn't, but I tried my best to be a grateful recipient of everyone's two cents.  

During one such session, I was given a peculiar bit of advice:

a well-seasoned mother:  'You need to use Dreft so that the fire retardancy isn't washed out of your daughter's clothes'.  



Actually, this tidbit was presented not as advice but as a divine order backed by conviction and persistance.  A truism to be gulped, not sipped- 

It is with the clarity of hindsight that I can say 'yes'.  Yes, this was the moment, the moment that I realized that there was nothing else that this woman could illuminate for me.  (Unfortunately I continued to hang out with her despite the fact that she was constantly stirring up unnecessary alarmist anxiety.  I finally called it quits on the day that she almost convinced me to spend the money that we have earmarked for grad school on 'the employment a night nanny'.  She informed me that if I didn't have a night nanny come and take care of the baby while my husband and I were sleeping that my mariage and health would almost certainly deteriorate.  'Besides, as soon as the baby is born you will no longer have the desire to go to graduate school.'  I cried in my car for 20 minutes after hearing these revelations, none of which turned out to be true.)

Poppy's fire retardancy is my responsibility.  I have always assumed that, with or without clothing, she is a generally flammable being and that we should both behave accordingly.  I can only hope that these omnipresent warnings on baby clothes help other parents become privy to the fact that their children's clothing will offer them no aide in the realm of fire retardancy*. 

I am still grateful to have received the well-seasoned mother's advice without which I might never have believed that it is necessary to put these warning labels on infant clothing-

*Unless their children's clothing was created at the house of Edna Mode.

http://www.shopbabybliss.com/index.php

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/02/04/gluten-free-whether-you-need-it-or-not/

A Pro-Gluten Movement

A Pro-Gluten Movement: Or Why Blogger Paige Darrah Isn’t Down with this Latest Diet Trend

 by JOSLYN TAYLOR in NOSH Feb 20th, 2013 6:35am 3 Comments Share Post

I try (try being the operative word here) to live by the wisdom of food writer Michael Pollan as much as humanly possible…these two nuggets of his wisdom in particular:

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” 
“Don’t eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize as food.” 

Pollan’s advice resonates for me because it feels logical and balanced (something not always present in food advice these days). The “mostly plants” part says there’s room for other stuff, in moderation, and that said “stuff” should be real food recognizable by those that didn’t have the “luxury” of massive, fluorescent-light filled grocery stores at their disposal.

My own great-grandmother made a huge homemade breakfast from scratch every morning before my great grandfather would go to work on their farm in Kentucky. As a child, I had the occasional pleasure of being on the receiving end of her massive buffet of scrambled eggs (from the farm, natch), sliced tomatoes, homemade biscuits, and homemade fresh peach hand pies. She didn’t make smoothies or steel cut oatmeal. She made peach hand pies… We enjoyed them, in moderation, and then ran around outside for the rest of the morning burning them off before regrouping for a similarly decedent lunch spread.

I think it’s safe to assume that in the scenario above Mr. Pollan would approve of the peach hand pies.

The imbalance of our current daily life has forced us into complicated relationships with food. Sadly, running around outdoors has been replaced by 8-10 hours of sitting in front of our computers. So, to atone for our sedentary ways, we go extreme…way extreme. No carbs, no meat, no sugar, no dairy, and, the latest object of our denial, no gluten.

Gluten is indeed the enemy for a large number of folks that suffer from severe allergies and Celiac disease. But, for lots of others, eliminating it has become another way to stay slim and healthy…But does it work? Dallas mom and blogger Paige Darrah has the same question, so she went straight to her daughter Poppy’s pediatrician to get the 411 on Gluten.

Here’s her take.

*******

By Paige Darrah

A recent SNL sketch shows a young couple on a date at a hip, dimly lit restaurant (it looks to me like they’re at Craft). The young man has just taken a bite:

Jason Sudeikis: ‘Hmmm. You wanna try some of my pasta?’
Nasim Pedrad: ‘Oh, I’d love to, but, ugghh, I’m allergic to gluten.’
Jason places his hand on Nasim’s hand.
Jason Sudeikis: ‘That must be sooo hard.’
Narrator: ‘When you’re faking an allergy to gluten or lactose, reach for Flaritin for fast relief.’

The subject of gluten-free diets came up in a recent chat with Poppy’s pediatrician, Dr. Christopher Dreiling (pediatrician extraordinaire at Pediatric Associates of Dallas).

Me: “So, Dr. Dreiling, what’s the deal with all these gluten-free people? Their food tastes terrible.”

Dr. Dreiling: “I love gluten. I order extra gluten on the side.”

Me: “Me too! Most of the gluten-free stuff that I’ve tried is far from tasty. Do you think people are faking a wheat allergy to seem more interesting, or is it a weight loss diet thing, or is it simply that more people have wheat allergies these days?”

Dr. Dreiling: “Lately I’ve had parents asking me if putting their kid on a gluten-free diet would help tame their child’s autism, ADHD, development problems, random fatigue, etc.. They come to me saying that little Johnny’s mother eliminated gluten from her son’s diet and all of a sudden he was doing better in school. The reality is that if you eliminate gluten, you eliminate other stuff too. That’s the problem with a nebulous elimination strategy; the danger of non-science tactics (Steve Jobs is one example). They expect to feel much better, and so they do – for a little while (gotta love that placebo effect). The same thing applies with many other random cleanses and cyclical diet trends – if not done properly they can be very unhealthy.”

Dr. Dreiling went on to explain that people can have different grades of gluten sensitivity. These grades can range from a mild gluten sensitivity (if you eat gluten you experience mild abdominal discomfort) to full-blown Celiac Disease (gluten intolerance as advertised).

I had a friend in college who couldn’t tolerate gluten, and she wouldn’t stand for it. Let’s call her Sylvie. Yep, Sylvie was gluten intolerant. As a result, there wasn’t very much that she could eat at the campus cafeteria, or anywhere else for that matter. It was only later that I found out that Sylvie did not actually have Celiac Disease, she was just anorexic.

As someone who has been a card-carrying vegetarian for 10 years (with only a brief intermission during my third trimester of pregnancy. Damn you Arby’s and your savory roast beef sandwiches!), I can certainly understand the need for weight loss tactics. Having said that, I’m calling into question some of those serendipitously gluten intolerant individuals whilst asking the1% of Americans who have a genuine gluten intolerance for a small favor: Please keep your voices down. The increasing prevalence of your food threatens to box out the palatable food.

http://moms.dmagazine.com/2013/02/a-pro-gluten-movement-or-why-blogger-paige-darrah-isnt-down-with-this-latest-diet-trend/

Why I Plan To Hedge Poppy (inch'allah)

primary school hedging strategy =>  an A-list primary school education won't necessarily translate to creative virtuosity, but it does mean that it is statistically less likely that your child will turn out to be lackluster.  When I'm 80 and sitting 'round the Luby's lunch table with my fellow seniors, it'd be nice to have some accomplishments to brag about.  And, considering it's doubtful that I'll have had many of note, I'm going to send Poppy to excellent schools and see what she can come up with/innovate/weave/sing/write/fix/marry.  

______________

I usually listen to Pandora whilst getting aerobic.  During one such treadmill session a few days ago I heard the following lyrics coming from my 'Carla Bruni' station:

Je ne veux pas travailler

Je ne veux pas déjeuner

Je veux seulement l'oublier

Et puis je fume

Which I recognized to mean something like:

I don't want to work

I don't want to have lunch

I only want to forget (something specific)

and then I smoke

The rest of the song goes on to talk about how she's not proud of this lack of ambition.  She believes that it's magnificent to be a nice person...she just never knew how to be nice.

[Simple yet profound huh?  This girl really put herself out there.] 

While still walking on the treadmill I tapped around on Pandora to find out who was singing these funny and succinct lyrics.  She's an American (which surprised me because her French accent is so beautiful) by the name of....wait for it....China Forbes.  Yes, her first name is China and her last name is Forbes.  China Forbes.  She went to Exeter - a high school that has educated a whole heap of smart and creative people.  People like:

-William Butler of Arcade Fire.

-Jeff Ma: that MIT blackjack dude.  He was the subject of Ben Mezrich's book Bringing Down the House that later became a movie starring Kevin Spacey and Kate Bosworth.

-Mark Zuckerberg: you know this guy.

-and one of those Coors beer guys.

After Exeter, Ms. China Forbes went to Harvard and studied visual arts which resulted in the creation of the following visually artistic music video:

Ma chambre a la forme d'une cage

Le soleil passe son bras par la fenêtre

Les chasseurs ma porte

Comme les p'tits soldats

Qui veulent me prendre

Chorus:

Je ne veux pas travailler

Je ne veux pas déjeuner

Je veux seulement l'oublier

Et puis je fume

Déjà j'ai connu le parfum de l'amour

Un million de roses n'embaumerait pas autant

Maintenant une seule fleur dans mes entourages

Me rend malade

Je ne suis pas fière de sa

Vie qui veut me tuer

C'est magnifique être Sympathique

Mais je ne le connais jamais

http://www.largeheartedboy.com/blog/archive/2010/06/maria_semple_in.html

http://www.portlandfamily.com/posts/unbreakable-china/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Forbes

Operation Purge Mom's Superfluous Crap

Understatements Are Timeless (and they promote tranquility) 

Brett Paesel wrote an interesting article entitled I Love You. (Your Stuff, Not So Much) in Parents  magazine this month (well, the article is not interesting  interesting, but it is practical and validating).  Well Brett, I don't like clutter either, in fact I have a rather extreme aversion to stuff that has worn out its usefulness (if it ever had any). 

When I was little, my mother was a card-carrying packrat.  Still is actually.  I found this so bothersome that I used to sneak around the house throwing away decorative teacups and fake plants and dusty ski trophies reminiscent of glory days gone by (bye-bye).  I pursued 'Operation Purge Mom's Superfluous Crap' until a neighbor called her up one day to tell her that there was a collection of mysterious domestic items accumulating in the drainage ditch behind our backyard.  That call marked the end of The Operation.

Ten years ago my husband, Pat, and I threw almost every knickknack we had into a box before our firstborn could destroy it. We put the box in the basement of our apartment building, intending to reunite with our stuff when our son was older. The box sat, like a time capsule, in a cage seven stories below us. When we finally decided that it was safe to bring up the box, however, we couldn't remember what was in it. Which raised the obvious question: If we had done without these items for so long, why resurrect them now? We agreed to leave them below ground.

This simple act started a domestic reassessment of how we viewed material things. First, we became realistic: After our older child poked holes in our furniture with his fork, we chose the floor sample of a dining-room table—with a few nicks and missing screws—rather than buy a new one.

Yet in spite of the fact that Pat and I had reduced our interest in stuff, by storing heirlooms and making peace with damaged items, we still had a lot of it. Our apartment bulged with papers and plastic things, art supplies and rocks. It seemed that stuff literally stuck to our now two children. Every time they walked in the door, they brought in more things that piled up by their beds and on top of their desks.

Added to that was what I can only call "debris." What was it? Little scraps of paper? Tiny sticks and folded plastic straws? The boys left a trail of it everywhere they went, spilling out of their pockets and the cuffs of their jeans. Although the debris was not technically "stuff," the boys were just as attached to it as they were to identifiable items.

"Don't throw that out," my older son, Spencer, would say as I turned his jeans pocket inside out over a trash can.

"There's nothing in here but sand," I'd point out.

Spencer would pop up from his chair and lean over the garbage can and retrieve what looked like a thin, plastic cuff to a juice bottle. "It's a launcher," he protested. Apparently, my sons have an arsenal of things to launch in the event of an attack on our home, because every other item I question is a launcher.

We weren't merely being buried under toys and every little thing my sons couldn't bear to give up, we also needed an extra room for the stuff that the children gave us: hand-painted picture frames, tulips made out of egg cartons, poems lovingly penned to their father and me edged with tissue-paper flowers.

How could I possibly part with these mementos? It turns out that the answer to that question is that it gets a whole lot easier. Initially, I bought a decorative box to house their crafty gems, but it quickly filled to capacity.

At that point, I started simply throwing stuff out after the kids went to bed.

Occasionally, they would ask for their construction-paper clock with the moveable hands, for example, and I would have to face them with a hangdog apology. But they started to accept that most of their artistic endeavors were temporary. Pat and I began keeping a file for each child of items with which we simply couldn't part, and one of my bookshelves was cleared for all their school journals and stories. I defy anyone to throw out a little boy's account of a war between Denmark and the planet Mars.

Casting a cold eye on my children's keepsakes allowed me to view my own amassing of personal mementos with drill-like detachment. It turned out that I wouldn't miss the gift cards from our wedding, or the wooden eggcups I bought in Poland but never used because I didn't then, and don't now, eat soft-boiled eggs.

When it came time for my children to purge their own toys and souvenirs, they had a harder time of it. I would give them each a brown shopping bag with the instructions that they should throw out anything in their room that was broken or that they no longer used. After an hour spent playing excitedly with every rediscovered toy, they emerged. In Spencer's bag I found an armless knight and a deflated soccer ball. Murphy's bag offered up a short piece of string and something plastic that he claimed was a launcher that had never worked.

you can read the rest of Brett's article here:

http://www.parents.com/parenting/better-parenting/advice/i-love-you-your-stuff-not-so-much/

here's a recent Gretchen Reynolds clutter posting:

http://www.happiness-project.com/happiness_project/2013/02/do-you-find-yourself-falling-for-these-12-familiar-myths-about-clutter/


Originally published in the February 2013 issue of Parents magazine.

Some Wisdom From Those That Walked Before Us (Or Why I’m Smitten With Lucia van der Post)

Some Wisdom From Those That Walked Before Us (Or Why I’m Smitten With Lucia van der Post)

 by JOSLYN TAYLOR in ENRICH Jan 10th, 2013 11:13am 0 Comments Share Post

I was perusing Dallas mom Paige Darrah’s fantastically honest and funny blog Poppy Adventures this morning when I came across this post about Lucia van der Post’s (the lovely lady pictured right) bookThings I Wish My Mother Had Told Me.

Now let me pause to say that I am 100% with Paige when she says, “Whenever I come across a confident, intelligent, well-put-together older women I usually consider asking her to come home with me and teach me things.”

I am a big believer in the wisdom of those that walked before me, those who (pardon my vulgarity) have their S%$T together because they no longer care so much about what other people think of them, those who have some real wisdom to share about husbands/children/home/career/lipstick (you know, the important stuff), because they’ve slogged through the mire and lived to talk about it.

Here’s a more of what Paige has to say about van der Post’s book:

“I am trying to prepare myself to be an inspiring mother. But how does one do that?

Well, I thought that I’d start by being the kind of mother who knows some of the secrets. It seems that Lucia van der Post, the woman who wrote Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me, knows a lot of the secrets.

This woman has an enviable amount of conviction about how to behave – from the trivial, to the logistical, to the genuinely important. Her book offers guidance from all three of these categories. Much (but not all) of what she wrote resonated with me, so I’ll start with that which addresses the importance of family mealtime:

‘Families that sit around tables enjoying evening suppers that have been properly cooked and served tend to be closer and warmer than those who sit perched in front of the television set with fast food or takeout, not talking, not communicating. Families gathered around a table build up memories of intimacy and warmth that last throughout one’s life.’

In the evening, perhaps as I’m arranging the to-go food or the dining-in meal onto proper plates, I’ll ask Matt the following question: Are we going to be civil or American tonight?”

You can read the rest of her post here and buy a copy of Things I Wish My Mother Had Told Me here (which is exactly what I just did). Thanks Paige.