Baby Foodie

I've been in a bad mood this week. Work is meh. Husband has been out of town. And I've just been all pouty and mopey and wah like.

Leo is always a bright spot in a dreary day but lately he has taken to throwing his food after the high chair and it drives me crazy! I am psycho about his food. I make just about everything. I lovingly bake bread, make meatballs with veggies, cook him a hot breakfast every day and when he just throws it on the floor it drives me so insane! I think part of my obsession with making all of his food comes from my working mom guilt. I want my son to have all the benefits that a stay at home mom might provide and in my fantasy world stay at home moms make every meal for their child from scratch and my son will not be denied that just because I work damnit!!! And I fully realize that stay at home moms could not possibly make every meal from scratch and I should probably let go just a little so that I'm not staying up till midnight on a work night baking banana bread but I'm a little neurotic so there you go.

I know he is just a toddler and he doesn't mean anything by it. But seeing that food fly to the floor when I've spent so much time preparing is enough to drive anyone mad. Plus, he keeps throwing food to the dogs and that doesn't go well for anyone (my bullies have sensitive tummies).

Today was a trying day at work. I had someone object to my presence at a meeting because it was adversarial and then I got mustard all over myself at lunch right before a video conference (luckily my jacket covered it). The road to daycare was closed so I had to take a huge detour for dropping off and picking up. I forgot my walled and had to track down a co-worker who was willing to (1) have lunch with me and (2) pay for my lunch.

I was actually dreading feeding Leo dinner because I just couldn't take him throwing anymore food on the floor. I had made spinach mac n cheese and chicken/corn/green bean meatballs earlier in the week. I put them all on his little dinosaur plate and put it on the high chair while holding my breath.



And thank sweet, little, 8 pound, 6 oz, baby Jesus he ate all of it! He didn't throw a single piece off the highchair and even used his spoon to eat applesauce. My sweet little boy knew exactly how to make his momma happy! Just watching him enjoy his dinner improved my mood by leaps and bounds. Now tomorrow he'll probably eat nothing but cheesy poofs for dinner. Yay for the roller coaster of motherhood.

Giving Up

Can I get just a wee bit religous with you for a second? Don't worry I'm not going to try to save you and my atheist husband will have a heart attack when he reads this but I feel like I have to write about it.

Background information: born and raised Catholic. Currently a practicing Catholic and by practicing I mean I have lots of guilt and go to mass during Lent.

I have had my fair share of the drama lately. I still cannot go into details but that is not really the point of this post. I have been feeling lost, helpless, confused. I lie awake at night wondering, questioning.

This morning I went to mass. I don't think I have been since Leo's baptism in September. The drama is not what spurred me to go. I simply went because I have been meaning to go to mass and the timing just seemed to work out this morning.



While I was there the drama hit me full force. As I was holding my sleeping son in my lap, my eyes stung with the tears I was struggling to keep in. I started to pray.



I never understood when people said give up your problems to God. I always thought, "shouldn't you do something about your problems instead of relying on someone else?" But today, for some reason, I did just that.



And He answered me. He inspired me to tackle the drama. He gave me hope. He showed me a path. It is going to be a long, painful, twisty path. But where I had been staring at a wall, I am now looking down a path.

I now understand when people say give up your problems to God. That is what I did today and I am so grateful.

Don't worry Captain America, I'm not going to turn into a Bible thumper. We don't even own a bible upon which to thump.

In unrelated news, we took Leo to a park for the first time today. He loved it despite falling out of my arms and getting a huge bruise on his cheek. I'm going to have to delay his one year pictures again!

Drunken Frosting

I had a very serious, introspective blog post all planned out in my head that I wanted to write tonight. But life got in the way (ok fine, I've been playing with my new google phone all night) and I'm too tired to deal with anything heavy.

Instead I shall leave you with photographic evidence of why one should not drink wine and try to bake/frost a cake at the same time.

I give you Exhibit A - the organic chocolate cake and organic vanilla frosting that I prepared for Leo's first birthday:



Yes, I made him an organic cake (it was still a mix from a box) and then royally screwed up the frosting. Needless to say, this cake did not make it to the party and I ended up just giving him a slice of the adult cake instead which he refused to smash.

Fluff

It's August.

Blah. Blerg. Meh.

I do not like August. It is without a doubt my least favorite month. It is sticky and disgustingly hot. There are no holidays. It is really long. And because I represent schools, work is mind numbingly slow since every one is on vacation. Really I might poke my eyes out at work from boredom. My big projects this month are preparing a presentation and working on a brief that is due in October. I usually just struggle through the month at work but it is making it even harder to be away from my son since I feel like I am doing nothing productive at work. Well, I have gotten in some good blog reading and it appears that all my favorite bloggers will be at Blogher this week and they have better set up some guest posts or something to keep me from taking a two hour lunch at Target.

Speaking of Target, it is one of those magical times of year where random stuff is on sale. Like this totally awesome, very sophisticated toddler chair.

It is very important looking. Leo is going to sit in it and read many leather-bound books in it.

In reality, he's been climbing it and trying to launch himself over the back.

And there is my blog post o' fluff because the stuff I really want to write about I can't. I want to, I want to pour my little heart out for the internet to see but it's just too personal and I fear the repercussions. Rest assured that I am fine and my little family is fine. I am just dealing with some family drama that refuses to end and it is driving me just a little crazy.

A Full Weekend.

This past weekend we took a trip to Palm Desert (La Quinta to be exact) for a little vacay.



We have taken Leo (I'm sick of calling him the beast, his name is Leo) on a lot of trips. His first vacation was to San Diego at 7 weeks. He's been on a plane, train, and automobile. Despite his well traveled status, each trip we take with him I feel like I'm learning something totally new.





Traveling with an infant is definitely a lot different than traveling with a toddler. This was the first time traveling with Leo where he was not dependent on breastfeeding/bottles for eating. He's just about 13 months, he eats real food, three times a day with a snack or two. I didn't think this would be a big deal. I packed some snacks and figured we would just get food in restaurants.




The problem is Captain America and I eat huge, gigantic, oh my gawd you are a fat American, meals on vacation. But we only eat once or twice a day. We started the morning with a typical vacay sized breakfast and were uncomfortably full. After swimming and an epic nap, Leo was hungry again so we headed out to lunch and ate another gigantic meal at a Mexican restaurant. Let's just say there were 5 items between two combo plates and leave it at that.





We go back to the hotel after scoring some new books and a puzzle at a Borders sale. Captain America took a nap and I entertained a crazy toddler. Then a few short hours later I say to my husband, "It's six o'clock, Leo needs to eat, we need to get dinner." He looked at me with pitiful eyes. We were still so full from breakfast and lunch but Leo was starting to flip his toddler shit so we headed out to a restaurant.

By the time we were seated and ordered, Leo was not having it at all. He alternated between a whine/cry and a staring us down with eyes that said "hey dumbasses, you have to feed me regularly or I will flip my toddler shit." Finally our food arrived, a meatball sandwich for me and a pizza for Captain America. The only reason I ordered a meatball sandwich was because it would be easy to share the meatballs with Leo. He's still too little for a kid's meal, he just doesn't eat that much food, so I usually share mine with him. The sight of the meatballs made me want to hurl but Leo was happy he finally got to eat. And since Captain America and I are like dogs, if you put food in front of us we will eat it no matter how sick we feel, we ate our food.





We ended up spending Saturday night in our hotel bed, whining and complaining about seriously uncomfortably full stomachs. Next trip I will definitely plan our eating better and more according to Leo's schedule. Captain America and I are on serious orders to slow down the eating. Eating three meals a day is fine if you don't completely pig out at each one. Ugh, my stomach still hurts. I'm looking forward to a week of grilled chicken breast and steamed veggies. Right after I finish my wine.

Who Knew?

This week I am really rocking the mothering gig. First, for two nights in a row, the Beast ate nothing but cheesy poofs for dinner.



But they were organic cheesy poofs, so that is clearly excellent parenting.

Second was the incident with the spoon. The Beast is cutting molars (which is as fun as it sounds) and has been all over the place with eating (see above cheesy poof reference). Yesterday I was talking to his daycare teacher about what he ate for lunch. They had served rice and turkey. She was telling me that he wasn't excited about eating it and she had to help him eat it. I said, "so you finger fed it to him?" She responded that she helped him with the spoon. I said, "oh he doesn't use a spoon." She looked at me kinda strange and said, "he uses a spoon all the time." And then another teacher piped up, "he's really good with a spoon."

What. The. Hell. How did I not know my 13 month old uses a spoon? I have never even attempted giving him a spoon. I was just about to launch into full on research on when and how to introduce utensils. But he's already freaking using one? What else is he doing during the day I don't know about? Algebra? Is he driving? It is such a bizarre feeling to realize that my child does something during the day that I didn't know about it. But I'm proud of the little guy for being such a big boy with a spoon. Now if daycare wants to go ahead and potty train him and just hand him over one day with, "oh he uses the potty now," I'll be just fine with that.

I guess it really does take a village.