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Eating my guts out

By Terry

Here is a complete list of what Jonah, recently turned 3, eats: peanut butter, yogurt (but only maybe and only if it's pink), simple carbohydrates, and salty snacks. No fruit. No vegetables. No meat, except chicken nuggets, and those only rarely. None of the things that his peers adore… no cheese, no pasta, no pizza, no macaroni and cheese from the box.

I'm afraid that he's going to get scurvy or rickets or beri-beri. I'm afraid that he will grow up to be like our friend M., who, until he married a woman who set him straight, ate just about nothing but plain hamburgers on buns, potatoes in all forms, and lobster. I'm afraid that my mother-in-law thinks that I'm a bad parent.

Breakfast and lunch are fairly easy and relaxed. He eats waffles or toast in the morning and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or peanut butter on crackers for lunch. He snacks on yogurt or healthy chips. He drinks a lot of milk and, a couple of times a day, some heavily watered-down apple juice.

But night after night, dinner is a battle. I put a plate of simple, child-friendly food in front of him, and he refuses to eat it. He pushes it away and starts screaming, asking for crackers or something to drink. We don't want him to have those things instead of real food, and the bargaining, begging, and cajoling begins while the hollering continues.

Some nights, he doesn't eat. In theory, this should encourage him to eat at the next meal. In reality, this week, it encouraged him to wake me at 4 in the morning, crying pitifully and begging for a snack. Other nights, he ends up with alternative food, just to buy us some peace.

So, what do I do? Do I spend a week in Food Hell? Do I figure that he'll grow out of it? Do I make an issue out of food, which I always swore not to do? Do I buy another bottle of Flintstones chewables and wait?

Have you had a picky eater? Did s/he end up eating a balanced diet at some point? What did you do to help your child learn to eat?

In the news

By Terry

Over 100,000 dead in Asia. Soldiers returning home from Iraq without limbs, or not returning at all. A dioxin-poisoned candidate in the Ukraine. Car bombs. Serial killers. Executions. Michael Jackson. Scott Peterson.

The news is inescapable. Stories of horror and death and destruction. Stories of the worst that human beings can endure, or become, or inflict upon each other. The words and the pictures are like sand, seeping in from everywhere, coming at us in the most innocuous of moments… in a snippet of disk jockey banter while we listen to the music in the car, on the blaring covers of the tabloids when we buy our milk, in conversations overheard at the library or the mall. The people who make up the media work diligently every day. Most reports seek to inform, to educate, or to enlighten; others to shock anew, to provide the most sensational and the most lurid. We take it all in while we tune it all out.

He killed his pregnant wife on Christmas Eve and dumped her in the bay? Dreadful! What do you want for dinner?

Did you hear? The 1,000th U.S. Soldier was killed in Iraq today. It's awful. Did you pay the electric bill?

Now they're worried about cholera in Sri Lanka because the decomposing bodies are contaminating the water supply. Horrible! Your mother called.

But what about our children?

At seven years old, Emily is like a sponge. When she comes to sneak a bite of whatever I'm making for dinner, she stops and listens to what the "All Things Considered" anchors are reporting. When she begs for candy at the checkout, she reads the headlines. When she walks through the dining room, she looks at the photo on the cover of The New York Times tossed on the table. She rarely processes this information immediately, but will bring it up and ask about it hours, or even days, later.

Mom, can you tell me again about why the United States is fighting in Iraq?

Mom, did we give any money to help the people who had the tsunami?

Mom, what’s "lethal injection"?

How do I explain these stories to her when she asks about them? How do I help my child to understand the human costs of war or natural disaster? How do I admit to the presence of evil?

I try. I ask What did you talk about at school today? I discuss the war and the tsunami and try to tell the truth, but not the whole truth. As with all things, I answer all direct questions with direct answers.

And yet, it all seems so inadequate in the face of my true goal: to help my child believe that the world is a safe and magical place for as long as she possibly can.

Happy holidays... maybe a little too happy

By Terry

Sometimes our curses become our children's blessings.

Take, for example, the twisted family tree around here. My parents are divorced, as are Andrew's. While this has stuck Andrew and me with emotional baggage, it has also provided my children with four complete sets of grandparents, each of whom adores them very much and will go to great lengths to prove that love, especially when they think that said love might be witnessed by an ex-spouse or an in-law.

Add to this my daughter's December birthday, and you can see how, year after year, I watch the holidays become an exercise in Olympic-caliber Competitive Grandparenting.

Since early November, Jonah has received an array of clothing and numerous new toys, including a complete train set and train table, a talking frog, an assortment of books and videos, and a very beepy Sit and Spin.

Emily, who is older, reaps the bigger benefits as there remains an unshakable notion that she "understands and appreciates it more." (I've given up fighting it and just figure that they'll ramp it up for Jonah in a few years, too.) Consequently, by New Year's Eve, she will have been the recipient of one American Girl doll; two wardrobes (one purchased and one hand-sewn), a bed, and a clothing trunk for said doll; a magic kit; a trip to the American Girl Store in New York City; her first Broadway show; three holiday dresses; and her second New York City Ballet Nutcracker experience. Oh, and a full birthday party attended by 14 little girls.

While we are grateful for all that the grandparents do for our children (it's not just toys, but also pajamas and winter coats, and we'd be hard-pressed to give all that up), it is hard to maintain appropriate senses of discipline and gratitude in the face of such extreme indulgence. I feel that the gifts that we give our kids become overshadowed and that the charity work that I do with them loses its meaning. They light the Chanukah candles and then even Jonah yells "PRESENTS!"

So I ask all of you… how do you keep your children from turning into greedy brats at the holidays? How do keep the grandparents in check? And, most important, when your efforts at control fail: What on earth do you do will all that stuff?

Small baby, big lesson

By Terry

Last Thursday was an incredible day for me. I had the honor and the privilege of meeting Charlie, the 6-day old son of my best friend, J and her husband P.

Under usual circumstances, meeting your best friend’s baby is, of course, special and wonderful, but nothing about Charlie is usual. He arrived 10 weeks early and about 250 miles from home. Conveniently for me, that put him 200 miles closer to where I live, and made it relatively easy for me to get to the hospital as soon as J and P said I could come.

In the days between the unexpected announcement and my scheduled visit, I contemplated any number of dramatic gifts, but, as the hectic world that is my life never slowed down, what I managed to do was what I always do. I cooked and I shopped.

J was discharged from the hospital the night before I arrived. I met them at the hotel that will be their home for the next several weeks, baked ziti, brownies, candy, toys, and other treats in hand, and we headed to the hospital. Charlie is the smallest baby that I've ever seen, and is living in the NICU. Although tiny, and attached to various devices, he seems healthy and safe, and I was thrilled to get to see him and to touch him, if only with my pointer finger.

Eventually, it was time for Charlie to go back to sleep. P headed off on his own for a while. J and I went to a diner.

We shared a shake, ate some fries, and stopped at a salon for pedicures. We talked as if we were the only ones there, and laughed riotously, likely disturbing the serenity of the other patrons, but not really caring very much. It was what we would do together on any normal visit, despite the fact that there is nothing -- nothing! -- normal about her life right now.

Before I left, J thanked me for the day and the pasta and practically skipped (as much as someone less than a week post c-section can skip!) up the ramp and into the hotel.

How remarkable it was to be invited into this very private moment in their lives, to be allowed to share with them, to be among the first to be welcomed into the circle of their new family, to give and receive love in the face of fear and uncertainty.

And I learned, or re-learned, something that day: Sometimes when you think that a situation is so big that it requires a grand gesture, all it really takes is some pasta and a bottle of Scarlett O'Hara.

The picture of good health

By Terry

I had a scare this week. After a routine mammogram, I was called in for another look. They asked me to schedule an appointment for the next day.

On one hand, I believed the nurse when she said that there was no reason to panic, that the doctor just wanted a better picture. On the other hand, I wanted to know a better picture of what, exactly, which she couldn't tell me, so I spent the next 18 hours utterly convinced of my own imminent demise.

I wanted my mother. I was terrified of having to tell my father. I worried about Andrew, having to do all the work of two parents when he doesn't even know how to make macaroni and cheese.

But the thing that devastated me, the thing that woke me at night, the thing that made me miss my turn on the way back to the doctor's office, was contemplating, over and over, my kids spending a year watching me get sicker and sicker and then growing up without me.

Jonah is only 3 years old. He wouldn't understand. He would be confused. He would miss me for a while, but eventually he wouldn't really remember me as more than a warm feeling. For him, I could still be replaced, in a way. But Emily, who is 7, would understand and would miss me -- all of me, the whole person that she knows and loves -- forever. She'd spend the rest of her life with a hole that nothing could fill. She would hurt, and she would ache, and she would yearn, and there would be nothing I could do to fix it.

Rarely have I felt as powerless as a parent as I did in those terrible imagined hours.

In the end, I am happy to report that everything was fine. They gave me a clean bill of health and sent me home. I can tell you that I have rarely left any place as quickly as I got out of there.

And I learned a lesson in all of this. I learned that I am as scared of my children losing me as I am of losing them. That all of us are only complete when we are together and whole.

I'll be thinking of this the next time I am tempted to skip a seatbelt for a short trip, or to blow off my annual physical because it's so hard to find the time, or to have a friendly cigarette (I quit buying my own years ago) to go with that margarita.

Power to the little people

By Terry

Last week, as part of our citizenship badge, I read my Brownies a story about Susan B. Anthony. I explained to them that until only 84 years ago (84 years! Fewer than my grandmother has been alive!), women weren't permitted to keep their earnings, own property, or vote in this country, ostensibly the most free on the planet.

I encouraged the girls, as I encourage you, to really think about what that means, to contemplate how powerless we once were, and the power that we now wield with our votes.

Then, on Tuesday morning, a man came to my house to do some work. When he was leaving, I said, "Go vote!" in exactly the same way that I would have said "Have a nice day!" if it hadn't been November 2. He smiled, shrugged, and told me that he had never voted in his life.

To me, that's unimaginable. It's like saying "I feel like I have no power over my own life, so I don't care one bit about what happens to me or my kids. I'm just a stick in the stream, riding where the current takes me."

Here at my house, that is just not the way things work. Not only do we vote, we take our kids to vote, we talk to them about who we're voting for and why, and we teach them that voting is not only a right, but a responsibility.

With all of that in mind, I took Emily with me to our polling place. I gave her a minute to check out the practice voting booth in the front hall. I bought her a muffin from the PTO bake sale. I took her picture, and pictures of her little second-grade friends. I picked her up so she could push the levers with her own little fingers.

In other words, I made the experience into the very big deal that it is and, hopefully, watered a seed that will grow into a lifelong voter.

I'll scratch yours

By Terry

Emily showed up at my bedside late Friday night. Nothing unusual about that, really. She's been a terrible sleeper for years. I lifted my blankets, and she slid into the flap. She curled into me, a wee demitasse spoon. I scratched her back, lightly, and she mumbled, "Under," as she does every time, reminding me that she prefers to feel my nails directly on her skin, rather than through her pajamas.

I thought of Mark. Mark, the best friend I've ever had. Mark, for whom little Jonah Mark is named. Mark, who loved me best, who let me love him best in return. Incredibly, December will make seven years since his death. Soon I will have been without him longer than I was with him.

He lived with the HIV for so long that everyone who knew him was lulled into believing that he could go on like that forever. When AIDS took control of his body, it was a surprise all over again. Everything changed. He was hospitalized for most of the last year. His hair fell out. He turned yellow. He became incontinent. At the end, his muscles were atrophied; his hands curled under his chin and he could no longer sit up or get out of bed. Six feet tall, he weighed less than 90 pounds when he died.

Sometime in that last year, his mother came from Texas. She lived in New York, in a facility that provides long-term low-cost housing for the families of AIDS patients. She was at the hospital, at his side, every day.

One day, I went to visit and I saw Mark roll over and I heard him say, "Mama, scratch my back, please." The sounds he made while she scratched were just like the sounds Emily made in my bed, murmurs and whispers of comfort and happiness and the joy of being loved.

I hope every day for the health and long lives of my children. I also hope that, if I do my work well now, when they are grown, I will still be loving them and mothering them with my whole heart, scratching them where they need it most even after they think they don't need it anymore.

In praise of the cookie

By Terry

When my daughter Emily (6 1/2 years old, and don't forget the half, thank you) was born, my husband and I decided that I would stay home. Taking care of her and her brother Jonah (almost 3), and the home that we all live in, is my job.

With a deft hand and a glad heart, I am a teacher, a nurse, a therapist, a chauffeur, a maid, a laundress, and a chef. I also teach Sunday school, lead a Brownie troop, and teach classes for children at my local library.

Last week, I was baking chocolate chip cookies to hand out with the lemonade that we'll make at an upcoming class, and they were cooling on the counter when Emily came in from school. With a quick "Can I have some?" she tossed her jacket and pack on the floor, and sat down at the table.

Jonah was still napping. We had some time to ourselves, and she told me about her day, about the secret world of school. Things slowed down. I stopped what I was doing and listened to her.

As anyone who has spent much time with me knows, I love to bake. I think nothing of buying 10 pounds of butter at a time when it's on sale, and I easily go through 25 pounds of flour during the holiday season.

I bake all kinds of cakes, pies, and tarts, but my favorite thing to bake -- and to eat -- is cookies. I have a dozen books devoted specifically to cookie recipes. There are usually three or four kinds in my freezer.

The wheels of our lives are greased with butter and sugar, and I've bought a lot of goodwill with not much more than a bag of chocolate chips.

I've used cookies for all sorts of off-label purposes. I've given them out as tips to mail carriers and garbage collectors, handed them to workmen in my home at break time, and used them as thank you gifts for teachers. I've sent them to school as surprise treats, packed a few for snacks on car pools, and made sure I had a warm batch on hand when a new child came over for a playdate.

I know that we are supposed to try to keep our kids from getting food and happiness all mixed up in their heads. I do. But the truth is that I bake for my children out of love, not duty, and they know it.

When Emily gets off the bus and sees that I've been baking, she lights up. When Jonah wakes up from his nap, he "steals" the cookies off the racks and peeks at me over his shoulder, chocolate smeared around his grin.

When I bake, when I pull out the ingredients and the mixer and the pans, I slow down. I think about what I'm doing, and who I'm doing it for, and why. It's all about the love.

The cookies are the messengers.

Editor's Note: Terry is a new DotMom. You can read her bio here.