Aden the Cook (Babble)

I’m not feeling well this morning.  All night I had a dizzy thing going on.  I felt (feel) a bit queasy, and every time I opened my eyes the room was spinning around like I’d just gotten off a tilt-a-whirl.  Very weird.

Anyway, Ian decided not to go do work at the violin store today until I’m feeling more normal and told me to just stay in bed for a bit.  I’m still kind of in the mindset I had when he was gone that I don’t get to rest because there are kids to take care of, so it seems odd to be just sitting doing nothing.  I took some ibuprofen, I checked email.  Ian told the kids I wasn’t feeling well so they played more quietly than usual.

I was glad when Mona conveniently forgot she wasn’t supposed to disturb me and came bounding onto my bed.  She and Quinn cuddled up while we did “school” on my laptop.  We’ve been trying to get them ready for school starting up next week, so for the past few weeks we’ve had a rule about no screen time until all of them have had a half hour of school review.  We have a white board propped up in front of the fireplace and Mona works on writing her numbers clearly and writing out her full name and copying words and sentences.  Aden works on spelling and writing her address and multiplication tables.  (Although the most important thing I’ve probably taught her in the past couple of weeks was how to play Heart and Soul on the keyboard.  She’ll get some good social mileage out of that in third grade.)  Quinn can write out most of his alphabet and numbers, and he likes learning about telling time.  (My favorite was the morning I asked him to write the numbers one through ten, so he carefully wrote a one, and then a ten, and said he was done.  I knew to explain it better for next time.) 

All my kids like these flash cards I picked up from the dollar bin with landmarks on them, although they can’t remember the Alamo is in Texas and they think Big Ben is in the United States somewhere.  This morning I just typed sentences on my computer for Mona to read out loud, mostly about dogs and purple bunnies to make her laugh.  Quinn typed out the alphabet of his own accord, and then everyone left again and I realized I was hungry but too dizzy to want to go downstairs.

(Mona on a typical morning doing “school.”)

And then, Aden appeared.  She’s so grown up lately.  I just can’t get over how tall and capable she is anymore.  She’d made me breakfast in bed.


Now, Aden is a sweetheart, and she has been making me some form of breakfast in bed for years when I’m not feeling well or on my birthday or some such occasion, but she’s old enough now that it’s not just cute, it’s good.  When she was three she once brought me two uncooked eggs on a plate, a fork and a napkin.  Today she brought me rice crispies in milk with a spoon, a hard boiled egg on a plate, toast, butter on a bunny dish with a little knife, and a cup of water.  It was just what I needed.  She sat with me while I ate and we looked at pictures of cute animals doing cute things on my laptop.  She said she was worried about me trying to walk down the stairs but thought I might be hungry.  I told her someday she’d make a great mommy and she looked very pleased.

I’m so impressed with the person she is and the adult she’s becoming.  She’s got a few habits and quirks I wish I could wave a wand and fix, but the same is true of myself so I try not to hold her to too high a standard.  I love that she wants to do more things on her own and still be my little girl.  She makes a really good omelette.  And yesterday she and Quinn asked if they could make sugar cookies and they did everything on their own but put the cookie sheet in the oven.  (I’ve even told Aden I trust her to do that, but she doesn’t want to, yet.)  I could hear them in the kitchen together with the recipe book, cracking eggs and running the mixer.

Aden made cookies the first time essentially on her own when she was four.  She wanted cookies and I needed to work (and Ian was deployed for the first time so he wasn’t available to help), so I had the recipe next to me on the violin bench and I would explain each step as needed and she’d run off to the kitchen.  I’d tell her to do things like find a measuring cup with a 1/2 on it and fill it with flour five times in a row, and leave her to it.  She followed rules like ‘no adding things to the mixer while it was running,’ and I figured the worst that could happen was a messy kitchen and some nasty cookie dough that we have to do over, but aside from a delicious smelling accident with the vanilla she did fine.

(Aden on Christmas in 2006 with her first Easy Bake Oven creations.)

(Aden a couple of weeks ago with a perfect omelette.)

In any case, I’m feeling a lot better than a few hours ago.  If I have another dizzy night tonight I’ll call the doctor, but today breakfast prepared by my daughter and served on a tray that used to belong to my grandma seems to have set me right.

Aden wants to tackle pancakes next.  Sounds good to me!  By next year breakfast in bed might be really something.  I love my Aden the cook.

Thankful (Babble)

I love Thanksgiving.   I’m really looking forward to tomorrow.  Ian’s coming home for the weekend.

We aren’t allowed to know when Ian officially ships out to Iraq because any information that could lead to an ambush or any kind of sabotage is classified.  But he took a gamble and bought tickets home for Thanksgiving day in the hopes he’d still be in the country, and it worked out.

Typically we team up for the Thanksgiving meal with our neighbors across the street, which works out nicely since the amount of food we want to indulge in is easier spread out between two families.  Our neighbors are kind enough to host and do the turkey and cranberries and corn and rolls, and we do pies and appetizers and mashed potatoes and green beans.  This year my parents are coming (it’s late Wednesday night and they should be here any minute!) because they didn’t want us to feel too alone.  When they found out Ian was coming, they told me they would leave town earlier than planned so we’d have time together.  I’m trying to convince them that if they really want us to have time alone, they need to stay!  Ian and I will simply be buried under a heap of kids all weekend if no one takes them for a bit, and I really want to be able to finish a sentence or two with my husband before he has to fly back to Louisiana.

The kids are excited.  Aden had her harvest play at school this afternoon, which was incredibly sweet.  She was a pilgrim, and their play was interesting because most of the Native American characters in it were not happy, and some of the pilgrims were distrustful.  It was refreshing to see an elementary school class acknowledge a little reality in a Thanksgiving play.  Made me like their school just that much more.  We had a minor nut allergy moment during the feast afterward, but resolved it quickly.  (I reminded Aden that she can’t trust other people’s cookies no matter how tempting they are.  A tough lesson when chocolate chips are involved.)  I got to steal Mona early from her kindergarten class to join us in the snacks, and Quinn was just thrilled to be doing something in the big kid school for the afternoon.  They were all proud to tell people that their daddy would be joining us for for Thanksgiving.

After school we went to the violin store where I met with a couple of customers while the girls made things out of paper (Mona does lots of birds and turtles) and Quinn ran in circles.  We headed home and after dinner and baths I got to work on some projects and pies.  Aden wanted to help, and it was one of those moments where I was proud of both of us.  It would have been very easy to just brush my daughter aside in favor of simply getting things done.  I’m far more efficient cooking alone, and when she asked if she could roll out the dough herself I hesitated.  The part of me that wanted to get the pies out of the way started to tell Aden, “No,” and then I had sense enough to tell that part of me to take a hike.

What on earth are pie baking tradition moments for if not to share with your kids?  We had a blast.  Aden peeled all the apples and I cut them up.  I told her how her great-grandmother had said the secret to a good apple pie was to cut the slices thin.  But her grandmother had taught me the secret to a good apple pie was to keep the slices thick.  My lesson to her was that apparently you can’t mess up an apple pie based on how thick or thin you cut the apples. 

Aden rolled out the pie dough herself, and the first time it came out weird but we made it work.  The next one came out better, and the last one was excellent.  She opened one too many cans of pumpkin, so we have extra deep pumpkin pies this year.  Mona wanted to crack eggs, so I had her do it in a separate bowl in case we needed to fish out any bits of shell.  Turns out we didn’t need that precaution because she did a perfect job.  Mona also measured sugar and sang songs to us.  Quinn was just happy knowing all of this activity would result in pies.  It’s so easy for me to forget to slow down a moment and let them help.  There are days I don’t have time for it, but I’m thankful for evenings like this where I’m able to be the mom I want to be.

As I’m finishing up this post, the pies are cooling, the girls are in bed, and Quinn is passed out in my arms.  (Typing is not easy like this, but how many years are left where he’ll fit in my lap at all?)  My parents will be here soon after a long drive from Detroit.  They love us a lot to travel in rainy darkness for so many hours.

And by this time tomorrow I should have Ian by my side.  I am so thankful for that opportunity I don’t even know how to express it properly.

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving, everyone!  I wish everyone as much to be thankful for as I have.

Weighting It Out (Babble)

I actually struggle about struggling with my weight.  I need to lose weight, but I don’t want my kids to really notice it.  I do and I don’t.  I am careful not to criticize myself in front of them by using words like ‘fat.’  We talk about exercising in terms of needing to be healthy and strong, not in terms of weight.  I want to be a good example without somehow drawing attention the example I’m hoping to set.  Body image can be such a minefield, and I don’t want to contribute to potential problems in that area for my kids.

I’ve never been particularly happy with my weight, but I have height on my side.  According to various charts I’m technically obese, but I have lots of room to carry that weight on a five foot, ten inch frame, so I don’t look to most people like I’m that bad, but it’s not good.  I gained a lot of weight after I had Aden because I was concentrating on the baby and I was home all the time.  Aden was a very easy baby, and we did go for walks across the park when the weather was nice, but most of the time we were just in the house and there were long stretches of boredom. 

After I organized everything I could think to organize I got into cooking.  My mom’s recipes were all geared toward a family of five, so they work great for us now, but when it was just two of us and a breast feeding child, it was too much.  I wasn’t looking at myself anymore because I was looking at the baby, plus breast feeding made me hungry.  I’m sure it’s true for someone somewhere that breast feeding helps you lose the pregnancy weight, but it was the opposite for me.  I was ravenous all the time when I was breast feeding.  Under normal circumstances I’m in trouble because I don’t seem to have a working switch anywhere the tells me I’m full, but when I was hungry all the time it was hard not to keep eating.

When I took a good look at myself just after Aden turned one and breast feeding her was over, I was pretty horrified and got serious.  I got into a routine of swimming and walking and kept track of what I ate.  It was going pretty well, and apparently I was looking pretty good because I soon got pregnant with Mona.  After having Mona I went right back into my exercise routine.  Ian was home so I didn’t have to spend all my time in the kitchen.  I could escape to the pool or Curves or anyplace that wasn’t the house.   Even though I breast fed Mona for a year, I was careful about what I ate and lost over forty pounds.  I was really happy about it, because I felt good and clothes fit nicely and I felt like I’d gotten control over something that had always bothered me.

Then came the double whammy of getting pregnant with Quinn and Ian getting deployed.   I was really stuck at home in a way I’d never been before.  I had two kids who needed to be fed regular meals, and between cooking and cleaning and dishes and even art projects, I felt like we never left the kitchen.  The pregnancy put pressure on my sciatic nerve which made walking incredibly painful.  After Quinn was born it was a little easier, but I was still trapped.  Food was one of the few things that was fun and available and made me feel better.  I liked baking with the girls and trying different recipes.  It was cozy and simple and very fattening.  I gained back all that weight that I’d worked so hard to lose.  I was aware it was happening and just surrendered to it.  There was so much stress in my life and I just couldn’t feel pressure about one more thing.  I bought bigger pants and enjoyed the snickerdoodles.

Because for me to lose weight it has to be at the forefront of my mind all the time.  It’s tedious and dull.  There are so many more interesting things to think about, and I hate wasting my attention on it, but I’ve reached a sort of crisis point again where I have to do something.  I write down everything I eat so I can keep track.  I don’t deny myself anything in particular, I just make conscious choices about if the cookie is worth it at that moment (it usually isn’t).  I’m making time for the treadmill at night after the girls are in bed.  About ten pounds from now when I’m ready to put on my bathing suit again I’ll start taking Quinn with me to the Y in the mornings while the girls are in school.  I’ve done this before so I know I can do it again, and this time I won’t get sidetracked by pregnancy, so that’s something.

The trickiest thing is eating with the kids.  I still want to sit down to the table with them at meals, but their needs are different from mine.   I had a revelation a few years ago about why it’s so easy for stay at home parents to gain weight.  I think of it as the ‘juice box factor.’  I was reading an article in National Geographic about how much portion sizes have changed in the US, and they made the point that if you simply added one juice box a day to a normally healthy routine, by the end of the year you would have gained ten pounds. 

The hardest part about feeding kids while trying to lose weight is embracing waste.  The left over fish stick?  The last bite of mac and cheese?  There’s the juice box.  It’s hard to throw those last bits of food out, but I do it.  At dinner I do my best not to prepare more food than we need at a meal, but that is far from an exact science with three kids.  I’ve taken to not really planning to feed myself at mealtimes.  I help myself to whatever vegetables or fruit we’re having as we sit together and eat, but I only have whatever rice or fish or anything else from what they leave.  If they eat it all, great.  It’s easy enough for me to make myself something else afterward.

I know one of the up sides for Ian about being at Fort Polk is being out of the kitchen.  He struggles with his weight when he’s the one home with the kids, too, and he has the added burden of the Army weighing him periodically.  He’s in better shape now in Louisiana than he was before he left because he’s able to make reasonable food choices and he can go exercise without having to arrange for child care.  I promised him when he comes home from Iraq we will hammer out a better routine for both of us this time.  The problem is neither of us actually likes to exercise, so it’s easy to talk each other out of it.  Maybe when all the kids are in school and we can do it together we can make it fun.  (Or at least less boring.)

So I think I’m on the right track again.  And with a little luck I won’t feel like writing another blog post about my weight, even thought it’s too much in my thoughts.  I’m hoping by writing my good intentions in a public forum that it will help keep me honest about it, but even I’m bored by my own weight loss struggles.  I can’t imagine it’s interesting for anyone else, so forgive me for putting it out there.

But as a parent, I do think about my kids and how their own feelings about their bodies will evolve.  I marvel at my children’s perfect little legs and arms and tummies and wonder when they may develop dissatisfaction with them.  I hope never, but that’s not realistic.  Aden did have a boy tell her once in kindergarten that she was fat.  When she told me about it, I asked what she did, and she replied, “I told him I was just right!”  And she is.  I was proud she knew it.  Chances are there will come a day when such a ridiculous comment from a boy may not roll off her so easily.  It makes me sad.  I wish they could always see themselves the way I see them and know with certainty how amazing they are.

And as a result, I’m kinder to my own self image.  I’m someone’s child, too, and it would pain my parents if I were not happy.  It’s a disservice to them and myself not to appreciate the body I have.  I’m not at the weight I want to be, but I can aim for something better without hating where I am.   Wish me luck.