Rubbernecker: I Follow Strangers on Twitter

Posted on May 9, 2013 by kate

Today I’m reviving a series from my pre-baby days: Rubbernecker, in which I focus on groups of people I love to – well, spy on, basically. My first two Rubbernecker posts dealt with Internet mommy forums (DH! DS! Baby dust! DTD!) and transpeople (don’t call them trannies; that’s very rude.). Today: Strangers on Twitter.

I love following people I don’t know on Twitter. Is that creepy? Probably. If you know me, though, it makes sense. (But is also probably still creepy.) I love to study people. Ever since I first got on the Internet, I’ve been finding people’s online journals, the more confessional the better, and watching their lives unfold. I used to read a mile-long list of blogs. Now that it’s possible to make money blogging, most of the people I read have stopped sharing the intimate details of their lives. Instead, they post collages of expensive furniture their sponsors want you to buy, or they cease blogging altogether. I moved to Twitter, where people were still spilling their guts, and found new people to spy on. I follow paranoid schizophrenics, people with multiple personality disorders, collared slaves, pro wrestlers, the young and chronically ill, cholas from East LA, food truck visionaries, art students from Irvine, African-American college students from Georgia, and a group of teen moms from rural Maryland.

When it comes to conducting anthropological research – or, since I’m not a real anthropologist, when it comes to my spying on people – Twitter’s even better than online journals, because you can see an entire group of people’s interactions with one another. It’s fascinating to see a community and all its interconnected relationships. If researching this stuff were my actual job rather than my guilty pleasure, I’d love to design a giant map of interactions and connect everyone together with pushpins and twine. (Not literally. That would be Silence of the Lambs-level creepy.)

I usually find interesting people by examining Twitter’s trending topics – for example, I’ll read people’s responses to a hashtag like #ConfessionNight or #IHateItWhen – and start following people based on whether their tweets interest me. I then see who they talk to, and through following those people, I work out what relationships exist within the community. Again, If you know me, you’ll be aware that, in addition to being a people watcher, I’m also a lover of slang. I’m learning all kinds of new words from my Twitter explorations. For example, this weekend, I’m going to my neighbors’ party and I’m going to get turnt up.* **

*Turnt up is the new crunk, if you don’t know. And I’m guessing you don’t.
**I’m not really getting turnt up this weekend. I haven’t done anything even remotely close to getting turnt up since I was about 19; I’m sure as hell not going to start again now.

You may ask why I don’t just watch reality TV – because I generally don’t. I find the narrative of most reality shows to be forced (no duh! I hear you say.). Story arcs on Twitter meander and change direction, and include all sorts of interesting, infinitely interpretable details that a reality show’s editors would leave on the cutting-room floor. It’s also cool to see how much personality most of these people can cram into 140 characters. Many of them probably have no clue that they’re very talented writers.

I would love to mention some of these people and begin to tell you their stories, but that would feel like an invasion of their privacy. Their tweets may be public, but I doubt they want some stranger discussing their lives on her website. (Or, if they did want that, they’d also want money for it. Fair enough.) Here’s one thing I’d love to say to two of them in particular, if I didn’t feel as though actually speaking to them would be breaking some weird journalistic fourth wall: Ladies! That guy you’re fighting over? He is LAME. Seriously. He can barely string two words together, and on the rare occasions he manages to, those words are always about weed. He is GROSS. Find a proper boyfriend. Actually, find two, so you can each have one.

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That One Asshole Kid

Posted on March 18, 2013 by kate

Is your four-year-old suddenly imitating everything you say, using a high-pitched, mocking voice? Has your seven-year-old begun worrying about her “cankles” all of a sudden? Is there a constant stream (if you’ll pardon the expression) of poop talk in your home? If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, it’s almost certain your child has met – and been corrupted by – That One Asshole Kid.

We all know one kid we wish our child had never met. If we’re lucky, the interaction is mercifully brief – for example, the kids see each other once a month for playgroup, and then they end up going to different preschools. If we’re not so lucky, the asshole kid is with us K through 12.

There’s at least one asshole kid everywhere: daycare, playgroup, preschool, and regular school. Go to the park and take five minutes to look around. I bet you can spot the asshole: he’s decided to play “Run From the Monster,” and he’s made the shyest, most awkward of his friends be the monster. She’s the one who’s commandeered the climb-through tube with several of her little cohorts, and is now forbidding anyone else from going in there. If he’s a middle-schooler, he’s running through the jungle gym like a 70-pound battering ram, knocking kids over left and right. The asshole high-school student will be hanging out by the swings, acting tough and calling her friends things like “little bitch-ass bitch motherfucker ratchet-ass hoe.” Her boyfriend will be smoking a blunt by the bleachers. (Seriously, dude? You couldn’t wait to get stoned until you weren’t right by a kids’ playground?)

Asshole Kid will also target you, the parent. He seems to know instinctively that jibes about your personal appearance will hurt the most, and be the hardest for you to respond to – unless you plan on insulting a little kid. The Asshole Kid banks on your being a nice person – or, at least, on your being afraid of repercussions. Asshole Kid, therefore, will tell you if you have a pimple. She’ll tell you if your arms look fat in that dress. If you’re not aware that you need a dental cleaning, Asshole Kid’s got your back; he’ll let you know. In a loud, ringing voice. Thanks, Asshole Kid.

Unfortunately, your kid nearly always thinks the sun shines out of this little sociopath’s ass. I know I did. Throughout my childhood, I had several friends my mother couldn’t stand. There was the hyperactive kindergartner with thick blond pigtails who taught me lots of good swearwords. In high school, there was the bitchy soccer player who would periodically decide she could no longer be my friend because I’d done something wrong, and I ought to know what that thing was without having to ask. I loved these girls, just like I loved that dumbass boyfriend and his psychotic buddy, despite the fact that – or was it because of the fact that? – they were monumental a-holes. My poor mother was beside herself, just like I am when I see some little shithead boy push my son around. The worse kids behave, the cooler he seems to think they are – just like I did with my asshole friends.

Most asshole kids aren’t horrible. They’re just annoying. They teach your kid inane Black Eyed Peas songs, or get them into that horrendous Winks Club fairy TV show, or have parents who give them wayyy too much dessert, so then your kid cries when you won’t let him have it too (or when the other kid beats him up because all that sugar turned him into Punchy McKickington). Some of them, though, are legitimately mean, nasty little individuals. They may be too young to be held fully responsible for their behavior, but they are completely aware of the power they can wield, and they use it for pure evil. Where do kids like that come from? They scare the crap out of me, and I’m a grown woman.

I pray that, as my sons grow up, my inevitable dislike for certain of their friends won’t make them want to hang out with them more often, the way it did when my mom declared her distaste for Prissy Princess Elementary School Friend or Passive-Aggressive High School Buddy. I also hope that, like I did, my sons will eventually realize that mean doesn’t equal cool, and stop idolizing asshole kids on their own, instead of waiting for different park schedules or school districts to do the dirty work for them. Last. but definitely not least, I hope that I have the clearness of sight to realize if it ever becomes the case that my child is That One Asshole Kid in somebody else’s life.

Posted in kids, life shiz, parenting, that is f'ed up. | Leave a comment

My son’s 5 favorite free iPhone apps

Posted on March 13, 2013 by kate
Talking John iPhone app. Photo from iappfind.com.

Talking John iPhone app. Photo from iappfind.com.

My four-almost-five-year-old son is an iPhone fiend. He has already mastered the interface, as is the duty of each new generation. By the time he’s an adult, computers will take the form of tiny chips inside our brains. In order to use them, we will simply have to think about doing so. I will, of course, call my son constantly, complaining that mine’s broken and that I don’t understand this stupid technology. If my son grows up to do anything remotely tech-related, I’ll also refer my friends to him when they’re having trouble working their newfangled mind-computers. I know he will love that.

But I digress. (Hey, you try sleeping in one-and-a-half-hour chunks for eight months, and then we’ll see how linear your train of thought is.) My son now has a shortlist of iPhone apps he loves. Here are his top five. In keeping with this site’s econo mentality, all are free.

1. Doodle Buddy. This drawing and painting app has been a favorite of my son’s for pert near two years (apparently, sleeplessness also makes me talk like an Appalachian mountain woman). It features paintbrushes of various thicknesses, chalk, and a cool smudging effect. There are also stamps with amusing sound effects. (My favorite? The poop, of course.) You shake the phone to erase the drawing and return to a blank canvas. The app also lets you use a photo from your iPhone gallery as a background for your drawing. Rather than draw rude things on people’s faces, as I would do, my angelic child (!) likes to make a solid layer of color over the top of the photo and then slowly erase it while he has you guess who’s underneath. Way to be far more mature than I’ll ever be, kid.

2. TiKL. Want to see a little boy laugh hysterically? Turn your iPhone into a walkie-talkie. Obviously, you need two iPhones for this to work. My husband and I both installed TiKL, and one of us went into another room, while the other one stayed with my son and sent messages back and forth. He’s still too young to care what “10-4, buddy, come on back,” means, but he finds TiKL completely enthralling nonetheless. (It also works way better than those lame phone things you shout into on the jungle gym at the park. They suck, amirite?)

3. Flow Free. My husband discovered this simple-looking connect-the-dots puzzle game, and was playing it one day when my son asked him what he was doing. My son got the hang of it quickly (angelic and a genius!), and it soon became a playtime activity he and Dad did together. You connect matching colors with pipes, avoiding crossing or overlapping them. The puzzles become more complicated as you level up. The Time Trial mode stresses my son out rather than motivating him, but some kids, especially older ones, might get a kick out of playing against the clock.

4. Pick-up Sticks. My son is getting really speedy at this classic game. You can choose to play against the clock or play in Casual mode, which involves wearing Gap khakis and slinging a pastel sweater around your shoulders. (I’m sorry. I think I have a fever.) It also features awesome Ben Folds Five-ish piano music in the background.

5. Talking John. This twisted little app seems to have no educational value, but look closer: it’s actually teaching your child about the superbugs we’ve created by not finishing our full courses of antibiotics. “John” is actually the collective name of several malevolent bacteria floating in the bloodstream. Push the syringe button on the left, and a yellow substance floods the screen. The bacteria howl with laughter at your futile attempts to rid them of their power. But wait – if you give them a pill, they frown, gulp and disappear. They also do this if you tap on them. If you give them a doughnut, they multiply. Oh, forget it: this makes no sense at all. Also, like your child, the bacteria repeat your words back to you in shrill mockery. I actually hate this app.

I did an informal survey of my Facebook friends to see what their kids love playing, and compiled a list of apps to download next, including some slightly more expensive options. I’ll keep you posted.

Posted in instranet stuff, kids, playtime, technology | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Who’s the breadwinner in your relationship?

Posted on February 22, 2013 by kate

When my husband and I first talked about having kids, I didn’t have a clear idea of whether I’d stay home to raise them. After we found out I was pregnant with my oldest son, we talked about how our work situations would change, and I decided I’d quit my job after taking maternity leave; I wasn’t excited about where I worked at the time. (I took the job because I thought there would be freaks there. If you know me, and you’re familiar with my work history, you’ll know that “Will there be freaks?” is a valid question for me when I’m considering accepting new employment. Suffice it to say there were no freaks. Far from it: I worked in a cubicle in Woodland Hills. It’s a nice place, Woodland Hills, to be sure, but remarkably devoid of weirdos.) After my initial decision to quit, I just wanted to play it by ear: I needed to feel out whether I’d be OK with becoming a stay-at-home mom, or if I’d long to go back to work full-time.

It turned out that it was best for me to work part-time. I feel extremely strongly that I want to be home as much as possible when my sons are young. I also, however, feel much better when I balance work with being a mom. I think I’m a more present, dedicated parent when I spend part of the day using my brain in a different way. Also, I’ll admit that my self-worth is partially bound up with work. That’s perhaps not the healthiest reason to want to work, but there it is. I went to a college full of Ivy League whores, and then got an MFA I never used, and my poor father spent a lot of money on it all, and it is still a big part of my identity, and now I feel like I really should be working, otherwise I’m not exactly sure who I am. Silly? Almost definitely.

One of the things that surprised me the most about quitting full-time work was how uncomfortable I felt being reliant on my husband for money. I resumed working part-time when my oldest son was 18 months, and I had a distinct feeling of relief when my first postpartum paycheck arrived. I’m still trying to figure out why that was such a big deal for me. Throughout our relationship, my husband has usually made more money than I have. There’ve been a couple of times that I out-earned him, but that was the exception rather than the rule. I did notice, however, that when I was bringing in more money, I felt the need to crow about it and point it out to my husband. That surprised me. What was next? Would I start dressing in a boxy suit with shoulder pads? Eighties-style feminism, release me from thy bony grasp!

I don’t remember if we decided my husband was going to be the primary breadwinner because he had always earned more money than me, or if it was more about my desire to spend most of my time being a stay-at-home mom. I’m not sure if I’d have been willing to be the primary worker, even if it had made more financial sense. Maybe that’s selfish of me.

When I decided I was going to work part-time, I gave up a substantial chunk of income. It was about time versus money; I chose to spend more time with my kids. It’s obviously meant that we have less money in the bank, and sometimes, especially living in an upper-middle-class section of Los Angeles, it’s hard not to measure my wealth – or comparative lack thereof – against some other people’s.

The issue of school is a potential game-changer: right now I’m trying to take deep breaths and reassure myself that as long as I pay attention, as long as I stay involved in my sons’ education, that they will not end up Neanderthal, book-eschewing devotees to violence, no matter where we can afford to send them to school – and I can still work part-time and be there for them as much as possible. Maybe I’m an idiot for thinking this will all work out well.

How did you decide who was going to be the primary breadwinner in your relationship? Is there a primary breadwinner, or are you more or less equal? Did you always plan for it to be this way, or has it had to evolve over time?

Posted in kids, life shiz, parenting, school | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments

Children’s Book Roundup

Posted on February 12, 2013 by kate

Book Roundup

For the giveaway, I asked you to leave a comment telling me your favorite kids’ book. So far, the response has been great! I’ve compiled a list of some of your suggestions. The Gruffalo is one of my family’s favorites. (Well, our littlest guy hasn’t weighed in on it yet, but I’m pretty sure he’ll enjoy it.) We read The Lorax all the time, too. I’m excited to check out the rest of your recommendations. Keep those comments coming!

1. I Love You Because You’re You
(Buy from Amazon || Buy from BookPeople)

2. Tacky The Penguin
(Buy from Amazon || Buy from BookPeople)

3. Charlotte’s Web
(Buy from Amazon || Buy from BookPeople)

4.The Conch Bearer
(Buy from Amazon || Buy from BookPeople)

5. Love You Forever
(Buy from Amazon || Buy from BookPeople)

6. Good Night, Gorilla
(Buy from Amazon || Buy from BookPeople)

7. The Lorax
(Buy from Amazon || Buy from BookPeople)

8. The Gruffalo
(Buy from Amazon || Buy from BookPeople)

9. Weslandia
(Buy from Amazon || Buy from BookPeople)

Posted in books, giveaway, kids, stuff to buy | 2 Comments

Giveaway! $25 Gift Certificate from BookPeople

Posted on February 11, 2013 by kate
Story time at BookPeople

Story time at BookPeople

Today’s giveaway is from BookPeople of Moscow, an awesome independent bookstore in Moscow, Idaho. BookPeople’s mission is to serve readers and writers of all ages with a handpicked selection of great books, a variety of events, and an inspiring place in which all are welcome.

BookPeople is celebrating its 40th year in business – the store has been open since 1973. When longtime owner Robert Greene retired in 2011, the Moscow community banded together to keep the store from closing. Steffen and Nicole Werner and Walt and Carol Spurling bought BookPeople in December 2011, and thanks to a huge swell of community support and a lot of elbow grease, BookPeople reopened in February 2012.

My talented friend Jesica, who I’ve known since we were teenagers, is in charge of bespoke gift boxes at BookPeople. This is a new service the store will soon start offering – they’ll ship custom collections of books anywhere, for any occasion. Customers can select a theme; the store will suggest the perfect books and gifts to go with it; and the customer can then hand-pick exactly what goes in the box. Co-owner Carol Spurling says the themes will include “the ‘new baby’ box, the ‘newlywed’ box, the ‘high school or college grad’ box, the ‘itchy feet’ box, the ‘midlife crisis’ box, the ‘breakup’ box, holiday-themed boxes for Valentine’s Day, Mother’s and Father’s Day, and several others.” The service will launch this summer. Customers can order online, in person, or on the phone. Keep checking BookPeople’s website for updates on this amazingly cool-sounding idea, and, of course, I’ll keep you posted here, too.

The BookPeople team - Nick, Jesica, and Carol

The BookPeople team – Nick, Jesica, and Carol

Now for the giveaway! One winner will receive a $25 gift certificate to use at the store (if you happen to be near Moscow) or online. To enter, please like BookPeople on Facebook, and leave a comment below telling me your favorite kids’ book of the moment. I’ll pick a winner at random on Mon, Feb 18.

UPDATE: Janet Higginbotham is the winner! Janet, I’ll email you and put you in touch with BookPeople. Thanks!

Posted in books, giveaway, stuff to buy | Tagged , , | 11 Comments

Fun with kids in non-kid-friendly places: UCSD

Posted on February 5, 2013 by kate

Two weekends ago, I found myself and my two kids on the campus of the University of California, San Diego. My husband was attending a conference, and, aside from visiting friends in town for a small part of our trip, my kids and I had no agenda. We needed some fun stuff to do, and fast.

The UCSD Snake Path. Photo courtesy of UCSD Stuart Collection.

College campuses aren’t the most kid-friendly of places. If I really wanted to show my sons a good time in San Diego, I would have gone to LegoLand or SeaWorld. Here we were, however, on campus on a rainy weekend, sharing a car with my husband, who wasn’t sure when he’d be done for the day. We had a couple of hours to kill – and we managed to find some fun stuff to do.

UCSD’s Geisel Library is named for Theodor Seuss Geisel, or, as you might know him better, Dr. Seuss. We got very excited about the Seuss Collection, which is housed in the Geisel Library, and asked one of the librarians if anything was on display. Sadly, nothing was on exhibit until March, the month of Dr. Seuss’s birthday. We did, however, get to go up the Snake Path. The path starts at the tail and winds up the hill to the library. Halfway along it is a giant granite book carved with a passage from Milton’s Paradise Lost: “And wilt thou not be loath to leave this Paradise, but shalt possess a Paradise within thee, happier far.” The only reason I was loath to leave the Paradise of the Snake Path: there was no elevator down to the library entrance (which is a few floors below where the snake path ends up). I had to lift the stroller down several steps, and then back up them again, which was a pain in the ass – I can’t imagine trying to navigate a wheelchair around there. Not cool.

Fallen Star. Photo courtesy of UCSD Stuart Collection.

Next stop: Fallen Star, a tiny cottage perched precariously atop Jacobs Hall, one of UCSD’s engineering buildings. We took the elevator up to the top floor of Jacobs Hall. (Even the elevator gets fun points, for being just rickety and shaky enough to give my four-year-old a thrill without actually seeming dangerous.) There, we peeked out through a glass door at Fallen Star, balanced at an unbelievable angle on a corner of the building, 100 feet in the air. You can actually go into the cottage – you walk down a little path into the front yard, where two Adirondack chairs sit – but a sign posted by the door told us that it was only open for visiting on Tuesdays and Thursdays. According to UCSD’s website, the house is furnished, and lights come on at night.

Inside Fallen Star. Photo: Philipp Scholz Rittermann for Stuart Collection (UCSD).

Down in the lobby of Jacobs Hall, two movies were projected onto the walls: one depicted the building and installation of Fallen Star, and the other showed footage from the Hubble Space Telescope (perhaps connected with this professor emeritus). Both enthralled my four-year-old – and, unfortunately, my baby, too. My pediatrician advised me not to let the baby have any type of screen time – computer, iPad, phone, or TV – before he’s two years old, according to AAP guidelines. I dutifully turned him away from the Hubble video, but couldn’t help thinking that if little dude is going to catch a few seconds of TV every so often, these amazing images of space are probably closer to brain food than most other video content out there.

Water fountain/bottle refiller. Image courtesy of plumbingsupply.com.

Last but not least, UCSD has these cool drinking fountains/water bottle refillers. They use sensors, so when you put your water bottle up to the spout – or your finger, in my four-year-old’s case – the water starts to pour out. It stops as soon as you remove whatever object you’re putting up to the sensor. Turns out little kids think this is the most hilarious thing in the whole universe. My son could have spent all afternoon putting his finger up to the sensor and yanking it away again. If you’re at UCSD with a cranky kid, find one of these machines, stat.

The conference my husband attended is a yearly one, so we’ll probably find ourselves back at UCSD next January. Do you know any other cool kid-friendly spots on or near campus?

Posted in dads, kids, moms, parenting, playtime | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Booster Seat Madness!

Posted on January 24, 2013 by kate

My oldest son is almost ready for a booster seat. Well, more accurately, he’s been ready for a while (he gets jealous when he sees his friends in boosters): he’s just not tall or heavy enough yet. The Car Seat Lady advises that kids who are at least 3-4 years old and at least 40 pounds can safely ride in a booster seat. My son is 4 1/2 and 38 pounds; also, his shoulders are not yet higher than the top set of harness-strap slots in the car seat’s back, which this Babycenter article says is an indication your child’s grown out of his five-point-harness car seat.

I found it difficult and confusing to locate consistent information about what kind of seat a four-year-old needs. Some sites say go for the full protective package – find a seat with a high back, side-impact collision protection, and a five-point harness. Others assured me that a backless booster – basically, a little cushion that the kid sits on, which helps the lap and shoulder belts rest in the proper places on his or her body – will work fine. (Here’s a great pictorial example of where the belts should rest on a child’s body. Here’s another example with extensive explanations; start the Google Docs presentation at slide 2.)

All kinds of scary details emerged when I started doing more research. I discovered I shouldn’t use a backless booster if, when my child sits on it, his ears come up above the back of my car’s seat (not my car seat. See the difference? Confusing, right?). In this case, I should opt for a high-backed seat. I should avoid using a high-back seat, however, if the shoulder belt guide doesn’t let the shoulder belt move freely – if a kid sits forward and the belt doesn’t retract once he sits back, he’s basically no longer wearing a seatbelt. Also, I should make sure that his movement doesn’t pull the shoulder belt onto his arm rather than keeping it snugly on his chest. Finally, I needed to remember to keep the car seat strapped in even when my son was not in it, lest I crash and the seat become a projectile. (Neither of our cars has a LATCH system to keep the seat strapped in at all times.) This last point was one of the most frightening for me, since my postpartum brain is a sleep-deprived sieve. Hopefully, by the time I decide to buy the booster, I’ll have gotten more than three hours of shut-eye at a stretch.

The more protection, the better, I feel – and I doubt many parents would disagree. The problem is, a full-on booster with all the bells and whistles can cost close to $250: the Recaro ProSPORT combination harness-to-booster seat is $223.99 on Amazon.com. In comparison, Amazon lists the Bubble Bum backless booster (try saying that five times fast) at $39.95. I’m attempting to find a happy medium, but when I looked into mid-priced high-back boosters, several of them had reviews complaining that the shoulder belt didn’t retract properly.

I’m in no hurry to move my son out of his five-point-harness car seat (a Britax Marathon, if you’re wondering). I’d like to make a purchase soon, though; Toys R Us is having a trade-in sale, and I’ve got a baby swing I’d love to get rid of. I feel like I need to do more research before I come to my final decision.

What’s your kid riding in? Do you like it? Do they?

If you’re looking to do some research yourself, here are a couple of good resources I found. Here’s the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety’s 2011 booster seat evaluation list. Here are the Car Seat Lady’s top booster picks (start the Google Docs presentation at Slide 9).

Posted in parenting, stuff to buy | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

Dessert Philosophy

Posted on January 19, 2013 by kate

I like dessert. I like it so much, in fact, that I have a dessert philosophy. It is this: BALLS OUT. When it comes to dessert, I do not fuck around. I will eat half a bar of that gargantuan Trader Joe’s Pound Plus milk chocolate in one sitting. I will eat a pint of ice cream, even when I am not depressed. I will eat a whole bag of Hershey’s Hugs and only occasionally get a stomachache. If I approved of eating contests, which I don’t, because their culture of waste and gluttony reeks of the Roman Empire teetering on the edge of destruction and makes me despair for the future of America, I’d enter a dessert-eating contest, and I would win that sumbitch.

I am a chocolate snob – well, not full-on: I don’t love funky stuff in my chocolate. Bacon = no. Edamame = it’s really good, but you’re pushing it. Black pudding? I’m not making it up: British chocolatier Paul A. Young has a black pudding truffle, but come on. Anyone who claims they like that is just lying to look cool. I guess I’d say I’m upper-middle-class in my chocolate taste. I like Lindt, Godiva, Ghirardelli, and anything English. I also only like milk and white chocolate – not dark – which means I’ll never be a true chocolate connoisseur. That’s OK with me, because I don’t want to chat with you about chocolate. I just want to eat it.

Going balls out means I don’t fuck around with low-fat desserts. There’s no time. I am not going to waste precious calories on anything with no sugar added. What’s the point? I’ll just eat a piece of fruit. Also, who knows what Frankenchemicals are in things like sugar-free Oreos? I’d rather have a pint of that Haagen-Dazs with only five ingredients. Fat, fat, fat, fat and fat.

There is a sort of dessert ladder I employ when my balls-out philosophy must adapt to times of austerity (i.e., when there isn’t any chocolate in the house). This is because I crave sweets terribly, and will stoop to certain levels in order to get my fix. If there’s someone around to watch the kids, I’ll head to the grocery store. If not, the dessert ladder goes into effect. Once I made a saucepan full of Bird’s Custard and ate that. Another time I ate some condensed milk. Baking chocolate will do in a pinch. If I am really desperate, I will have a Crunchie, which I hate.

I can’t pass my dessert philosophy on to my children. I must go balls out in secret. (Come to think of it, it’s probably a good idea, whatever one means by “going balls out,” to refrain from doing it in front of children, right?) Luckily the baby doesn’t know what dessert is yet. When I stop by the kitchen to shovel a few Dove’s Promises into my head, he is none the wiser as I sit him on my hip and unwrap the pieces of chocolate one-handed. The four-year-old is too smart and can smell it when I kiss him goodnight. Then he gets angry, because my chocolate breath reminds him of the painful fact that I can have dessert whenever I want, but he can only have it when I say he can. I never eat dessert in front of him when he can’t have it too. That’s just mean. I also eat the same amount of dessert he’s having. I don’t want him to see me inhale the entire tub of Trader Joe’s Macadamia Nut Laceys. I want him to have a healthy relationship with sweets, rather than my extreme-sports relationship with them.

I need dessert, I tell myself. Raising two kids is stressful. Other parents drink wine or smoke crack. I’ve got to unwind somehow. Bubble baths and yoga take too much time. Recently, though, I’ve started eating much more healthily – lots of whole grains and vegetables – which is great, because it means I’m saving more calories for dessert. Besides, who would I be without dessert? Sometimes I feel as though my unashamed consumption of sweets is one of the ways I define myself. It’s one of the only ways I rebel anymore. But what am I rebelling against?

When it comes to bad habits, I am an all-or-nothing kind of person. I can’t have an occasional cigarette; within a week, I’ll be up to 30 a day. Quitting smoking for me meant just stopping – getting to the end of the pack of cigarettes, and just stopping. That’s probably how I’ll quit going balls out on dessert, which I will have to one day, I imagine, unless I want to ruin my health in several ways. I will try my hardest to practice moderation, but it’s hard to imagine myself eating one little piece of chocolate and then primly pushing away the rest. Best not to have it around at all. Just as a retired skydiver gently folds his parachute and places it in mothballs, I shall tuck away my extreme dessert habit in the cedar chest of my memory. Oh, how I will mourn when that day finally comes.

Right now, though, I’m going to go get another bowl of ice cream.

Posted in food, life shiz, moms | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Baby Food 101

Posted on January 9, 2013 by kate

My younger son just turned six months old. Time for solid food! I thought I remembered the drill from when my oldest started eating solids, but it turned out my memory had gone the way of my waistline. I had a lot of questions: how many days should I spend introducing each new food? Can rice cereal be mixed with water, or should I avoid any water until my son’s older? Oddly, it was hard to find all the answers on the Interwebs. I thought I’d be able to find a site that broke it all down for me, but instead the answers I sought were scattered in different places. Ah, yes, such is life, my friends; such is life.

I thought I’d gather my questions and answers into a sort of Baby Food 101, in case anyone else is having trouble finding this information.

Do I heat up rice cereal?
Heat up the breast milk or formula, then mix it with the rice cereal. Don’t microwave breast milk; it breaks down the nutrients. You can also serve rice cereal with cold breast milk or formula. My son’s reaction to warm rice cereal? Meh. Cold? Also meh.

Once I’ve started with rice cereal, do I continue, or is it just useful as a first food?
My pediatrician says it’s a good idea to continue feeding baby rice cereal, because it’s a good source of iron. You can mix it with fruit and vegetable purees.

How many days do I feed my baby each new food before I move on?
My pediatrician says five; WebMD says three to five. If your baby has an allergic reaction, this system makes it easier to identify which food is causing it.

Can I mix rice cereal with water?
Yes. Mixing it with breast milk at first, however, might make it more appetizing for baby.

Can I add spices and seasonings to my baby’s food?
BabyCenter says yes. BabyCenter India advises following the same rules as you would with introducing new foods: introduce one spice at a time over four or five days to make sure it doesn’t cause an allergic reaction. Don’t add salt or sugar to baby food, though.

How much food should my baby eat at each sitting?
An aside: While searching for the answer to this question, I came upon this confusing statement on the Earth’s Best site:

“Although the American Academy of Pediatrics’ section on breastfeeding supports exclusive breastfeeding for the first 6 months, its committee on nutrition says that solids can be introduced between 4 and 6 months.”

Huh? Does anyone talk to each other over at the AAP, or what? Maybe the breastfeeding committee and the nutrition committee have beef with one another. Beef, get it? Anyway. According to Earth’s Best (makers of organic baby food), babies 6 to 9 months of age need 2 to 4 tablespoons of baby food, twice or three times a day. Dr. Sears emphasizes that the amount may vary from day to day: “baby may take a couple tablespoons one day and only a teaspoon the next.”

When it comes to feeding my babies, I pretty much follow doctors’ orders. I have friends, though, who flouted all the rules, and their kids are very adventurous eaters. What about you? Do you follow the rules, or scoff at conventional wisdom?

Posted in food, parenting | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments