We plan to raise the girls to understand they are global citizens, and I’m hoping this will include multiple international trips while they are young. But I don’t envision any 8+ hour flights anytime soon and they’re a little young for lessons in foreign policy, so for now I’m just trying to make sure they develop a varied palate.
We started off with what is technically Chinese food, I guess, but it seems so basic it hardly counts: tofu sautéed in a soy sauce/honey/fresh ginger sauce. In a pinch, I can buy a side of brown rice from the Chinese restaurant down the road, throw in some broccoli, and have a sure meal. Of course, they are well versed in Tex-Mex, which I guess kind of counts as Mexican food. They’ve been eating guacamole since they were eight months old, and Monkey will happily down an entire cheese enchilada for dinner.
About six weeks ago I decided it was time to branch out. We tried Indian food first. The girls had a good snack before we left home so the food experience could be purely experimental. Twin Daddy and I both got Chicken Tikka Masala, medium spicy on the sauce. Monkey loved the naan (bread) and was dipping it into the masala sauce like a pro in no time. Turtle wasn’t so keen on the naan but she did really enjoy dipping her Ritz cracker into the sauce, so that was a great start. We had the same meal a second time around and Turtle enjoyed the naan that time, and they both had lots of rice with sauce and even a few bites of chicken. Then I made an “Indian stew” I found in Parents Magazine – I’m sure it has a real name but that’s what the magazine called it. Its primary base was yellow split peas and potatoes. The girls loved it but apparently I still need to develop my palate.
A couple of weeks later I found an “instant” Mujadara meal at Whole Foods. It’s a Mediterranean lentil and rice pilaf, and it’s delicious. The girls devoured it, so I found a recipe online and made a big batch for us – it’s so easy; it’s just lentils, rice, onions, cinnamon, cumin and olive oil. Things went so well with the mujadara that we thought we’d try out a Greek restaurant. The girls liked dipping their pita bread into the tzadziki (cucumber sauce) – they’re really into dipping right now. They had a couple of bites of falafel and kind of picked at some of the other things, so it was ok, but not the rousing success I had expected. Still, I got an extra side of the tzadziki, mixed it in with the leftover mujadara we had at home, and that was a hit.
Now, I have to admit, for me this was just building up to the moment when I could introduce the girls to the food I would eat every single day if I could afford to: sushi. I thought I would be crushed if they refused sushi, so I had to see how they reacted to other foods first. Based on their openness to at least trying the other foods, I thought it was safe to venture into my sacred territory. We went to a little Thai/Sushi restaurant down the street and kept it simple (and cooked, of course): a California roll and a Philadelphia roll. I sat next to Turtle; Twin Daddy sat with Monkey; Aunt V. sat across the table wondering how her sister turned into a silly yuppie who feeds her toddlers sushi.
I pulled a little piece off for Turtle and she took it, kind of played with it, and ate it, seaweed and all! That was enough for me to call the meal a complete success. She didn’t eat much more of the rice and seaweed – she didn’t like how the rice was so sticky she couldn’t get it off her fingers. But she did eat the “innards” of a piece of California roll (avocado, cucumber, crab stick) and Philadelphia roll (smoked salmon and cream cheese). She and Monkey also had several bites of my tofu Pad Thai. Monkey had a similar reaction to the sushi, trying little bites of the rolls and the innards. She was more interested in Twin Daddy’s chicken fried rice, though, a meal to which she’s more accustomed.
My hope in all this is that if we introduce them to enough flavors now, when one or the other gets to that weird toddler stage where they insist on eating the exact same thing for weeks on end, it will at least be something interesting, like sushi, and not lame, like toast. And so to that end, for the first time on this blog, I’m issuing a call for suggestions – which kid-tolerant Austin restaurants serving global cuisine do you like? Leave me a comment and we’ll (try) to give them a try! And I’ll let you know if my little experiment in globalizing toddlers’ taste buds works.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
This week in toddler town
Monkey loves being mommy’s helper. She gets both her shoes and Turtle’s shoes and brings them to me so we can go “side” (outside). She helps me with the laundry – yesterday she carried as many clean clothes as her little arms could hold from the laundry room to the living room. She is also showing a deeply sweet side - she reaches for Turtle’s hand when we go out for walks and is the first to give out kisses at bedtime. These wonderful instincts have really sharpened over the past week.
Also over the past week, Monkey has had a number of hysterical meltdowns. Sometimes when I try to put her in her highchair, she screams and claws and stiffens her legs and generally fights like I’m trying to put her in a pot of boiling water. She may eat the food she’s offered, or she may scream when she sees it, dump over the contents of the plate, and then throw the plate on the floor.
The biggest struggle we had this week was over an apple. She kept saying “apul, apul” (this was after she had thrown the offered lunch on the floor). So I peeled an apple and cut her a few slices. Which she threw on the floor. So I moved on to cheese. I cut her a slice, she ate a bite, and seemed happy. I cut the slice into little pieces. Which she threw on the floor. That’s when I kind of lost it – I held her arms tightly to her side so she’d stop throwing the food and said through clenched teeth, “This is what there is to eat.” She started crying, a really sad cry, not like the frustrated screaming she’d been doing moments before. It was like she was saying, “I can’t make myself understood and now Mommy is mad at me.” That calmed me down quickly, so I gave her a hug and asked her again what she wanted. She said “apul.” I gave her the whole apple this time, and she was so happy, holding the big apple all by herself and taking bites out of it like a grownup. That’s when it dawned on me that she didn’t want her food cut into little pieces like she was some kind of baby! So I gave her a huge chunk of cheese and she took a bite out of it, then set it on the table, all the while hugging her huge apple close to her chest. She chewed that apple pretty much down to the core, stopping occasionally to take a bite of her big hunk of cheese, and she was happy, and the storm passed.
What is Turtle doing during all this? Sometimes she follows Monkey’s lead in throwing her plate on the floor, which sometimes pushes me to pick up one of those plates and throw it into the sink as hard as I can. But usually she just ignores Monkey’s tirade and eats until she’s finished, which is a relief.
Now, I know I make Turtle out to be a little angel, but let me tell you Turtle’s secret: she’s a biter. And I don’t mean love bites. I’m talking tear-the-flesh-off-your-arm bites. Just ask Monkey, the unlucky recipient of the wrath of Turtle. Yesterday Turtle was sitting on the fireplace hearth and Monkey had the audacity to come sit down next to her. Turtle leaned over and bit Monkey on the arm so severely that it left a deep mark, which turned into a swollen red welt, and then settled into a purply bruise. Turtle has been a biter pretty much since her first tooth came in, but she’s really picked up the pace over the past couple of weeks; Monkey always has a bite bruise somewhere on her body. I correct her every time, give her a short “time out” and then make her “apologize” to Monkey, which she does by kind of leaning over and patting Monkey on the arm. But I am terrified that she is going to bite someone in our playgroup one of these days, causing me to die of horror on the spot. If Monkey had a huge meltdown at the playground, I’d be embarrassed but I’d get through it. But if Turtle takes a hunk of flesh out of someone else’s kid, well, I just don’t think I could show my face again. I wonder why biting seems so awful, so stigmatized, when it's a common issue? My guess is that it seems primitive and violent, something that a proper suburban child just shouldn’t do if she’s being raised right. So I’ll be watching little Turtle like a hawk tomorrow afternoon at the playground.
I could go on forever about every little idiosyncrasy of each of the girls as they hurtle through toddlerhood; this post has barely scratched the surface of their escapades this week. I didn’t even talk about the night Monkey refused to be put in the bath, screaming and climbing out repeatedly until we gave up; or about the next night, when it was Turtle’s turn to melt down at bath time, screaming and climbing out of the tub repeatedly until we gave up. Or about the night when they kissed each other at least twenty times before bedtime. Or how cute it was the other day when they held hands as they walked around the driveway. Every day we have a high and a low, and sometimes Monkey is the sweet angel and Turtle is the drama queen. I try to remind myself daily that my job as Twin Momma is to focus on each girl as an individual, to help each girl develop the full spectrum of her personality, and to forgive myself on those days when I handle the stress by screaming like a banshee.
Also over the past week, Monkey has had a number of hysterical meltdowns. Sometimes when I try to put her in her highchair, she screams and claws and stiffens her legs and generally fights like I’m trying to put her in a pot of boiling water. She may eat the food she’s offered, or she may scream when she sees it, dump over the contents of the plate, and then throw the plate on the floor.
The biggest struggle we had this week was over an apple. She kept saying “apul, apul” (this was after she had thrown the offered lunch on the floor). So I peeled an apple and cut her a few slices. Which she threw on the floor. So I moved on to cheese. I cut her a slice, she ate a bite, and seemed happy. I cut the slice into little pieces. Which she threw on the floor. That’s when I kind of lost it – I held her arms tightly to her side so she’d stop throwing the food and said through clenched teeth, “This is what there is to eat.” She started crying, a really sad cry, not like the frustrated screaming she’d been doing moments before. It was like she was saying, “I can’t make myself understood and now Mommy is mad at me.” That calmed me down quickly, so I gave her a hug and asked her again what she wanted. She said “apul.” I gave her the whole apple this time, and she was so happy, holding the big apple all by herself and taking bites out of it like a grownup. That’s when it dawned on me that she didn’t want her food cut into little pieces like she was some kind of baby! So I gave her a huge chunk of cheese and she took a bite out of it, then set it on the table, all the while hugging her huge apple close to her chest. She chewed that apple pretty much down to the core, stopping occasionally to take a bite of her big hunk of cheese, and she was happy, and the storm passed.
What is Turtle doing during all this? Sometimes she follows Monkey’s lead in throwing her plate on the floor, which sometimes pushes me to pick up one of those plates and throw it into the sink as hard as I can. But usually she just ignores Monkey’s tirade and eats until she’s finished, which is a relief.
Now, I know I make Turtle out to be a little angel, but let me tell you Turtle’s secret: she’s a biter. And I don’t mean love bites. I’m talking tear-the-flesh-off-your-arm bites. Just ask Monkey, the unlucky recipient of the wrath of Turtle. Yesterday Turtle was sitting on the fireplace hearth and Monkey had the audacity to come sit down next to her. Turtle leaned over and bit Monkey on the arm so severely that it left a deep mark, which turned into a swollen red welt, and then settled into a purply bruise. Turtle has been a biter pretty much since her first tooth came in, but she’s really picked up the pace over the past couple of weeks; Monkey always has a bite bruise somewhere on her body. I correct her every time, give her a short “time out” and then make her “apologize” to Monkey, which she does by kind of leaning over and patting Monkey on the arm. But I am terrified that she is going to bite someone in our playgroup one of these days, causing me to die of horror on the spot. If Monkey had a huge meltdown at the playground, I’d be embarrassed but I’d get through it. But if Turtle takes a hunk of flesh out of someone else’s kid, well, I just don’t think I could show my face again. I wonder why biting seems so awful, so stigmatized, when it's a common issue? My guess is that it seems primitive and violent, something that a proper suburban child just shouldn’t do if she’s being raised right. So I’ll be watching little Turtle like a hawk tomorrow afternoon at the playground.
I could go on forever about every little idiosyncrasy of each of the girls as they hurtle through toddlerhood; this post has barely scratched the surface of their escapades this week. I didn’t even talk about the night Monkey refused to be put in the bath, screaming and climbing out repeatedly until we gave up; or about the next night, when it was Turtle’s turn to melt down at bath time, screaming and climbing out of the tub repeatedly until we gave up. Or about the night when they kissed each other at least twenty times before bedtime. Or how cute it was the other day when they held hands as they walked around the driveway. Every day we have a high and a low, and sometimes Monkey is the sweet angel and Turtle is the drama queen. I try to remind myself daily that my job as Twin Momma is to focus on each girl as an individual, to help each girl develop the full spectrum of her personality, and to forgive myself on those days when I handle the stress by screaming like a banshee.
Friday, March 13, 2009
(almost) Losing Mr. Lovey
Sometimes it feels like Turtle’s Mr. Lovey is my third child. I’m always keeping an eye out for him, and I wouldn’t dare leave the house without him. I bathe him several times a week. I’m embarrassed when other people notice that he’s particularly stinky or dirty. It ruffles my feathers when Twin Daddy calls him “it” as in “Are you looking for your lovey, Turtle? Here it is.” Mr. Lovey is a he, thank you very much.
Mr. Lovey is also my back-up, my buddy, my helper. When Turtle has a particularly nasty ouchy, I may be her first line of comfort, but her recovery is not complete until we go find Mr. Lovey. She snatches him into her arms, twirls him around a bit, and then sticks him in her mouth. As soon as we get in the car, she whines until I deliver Mr. Lovey, and then she happily (and quietly) chews on him until we reach our destination. He is all she needs to go right to sleep. Mr. Lovey is a miracle worker, and I don’t think I could parent both girls at home alone without his help.
When it’s time for Turtle to give him up, I plan to give him the best bath I can and then seal him in a plastic bag, saving him to comfort me some day when my little Turtle Maria grows up and moves away.
I didn’t realize how attached I was to Mr. Lovey until last Friday. We came home after a frazzled afternoon – I had taken Turtle (with Monkey in tow) to the pediatrician for conjunctivitis and an ear infection, then to H.E.B. to get the antibiotic prescription filled. Turtle was miserable, sagging over the seat of the “car” double cart with her pink watery eyes and runny nose. Monkey was making me miserable, whining non-stop the entire twenty minutes in the store, hating being strapped into the cart, then whining the whole way home, hating being strapped into her car seat. Minutes after we got home, I realized Mr. Lovey was nowhere to be found. Not in Turtle’s car seat, not on the floorboard, not in the stroller. She was whining for him and for the first time ever, I couldn’t find him.
I immediately thought we left him in the cart at the H.E.B. I called the store but he hadn’t been turned in to Lost and Found, so the minute Twin Daddy got home I rushed out the door and drove like a maniac back to H.E.B. I checked all around the parking lot, and then walked up and down every aisle. I accosted every parent in the store with a car double cart, but none of them had found a yellow duck lovey the size of a washcloth. I imagined my poor, sick Turtle crying herself to sleep that night because Mr. Lovey wasn’t there, and my eyes filled with tears. I checked the parking lot one more time but it was no use.
I cried the whole way home. It was too undignified an ending for Mr. Lovey - dropped in a parking lot, to be run over by strangers who had no idea what a loyal friend Mr. Lovey has been, through vomit and snot and poop and so many tears. And it was much too soon for poor Turtle, who was in no way ready to let him go.
I pulled into the garage and opened up the Saturn once more, determined that he must be in there, he simply could not be lost. I pulled out the stroller, shook it out, began opening pouches I never use, and . . . I found him! Relief washed over me, then I burst into tears again. I pulled Mr. Lovey to my face and basked in his stinkiness. I ran into the house, a triumphant, blubbering mess. Turtle smiled and put her arms out for her old friend, then pulled him close and started chewing on his ear. I put her in my lap and buried my face in her neck, trying to get a hold of myself. Twin Daddy patted me on the back and didn’t say a word, but I’m sure he was thinking, “I wonder where Monkey gets all her theatrics?”
And so Mr. Lovey was safe, and I vowed that he would never leave Turtle’s car seat unless we were at home. I am in no way ready to let him go.
Mr. Lovey is also my back-up, my buddy, my helper. When Turtle has a particularly nasty ouchy, I may be her first line of comfort, but her recovery is not complete until we go find Mr. Lovey. She snatches him into her arms, twirls him around a bit, and then sticks him in her mouth. As soon as we get in the car, she whines until I deliver Mr. Lovey, and then she happily (and quietly) chews on him until we reach our destination. He is all she needs to go right to sleep. Mr. Lovey is a miracle worker, and I don’t think I could parent both girls at home alone without his help.
When it’s time for Turtle to give him up, I plan to give him the best bath I can and then seal him in a plastic bag, saving him to comfort me some day when my little Turtle Maria grows up and moves away.
I didn’t realize how attached I was to Mr. Lovey until last Friday. We came home after a frazzled afternoon – I had taken Turtle (with Monkey in tow) to the pediatrician for conjunctivitis and an ear infection, then to H.E.B. to get the antibiotic prescription filled. Turtle was miserable, sagging over the seat of the “car” double cart with her pink watery eyes and runny nose. Monkey was making me miserable, whining non-stop the entire twenty minutes in the store, hating being strapped into the cart, then whining the whole way home, hating being strapped into her car seat. Minutes after we got home, I realized Mr. Lovey was nowhere to be found. Not in Turtle’s car seat, not on the floorboard, not in the stroller. She was whining for him and for the first time ever, I couldn’t find him.
I immediately thought we left him in the cart at the H.E.B. I called the store but he hadn’t been turned in to Lost and Found, so the minute Twin Daddy got home I rushed out the door and drove like a maniac back to H.E.B. I checked all around the parking lot, and then walked up and down every aisle. I accosted every parent in the store with a car double cart, but none of them had found a yellow duck lovey the size of a washcloth. I imagined my poor, sick Turtle crying herself to sleep that night because Mr. Lovey wasn’t there, and my eyes filled with tears. I checked the parking lot one more time but it was no use.
I cried the whole way home. It was too undignified an ending for Mr. Lovey - dropped in a parking lot, to be run over by strangers who had no idea what a loyal friend Mr. Lovey has been, through vomit and snot and poop and so many tears. And it was much too soon for poor Turtle, who was in no way ready to let him go.
I pulled into the garage and opened up the Saturn once more, determined that he must be in there, he simply could not be lost. I pulled out the stroller, shook it out, began opening pouches I never use, and . . . I found him! Relief washed over me, then I burst into tears again. I pulled Mr. Lovey to my face and basked in his stinkiness. I ran into the house, a triumphant, blubbering mess. Turtle smiled and put her arms out for her old friend, then pulled him close and started chewing on his ear. I put her in my lap and buried my face in her neck, trying to get a hold of myself. Twin Daddy patted me on the back and didn’t say a word, but I’m sure he was thinking, “I wonder where Monkey gets all her theatrics?”
And so Mr. Lovey was safe, and I vowed that he would never leave Turtle’s car seat unless we were at home. I am in no way ready to let him go.
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Monday, March 2, 2009
Happy Anniversary!
Today Twin Momma and Twin Daddy celebrate their 7th wedding anniversary. Yay to us!! We're taking the girls in to day care and going to lunch and a movie.
Two years ago today, the nurse from my OB's office called with the blood test results: "You are definitely pregnant!" It was a thrill to get the official news on our 5th anniversary, and we celebrated with a delicious and obscenely expensive dinner at the Driskill Grill. I didn't have a drop of wine, of course, what with being 15 days pregnant and all.
A few days later I had a second blood test to make sure my "numbers" were going up like they were supposed to - the nurse said something like, "you are doing great, your numbers are way up."
Way up? I remember smiling wide and thinking, "Maybe it's twins!"
Two years ago today, the nurse from my OB's office called with the blood test results: "You are definitely pregnant!" It was a thrill to get the official news on our 5th anniversary, and we celebrated with a delicious and obscenely expensive dinner at the Driskill Grill. I didn't have a drop of wine, of course, what with being 15 days pregnant and all.
A few days later I had a second blood test to make sure my "numbers" were going up like they were supposed to - the nurse said something like, "you are doing great, your numbers are way up."
Way up? I remember smiling wide and thinking, "Maybe it's twins!"
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