I hate you, f%#@ seahorse!

I see you there, looking at me with those beady little eyes and that stupid grin.  I see you.  With those shiny ruffles and the glowing belly.  You’re not going to get the best of my baby!  No, seahorse.  With your badly played MIDI versions of classic melodies and your horrendous timing!  Why do you skip a beat in between phrases?  Why must you torture me like this?  Every time that moment in the music is about to happen, I cringe with all my being.  You’re teaching my child that tempo doesn’t matter, that anyone, even a seahorse, can play Bach and Beethoven, even badly and even under the sea.  I don’t care that she loves you.  I hate you, seahorse.  And one day, she’ll take piano lessons and realize how wrong you were. Hopefully by then, you will have disappeared into the under-bed cemetery for discarded toys, covered by dust bunnies and single socks, and we’ll have no more of you.

“Sopita” — a “little soup” that babies love

Aromatics + root vegetables + broth + tiny pasta

My 11-month old loves this.  I vary it, but here are the basics.  Sautée some cut up aromatics such as onion, scallion, shallot, bell peppers or leek.  You don’t have to chop finely because you are going to put this in the blender.  Add vegetable broth (I really like “Better Than Bouillon” vegetable base). Add a mix of potato, carrot, sweet potato and squash (whatever you have).  Simmer until tender.  Whiz in the blender.  Once smooth, adjust seasonings and add tiny pasta such as star shapes.  Cook until the pasta is done, about six minutes.  That’s it!  You can add a little grated parmigiano and/or parsley at the end.

For a variation, add a little cumin or curry powder to the aromatics.  (Omit the parmigiano.)

I think the mix of an orange vegetable with regular potato really mellows out the taste.  Make a big batch and freeze some of it.

The best $40 high chair idea

I have to admit, I’m pretty proud of my bargain-shopper self on this one.  I was searching everywhere for a nice high chair and I was appalled at the monstrosities out there.  They’re huge and plastic, take up half your dining room and are expensive to boot. I wanted something wooden, not ugly and stable but I couldn’t find anything to fit that criteria, except for ones like the Tripp Trapp, but there was no way I was shelling out $300 for a high chair.

One day, I was in a bagel shop, of all places, and I saw the commercial high chairs that most restaurants have. I looked at it and thought, hey, that’s kind of a nice chair!  It’s wooden, it’s sturdy, it’s reasonably small… Hmmm…

As it turns out, you can buy a restaurant high chair for about $40  or $50 online. We got the one made by L.A. Baby. The wood is solid and beautiful. It has a simple safety belt. My crafty mom made a gorgeous set of cushions for it.  (Not me, I can barely sew a button). And, voila!  Sofia loves it. We pull her right up to the table and she eats with us.

Next project, an oil cloth mat for underneath to catch all those peas and carrots.

I suck at the Ferber method

I try, really, we both do, but nobody said she was going to cry like THAT.  It’s not a hunger cry, or a tired cry, it’s an all-out YOU ARE ABANDONING ME AND I’M TERRIFIED cry.  And every parenting instinct kicks in and we go rushing in there and pick her up.  OK, my husband is better at this than I am.  He can go in there and pat her and calm her without picking her up, but for me, it’s almost impossible.  Especially since she’s learned to put her arms up and ask to be held.  What am I supposed to do?

We’ve tried for four nights and gotten her to sleep in her crib twice and given up twice.  They say she’s not going to remember this, but how can I be sure?  Does she hate me?  Is it s really OK to do this to her?

The payoff is really tempting –a baby who sleeps through the night in her own crib.  It seems an impossibility right now.  The Sears doctors say don’t let them cry, but my friends who have had the strength to do the Ferber method say it really works and their kids seem fine.

Oh, the agony!  What to do?

Sorry, Mr. Window-washer, that you had to see that.

I love breastfeeding my  baby and even though pumping milk at work is a pain, I still do it.  The American Academy of Pediatrics now recommends breastfeeding for the first full year and I’m trying to keep going for as long as I can.  But pumping is not always easy.  Sometimes a morning meeting will go long and I’ll be totally engorged by the time I can get away to pump.  Other times, it’s good.  I can shut my office door, do some email, and nobody  bothers me.

And then there’s this.  The other day, I ‘m sitting in my office pumping, with the door closed, lights off and the blinds drawn.  These are the kinds of commercial vertical blinds that you can’t see through if you’re far away, but if you are close to them, you can see through them.   Which is exactly what the window-washer did today when he got to my floor.   All I know is that I heard a thump outside my window, I turned around and there was a man hanging from ropes, and there I was, with my boob hanging out.  I mean, what are the chances?

I just spun my chair around and sat frozen until I was sure he was gone.  Sorry, Mr. Window-washer.

My Bilingual Baby, Part One

When my husband and I decided to raise our child bilingually, it just kind of happened casually.  My sister and I had always spoken Spanish at home and we had lived the benefits of being bilingual in the United States, so of course, we wanted to pass that on to our children.  Our husbands don’t speak Spanish well enough to speak to the children in anything other than English most of the time, so I had a lot of questions about how this was going to work.  When would we speak which language?  Would the kids be confused?

I headed to my local library and read up on how you do this.  Luckily, unlike breastfeeding, sleep training and discipline, there is actually a set of common-sense and widely-accepted advice!  Most experts actually agree on how to do this!

There’s no magic. The language of the place where you live will happen naturally, as long as the child is exposed to a lot of adults who speak to him. The “second” language takes some work and the trick is three-fold: exposure, division and consistency.

1. Exposure: it’s a spectrum and you have to find where you fit in it. One one end, say the child gets the second language from a grandparent once a week or month. He will learn only that amount. On the other end, you make sure the child gets exposure every day from a variety of people, and reads and learns in that language, he will be fully bilingual. There’s no right or wrong way to do this. Even a little bit of exposure is giving your child a huge gift! (More on the positive effects of bilingualism on brain and social development later!)

The more variety the better. I’m planning on getting Spanish books, movies, finding or creating a Spanish play group, and maybe traveling to Spanish-speaking places as often as possible.

2. Division: In order to reduce confusion and increase the child’s ability to learn, it’s important to draw lines between languages. One way to do this is to decide on a time when each language will be spoken. My sister does Spanish-at-dinner, for example. You can also do second-language-weekends, or second-language-mornings, whatever suits your lifestyle.

The second way is based on place. Spanish at home, French at grandma’s house, Mandarin in the car, whatever works.

The third way, and what I think is going to be the easiest and most consistent method is OPOL (One Person One Language.) Mom speaks Greek and Dad speaks Italian. Nanny speaks Portuguese and Grandma speaks Urdu. You get the idea. That’s my plan. I will speak Spanish to our daughter.  My husband will speak English.  My family will speak Spanish to her exclusively and we will insist that she speak Spanish back to us.  I’m hoping that if we start this early on (which I did from day one), it will be natural and she won’t mind it.

3. Consistency. This works best if you are as consistent as possible. I only speak Spanish to her, all the time. And I expect that when she starts to speak, she will speak in Spanish to me. If you go back and forth, it not only confuses the child, but it shows her that you are not committed to it and that learning the language is not important.

The experts seem to agree that what is most harmful is mixing languages – a person speaking both at once, or the “Spanglish” problem.  So I’ll try to keep it to Spanish only.

Anyway, that’s what my research found and this is my plan. How will it all work? Will she speak later than other kids (this sometimes happens with bilingual kids and is totally normal.) Will her first words be in English or Spanish? What happens when her dad and I have to talk to her together? If her Spanish develops faster than her father can keep up, will he feel left out? There’s a lot more to learn here.

Stay tuned!

Things I swore I’d never do

#1 Let me child sleep with me

I always thought that the parent’s bed was, well, for the parents, and the children should sleep in their own beds. That’s why we spent hours researching and comparing and paid $350 for a crib made of sustainable wood, with a non-toxic finish and up to the latest safety standards. And then Sofia was
born and all bets were off. She simply won’t have it. Sure, she’ll play in the crib while she’s awake, but if you should put her to sleep in it and she wakes up… oh, the screams!

So she’s now six months and it’s been about 180 days of sleeping with her. The first hundred or so were spent trying not to roll over her. The next eighty were spent trying to avoid her hitting us!

Even though my back is killing me and we’ve had to clean poop off of the mattress a few times, I’m not pushing her out of bed. When she’s thirteen, she’ll hate me and want to be nowhere near me. For now, let’s just cuddle.

#2 Buy an exersaucer

Let’s face it: they’re huge and plastic and ugly. My friend calls hers “The Contraption.” And secretly I wonder if my daughter is tacky. But she loves it and it’s the only way she’ll let me put her down right
now, so I can get some dishes done.

#3 Force you to look at baby pictures

If you see me walking toward you, iPhone in hand, you better just walk the other way. At last count, I  have 1,064 pictures on my phone and 999 of them are of Sofia. Either stop to look at a few now, or be subjected to a slide show later.

#4 Wear sweatpants to the store

Seriously, I have very low standards, even for Boston. But I did draw the line there. Until the only pair of jeans that fit me had puke all over them and I had to go out to get diaper cream. Sorry, folks, that you had to see that.