Category: News

All I wanted was a cheese danish.

I braved the weather (and luckily dodged the heavy rains before and after our trip) to go to the Publix.  I looked in the bakery section.  All they had was almond and apple.  This would not do.  I searched high and low for the Entenmann’s section.  I finally found it.  I gleefully purchased said cheese danish.  I returned home and opened the box to take that sought-after first bite.  I found mold.

I’m pretty sure that this is a sign that I shouldn’t be eating cheese danish.  I’m ignoring this instinct and looking for danish recipes.  Yes, I want one that badly.

[Scene:  8:30 in the morning, pre-breakfast.)

Liam:  Dad?

Matt:  Yes, Liam?

Liam:  I want some chocolate.

Matt:  You want some chocolate?

[A few minutes pass.]

Matt:  Liam, let’s go get dressed.

Liam:  No.  I want some chocolate.

Matt:  How about some strawberries instead?

—————————-

At least, in case there was even a shred of doubt, we know with full certainty that he’s my son.  And at least he’s still easily redirected…

Just because you’re honking your horn and making nasty hand gestures at me does not mean I can see any better to be able to make a safe left-hand turn.  I am driving a Civic.  I am low to the ground.  I live in SUV country.  I cannot see around the line of gigantic vehicles in the turn lane across the street to be able to know if I can safely make a turn.  I have my child in this car.  He’s my most precious cargo and all the honking and gesturing (and swearing, don’t think I can’t read your lips in my rearview mirror, because I certainly can) in the world will not cause me to make a blind turn.  There is a green arrow coming shortly.  Please hold your horses and get over yourself.

Thanks,

Shannon

This morning, after a particularly exhausting (and completely necessary) trip to the Costco, we arrived back at home with a carload full of groceries at around 11:30.  After 30 minutes of unloading the car and loading the fridge and deep freeze, Liam was sneaking (unwashed) grapes out of the produce drawer and telling me he was “sooo HONGRY.”  So I started to get things going when I noticed him red-faced and squatting.  I asked him if he needed to poop and he said yes, and after a quick check to make sure the process hadn’t already started I sat him down in the toilet and began reading Fox in Socks.  After several times through that book and at least one time through the Mister Rogers potty training book, he said he didn’t need to go.  I put on a pull-up, got his pants back on, washed his hands and went back into the kitchen to start lunch again.

I looked up and saw more red-faced squatting but this time it was too late for the toilet, so we headed for the changing table.  I took off his pull-up, cleaned him up and turned around to get a new diaper.  When I turned back around things were definitely glistening.  He had peed on his socks (both of them), his shirt, and all over the changing pad.  Then it was time to change all of his clothes and the changing pad.  By the time I got him all put back together it was 12:45 and still no lunch.

He’s now happily eating Joe’s Os and a fruit cup while I try hard to absorb what’s been a universal truth with this kid since he was born:  he does things in his own time and not a minute sooner.  As soon as he’s ready he’ll let us know and then it’s off to the races with no looking back.  I sure hope his preschool accepts this explanation when he’s not toilet trained in time for the 2011-2012 school year…

Liam has got to figure out this whole potty training thing before too terribly long.  I’m trying to be patient but this morning I checked his diaper thinking that I smelled poop when what I was smelling was his blueberry waffle in the toaster oven.  That’s right:  I have cleaned up so many nasty messes involving blueberries in the past few months that I now associate blueberries with poop.  Something’s gotta give.  This is madness!

There are two smells in our house right now competing for the attention of my olfactory nerves.

The first is the smell of dirt that’s taken over the entire first floor of the house after Matt re-potted the peace lily yesterday.  This desperately needed to be done, but wow.  Who knew fertilized dirt could be so fragrant without being straight from the source, so to speak?

The second is the overwhelming, unbelievable stench emanating from Liam’s mouth.  You know how kids transform overnight from sweaty children with an odor that’s still (somehow) clean into stinky tweens with whom someone needs to have the deodorant talk?  Well something’s happened to Liam’s breath after he consumes garlic (hummus being the most recent culprit).  He used to eat hummus by the bucketload and no one would have been any the wiser if they weren’t changing his diapers.  Now?  Now if I feed him hummus for lunch I go back in to get him after his nap and am greeted by an ungodly wall of stench.  Seriously.  It almost brought me to my knees.

I’m afraid that the loser in this battle is neither the dirt nor the halitosis, it’s me.

Today I was all psyched up for a bacon and tomato sandwich.  I actually found some hothouse tomatoes at the store that taste like tomatoes (I mean, nothing tastes like fresh summer tomatoes, but it’s February and I was jonesing for a BT sandwich, so there you go) and I cooked up an entire package of turkey bacon for the occasion.  My bread was all toasted and I was getting ready to cut my tomatoes when Liam asked for a piece of bacon.  I gave him one.  Apparently he liked the flavor because by the time I turned around again he had stuffed most of it in his mouth.

Anyone who has spent any time around Liam knows that his one major issue in life has always been (and unfortunately continues to be) eating.  He never latched properly when he was a baby.  He had trouble with choking even with the slowest of slow nipples.  We ended up taking him to a specialist and (an enormous amount of money later) found that he has trouble with sensitivity in his mouth, specifically his cheeks.  He gets ahead of himself when eating and he ends up with far too much food in his mouth.  We were basically told to work with him on recognizing that there is a lot of food in there since his cheeks don’t send that message to his brain on their own.  Things have largely been okay, but I don’t really see there being too much improvement until he’s old enough to realize on his own that there’s too much in his mouth.  It’s (part of) the reason he still wears a bib with a little pocket in it: sometimes he just realizes (far too late) that there’s too much food in his cheeks and his natural response is to spit it out and start again with a clean slate/fresh palate.

Lately this has taken a (disgusting) new turn.  I guess I should be grateful that although his cheeks aren’t sensitive in the way they should be, his gag reflex works just fine.  That’s what I keep trying to tell myself as he repeatedly puts too much in his mouth, chokes on whatever’s in there, and then proceeds to vomit up whatever he’s just eaten.  But you know what?  It’s really hard to enjoy a bacon and tomato sandwich when you’ve just finished cleaning up bacon vomit.

I guess it’s back to Lean Cuisines for me…