Peter's Cross Station

How I Got My Kids to Eat Kale

I was gonna call it, "How To Get Your Kids To Eat Kale" but thought better of it.  Because kids--they're a mixed bunch.  You just never know.  Still, if you want your kids to eat kale and they don't eat it, you're welcome to try my technique.

Time was when Nat had leafy greens daily.  Remember Green Supper?  Ah the golden days of baby and toddlerhood!  These days, I sneak frozen spinach into mac and cheese, spaghetti sauce, under the cheese on the pizza--otherwise they'd never get greens at all.  (Selina might, but she suffers from second child syndrome and typically gets whatever Nat's getting, thus fewer greens than Nat got at her age.)

Anyway, I have some kale in one of my back porch window box planters.  It's a variety called "perpetual spinach" because it's mild and can be used as a substitute for spinach,but is easier to grow and just keeps going all season.

I have cut it, cooked it, served it raw--none of these things got a thumbs up from the kids (they did from Cole and me, though).  Instead, they'd chew it, spit it out, play with it, toss it on the floor and otherwise waste this awesome fresh green that should be in their little bodies fighting oxidants and making them super girls.

Until they were playing outside while I picked it.  "I want a leaf!" declared Nat.

"What?  This kale?" I asked.

"Yeah, the kale!" she said.  I gave her a baby leaf.  She gobbled it down.  "I want anther one!" she begged.

By now, Selina was at my ankles, whining "Me too!  Me too!" (her perpetual battle cry).
I stood there pulling them off one leaf at a time until my kale was cut back to the roots.  They ate it with gusto.  About every three days, I get enough mature leaves to repeat this and so far, they haven't caught on to the fact that this is the same thing they have rejected on a plate time and again.

Kale.  The new Ice Cream Truck.

Give it try with yours and let me know how it goes!

Proud of My Girls

Selina:

A couple of days ago, Selina mistook someone on the street for Babysitter J (her favorite person on the planet Earth).  She called his name happily, but we told her it was someone else.  The man turned around and looked at her with distinct annoyance on his face.  "Say hi!" we cajoled Selina, because we felt awkward.  But after a couple of times being told this, Selina looked the obviously disgruntled man in the eye and said, calmly, "I don't want to say hi."

Well good for her.  She shouldn't have to make us feel less awkward about a perfectly harmless baby mistake or feel the need to be polite and conciliatory to strangers who aren't polite and conciliatory themselves.  Anyway, that's my humble opinion.  I think it's a very good thing to be polite and gracious, and we are certainly teaching our kids that.  But you know, girls are asked far too much by our culture to smile and act nice for the benefit of others.  And they shouldn't have to if they don't want to.  I was proud of Selina for discerning that this strange, annoyed man was not someone she really wanted to engage.  She wanted to engage her beloved J.

Nat:

Nat is a champ in her Spanish class.  She really loves the teacher and I think the teacher is rather fond of her too.  But they do this weird thing at the school.  They use a plant mister--a little spray-bottle full of water, and they squirt the kids with it as a reward when they respond in an exercise or game.  I can't even imagine how anyone came up with that idea.  I see a water mister and think "cat punishment" right?  But the other kids (not Nat) just laugh and giggle and seem to love it when the teacher squirts them with this water bottle.

So it was Nat's turn, and she dutifully did whatever the teacher was aiming for her to do and the teacher squirted her. I was peeking through the classroom window and I saw Nat flinch.  I happen to know she hates to be sprayed with anything, because she complains whenever I spray water or conditioner on her hair when I'm braiding it.  So the teacher made it around the circle and got back to Nat again.  She asked Nat for a response again, and Nat hesitated, looked the teacher in the eye, and said calmly but clearly, "I don't want you to spray me with that water."  The teacher told her that was fine and she promised not to spray Nat any more.  Then Nat gave her the answer she wanted, and the teacher cheered her sin water sprayer.

I was just really impressed that Nat didn't cry or throw a tantrum or try to leave the circle, (or come looking for me) but neither did she submit to something she didn't like.  She named her boundary politely and made sure it was going to be respected before she went on with the exercise.

Really, I think I was as proud of that as I was of her quick and ready responses to the instruction.  Prouder even, maybe.

I wouldn't have done that at four.  No way, no how.  I would have rolled over with whatever awful thing the adult was doing or telling me to do.  I was a meek little kid.  Nat is not meek, but she is not rude, either.  Go Nat!

Two Over Two

Selina's second birthday has come and gone (Saturday) and was, I have to say, a huge success.  She was aware this year, that she was the birthday girl (she remembered Nat's birthday from February and knew what it meant) and enjoyed--really for the first time in her life--a real place at center stage.  Nat was a gracious supporting cast member and terrific big sister, helping (no, really just helping) Selina open her gifts and appreciate her cake.  Well, Selina didn't really appreciate her cake at all.  I had hoped she would recognize Sandra Boynton's hippopotamus, but for one reason and another, she didn't seem to.

  Nat did, though, so that was nice.  Actually, it was pretty amusing.  For the party I had veggie crudite and dip, plus some whole apples and pears.  Selina usually gets cut fruit, but Nat can eat a whole fruit.  So Nat had been munching away on an apple, but when she heard cake was imminent, she handed the apple to Selina, who was really excited about getting a big, whole apple, like sister usually gets.  So the cake sort of didn't register in the wake of her excitement about the apple.  She held it in her hand while I tried to get her to blow out the candles.  Cake was really underwhelming for her.

She did like eating the cake.  But I am not sure she liked it more than the apple.  (Nat did, though!)

Mama Fern was here (along with Grammy and Granddaddy, Babysitter J, friend Krystal and her guest, Justin and neighbors K and D) , which was nice, as she was unable to get together for Mothers' Day this year.  I have to let you know something, though.

I have decided not to blog much about our specific adoption experiences here anymore.  I will still be blogging about adoption in general and about our family on a surface level, but I have been unable to figure out where the line is for me in sharing too much of others' stories.  Since the kids are too little to help decide how they feel about sharing their own stories, and since neither of the first mothers in our family have computer access, I feel too much responsibility for the control of the story.  I am going to err on the side of telling too little, rather than telling too much.

I guess I've had this policy for a while, unofficially, but now I'm letting you know.

Meanwhile, I want to also let you know that if you ever want to email me and ask to hear more of our experience in order to help you sort out your own, please do feel free.  I don't have a problem discretely sharing with you as an individual.  I just think publishing on the WWW is a bit too much for me at this point.

Suffice it to say that we have what I think of as successful open adoptions in the sense that all parties are doing all they are able for the best interest of the children.  But that doesn't mean we have happy, rosy stories. "All we are able" is sometimes quite short of perfect and that is the case in our family.  But I also feel that "all we are able" is something the children will understand and appreciate as they grow up.

I will also say in vague terms that open adoption is HARD.  Sometimes I fear people will think it is easy for others and so when they don't find it easy themselves, they decide it must be wrong for them and they close the adoption.  I will say it again, I am finding open adoption to be a serious challenge.  A struggle.  Painful.  But all in that way where you know the pain is good for you and means you are growing.  I am especially convinced that it is good for my children, which is why I work so hard at it, however challenging I find it.

I think both kids--especially Nat--are beginning to really understand some things about their families in an age-appropriate, organic way that will prevent sudden surprises that might really hurt them and turn their realities upside down to learn later.  So again:  hard but good.  And again, feel free to write personally via email to share your story or hear more of ours if you feel it will help in any way.

And now we are off for family adventure day at the aquarium.  We hear the dolphins and whales are back from "vacation!"

Arty

Nat has made some fun pictures lately.  I thought I'd share a smattering (so I don't have to actually keep them.)

This is a drawing Nat calls "Go" which she is still learning with Babysitter J, who says she's coming right along:

Here's a pretty painting.  Only recently, she's started paying more attention to filling space and color in a way she finds pleasing and balanced--as opposed to just going nuts with the brush for kicks.  I like this one, because it's in my favorite color scheme:

I dictated the letters and Nat wrote Selina's name.  I thought it was pretty good:

Nat has started to write a lot of words lately.  I only dictated this one.  Others she's written include "bear" and "apple."  She spelled bear correctly on her own, but apple, she spelled "APPL."  But I was impressed that she put two Ps in there.  Invented spellers at Nat's stage would typically just write APL.  And Bear--maybe BR.  But she reads a lot, so I guess she picks up some spelling that way, unconsciously.  I want to start writing stories with her, but I need some pointers on getting good stories out of children.

Here's a fairly typical face these days.  Sometimes, though, they do get quite elaborate with jewelry and appendages and clothing.  She still hasn't hit the torso stage.  When she does limbs, they come straight from the face:

 

And finally, a cameo from Selina!  Her style is interesting. Unlike Nat, who I mentioned has only recently started thinking about filling te space consciously (painting above), Selina is already quite focused on filling the page in a balanced way, with similar marks, in a variety of colors, evenly spread over the page:

Selina Speak

Selina's speech is actually starting to clear up a bit.  Who knows where it's headed, but for now I have to record the cute before I forget.

Selina's favorite book right now is Not the Hippopotamus by Sandra Boynton.  I say, "do you want to read a book?" and she grins ear to ear and declares "Nahhhhh-Tihhh-totomus!"  But today I noticed it was more like, "Not the Hippo-tamus!"

She has a little cold at the moment and she will come up to me, distressed and say "I need tissue!  I sneeze!"  And she's always right, but in spite of asking, she still gets mad when I actually wipe her nose.

She came to me with the toy tea set and announced, "I make tea!  Is vewy hot!" then she blew into the empty, plastic cup.

On the phone to Cole's mother, she said "Hi Grandmom!" with great enthusiasm, then explained "I dwaw peechoo!" ("I'm drawing a picture")

The other day, she carried her shoes up to me and said, "Mama Shannon?"  I asked "what?" and she handed me a shoe and said "I need help with shoes.  I ready to go now."

She has also picked up Nat's habit of declaring woefully "I'm so sad!" when she is crying for any reason.  It's the worst for tearing your heart out.

When we pass by the bathroom she asks "take a baff and pwetty haiwoo?"  ("Take a bath and pretty hair?")  And she still calls Nat mostly, "sheestoo" for "sister" though sometimes she calls her Nat.  Water is still "wawoo."

They still spontaneously hug each other and tell each other they love each other.  But Nat does a lot of grabbing things out of Selina's hand too.  I give that another six months at the outside.  Selina's gonna just start shoving Nat away when she sees her coming in for the grab.  She'll do it unemotionally but effectively, I predict.  That's how she is.  She's very effective physically but not hysterical at all when she trips and falls or fails to do whatever she's trying to do.  She just says calmly, "I need help!"  and/or gets up, brushes herself off and moves on.  Occasionally, if she actually hurts herself in some painful way, she'll announce, "I hurt toe!" (or finger or what-have-you).  But she isn't melodramatic about it all, which is weird, since Nat really, really likes to perform her feelings bigger than life.  Selina is a great audience for Nat and sometimes copies her in a studied, less emotional way.  (She always grins really big though, in a proud "look at me!  I did it too!" kind of way--even when she doesn't really know what "it" is.)

It's awesome how different they are in personality. They fit together like puzzle pieces.  I hope their relationship continues this well.

Regardless, Selina is a Little Genius

Selina really has some kind of language gift.  She is hard to understand, but she says the most amazing things.  "I need help" she'll say, handing me a toy with a lid she wants me to open.  I open it, hand it back, and she closes it, hands it to me again and says "I need help again!"  Really, every word.

Yesterday, I was trying to put my finger on why she sounds so weirdly precocious to me lately.  Then I realized that she has leapt from using all proper nouns to using pronouns...correctly.  She went straight from, "Selina do it!" or "Mama Shannon sit down!" to "I do it!" and "you sit down!" No you-me confusion for her, no way.  Today, she was playing with the drawing board and she wrote some scribbles with a flourish and declared, proudly, "Selina!" and grinned up at me.  "You wrote Selina?" I asked her.  "Yes, Selina!" she confirmed, "it's me!" and pointed to herself.  (Mind you, she didn't really write her name.)  Then she pointed at me and said "you're Mama Shannon!, I'm Selina!"

This morning, Cole had to go to work (out of town) and Selina was devastated at her leaving.  She was crying and carrying on and I was comforting her.  "I need Cole-Mom!" she cried.  "I need Mama Shannon and Cole-Mom!"

She's not even two yet.  Tomorrow, she'll be 23 months old.  She's amazing.  There are two of them.  What am I gonna do with two of them???

Maundy Thursday

Church tonight was really fun--which is pretty weird for Maundy Thursday, I know.  But they cleared out the sanctuary and put in dinner tables and fed everybody right in there--a whole meal, featuring a few Passover standards among the dishes.

They were washing feet all around too, and when Nat saw that, she of course wanted to do it.  So I helped her off with her tights and she took her turn.  Except she was way too short for her feet to reach the basin from her chair, so they stood her up right in the bowl.  Why oh why did I leave my phone with the camera in my coat pocket in the hallway?  It was excruciatingly adorable to see a white man in a business suit bending over my daughter washing her feet in the middle of the church--and her grinning with getting away with something completely crazy.

Afterwards, Nat kept saying "I got my feet wet!" and "I got my feet wet in church!"  Then when they cleared away the dinner things, Nat turned to Cole and said "do you like the church restaurant, Cole-mom?"  It was Disney Land as far as she was concerned.

I put the kids in the play room after that and they did a Eucharist and stripped the church.

They do theatre really well at this place.  I have to hand it to them.

Nat, by the way, barely touched the food.  She has finally hit a picky stage.  Selina, on the other hand inhaled humus, veggie salad, eggplant, couscous and lentils, apples and walnuts, matzoh, all with great relish and glee.

Why I Like Working at Home

J. made the kids super capes out of baby blankets.  Moments later...

Nat: Mama Shannon!  We are supers! I am Super Nat and Selina is Super Selina and J. is laughing and laughing!

Off to the rescue!

J: Who are you going to rescue?

Nat: Selina!  and Selina is going to rescue me!

Come on Super Selina, let's go fly some more!

Bambina Update

Sigh.  I know my baby is not a baby anymore, and here is why:  When she was a baby, she hated being held in a way that confined her limbs and rocked and sung to.  Instead, she insisted on being held up, facing me and singing along.  (It took me ages to figure this out, too, because Nat had loved--still does, really--to snuggle up to me and surrender all control while I sang and rocked.)

But now she loves to play "baby" in which I rock her, cradle-style in my arms and sing "My baby, Selina, my little baby, Selina!"  She still sings along though--"baby Seena, baby Seena!" with a huge grin.  It's a sure sign she isn't really a baby anymore.

I stopped looking at developmental milestone charts as soon as it seemed that Selina was A) done with the preemie delays and B) shaping up mentally and physically within typical perimeters.  But recently someone raised the question of her language development, suggesting that the fact she's very difficult to understand may indicate she is lagging in language development.  (I understand her about 75% of the time, Cole and babysitter J understand her about 50% of the time and everyone else is in the dark--except, come to think of it, Nat, who understands her most of the time, I think.)

My immediate instinct was the opposite--that her language is ahead of the curve and that her funny baby speech is a matter of her tongue being on a more normal trajectory and her brain being ahead of it.  (Not that I won't keep a sharp ear on her speech and take her for help if it ever does seem she has a slight impediment, mind you.)  So I checked the book we all love to hate and according to those perimeters, she is indeed quite a few months ahead in language development--at least as far as what she is trying to say, even if we don't always understand.

For example, she's all over the prepositional phrases.  "Sit down right here!" is a favorite of hers (it tends to be the rocking chair and it tends to be part of a demand to read books).  "Over there" "up the stairs" "into" the room, the car, the bathtub, etc. are favorites.  Instead of "look" or "what?" she points to things that impress her and says "right there!" (I know that's not a prepositional phrase, but anyhow).  She also regularly strings two, three or four words together in phrases or sentences.  After being happy with "have that!" for a few months, I have moved on to encourage "may I have that please?" and she usually gets it after one reminder.

She has reached the age of loving books.  She knows all of her favorites by title and asks for them accordingly.  "Panda Bear What See?" "Every Babies" "Happy Baby ABC" (actually the correct title), "Counting Book" "Welcome Presh" "Head-Toe" "Big Red Barn" are some of her greatest hits.  She likes to take a book to bed and if I let her, will play and read for a good 20-30 minutes alone after waking up.  (Yes!)  I will say she has quite an obsession with balls and hats, and these days, reading books is all about finding the balls and hats on any given page.

She knows about 80% of the capital ABCs and all the ASL letter signs.  She points out the ones she finds herself and tries to sign them (and usually fails--her fingers aren't that nimble yet). For instance, this morning, the clock hands on a dial clock were crossed in an X pattern and she pointed, declared "x!" excitedly and tried to make the sign for X.

She is a bit ahead of the curve in certain gross motor skills too.  She's been "kicking a ball forward" and "jumping up" for some time.  In fact, she climbs up on the sofa in the playroom and jumps off of it to a pile a cushions below on a fairly regular basis.  Nat doesn't like to do that sort of thing, but wants to join (and best) her, so Selina actually has Nat engaging a bit more with her body than she would ever choose to do on her own.  As I recall, Nat was still a long way from walking up a single stair at Selina's age, and here, Selina has hit the "do it myself" stage and will fight me to let her climb three floors when we arrive home from somewhere.  I'm glad, frankly, as my back is more than happy to have the break, even if it takes three times as long to plod along behind, spotting Selina on the stairs.  Really, she and Nat can get up them at about the same pace, though Selina's short little bow legs can't step up very well, she scrambles up using her hands to assist, now and then, while Nat is still working on the every-other stair climb technique.

Selina still loves music and singing and has a great sense of rhythm.  At the moment, she has a thing for Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and will just bust out with it from time to time when the mood strikes her.  She isn't pitch-perfect, but she is quite melodic for her age.  She and Nat also perform duets on the toy piano and toy guitar and sing the ABC song or Twinkle, Twinkle to their own accompaniment.

Selina informs us about 25% of the time when she needs a diaper change.  Since Nat is still refusing to poop on the potty (save two big events), I am hoping that God's reward to us for potty-training (or not, as the case may be) the hugely resistant Nat, will be one of those kids who just does it herself at two and a half.  Fingers crossed.

Selina's favorite person at this point is still baby sitter, J, whose name she shrieks with delight upon seeing him, or hearing that he's coming to see her.  She has, at least, stopped asking for him in the morning when I go in to get her, though.  Really it was sad, like, "sorry kid, it's just your mother."

She was also a big Uncle Jeremy fan when he came to visit and asked for him after he was gone too.  Both my kids do love them some uncles.  If you can put a kid on your shoulders and sing tenor, you're golden around here.

And that is Selina, about one week shy of 22 months old!

A Conversation Worth Having

When I was in high school and college I was subject to a gazillion courses in bioethics.  At the time, IVF was newish, egg donation was mostly theoretical, right-to-die folks were just starting to get noisy, the human genome was only just beginning to be mapped, etc.  I spent countless hours in discussions with far more conservative peers, arguing mostly for a great deal of freedom for the uses of new medical technologies and research (including research using human embryos).

So imagine my surprise when my recent post at Strollerderby about a new for-profit offering at a fertility clinic, allowing parents to use PGD to determine a child's hair and eye color, was met with a big shrug.  Most commenters seemed to feel that hey, it's a free market.  And of course, IVF being a massive undertaking--only done by the medically in need, at great pain and suffering and expense--this procedure isn't going to be sought by many and thus will have very little impact on society.

Well of course.  This procedure.  At this moment.  But that doesn't mean we should just accept it and move on.  The fact that huge expense goes into developing something so--frankly--stupid as hair and eye color selection and it is offered in a free market to medical consumers is a travesty in my opinion.  No it won't impact the gene pool (which fact plenty of people don't seem to understand and is another problem with the lack of discussion) and no, banning it won't automatically cause money to spent elsewhere.

But unlike Barack Obama, I'm a socialist--at least about a great many things.  And it seems more than obvious to me that a free market approach to medicine has failed miserably in the United States.  It's time to pull in the reins on the race to the ethical bottom (octuplets, anyone?) and the excessive gap between rich and poor people's access to medicine.  Taking a good look at high-cost fertility treatment that forces people to mortgage their homes for a 5% shot at having a baby seems reasonable to me, when we re-evaluate how our society allocates spending.

And I am not talking about banning fertility treatment.  It seems like in some corners, if you say "regulate" and "fertility treatment" anywhere within 100 words of each other, people jump to assume they will no longer be allowed to do those high-end procedures.  I am hardly suggesting that.  In fact, I think that any public health coverage should include fertility treatment--including IVF, including PGD when medically called for--which is considerably more than most private insurance plans do for us now.  But if we are going to provide fertility coverage to everyone, we are going to need to make the expenses reasonable.  Why not include in any new health plan, caps on pricing for treatments and drugs like many countries have now?  Why not put a maximum on the profit a doctor can make with this stuff?  How could regulating that kind of thing not help infertile people who need the treatment?

Look, I'm not interested in ever getting pregnant myself.  But I'm happy to pony up some percentage of my tax money so that you folks who are interested and need help with it can get that help even if you aren't rich, without going into monumental debt.  But I'm not paying so some fool doctor in LA can line his pockets with cash from people who know no better than to think it's a good idea to custom order a baby by looks.  And I'd like to see the incentives to a doctor to offer that sort of thing drastically reduced--by, for example, making it illegal to charge anything extra for that kind of service.  That would also reduce the R&D incentives to go finding those genes in the first place.  The market is not a force of nature.  Plenty of people outside the United States know this.  It is time U.S. Americans realized it and started taking some responsibility for where the market goes next.

Let's focus on curing cancer, not filling the prep schools of tomorrow with customized kids.