Someone has clearly taken my "baby" Noodle and replaced her with a much more ambulatory, verbal, strong-willed, ravenous, and sleepy toddler.
The past few days have found us dancing to German folk music at an Oktoberfest and Nora toddling 8+ steps across the floor to deliver various toys or crumbs into our hands. It's fun...but has me often looking at her wondering "where is my baby?"
She is talking in her own special language. Certainly a mix of German and English that comes out in squeaks and bobbles and sign-language mish-mash. She has added "water, shoe, read" to her signs and also a fantastic verbal copy of Daniel's "putchyer, putchyer, putchyer, putchyer pants on." She now shouts "Putchyer! Putchyer!" anytime she's on her changing table and belts it out when putting on her shoes.
And although I do strongly resist the connotation wrapped up in pink-princess-glittery-overly-feminine clothing, I have put Nora in a dress on three occasions. She wore a baptismal dress, an Easter dress, and now this cocoa brown number. And admittedly, she was sweet in all of them.
With her orange cloth bootie peeking out from underneath, it was a colorful moment.
The feather cap of an ancient Bavarian boy also became an adorable exclamation point to our afternoon spent at the Phoenix Club's Oktoberfest.
We went with the lovely Carrie & Ed and their baby Ruby.
Along with Amy & Malta with their daughter Paloma.
A very authentic festival complete with real-live Germans selling bratwurst and beer, donning lederhosen and dirndles, and of course, large rings romping to the chicken dance. A truly horrifying dance that for some odd reason is repeated at every event pertaining to Germans.
There were, sadly, no Turkish foods, songs, or people (that I could obviously spot), to make me feel like I was at home with my peeps in Cologne...but that's a whole other post for another day.
I had to take some ridiculously cheesy photos.
We had a blast feeding Nora saurekraut and potato salad.
Sipping on giant beers while she danced under the German flag.
Playing with her amigas, Ruby and Paloma, on a picnic blanket...Lulu was the eldest child, the wise one (by one whole month!).
To see the complete set of Oktoberfest pictures, click here.
On the toddler-eating tip, I've been reading a great book given to me by my sister-in-law (who has her smarty-pants-enormous-brain doctorate in nutrition), Child of Mine: Feeding with Love and Good Sense by Ellyn Satter (also a giant well-used brain).
I was laughing yesterday as I underlined these key points below (having just shot the video of us wanting her to eat her broccoli mash the day before).
- If a struggle emerges about eating, a toddler will get so involved with the struggle and so upset that it overwhelms her need to eat.
- The diets of children of all ages suffer when parents go to extremes of being controlling on the one hand or failing to provide support and guidance on the other.
- Children eat poorly when parents criticize, manage, or intrude on eating.
- The more trouble parents take to make special food for a toddler, the more inclined the toddler is to reject the food.
- Don't try to reason with her. She can't reason, it won't help her eating, and your efforts to persuade her will only teach her to use the issue as a bid for attention.
- Children learn only if they get opportunities to learn.
- Resist the impulse to entice, reward, play games, placate, and make special food.
- She can use her fingers to feed herself, learn to use eating utensils, and drink from a cup.
- She needs predictable feeding times, three meals and two snacks, and she needs help coming to the table rested and hungry but not famished.
- Despite her erratic and sporadic hunger and appetite, she will get the calories she needs by averaging her eating out over several days.
So, hmmm...my giving her constant snacks when she begs, when she's fussing in the car, when she seems bored or irritated at a playdate, trying to force "green"' foods if she doesn't want them, worrying that she's eating too much fruit, not wanting her to get messy or spill food all over the floor and so feeding her most of the time...apparently all of that could use a few adjustments. Because frankly folks, I have some food issues. I eat WAY TOO much, too fast, and too often. I had asked Kathy for a book that would help me approach Nora's eating with some more thought than I give my own.
And I am amazed at just how often I contradict the above. How often Nora must have seen me eat a monstrous meal of unbalanced foods, eat out of the fridge/bag/box. How often she sees me eat when I'm upset, bored, happy...basically any emotion. I would like her not to turn to food for an emotional embrace. And as her primary food-provider, she is already taking some major cues from me. I carry her special snacks with me and dole them out all the time.
When did that happen, I wonder? This doling out of constant raisins, goldfish, mum-mums, crackers, cheerios, puffs? Most moms I know have these items on hand. And they aren't given at an official "snack-time" seated up at a table, but rather sprinkled around to keep a kid happy or quiet, help them calm down, stop crying, or allow a phone call or email to finish...or because the child is watching you snack and starts to beg for some (that's me!). I am doing all of these things...all the time.
But let me be clear...I am writing these words and NOT feeling guilt....because I am learning this gig as I move along. Always learning and adjusting to how I might serve Nora better.
Even if I stay against Nora having ingesting hormone-laced meat, insecticide-coated produce, salty foods, sugary sweets and drinking juice, if I've set the wheel in motion that she craves food whenever she feels any emotional high or low or boredom...(like her mama)...then I have still done her no favors.
So, I feel a renewed excitement about my approach to her eating. I am not proud of my relationship to food...but my daughter doesn't have to feel the same way. I am almost at the heaviest weight of my life (the same weight I was at 40 weeks preggers...this is painfully obvious in this photo from Sunday...wow, that's hard to look at!)
...but Noodle doesn't have to obsess about her weight the way I do.
Our days ahead will hold more opportunities for Nora to eat "regular" food, get messy, learn to pick it up, chew it up, and feel the textures. No wiping her mouth often, no feeding her on my hip without much thought given to sitting down.
She will not be forced to eat her veggies...but offered them regularly. No more gravy-train of snacks spilling out of the diaper bag. No more holding her at the kitchen counter and doling out snacks as I graze myself. I will stumble in my new path...but I am grateful for the information. This will not be a perfectly-straight path...it could never be. But I will try.
When you struggle daily with food, weight, body-image like I do, having a daughter and wanting a different experience for her, must be natural. But my habits are deeply entrenched...habits that I hope helping Nora not to acquire might help me to recognize more in myself. Oh, I'm sure there are books about how you are not to correct your own deep issues through your children - and maybe one day I'll read one of those, too...or Nora will hand it to me after seeking therapy!
I do want my heart to beat strongly into the future. And that will demand changes in my behavior. I always write this type of post here when I'm fed up. I send it out into the world to shake things up. I think these pictures of late, combined with my neighbor recently telling me that I always look frumpy and my grandma saying about Nora's birthday pictures, "Your face looks happy and the rest of you looks...well, your face is happy. Your cousin is losing weight and feeling really good about himself. Did you know that?" have struck a nerve. Yes, you don't need to tell me that these comments were mean. Spoken without malice...but still unkind.
Perhaps, it's a nerve that needed to be struck.
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