She Pretends Very Well

But Kathleen isn't fooling anyone.

Dr. Brown, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the ER

Often family pictures can be stressful, and coupled with those flashing lights, it may leave some with headaches. What it left Brandon with was a migraine. Formerly, in another life, before I met Brandon, he suffered from migraines, mostly in high school. However, with my wonderful presence bestowing goodness at every turn, we thought that Brandon was free of them. He was, until a few Fridays ago.

So we prepared to spend the rest of the day sitting out the migraine, and resting from the after-effects. However, when Brandon couldn't remember Kathleen's name, couldn't see out of his right eye, and told me he was having problems "abling," we decided to head to the hospital.

Thankfully the ER was not very busy, and after and hour or so, Brandon was able to get a potent cocktail of drugs that made it difficult to do anything, much less remember anyone's names. Kathleen was very patient, helped by many, many walks around the ER hallways where she smiled and flirted with anyone who would give her a second glance. After three hours and a CT scan, we headed home to put both Brandon and Kathleen to bed. I think he might have gotten ever more sleep than Kathleen, something that has never happened before, and isn't likely to happen again.

How do they get children to smile?

Last Friday, Brandon and I completed another milestone: first family picture. Having had no official photographic record of Kathleen as of yet, and desiring to have one with only three of us (without #4 making its presence know yet visibly), we went to the photographer. We all arose bright and early Friday morning, washed, dressed in our best, combed our hair, and prepared for photographic immortality. I had visions of endless portrait studio ads with sweetly smiling angels, displaying to the world their cheerful temper and cherubic smiles.

Kathleen will never be featured in any of those ads. In fact, I wouldn't even count on her being a model as an adult. Kathleen loves the camera, smiling and cooing whenever we bring it out. One would think that the camera is her next-best friend (after the toilet and perhaps the telephone). Evidently that love doesn't extend to cameras that want to take her picture for hanging on the wall, not just computer screen savers.

After suffering through half an hour of trying to get Kathleen to smile instead of cry inconsolably while sitting on Brandon's and my lap, the photographer then had the Herculean task of stemming the even-louder sobs while again trying to catch a smile that might be hidden behind the runny nose and tears. Brave soul. Eventually cheerios saved as much of the day as possible, and we have hopes for at least one picture that will make it past the digital trash can. If not, there's always digital manipulation, right?

Next time: what happened after the photo session.

The Love Affair Progresses

Until yesterday, Kathleen kept her passion for the toilet restrained and chaste, only banging on the lid, and occasionally lifting it for a more... intimate... view of her beloved. However, as small children enjoy showing off for strangers, Kathleen decided that Aunt Ginger's visit would be a perfect time to unveil a new skill, a new level of her relationship - taking the plunge one might call it. As Brandon, Ginger, and I were cheerfully discussing Thanksgiving plans, I heard a gentle splash splash. Afraid someone had inadvertently left the lid open, I raced to the bathroom to discover Kathleen's newest skill - lifting the toilet lid while simultaneously splashing in the water. She smiled, and I spanked her. A few minutes later, and a repeat, followed by a third time, with punishment each time. Hopefully third time's the charm, but I'm not holding my breath.

Kathleen's Toilet Envy

First children live a strange existence, babies living in an exclusively adult world without any reference to other babies to take their cues from; instead their only reference for what is normal is their parents. So I suppose I shouldn't be surprised when all Kathleen wants to do is pull books from the shelf and read them, not knowing what all children know - scriptures are boring - it's the books with pictures one should really like. And when she pulls out a book of Arabic sayings or Russian folk tales, well that's what dad does, too. There's no one to tell her that you're only supposed to look at one kind of funny squiggle.

So again, I shouldn't be surprised when Kathleen gets upset about my trips to the bathroom; after all, she has no mental connection between wearing diapers and not using the toilet. If mom and dad go in the room and shut the door, then she should too. Mom and Dad, however, disagree and enjoy the privacy of alone time in the bathroom.

So, Kathleen is stuck outside, furiously curious about, what goes on behind closed doors. And as Kathleen has never been accused of being a quiet child, she lets her displeasure be known by banging on the door and wailing loudly, begging to be let in. But lest any of you worry that she is distressed by separation from her dear parents and not separation from the dear toilet, don't worry. As soon as I open the door, she runs in, arms open, straight to her great love - the toilet, never giving me a backward glance.

A Note of Explanation

There are times in everyone's lives when some things, like blogs, get left by the wayside for a time. Big changes are often the most likely culprit, whether it be moving (we're not) getting a new job (not yet), receiving a new, intense calling (still no callings yet), sickness (we're all healthy as horses, save Kathleen's new bout of teething), divorce (not likely), death (see sickness above), and perhaps one of the most disruptive events with eternal repercussions, pregnancy.

Some of you might have suspected, as my posts have dropped off dramatically in the last two months, and I am now confirming those suspicions. We have tried to tell Kathleen, too, but as her ability for non-literal thought is limited, she hasn't really understood yet. However, she will around May 14, when her life drastically changes and she is no longer the sun around which Brandon and I orbit. Which is a good thing; everyone needs to realize at some point in their life that while intrinsically full of worth, they don't deserve to have to world rotate around them - nobody here does.

Friends have asked if this pregnancy is better or worse than the last one, but I honestly have to admit that the memories of the last one are quite fuzzy. I now understand what my mother said about selective memory having something to do with more than one child. Brandon asserts that men's memories are better than that, and if the childbearing were left up to them, everyone would be an only child, and the world would have a big problem with dwindling population.

But as he only has to provide for them and my varied and constant food cravings, the world has no need to fear on my behalf.

If you give a cook a cookbook

Yesterday, I was browsing Brandon's birthday present, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, by Julia Child. Most cookbooks are somewhat dry, presenting a list of ingredients, and instructions about what to do with the preceding ingredients. The Joy of Cooking isn't so bad, and the section on pastries sustained Brandon through a bad fever in Cairo. Julia Child, however, reads like a novel. A novel that makes you want to go out and commit all of the acts described in aforesaid novel (it's probably good that she never wrote murder mysteries).

Which is how I found myself researching pastured chicken for several hours yesterday morning instead of cleaning my house. Julia Child describes things in such delicious, mouth-watering detail, that when reading the recipe on roast chicken, one can't help but start thinking of reasons to throw a big, complicated, time-consuming dinner party that would honor such a thing as roast chicken. Such a dinner party, however, could not have at its centerpiece a dry, sawdust-tasting grocery store chicken. Those animals belong in a pot-pie, or soup. No, for such a glorious centerpiece, a more fitting bird must be found, one that grew up knowing it was a chicken, and had to taste like the grand heritage it descended from. Some historians claim that Richard the Lionhearted was captured in Austria because, although posing as a commoner, he was demanding roast chicken (after all he was French), and everyone knew that only nobility ate roast chicken.

Luckily, a recent trend has begun towards -free foods. Hormone-free, antibiotic-free, animal product-free, homogenization-free, pasteurization-free (I'm not kidding), and perhaps food-free. And so, after much searching, a store was found locally that claims to sell only Real Food (instead of the pretend styrofoam kind that is only painted to look like food), that includes pastured chicken. And that's the problem with dreams of delicious dinner parties. They're always time consuming, and always expensive.

Why Can't She Eat Tomatoes?

When I was a child, my mother was so worried about my eating habits, that she thought I might be anorexic. On one (and the only) family trip to Disney World, I frustrated my parents beyond belief by refusing to eat anything but chicken nuggets. Yes, the Japanese man throwing knives who fixed our food in front of us might be interesting, but there certainly weren't any chicken nuggets when it came time to eat. Even as a teenager, I was scared of dating because of the possibility of going out to eat where hamburgers might not be served. And a mission? Completely out of the question. What if they sent me to Mexico?

Brandon, on the other hand, always wanted to go to foreign lands on his mission to taste all of the exotic foods. His favorite thing when querying return missionaries was about the food they had eaten. When taken to an Asian restaurant as a child, he was disappointed to discover that the child's meal he ordered was a hamburger.

Thankfully for our marriage, time eventually gave me tastebuds, and Brandon and I now enjoy any ethnic food we can find. And apparently so does Kathleen.

Taking advantage of still only having one child who is more amenable to late hours than previously, Brandon and I went out for sushi Monday night, on a whim. Thankfully, the restaurant was nearly deserted, so Kathleen's occasional self-entertaining yells weren't so obnoxious. Knowing, however, that she wouldn't be entertained for long by talking to her self quietly, Brandon and I started giving her our food. Better Japanese baby there never was, as Kathleen greedily gobbled down every tasty morsel we put in front of her, and even consented to be fed by chopstick. Attempting to be good parents (and selfish, because we didn't want to share), we gave her no sushi, but certainly gave her some of everything else. Hopefully with an early intervention plan, we can prevent her from turning out like I did.

Unexplained Mysteries

Saturday night, Brandon and I grilled bratwurst and squash for dinner. There are two types of people in this world: those who adore bratwurst, and those that think bratwurst is disgusting. As for Brandon and me, we are in the former category. Perhaps it's my memories of the best street hotdogs in the world in Prague (that probably should have killed me), or my secret love for fatty chunks of meat stuffed inside crispy intestine casings, but the marriage of pre-burned wood and pre-chewed meat is one of magical results.

Recently, National Geographic had a small article about the "green" nature of various grilling methods. Not surprisingly, charcoal was hailed as the end of all civilization as not only does it emit greenhouse gases 1. when you burn it (and don't forget the silent killer: lighter fluid!) and 2. when it is produced. Of course any sensible citizen would eschew such an environmentally damaging source of pleasure for its much cleaner and guilt-free distant cousin: the solar grill.

But then, where would be the joy of tending a smoking fire in the cool of the evening in one's own backyard? The smell of smoke that drifts over the neighborhood, broadcasting the smell of good food to come? And the most important, that never-duplicated, mysteriously delicious, blessing to all meat - smoke flavor? Many malign man for his destructive impact on our world. But he did something right when the first Cro-Magnon pulled that flaming torch from the nearby forest fire, looked at it, and thought, "meat, fire, good."

Pearls Before Swine

Yesterday we were in the backyard and I picked some grapes for Kathleen. She loves grapes, or perhaps it is better to say that she loved grapes the day before yesterday. One after another, she put a grape in her mouth, spit it out, and then put the next one in, only to spit it out before inserting the next victim. Perhaps she thought the next one might taste better.

After the grapes, she wandered over to my basket being filled with cherry tomatoes. When I came back to put some more in, I discovered four or five spit-covered tomatoes at her feet, with another entering her mouth, soon to join its fellows. With this food behavior, which is often echoed at the table, I was shocked to discover that she is in the 97th percentile for height. Kathleen certainly doesn't get that from me.