So I was reading this local parenting magazine, and I came across an article on picky eating. Since my children will not even eat macaroni and cheese – macaroni and cheese! Nectar of the comfort food gods! – I read every single picky eating article I come across. After reading, I realized that it was written by someone I know, which was exciting, and yet depressing, as I know for certain that her children regularly eat everything set in front of them. I have the utmost respect for professional opinions, but when it comes to picky eating, I think you actually have to live with a picky eater before you can offer advice on how to deal with it. Otherwise, it sort of feels like getting parenting advice from a non-parent, a phenomenon which has happened to all of us I’m sure, and is especially lovely when it comes from a relation who likes to visit and tell you how you are DOING IT ALL WRONG. But, I’m not going to go there.

Some picky eating advice is quite decent, like paying attention to the food presentation, or involving your children in meal planning and preparation. I do all these things, but yet, the variety of foods consumed by my children is fairly limited. Mark can happily scrub an entire sink full of potatoes, but is about as likely to eat one as he is to don a tutu and dance the Nutcracker. Which is to say, not likely.

I may be going out on a limb here, but if your child eats a fairly rounded and balanced diet, who really cares if he doesn’t eat certain items. I mean, sure, it’s great to expose your children to new foods, but it’s also great not to waste time and money on preparing things that will almost certainly be not eaten. It’s great if your child will happily dig into everything you prepare, but hey, that is totally not the situation in my house. Add that to the fact that I am really not an enthusiastic cook, and you get the following rules in my house:

1. Breakfast is always eaten and always contains at least two or three food groups.
2. Juice is fine at snacktime, but only milk or water at dinner.
3. Fruit and veggies are served generously at snacktime, along with home-baked goods (that contain sugar! Bad bad mommy indeed).
4. Dinner consists of a vegetable, a grain, and a protein. If the protein I have prepared is not to your liking, yogurt may be substituted.
5. Yes, yogurt is acceptable at dinner. I care more about calcium and protein than drawing a line in the sand with regards to acceptable dinner foods. This may or may not be the result of my own childhood memories, in which I am forced to sit alone at the table, long after everyone has left and the kitchen cleaned, crying into my plate of liver or hamburger casserole that I must consume before leaving said table. Which leads me to number six.
6. Eat until you are full and then you may be excused. We do not have a “clean plate” rule in my house. This means that small portions are served to reduce waste and seconds and thirds are available, if needed.

My children are healthy and tall, they take their vitamins, they eat vegetables and fruits, and they are picky eaters. Sure, I wish they would try a few more things, that they wouldn’t grimace when I cook something different, but on the whole I would rather not fight with them about eating. I think dinner should be pleasant and social, rather than stressful and experimental.

Do you have a picky eater? If so, how do you deal with it?

So Rob is at a hockey game tonight, and I just finished my standard “Rob’s not here” meal of pita and Greek salad, I’m counting down to bedtime while my children are, strangely enough, playing a game in which they are hammering something – what? – through the holes in their play workshop, and laughing in a shrieking, hyena-like way. I’m looking forward to wine and maybe an episode of Jeopardy and NYPD Blue. I’m also laughing about Mark’s new obsession: just in time for his birthday (okay, it’s seven weeks away) he has been taken by a new commercial. Remember how I said the kids are largely unaffected by commercials? Well, I was wrong. They just needed to see the right one. Mark really really REALLY wants a “Sham-Wow”. It’s a miracle chamois that can clean up an entire spilled can of cola, should you spill an entire can on your carpet. You can wash ANY vehicle with Sham-Wow, and that vehicle will shine like the sun. “But Mom, you will never have to buy paper towels again if we get the Sham-Wow”. Good to know.

With the giant lottery draw this past weekend, I reflected, as I always do, on what I would do with the jackpot if I actually purchased a ticket and subsequently won. My conclusion: I would get the f*** out of Calgary.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice city and everything, somewhat friendly people, etc., etc. The thing is, I’ve lived here my whole life and a) I wouldn’t mind a little broadening adventure, and b) this place is terrible in the winter. I wouldn’t move to anywhere tropical, as I actually really like the change of seasons and snow on the ground. I would move to someplace where winter is actually only three months long. I remember as a child being fascinated by the idea that November is an autumnal month. November! To me, winter goes from mid-October to mid-April. Not to mention the not-uncommon gigantic May snowfalls. Or the July that I stood amid snow-flurries and high winds for a Stampede breakfast. Groundhog Day is coming up and I always laugh a bit: on February 2, six more weeks of winter IS an early spring.

But maybe I shouldn’t complain, even as I layer the kids into their enormous winter coats and boots, fielding arguments about whether or not mittens are necessary when it is 20 below, and yes, you do need to wear your hood if you refuse to wear your hat. Etcetera. Because even as I’m performing these tedious motherly duties, there are other mothers in this city who are not bundling their children due to the absence of items with which to bundle. This city of prosperity, which lures tens of thousands with promises of wealth and jobs, only to discover the crippling cost of living. This city, which has been insulated for so long, is starting to feel the pain of the economic crisis.

The air is positively biting. Even with the clear Alberta-blue sky and sunshine, the cold is painful.

So, I’m still singing the Pina Colada song, and I still have no idea if that is its actual name or not. If I wasn’t so lazy I’d google it, but alas. The thing about that song is that it is nearly impossible to sing along without belting out in an impassioned way “IF YOU LIKE MAKING LOVE AT MIDNIGHT”. I think I speak for mothers everywhere when I say, um, no, I don’t. (Or maybe I just speak for myself. My ideal scenario is that by midnight, I will have been sleeping for at least a couple of hours. I guess I’m more of an “Afternoon Delight” type of girl, so maybe not totally un-dateable in the 70’s.)

Not to brag or anything, but my husband is incredibly hot – in fact, if I were the editor of People magazine I would surely crown him “Sexiest Man Alive” year after year – but if he were to wake me up to suggest making love at midnight, my impulses would be more homicidal than erotic, if you know what I’m saying. After years of broken sleep (which is still all-too-often broken) I have one general rule: do not wake me up unless absolutely necessary.

Of course, this is partly hypothetical as it seems like my husband is actually physically unable to wake me up. During our recent bout of illness, apparently he had a prolonged and very loud middle-of-the-night coughing fit, throughout which I lay beside him comatose. After his coughing, Jake made a tiny “ahem” type of noise, and I bolted up, wide awake, and ran into his room. What can I say? It’s maternal programming.

If you were to ask me on any given day what (if any) song was in my head, almost always the answer would be some theme song from a children’s television program. Most days, I will be going about my day, humming “Toot and Puddle, what a day for adventure”, or the much catchier “Overture! Curtains, lights!”. (Toot and Puddle – if there is a better children’s show on television, I would like to know what it is. And how can you not love Bugs Bunny? Except of course the fact that our dinnertime conversations now include comments like “I like this spaghetti. I am going to blow it up with a cannonball!”). These themes are highly preferable to the “Wonder Pets” or “Backyardigans” themes, which had a tendency to haunt me in my sleep, and which I’m thankful the boys don’t really watch anymore.

The past couple of days have found me humming actual songs that I chanced to hear (and are now probably going to haunt me in my sleep). The first is the Pina Colada song (does that song have an actual name other than the Pina Colada song?). Upon listening to this romantic ditty, I realized that I am actually the exact opposite of the individual described in the personal ad. In other words, I would have been un-dateable in the 70’s. It’s like how I used to think of myself as somewhat of a free spirit, when in reality I am incredibly rigid. Or how I used to think it would be great to live and work in NYC, when in reality a) I hate crowds, b) I love gardening, c) I can’t stay up late, and d) the thought of packing myself, let alone myself plus two kids, into a shoebox of an apartment gives me eye spasms.

The second song circling my brain is “Bust-A-Move” by Young MC. Yes, “Bust-A-Move”. The sad thing about this is that I actually know all the words. I have to think that this is a large waste of brain space. Really, it’s taking up room for information that I really should have in my brain. Information like, is it okay that my four year old thinks it would be funny to put his brother in a dehydrating machine, and then pour water on him so he is back to normal? And if this is not okay, should I start rationing the Bugs Bunny?

So here it comes, the question of the day – what song is going through your head right now?

When I was an economics student, the process of mean reversion was kind of interesting to me. Okay, I just realized that if anyone was actually reading this post, they have probably stopped. But, if you are still reading this, stay with me a minute. Anyway, it was interesting to me that, for example, inherited or spontaneous wealth has a tendency to mean-revert, exemplified by the high percentage of lottery winners who end up broke after a few years. Another fine example is Barbara Hutton, heiress of the fabulous Woolworth fortune, who died with only a couple of thousand dollars in the bank.

Rob has been away this week and without him, I have been reverting to some single-girl ways. Now don’t get too excited: this is not a post about me Mrs. Robinson-ing with the guys down the street or anything. Since I’m at home with the kids, the shape of our days is pretty much the same as it always is, with some exceptions, dinner preparation being the most notable. The only reason I’m not eating popcorn for dinner is because our ancient and cheap air popper recently set off the fire alarm. I have, however, eaten Greek salad and pita bread for four straight nights, allowing the kids to eat cheese pizzas and chicken fingers. Dinner notwithstanding, the real difference in my day is when the kids are in bed. It’s a smorgasbord of wine drinking, straight-from-the-box cereal eating, and, sadly, NYPD Blue rerun watching. It’s like when the cat’s away the mice will play, only the mice are lamely addicted to the episodes with Kelly and Sipowitz, and also Mini-Wheats.

Now I’m going to go out on a limb and say something that may actually make you die laughing: I think motherhood has actually made me cooler. Please stop laughing. Despite the fact that I absolutely love my minivan, I think I am actually cooler now than before I had kids. Please note that this is highly relative, I mean really, I’m pretty lame. I still love me a good book and a good math-based joke, but at least I don’t spend my days poring over Visual Basic and creating option pricing models. When Rob’s away though, my (relative) coolness evaporates and what emerges is a lame-o girl with a weird crush on David Caruso.

So here’s the question of the day: what behaviours do you revert to when your significant other is out of town?

This morning I woke up without a splitting, pounding, sinus headache for the first time in a while. I’ve been sick, in varying degrees, since December 21. In my last post I wrote about the positives about having sick kids over the holidays. Well, as time wore on and the viruses continued their playdate in our house, my sunshiny attitude became replaced by that of an irritable, mangy dog.

Boring, isn’t it? I mean, isn’t everyone sick right now? It seems like no matter where you are in this country, the majority of people are either sick or just over it. Anyway, we are on the mend over here, the kids are eating to make up for the disturbing illness-related weight loss (my children, never overly stout, now have countable ribs and stick arms and legs), our life is pretty much back to normal.

Jake was the sickest of us all, then he improved, and then he…didn’t. The thing is, I didn’t really notice that he started to backslide until days later. Nothing says “bad mother” like not correctly identifying your children’s symptoms. By the time I took him to the revolting, germ-encrusted walk-in clinic, I hadn’t slept much for days and was in an exhaustion- and medication-induced fog. As I stood in line at the Co-Op to fill his prescription, I started crying and couldn’t stop, the kind of crying that has people looking at you and then quickly looking away. “Are you all right?” the pharmacist asked kindly as I left clutching the little paper bag of antibiotics.

I was remembering the night before, when I was up for the eighteenth, nineteenth, twentieth time with Jake; Jake who was restless and sobbing. Don’t get me wrong, externally I comforted, I cuddled, I administered Tylenol. Internally, I was seething with frustration and impatience, it practically vibrated through me. At four in the morning, after not having more than 30 minutes of consecutive sleep, I said to Rob “YOU deal with him, I just can’t anymore”. Like instead of being sick and in pain, Jake was just trying to irritate or inconvenience me. It wasn’t until the next morning that I realized how sick he had gotten; I started beating myself up and haven’t really stopped since.

I’m not really a New Year’s person. This year my “celebration” consisted of me, by myself, eating a plate of nachos, drinking an entire bottle of wine, watching “Anne of Green Gables – The Sequel” on Access, and passing out before 10:00. But maybe this year I will make a resolution. My resolution is not to win the Bad Mother Award again – I think one such trophy is enough for me.