A Jaded Mama

Wordless Wednesday - Marker, meet Baby

On Problem Solving and Tooth Decay

Food is my happy place. After a long(ish) day of work, the easiest way to get my thoughts off the challenges of the day is to solve problems that do not relate to business. And my favourite problem to solve is that of making sure that my children are as nourished as they possibly can be.

I'm talking physically nourished here, just to clarify. The other kinds of nourishment can be found on the blogs of other moms.

Azure has never given me cause to worry on the food front. She's always had diverse tastes and thankfully she's always loved smoothies. You can hide anything in smoothies (except for fermented cod liver oil. There ain't nothing that can disguise the taste of that nastiness, but more on that in a future post). And she has always understood the relationship between what she eats and how it affects her body, at least from the perspective of whatever age she has been.

Ione is not the best of eaters, though her size would indicate otherwise, but I'm still nursing her and making sure I am well-nourished, so I'm not yet concerned. She's got time to swing in one direction or the other.

My little Phoenix, on the other hand, is a whole challenge and a half.

I know I'm supposed to be greatful that she likes as many foods as she does. I know I'm supposed to quip, "well, I was a picky eater and I turned out okay." But did I, really? And what if I want my kids to be more than just "okay", because just okay is not good enough? From that angle, she really is not a very good eater.

Phoenix is the kid you kind of worry about. She's healthy as a horse, is never sick, has met or exceded all her milestones, and so on and so forth. But she's a small kid and she hasn't got much on her, and certainly nothing to spare should she ever come down with something (knock wood). And the fact that I can't get the right kind of foods into her is a real cause for concern.

Foods Phoenix will eat:

• Oatmeal (it's the only breakfast option other than French toast or homemade pancakes)
• Tortellini and pesto, packaged. She LOVES tortellini and pesto.
• Apples, tons of apples
• For a while there all she wanted to eat was bananas. Now she will eat the occasional banana.
• Juice (which, if we give her, is limited to an ounce a day, watered down, and more infrequently).
• Broccoli, especially if frozen.
• Roasted cauliflower (mmmm...so easy and so good)
• Sweet potatoes as oven fried chips.
• Chicken.
• My Add Anything Meatballs, which can be stuffed full of veggies.
• My chicken soup.
• I'll add more as I think of them!

 So here's the problem: Phoenix has a cavity. If you click on this picture and look between her two front teeth, you'll see it. You'll also notice that her gum are ripped off the teeth on her upper right, due to a face-against-the-headboard-while-jumping accident from last Christmas day. Fun little buggers, those teeth.

What's the big deal, right? We go to the dentist, she gets it drilled and filled, and off we go.

EXCEPT I've done a lot of reading recently on what a bad idea that is. And not only that, but apparently, under the right circumstances, teeth can heal themselves. They are, after all, living tissues. The reason they decay is not, in fact, due to all the reasons your dentist has been feeding you all these years (but do not stop brushing your teeth!), but rather because they are a mineral rich research and when the body is out of balance it pulls minerals out of teeth and bones to maintain equilibrium.

I'm not making this up. I picked up a copy of Cure Tooth Decay and learned all about this stuff. Here's a great article that sums it all up nicely as well.

It's largely about what you eat.

And this kid doesn't eat enough variety.

See my dilemma? I could FIX it, if only she'd let me! This is a problem to which there is a wonderful and apparently very accessible solution.

This is one of those times where ignorance is bliss and I simply know too much.

I will try to be grateful that this cavity is in a baby tooth.

Wordless Wednesday - The Cheesy Child

These snaps were captured using Hipstamatic on my iPhone 4.

Where does she get these moves??

Not from me, I tell ya. If this is what Ione can do at 15 months, imagine what she'll be doing 10 years from now! Or don't. I'm trying not to.

Please excuse the inappropriate lyrics (it's Fred's iPod, not mine. Mine just has Glee soundtracks) AND the fact that she is, in fact, forward facing in her car seat. We had a long ride ahead of us to Ottawa and I just figured it would be easier on all if we could see each other. Her seat has now been returned to its rear-facing, much safer position.

Organized, hygienic AND cute

My friend Angie, who owns a little kids café in St-Leonard, gave the girls these adorable little toothbrush holders as a loot bag. Aren't they super sweet? Buh-bye nasty glass full of spit and drippings. Now just need to pick up a couple for Fred and me!

I suck.

Le sigh. So here we are, winter vacation drawing to a close, and we barely took the kids outside. I suck. I'm a crappola parent.

Why do we live here again? Though we got DUMPED on a little while before Christmas, the temperature went above zero for New Year's, followed by a melt and the gross, slushy, dirty snow that comes with such a shift in temperatures. See above. I don't want to be out in that. I mean, it was glorious for my return to running and all (please please please don't let it snow or get any colder until spring comes to take it all away please please please and never mind the froggies), but it's like the worst weather for playing outdoors with small children.

Insert reminder about $7/day daycare here.

That's why we stay. And the sugar shack, which is, incidentally, only THREE SHORT MONTHS AWAY! I'm already giddy with excitement about that. Hey, a girl's got to have something to look forward to, no?

We took the kids sledding twice (I think, maybe it was once) and we went skating once. Fred played for hours with Azure once when they built a fort just before Christmas, I played outside with the two of them while the younger girls slept in the stroller and I inadvertantly smashed Azure's face into the compacted snow while trying to shove her down into the fort, as part of our game.

So not only did I barely take them outside, I damaged one while trying.

Epic FAIL on my part.

At some point I will be able to kick the lot of them out into the backyard without having to accompany them, right?

There WAS that full day at Santa's Village, which should count for at least four normal days, really. Does it? Oh, look, there's goat butt in that picture of Azure. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Thanks for listening...

 

Figured it out!

Alright, so a challenge with this whole fancy hair thing I've started with Azure is that at night she moves. She wiggles and rolls and slides across her pillow, and the result is a very fuzzy head in the morning.

When I first had extensions put in her hair it was suggested to me that I pick up a satin cap, such as the one seen here, but you know what? I don't want my daughter sleeping with a polyester cap on her head. It was one thing when she was wearing fake hair (which won't happen again until she can pay for it herself!) but her hair is all hers now and I want that beautiful scalp of hers to breathe.

So I looked for a real silk pillowcase, which are, by the way, like, IMPOSSIBLE to find. Next option was silk fabric to make into a pillowcase but that would require me to break out the rusty sewing machine and I don't think it even works anymore. Plus I'm SO done with the sewing thing.

I had an aha moment yesterday. Those Waldorf-y playsilks I bought when Azure was really little, the ones she used to wrap around her head all the time and have me tie like a long, dangling ponytail? Those are real silk! So tonight I wrapped them around her pillows and voilà! Problem-solved.

They're pretty too, and widely available on Etsy for less than a metre of silk fabric, I imagine! And they make GREAT holiday gifts for the creative little creatures in your life. Take a look for yourself!

I'm so stinking proud

Of myself. Is that lame? So maybe it's not lame in theory but to blog about it? Yeah, lame.

But I'm SO proud. I feel like I just discovered a missing piece of myself. It's that piece I've been looking for since I hit adulthood. It's the piece that means that I DO have the potential to be an organized person and get a handle on the entropy that surrounds me. I DO know how to pick up after myself and put things away.

I was so jazzed about this that I went to bed WAY too late last night, after watching tutorial videos on YouTube.

LOOK WHAT I DID!!!

Now I'm just waiting for time to catch up with reality so that I can head over to Fabricville to see if I can find some real silk to make this child a pillowcase. Then maybe her hairdos will look nice for more than a few minutes.

Look at this face!

Yes, I am biased. I'm her mother, for heaven's sake. But doesn't she just GLOW? Under all the snot, I mean.

Is it like coffee?

I'm still giggling over a question that Amy asked me on Thursday.

I've been writing a post in my head since Ione was eight weeks old and took the pacifier for the first time and I'm finally getting it down for all of you. Amy's hilarious question could not have been more timely.

So I've managed to give birth to another child that seems to require constant stimulation from a third party. No matter how many toys that baby has, she's never content for more than, oh, say, 5.76 seconds. It makes it rather challenging to get much work done if she's not sleeping.

This past Thursday, as my to-do list was 10 items long and I was desperate to finish item 10 before heading out to pick up the older girls, I asked Amy, who is almost 37 weeks pregnant now and quite comfortable to just sit on the sofa in our office, to hold the baby. She did what she could to keep Ione amused and stuck the pacifier back in her mouth quite a few times before she turned to me and asked, "Are pacifiers like coffee in that after a while you're not so sensitive to the effects of the caffeine?"

Clearly Amy doesn't spend as much time around coffee drinkers as I do, being a sworn Mormon and all.

Anyways, the answer is a resounding no, of course. The effects do not wear off. This child loves the pacifier and I am proclaiming for all the world to hear that I AM SO GRATEFUL.  

Do you ever play that game in which you ask yourself what you'd tell a younger version of yourself if you could go back X number of years? I do. I play it ALL the time now. If I could go back 6.5 years I'd take myself by the shoulders, give myself a HARD shake, and say give the child a bloody pacifier. It will not make you less of a mother. It will not damage your child for all eternity if she is not permitted to be attached to your body 24/7. In fact, it might even improve things on the relationship front if you allow her to be soothed by something other than your own breast.

Well, live and learn, I guess. Hopefully this whole relaxing of my principles won't result in thousands of dollars of orthodontic work in a few years...