Cookie Thief

Despite my attempts to get my daughter to eat healthy snacks, she loves cookies. (And yes, I know the apple does NOT fall far from the tree!) Part of the reason she developed a love of cookies is thanks to my mom (and I did let her have graham crackers c.f. blog entry "Teddy Grahams"). My mom’s belief was that certain biscuits from Italy had vitamins in them and that the baby could use more vitamins. Of course, upon looking at the nutritional information of said cookies, there were, in fact, as I suspected, very few vitamins in them. 

However as my daughter’s food pickiness came into being, it became a debate of whether to give her something to eat (the vitamin cookie) or nothing at all. I opted for a cookie every now and then to give her an occasional treat. But like most things, when the cat (momma) is away, the mice (grandma) will (give the child cookie) play.  I discovered many cookies were being eaten and nibbled on when I was at work. 

Of course these food issues with my daughter are a power play that she’s getting away with on her grandma. I try my best to give her fruits and veggies and other things we eat, only to have her toss it to the dogs. My pooches are thrilled by this free for all, believe me. 

On occasion before I’ve even placed food on my daughter’s plate, she’s already made eye contact with the dogs and they sit under her high chair. The food goes from my hand in a direct path to the dog’s mouths. It’s great! Really! 

Lately what I’ve noticed is that my daughter takes her sweet time eating her cookies. This is pure temptation for my bigger dog, who is always hanging around my munchkin. M will walk around the apartment with a hand on the wall or her playpen and the other hand tightly grasping a cookie. When she takes too long, the big dog follows her around. Her face fixed on the cookie in hopes that the cookie will either drop on the floor. Or with the desire that my daughter will just give her the cookies after her hands get all steamed up from the dog’s hot breath on her fist. 

Once or twice, I’ve been there to witness the dog gently put her mouth around the treat in my daughter’s hand, my daughter giggles from the drool and opens her hand. The pooch has serenely digested the sweet snack satisfyingly and all is right again in the puppy universe. Score one for the canine. 

Last weekend my daughter walked back and forth in the apartment for about 15 minutes. She probably completed a mile of pitter-pattering with a gingerbread cookie in her hand. Throughout this little marathon, the dog walked on her side with her snout right above my daughter’s fist. A couple of times, my daughter shoved the dog’s face away from the cookie with her cookie-covered hand. This only made the dog salivate more. Over time and repetition of this same scene, the cookie became soggy and my daughter opened her hand to rub the drool off of her hands. The cookie fell to the floor. And score two for the canine!

Let’s look at the scoreboard:

M = 0;  pooch = 2!

I am pretty sure this game of cookie ball will continue for quite some time. At least until my daughter learns to keep her food to herself. I suppose I should be happy that she’s learning to share but it’s not quite how I imagined sharing to be taught to my daughter. It’s certainly not sharing by intimidation but by salivation.

Honorary Smurf

Recently a pair of jeans that I have had for many years went to the denim patch in the sky. I really couldn’t do much to salvage the worn fabric between the thighs since most of the area was threadbare. Fixing them would be more time and money than to just buy a new pair at Old Navy (where I always get my jeans). It was a sad sartorial day in my closet. Sniff, sniff.

Shortly after saying goodbye to my trusty pants, I ordered a new pair online. (Yes, I know the morning period was rather short but I needed a new pair of jeans pronto. The next weekend, when all I wear is jeans, was fast approaching). I found a pair with a dark wash, which is good for a mom who spends time crawling around after a little munchkin.  As soon as I got them, I cleaned them as the instructions stated and as is my common practice with new items. 

The next weekend came and I wore my jeans all day. By the end of that Saturday evening, I was changing into my pajamas and noticed a weird tinge on my legs. I thought it was either my tired eyes or the bathroom lighting so I didn’t give it much thought.

However the next morning with fresh eyes I realized that the jeans’ dye was wearing off on my skin. Further proof came when I took my shower and the water had turned navy. I looked up the product information to see if it said anything and I realized from having worked in retail back in the day, that it would take a number of washes before the color would stop ‘bleeding’ onto my legs.  While I will have to wait a bit longer to get out of my Papa smurf phase, my daughter had it much easier.

For Christmas, I ordered some blue velvet cupcakes from a bakery that I saw online. Since I love red velvet cupcakes, I thought I would see what was so special about blue velvet (aside from it being my favorite color and fabric) ones. When they arrived, I was very excited! They were so pretty and blue that looked more like the sky than the royal blue that I love.

The cupcakes were quite moist and yummy but nothing too different than the red velvet ones. They had more of a vanilla flavor than the red velvet ones I’ve had. I decided that my daughter should try one out with me and let me know if I was correct in my decision. 

I gave her a little piece but she demanded a chunk with frosting. She stuffed it in her face immediately but missed most of her mouth. A good portion of the cupcake landed around her mouth and under her nose. Due to my daughter’s not yet mastering self-feeding herself, the only part of her face that wasn’t blue was her forehead. By the time we had finished the dessert, she looked like a smurf temperature gauge – where the heat hadn’t quite gotten to 100 degrees yet. 

A quick wiping with a towel got rid of all smurfy evidence on her face while I am still dealing with my blue legs! A few days later though, while eating blueberries and blackberries, my daughter looked like a very angry dark Smurfette. Not sure when I will start to regain my human color but at least with a little water, my daughter returns to normal relatively fast.

What Happened to Thanksgiving?

 A few weeks ago, just after Halloween, I walked into my second home. I was stunned to see it decked out in Christmas decorations weeks before Thanksgiving. Actually I got really upset. Why are we pushing off one of the best American holidays into non-existence? Most importantly, where did my Thanksgiving blend go?

All joking aside, I love Thanksgiving. It’s a great day, full of all the ideas and concepts that I appreciate most about holidays. I like cooking and spending time with my family and being grateful for what I have. It’s something we should do everyday.

 Sadly, this one day is often the only day we get to appreciate these things. As much as I try to be mindful and grateful every day, this one day is, at the very least, the one day when we can share time with those we love and appreciate them. 

Yes, Christmas is also another time to share with your family. However, the over commercialization of Christmas often leads us to lose the true meaning behind the holiday. Here was an example of Christmas and big business doing just that – pushing the holiday meaning out of the holiday. Let’s just forget about Thanksgiving and remember we need to spend money for Christmas.

It’s sad that people who work in retail will have to work Thanksgiving to make room for all the sales of Black Friday. Big stores are opening up on Thanksgiving to give people an extra shopping day. Really?? Isn’t that what Black Friday is for? You shop the day after Thanksgiving. Spend the day with your family and then go out the day after. Let’s keep Thanksgiving sacred, people! Enjoy this one day since everyone keeps trying to take it away.

Navel Gazing

My daughter is very observant. She's always looking around at what is different, new or moving around. She is obsessed with my dogs, which makes complete sense because I am too. However the thing that interests her most lately is her belly button and everyone else's too.

I'm not sure when the fanaticism started but almost every day when I get home from work, she pulls up my shirt to make sure that my belly button is there. She then shows me hers. Whenever she wakes up and after she's had breakfast, she checks to make sure that her belly button hasn't gone away overnight. It's very cute.

Before she goes to bed, and usually while I'm reading her bedtime stories, she decides it's a good time to stick her finger right into my umbilical area. She often compares her tummy to mine and I always tell her "Yours is much cuter!"

A week ago, one of the dogs presented us her tummy. My daughter proceeded to inspect the dogs tummy. She then pulled up her shirt to look at her belly button. She returned her gaze to the puppy's tummy and back again to hers. I realized what was going on and said "Honey, I don't think dogs have belly buttons." I am not entirely sure how I didn't eat my own child but I guess I have a lot of restraint.

She even pursues this tenacity with the rest of the family. I've caught my daughter pulling up my mom's shirt in search of her belly button. Whenever she finds it, she pokes her index finger into my mom's stomach. My mom thinks it's cute but always asks me where she learned this behavior. Not sure I can provide any light there as I am equally mystified by daughter's interest.

She once caught my sister's back slightly exposed and she bent down to search for said tummy trinket. She kept pressing her finger into my sister's back until I realized what she was up to and told her "What your looking for is in the front of your aunt, not in the back." She did stop after I said that. I don't think it's because she understood what I was saying but more because she realized that she was not similar to my sister at that moment.

It's really very cute to watch her in this phase where everything is new and interesting.The only thing I have to remember is to trim her nails because getting poked in the stomach with talons hurts!

Winding Down

I work in a group with people who are located in every time zone in the United States and a couple international ones as well. This has its pros and cons. As I write this, I can’t think of any pros, but I am sure some must exist. I just happen to be at a loss at this moment. 

There are a lot of cons to this setup; One of them is the time zones differences (wait, this might actually be the biggest con!). People in India are hard to get a hold of almost any time I am online. People in other Asia Pacific countries need to be accommodated almost entirely outside of my 9-5 schedule. People in Europe are mostly reachable during my morning time. If I miss them by noon, I know I’ll have to catch them the next day. This often results in a waste day when it comes to communicating with them. Grrr!

I have a few colleagues in the Central time zone. I often have to wait until 10 am to be able to even reach them. Getting in touch with people is really difficult on this global model. Because the team covers the globe, there are a lot of meetings scheduled to try to get everyone ‘in the same place, at the same time’ (and no need to tell me how ridiculous this phrase is!). It becomes an exercise in futility but I’m preaching to my own choir

This component is also frustrating because when the clock is getting close to or is at 5 in my time zone, there’s still time left in my Central Time Zone colleagues’ day. But that doesn’t mean I want to hear from them as I am about to shut my computer down! And I definitely don’t want to have a call from 4 to 5 during my day even if it is 3 to 4 in their day. I want time to get work done and finish up before calling it a day. 

And why? Why? Do people often instant message me when I am about to log off for the day. Is there some kind of cosmic wave that goes out in the universe and says “ooooh Angie is logging off, let’s ask her a really complicated question even thought it’s past 5 in her time zone.” 

I have been in the workforce for quite a while. This aspect of it is beginning to really get my goat. I am not sure how to rectify this except by perhaps looking for another job where I don’t have to be on a 24 hour clock. In the meantime I’ll just block my calendar from 4-5 in hopes that I don’t get called into any late day meetings.

Father Knows Best

Having grown up in the 80s, I watched the first episode of ‘The Goldbergs’ a couple of weeks ago. I wanted to see what they would do with a family comedy set during that time period. My viewing was partially nostalgic and the other half was scared that I lived through so many horrible things – mostly the clothing. 

I can’t say it was the best comedy I’ve ever seen but it did remind me of a lot of awkward moments. One scene resonated very loudly with me. It reminded me of my own experience. The moment is when the father teaches his son to drive a car. I felt as though I was living that same moment right on my sofa. 

The father yelled at the son and the son yelled back. I flashed back to: 

“Angie!!What are you doing?! NO!!!!! “ screamed my father as he grabbed the steering wheel from the passenger seat. 

“You are smarter than that”, whenever I made a move that he didn’t think was correct.

“Use your head!!”, if I didn’t focus and follow ‘the rules of the road’. 

Ohhh I remember it well. I don’t mean that in an entirely good way. All the times I spent arguing with my dad in the car were so painful when they were happening but so funny now when I look back on them. It’s so present in my mind that I’ve written about it before (c.f. GP(api)S). 

The way the father reacted in the show also reminded me of my dad. The Goldberg dad seemed to constantly blow a gasket. When I was growing up, I wanted to stay as far away as possible from my dad when he was angry. Although he was a very tiny man, his voice bellowed over great distances. I often wanted to go to the Grand Canyon with my dad to see if his gravelly smoker’s voice would carry across the immense caverns. I guess I’ll never know now. 

Another thing about the show that reminded me of my dad was how the dad called the kids ‘idiot’ or ‘moron’. Whenever the father said something to his progeny, there was a subtitle to explain what the father meant when he said these mean things. It really was horrible to see the father’s inability to communicate effectively with his kids. However my dad was no better. He said many choice things to us in his own special way. Of course they sounded better being in Italian. 

Now that I think about a lot about what he said and look for meaning in those phrases, I do see that good intentions were there in his messages. Because he never had anyone express their emotions to him growing up, he had no idea how to do it for us. He definitely tried his best and sometimes it was good and sometimes it left much to be desired. In the end what I saw in that episode of “The Goldbergs” and in my dad’s communiqués was that perhaps subtitles are needed when it comes to understanding some people.

Sunday Best (Maybe)

I am an early riser and there is nothing I like better most weeks that Sunday morning. Most people are slumbering when I get up and go grocery shopping. There are no lines and just a few people so I can get it all done in a half hour. Unless everything goes wrong, like it did yesterday.

I knew that there was a charity walk but I figured it would be later in the morning…not at 7:30. When I got to my local coffee house, the line was incredibly long that I decided to skip it altogether. I figured that if I got on the line and got my coffee, I’d be late at the store. And just a few minutes makes a big difference in the amount of people at the grocery store.

So I forewent my caffeine, which normally relaxes me (yes, I get the irony of coffee relaxing a person) to try to get to the store. But the streets were filled with packs of people in pink who were screaming and yelling and hoarding up the sidewalks. No one should be subjected to that much noise on a fine Sunday morning. Trying to get around and to avoid these herds just put me in an even worse mood. 

Luckily, the store was very quiet and there were only a few people. I got my shopping done very quickly but as usual, I went a bit off my shopping list. This veering off led to my grocery bags being heavier than I anticipated. (Did I really need those potatoes? I thought in hindsight.)

Normally I could have walked home, even with the heavier weight, in a few minutes. But between the heavy bags and the charity cattle, it took me 20 minutes to get home. Needless to say, I was pretty perturbed when I walked in the door. Even though I was greeted by cuteness in every way, I was in a very bad mood due to my numb arm and lack of caffeine. 

I tried to remediate the situation by going to get coffee elsewhere. I thought I’d visit a mom and pop shop to encourage small business. I was very excited to try the roast that was described to me. I put in my sugar and continued my walk with M. When I finally sipped the coffee (because I wanted it to cool down a bit), it tasted like bitter rust. It made me even more upset than I already was. I decided to cut my losses and I tossed out the rest of the coffee. I decided that perhaps today just wasn’t my coffee day. I went all day without coffee. Needless to say, I was grumpy and tired the rest of the day. Those two adjectives do not make a nice girl in the least. 

It just goes to show you that little things do mean a lot. A nice cup of coffee is a morning ritual for some (ahem Me!) which set the stage for the rest of the day. And people should not be so obnoxious, no matter the reason, any Sunday morning. It is the day of rest for a reason. It is a rest from the chaos of the week so people just be quiet!