Picky eaters: how can he know he doesn’t like it until he takes a bite?

English: By Ruth Lawson. Otago Polytechnic.

Never, ever take advice from me on potty training. Or weaning. Or cleaning house. (But if you ever want to feel better about the chaos in your house, come see my kitchen when I’m on deadline. Last week, I was ankle-deep in stuff. Stuff=shredded egg cartons that Ender destroyed with a cheese knife while I tried to get the last paragraph for a profile of a leadership transition at an oil sands company nailed down just right.) But if you want, you can take advice from me about food. I’ve raised three garburators—by which I mean not children who eat junk food, but children whom no one can ever call picky eaters. They’ll eat anything.

But, wait. There’s a caveat. Not anything all of the time. Taste buds change, see, and sometimes kids don’t have the taste buds—or have taste buds that are just too sensitive—for the food we’re offering them.

One of the things we’ve always talked about as Cinder and then Flora didn’t like something / didn’t want to try something was that “taste buds change.” (Interlude: yes, it’s possible to know you won’t like something without tasting it. I will not eat steak tartare. You cannot make me. I will not taste it. I extend the same right of total refusal to my children. If they think it looks and smells gross, that’s enough. One day, they might think differently. Until they do, I will not force them. Back to tasting change buds… er, changing taste buds:) So when my eldest went off broccoli, when I’d make broccoli, I’d ask him if his broccoli taste buds changed yet–and he’d sniff it or look at it, and say no. And then one day he said, yes, but only in soup.

It’s easiest to relate to this if you’re recently gone through a taste bud shift yourself. During my Ender pregnancy, I totally went off broccoli too–formerly one of my absolutely favourite, could eat it every day vegetables. It’s been years, and those taste buds haven’t come back yet. I seem to forget this every week and order broccoli… and then look at it wilt in our fridge through the week, taking it out every couple of days to
look at it with disgust, (I don’t have to taste it to know I don’t want it) until, finally, I put it out of its misery and puree it into a soup my children devour while I watch them and eat something else… or, if I’m too lazy to fix myself a second lunch, drown my bowl of broccoli soup with hot sauce so I can’t taste its foul cruciferousness.

Mmmm, hot sauce…

Point: when introducing children to food—offer. Put on the table. Eat it yourself. Make it again. Ask if they’d like to try it. Ask if their taste buds for [X] have come yet. But never, ever force. Not even one bite.

Unless, of course, you’re willing to reciprocate? When Jocelyn is making a yummy mud pie with dirt and worms and beetle carcases, would you need to take a bite to be able to assert that you don’t like it?

Unfair comparison, I know. Switch mud pie for something you haven’t liked forever and ever. Shrimp? Egg? Sushi? Tripe? Would you have a bite if I offered it to you?

Don’t expect more of your little ones when it comes to food than you would of yourself. That, I think, is fair.

What do you think?

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Serious: When toddlers attack (surviving “That Hitting Things”) • Searching for strategies for Sensitive Seven • Five is hard: can you attachment parent an older child • It’s not about balance: Creating your family’s harmony • 10 habits for a happy home from the house of chaos and permissiveness • The ultimate secret behind parenting: it’s evolution, baby

Funny: Floor peas • The rarest song of all • Sarcasm, lawn darts, and toilets  • What humanitarian really means  • The sacrifices mothers make for their children (Warning: grossness factor uber-high)  • It’s all about presentation  • Anatomy talk, now and forever  • Want to hear all the swear words I know?  • Of the apocalypse, euphemisms and (un)potty training  • Mom? Have you noticed I’ve stopped…  • Poisonous Volvo

♦

And remember, we have a spin-off blog now just on homeschooling: Undogmatic Unschoolers.

“There are no pee towels in the kitchen”

o1

Ender: Mama! I peed in the kitchen!

Jane: Just a second! I’m folding the laundry… I’ll be right there…

Ender: Mama! There are no pee towels in the kitchen!

Jane: I know! They’re all in the laundry! I’m folding them right now; I’ll be right down!

Ender: Mama! There are no good towels in the kitchen!

Jane: Folding laundry! Be right down!

Silence. Too much silence. Eerie silence. I grab a handful of unfolded pee towels and run down the stairs. And there is Ender. In the kitchen. Naked.

Jane: Why are you naked, Ender?

Ender: There is no pee towels. There is no good towels. But look–I took off my shirt, and I cleaned my pee up with it.

Problem solving, right? This is a good sign, right?

P.S. I hate laundry. Even when I’m on top of it and have a system that’s working… there’s just nothing fulfilling about it. And as I take Ender’s piddly shirt and pants and pound down the stairs into the basement to start another load going, I know precisely why.

P.S.2 Yes, I have a drawer of pee towels in the kitchen. What, you don’t?

Photo (Photo of the Week 44-2011 – Towel Day) by cheesy42

Octobers of the past retrospective

Pumpkins, photographed in Canada.

Ender turned three this month, and when I started this blog in the Spring of 2012, I created a “fake” archive going back to October 2009–the point of his arrival. (I had to start somewhere, right? And where better than with a birth story?) So as October wraps up, I’m looking back at the highlights from three Octobers past:

Three years ago in October:

Any Way They Have to Come, October 21, 2009
The Last Three Minutes, October 15, 2009

Two years ago in October:

Why Ender’s Ender, October 14, 2010

One year ago in October:

Cinder and Flora Become Hellenic Pagans, October 25, 2011
Emergency Pig’s Ear, October 21, 2011
Don’t you know skin falls off? October 5, 2011

…and sending out belated Canadian Thanksgiving “thank you’s” to the universe for Ender, Flora, Cinder–Sean–and my entire, ridiculously privileged life.

He’s so his mother’s son, part deux

English: M with Sponge Bob in Leipzig. Portugu...

I.

Jane: Oh-my-god-Cinder, have you been sneaking off and taking extra annoyance lessons or something?

Cinder: No. But I’ve been watching Sponge Bob again.

Jane: Well, that explains it.

Cinder: Or, it could be all-natural, courtesy of your genes. Hmmm. Probably the latter. Don’t you think?

II.

Jane: I’m going to go read the book now to Flora, you coming?

Cinder: What book is that?

Jane: You’ll love it. It’s called Butts and Asses of the World.

Cinder: Really?

Jane: Um…

Cinder: You’re the best mom in the world. Hey! This is The Mark of Athena!

Jane: You’ve been waiting for Mark of Athena since June.

Cinder: Well, yeah, but you got my hopes all up with that Butts and Asses book.

I’m so evil.

P.S. Rick Riordan’s The Mark of Athena! Finally!

Silver tetradrachm issued by the League of Ath...

If you’re as excited about The Mark of Athena as we are…

the next four journals

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My current personal favourite: The Authoritative New Parents’ Guide to Sex After Children (of course… what else.)

Serious: When toddlers attack (surviving “That Hitting Things”) • Searching for strategies for Sensitive Seven • Five is hard: can you attachment parent an older child • It’s not about balance: Creating your family’s harmony • 10 habits for a happy home from the house of chaos and permissiveness • The ultimate secret behind parenting: it’s evolution, baby

Funny: Floor peas • The rarest song of all • Sarcasm, lawn darts, and toilets  • What humanitarian really means  • The sacrifices mothers make for their children (Warning: grossness factor uber-high)  • It’s all about presentation  • Anatomy talk, now and forever  • Want to hear all the swear words I know?  • Of the apocalypse, euphemisms and (un)potty training  • Mom? Have you noticed I’ve stopped…  • Poisonous Volvo

The Family that eats together, or “Help! I can’t make my kids stay sitting at the table through the meal”

English: The end of dinner

Question: What is that that you’re trying to achieve with “family” dinners?

I don’t make my kids stay at the table until everyone’s finished eating. Never have. Rarely will, even with the elder two. But guess what? Now that they’re 10 and coming up on 8, they’ll often―usually―choose to stay at the table through the meal. Even when it’s one of those festive family meals that drags on together.

On “regular” days, although we almost always eat at home, we don’t always eat dinner together as a family. And here’s why.

When your purpose is to create a time that’s special, shared and valued–a time, place and space where the family comes together and builds itself, strengthens itself–how can that possibly occur when that togetherness is enforced and participated in unwillingly? The “family that eats together” myth is so ingrained in our culture — the picture of the family sitting down to dinner together such a sacred cow — a lot of us don’t really think critically about what it is that we are trying to achieve — and how we may be subverting our actual goals by the “we’re all eating dinner together goddammit” action.

There are so many other ways to come together over food if a ritual meal time is something you’re after:

Picnics.
Tea parties.
Dessert.
Appetizers.
4 o’clock tea
8 o’clock snack.

It doesn’t have to be dinner. In fact, depending on the ages of your children and the work schedules of the adults, dinner may be the worst possible time for a ritualized get-together: too late for the children, too much in the middle of too many other things for the adult who’s come home from work and needs to rush off to a meeting…

It may be so much more pleasant for everyone involved if young children eat their meal (meals) an hour or two before the parents eat their dinner – and then everyone can come back to the table or kitchen for drinks, dessert, cleaning, the post-dinner game, whatever. Or get the togetherness you’re shooting for from cuddling together on the couch, wrestling on the carpet, going for a walk, going swimming―at another time of the day. After dinner. On the weekend. Before bedtime.

The ritual power of the joint meal is huge, I get that, totally–the most important events in my calendar are our community potlucks, family dinners and food celebrations with friends–but their strength comes from voluntary, joyful participation.

I know from the example of my elder two children that my toddler will one day happily join us at the family dinner table for a prolonged meal. But it probably won’t be this year. Or next year. And that’s okay. He’s learning the power of ritual and community and family even as he runs laps around the dinner table―or eats two hours before us, and is asleep by the time we have our meal.

What do you think? Do you eat together as a family? Is that important to you? Does it work for you? If it does―how do you make it work? If it doesn’t… why do you keep on doing it?

MOST POPULAR POSTS

My current favourite: The Authoritative New Parents’ Guide to Sex After Children (of course)

Serious: When toddlers attack (surviving “That Hitting Things”) • Searching for strategies for Sensitive Seven • Five is hard: can you attachment parent an older child • It’s not about balance: Creating your family’s harmony • 10 habits for a happy home from the house of chaos and permissiveness • The ultimate secret behind parenting: it’s evolution, baby

Funny: Floor peas • The rarest song of all • Sarcasm, lawn darts, and toilets  • What humanitarian really means  • The sacrifices mothers make for their children (Warning: grossness factor uber-high)  • It’s all about presentation  • Anatomy talk, now and forever  • Want to hear all the swear words I know?  • Of the apocalypse, euphemisms and (un)potty training  • Mom? Have you noticed I’ve stopped…  • Poisonous Volvo

♦

And remember, we have a new spin-off blog focused on homeschooling: Undogmatic Unschoolers.

And now, a short exposition on the hidden horrors in your home

Desiderius Erasmus (1466/69–1536) in a 1523 po...

According to Horrible Science Mag Issue 6, The Hidden Horrors in Your Home, (bedtime reading right now, lucky me), “the famous writer Erasmus was once a guest at someone’s house. He looked down and saw:

…a collection of spit, vomit, urine of dogs and men, beers, scraps of fish and other filthiness not to be named.

Suddenly, I feel much better about my house. Don’t you? I may be a crappy housekeeper, but the urine of dogs and men (well, male toddlers, anyway) gets mopped up immediately as does the vomit, and while I won’t guarantee the floor’s spit-free (I do have boys in the house after all), there are never scraps of fish on the floor. Score!

In the spirit of celebrating my low standards of housekeeping, I’d like to thank Beth Berry for last week’s post on Mothering.com, 10 Great Ways to Be An Unhappy Mom. #3 is:

Base your contentment on the state of your house. I like a tidy house. I feel more on top of my game, at ease and productive once it is relatively “clean.” But I would have gone insane (and taken everyone with me) if I held onto the idea that I could only be content once everything was “in its place.” Kids exist to dispel this notion. Likewise, feeling the need to apologize for the state of things upon welcoming unannounced visitors is like saying, “I’m sorry you have to see that we live in this house.”  The notion that homes must look like display windows before they are presentable to guests is a crying shame in a culture so starved for community. 

Absolutely. More importantly: compared to your medieval ancestors, no matter how pig-sty-ey your pig-sty might seem to you, it’s comparatively pristine. I say again–score!

English: Erasmus of Rotterdam censored by the ...

MOST POPULAR POSTS

My current favourite: The Authoritative New Parents’ Guide to Sex After Children (of course)

Serious: When toddlers attack (surviving “That Hitting Things”) • Searching for strategies for Sensitive Seven • Five is hard: can you attachment parent an older child • It’s not about balance: Creating your family’s harmony • 10 habits for a happy home from the house of chaos and permissiveness • The ultimate secret behind parenting: it’s evolution, baby

Funny: Floor peas • The rarest song of all • Sarcasm, lawn darts, and toilets  • What humanitarian really means  • The sacrifices mothers make for their children (Warning: grossness factor uber-high)  • It’s all about presentation  • Anatomy talk, now and forever  • Want to hear all the swear words I know?  • Of the apocalypse, euphemisms and (un)potty training  • Mom? Have you noticed I’ve stopped…  • Poisonous Volvo

♦

And remember, we have a spin-off blog now just on homeschooling: Undogmatic Unschoolers.

“Mom? Were you cool when you were a teenager?”

(Post Number 200 on Nothing By The Book! Milestone! We’re celebrating it with a spin-off blog–more on that below.)

Jane: … And we’d come here late at night, and sit on those rocks, and look at the stars, and talk.

Flora: Cool… (Pause). Mom? Where you cool when you were a teenager?

Jane: Me? Geez–no. I was always, you know, kind of weird.

Flora: But isn’t weird cool?

Yup. But I think… I didn’t always know it back then. And I’m just so happy that you just know it, little munchkin.

Flora and I had this conversation just a few days after I had read Sarah Small’s wonderful post Are homeschooled kids weird, on Simplehomeschool.net. Pop over and read it yourself; but until you do, here’s the best bit:

Because 99.9% of kids (totally made-up statistic) are innately weird, creative, silly, funny, uninhibited, and terribly clever—if they are allowed to be.

 

AND NOW–AN ANNOUNCEMENT

And speaking of weird homeschooled kids–I’m splitting my blogging personality into two. Nothing By The Book will remain my primary blog, focused on Nothing By The Book parenting unadvice, stories from the trenches of family life, and “those conversations” from Cinder, Flora and Ender. I’m migrating the homeschool-specific stuff to Undogmatic Unschoolers, so that I can blather on enthusiastically about overt aspects of our unschooling adventure without boring or annoying those of my lovely NBTB readers who couldn’t care less (it’s okay not to care about homeschooling if you don’t homeschool. Really. My eyes glaze over when my best friends start to talk about PTA meetings, school fundraisers and homework. We don’t all have to be the same. That’s what rocks about being us). Those of you who are on a similar learning journey with me… well, I hope you come over and follow Undogmatic Unschoolers (look, another hyperlink, click now).

pause-08

Photo (pause-08) by Christopher Robbins

MOST POPULAR POSTS

My current favourite: The Authoritative New Parents’ Guide to Sex After Children (of course)

Serious: When toddlers attack (surviving “That Hitting Things”) • Searching for strategies for Sensitive Seven • Five is hard: can you attachment parent an older child • It’s not about balance: Creating your family’s harmony • 10 habits for a happy home from the house of chaos and permissiveness • The ultimate secret behind parenting: it’s evolution, baby

Funny: Floor peas • The rarest song of all • Sarcasm, lawn darts, and toilets  • What humanitarian really means  • The sacrifices mothers make for their children (Warning: grossness factor uber-high)  • It’s all about presentation  • Anatomy talk, now and forever  • Want to hear all the swear words I know?  • Of the apocalypse, euphemisms and (un)potty training  • Mom? Have you noticed I’ve stopped…  • Poisonous Volvo

Revelation: “So this is why you go to Mom’s Nights Out?”

Setting: Ikea. The cafeteria. God, I love the Swedish, bless their socialist-capitalist little hearts. They think of everything, including giving urban mothers in crappy climates the ultimate “come let your children run wild in our giant show room” indoor play area. (Smalland? We don’t go to Smalland. We test all the beds. And couches. And chairs. And shelving units. “Cinder! Get Ender out of the cupboard! I don’t care if he likes it; do not lock him in the pantry!”) Best of all: the lunch. Where else can I feed three kids and self for $10 for lunch? Although, with Cinder ordering two and sometimes three kids meals’ these days, the price tag’s inching up. Still… Ikea. Love it.

And here we are. For lunch and a mission: reading lights for the kids room, a birthday present for Flora’s friend (I’m all about efficiency shopping. The lil’ girl’s lucky today was Ikea day and not tire change day. What little girl wouldn’t love a socket wrench for her seventh birthday?).

The plan: Eat. Shop. Leave, before Ender-the-toddler breaks something.

The marvellous gift from the universe: Ender falls asleep in the car.

The new plan: Shop. Pay for everything. Look at breakable stuff at leisure. Go eat as soon as Ender wakes up.

The revised plan: Shop. Eat. Because the older children are starving (The first thing you learn as a parent: Life with hungry children is not worth living. Especially in public spaces.) Feed Ender during round 2 when he wakes up.

So there we are. Ender asleep in the stroller. Cinder eating fish and chips, Flora devouring meatballs. Me, piggish, with the shrimp AND the salmon plate. Ender asleep… oh, I already mentioned that. Ender asleep. Ah.

Flora: Wow. This is such a nice, peaceful meal.

And she looks around the table as if it pinpoint the difference. Indeed, it is so peaceful. Eating with a 10-year-old and a seven-and-a-half year-old, really, is pretty much the same as eating with adults. Right? They move the food from their plate to their mouths without too many detours. They don’t throw the food. They don’t choose the middle of the meal as the time that they need to scale your back and head for a better view. They don’t pee their pants five minutes in and require an emergency bathroom run. They don’t throw the food–oh, I already mentioned that, didn’t I?

Flora sighs with contentment and then, the penny drops. She looks at sleeping Ender. She looks at me.

Flora: Oh-my-god. This is why you go to Mom’s Nights Out, isn’t it?

Jane: Yup.

Actually, I go to Mom’s Nights Out to have more sex (see The Authoritative New Parents’ Guide to Sex After Children). But that’s a conversation I’m not planning on having with Flora just yet…

MEATBALLS! How typical! Considering we are, uh...

MOST POPULAR POSTS

My current favourite: The Authoritative New Parents’ Guide to Sex After Children (of course)

Serious: When toddlers attack (surviving “That Hitting Things”) • Searching for strategies for Sensitive Seven • Five is hard: can you attachment parent an older child • It’s not about balance: Creating your family’s harmony • 10 habits for a happy home from the house of chaos and permissiveness • The ultimate secret behind parenting: it’s evolution, baby

Funny: Floor peas • The rarest song of all • Sarcasm, lawn darts, and toilets  • What humanitarian really means  • The sacrifices mothers make for their children (Warning: grossness factor uber-high)  • It’s all about presentation  • Anatomy talk, now and forever  • Want to hear all the swear words I know?  • Of the apocalypse, euphemisms and (un)potty training  • Mom? Have you noticed I’ve stopped…  • Poisonous Volvo

Quote this: A.S. Neill on parents and the yearnings of childhood

Parents who have forgotten the yearnings of their childhood—forgotten how to play and how to fantasize—make poor parents.

A.S. Neill, Summerhill School: A New View of Childhood
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993 [1960])

Paques01

Discuss. Do you think your recollections of childhood, of how you felt, what you thought, as a child (and a teen) are accurate? Do they help you be the parent you want to be? Or is Neill off base here? What do you think?

P.S. Happy third birthday, my sweet Ender. xoxo Mom

MOST POPULAR POSTS

My current favourite: The Authoritative New Parents’ Guide to Sex After Children (of course)

Serious: When toddlers attack (surviving “That Hitting Things”) • Searching for strategies for Sensitive Seven • Five is hard: can you attachment parent an older child • It’s not about balance: Creating your family’s harmony • 10 habits for a happy home from the house of chaos and permissiveness • The ultimate secret behind parenting: it’s evolution, baby

Funny: Floor peas • The rarest song of all • Sarcasm, lawn darts, and toilets  • What humanitarian really means  • The sacrifices mothers make for their children (Warning: grossness factor uber-high)  • It’s all about presentation  • Anatomy talk, now and forever  • Want to hear all the swear words I know?  • Of the apocalypse, euphemisms and (un)potty training  • Mom? Have you noticed I’ve stopped…  • Poisonous Volvo

Of boys, girls, oblivion, awareness and frustration; (or why women think men don’t understand them)

It goes like this:

I.

Flora: Sophia just can’t stand Cinder, she says. Remember that time we were all playing grounders, and Cinder kept tagging her out? She still remembers that, and she just hates him.

Cinder: Who’s Sophia?

II.

Flora: Tammy hates Cinder. She’s so mad about the time the boys stole our shoes–remember?–and buried them in the gravel. She’s sure Cinder took her boots. She just hates him.

Cinder: Who’s Tammy?

III.

Flora: I think Emily kind of likes Cinder. She says she doesn’t, but she’s always asking me what he’s doing and if he’s coming out and stuff. Yup, I think she likes him. What do you think of Emily, Cinder?

Cinder: Who’s Emily?

Meanwhile, Cinder’s not-quite-three-year-old brother has a different attitude:

IV.

Jane: For heaven’t sake, Ender! What are you doing?

Ender: I throwing gravel at that little girl. And I go push her over. Hee hee hee.

Jane: I know–I saw. Why? Why? Why would you do that?

Ender: Because she so pretty. (Pause) I do it again!

V.

Ender: We sit here, Mama. Come sit here.

Jane: OK, sure. Why are we sitting here?

Ender: So I look at that girl. See? She’s so pretty!

VI.

Jane: In the car, dude!

Ender: My friend Izzy! I go give her hug, ok? And kiss. And tell her she’s so pretty.

VII.

Ender: Where we going, Mama?

Jane: We’re going to see our friends Victoria and Elizabeth and Loch and Baby M…

Ender: Oh, I love Baby M. I hug her and kiss her, and wrestle her and hug her…

Jane: I know, dude. Go easy on the wrestling, okay? I don’t think she likes it.

Ender: Oh, she likes it. She so pretty. She loves me too.

And then, there’s this:

VIII.

Cinder: Mom? You know how Creeper and Paulo and all those guys keep on talking about girls and stuff now?

Jane: Um, yeah?

Cinder: Well, I’m not really into girls at all. But… I’m starting to think boobs are really cool.

Oh, boy.

Flora

MOST POPULAR POSTS

My current personal favourite: The Authoritative New Parents’ Guide to Sex After Children (of course… what else.)

Serious: When toddlers attack (surviving “That Hitting Things”) • Searching for strategies for Sensitive Seven • Five is hard: can you attachment parent an older child • It’s not about balance: Creating your family’s harmony • 10 habits for a happy home from the house of chaos and permissiveness • The ultimate secret behind parenting: it’s evolution, baby

Funny: Floor peas • The rarest song of all • Sarcasm, lawn darts, and toilets  • What humanitarian really means  • The sacrifices mothers make for their children (Warning: grossness factor uber-high)  • It’s all about presentation  • Anatomy talk, now and forever  • Want to hear all the swear words I know?  • Of the apocalypse, euphemisms and (un)potty training  • Mom? Have you noticed I’ve stopped…  • Poisonous Volvo

The Authoritative New Parents’ Guide to Sex After Children

(or, how to make sure you keep on doing that thing that landed you with children in the first place!)

Two Hearts

Ambitious title, but I bet I’ll deliver. Tell me afterwards. Two caveats. First, if you’re currently childless, don’t read this. It will either depress or embarrass you. Especially if you’re a guy. It’s the weirdest thing, really: when it comes to talking about sex and bodies, there is no creature more uptight than the childless male. Anyway, if you’re one of those, go read How I got deprogrammed and learned to love video games or Math + Gun = or … (I’m not being sexist, am I? You can read this if you really want to. But I know you’ll be mortified…)

Second, if you’ve got young children and you’re having all the sex you want—really? Honestly?–you probably don’t need to read this. But you should anyway, because maybe at the end of it, you might be having more sex. And what could be better than that?

And thirdly—I said two caveats, right? Oops—in case you haven’t noticed, this post is going to be about sex. It’s how you get children. If reading about sex makes you squeamish, stop here and go read… how about It’s not about balance: creating your family’s harmony or 10 habits for a happy home from the house of permissiveness and chaos.

Also, mom, dad, mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother—um. Yeah. You’re excused. Go read how Cinder and Flora became Greco-Roman Pagans. And never, ever mention this post to me. OK.

The rest of you, come with me.

English: 3 of hearts.

OK. Here are the three assumption I’m making:

1. You have kids. Babies, toddlers, preschoolers, sentient school age kids. The babies need to be breastfed and rocked to sleep at all hours of day and night, the toddlers and preschoolers exhaust you, and them older kids stay up later and later and open doors and need help with homework and need you to feed them and take them places and…

2. You don’t have enough sex. Define enough as you will. You’d like to have more.

3. You’ve got a partner to have this sex with (if you don’t, I canna’ help you with that, but I hear there’s these dating sites…). The partner would also like to have more sex. The will is there. What’s lacking is time and opportunity. (If the will’s not there… well, I can help you with that a bit. There will be an addendum about that at the end.)

With me so far? Want to. Don’t have (enough) (at all these days). Don’t worry. There’s hope. Really. You’ve just got to rethink a few things.

Two Hearts Beat As One

First, there are three principles you have to internalize.

1. Sex is more important than sleep.

2. Sex is more important than cleaning.

3. Sex is more important than work.

Somewhere between child one and two—or maybe it was two and three?–my partner and I made the following pact: either one of us was free to wake up the other at any other time for some quick love making (stress on quick: I’ll come back to this point shortly)… unless the sleeper had a 6 a.m. appointment with the client from hell or some other such situation. We made this pact after the following conversation:

Jane: Dear God, do you realize this is the first time we’ve had sex in… oh my god, has it been three weeks? Four?

Sean: Well, by the time I come to bed, you’re always asleep. And I know you’re going to be up half the night with the baby, and then up super early with the toddler, and…

(This is why I love him so, by the way. What a guy.)

Jane: You can wake me up.

Sean: Really?

Jane: Yes.

Sean: You can wake me up anytime, too. I mean, if you’re ever awake after me. Well, unless I have a 6 a.m. shoot. Don’t wake me up then.

Jane: Deal.

Sean: Deal.

(And we draw the curtain so we can have some privacy.)

two hearts

So. Make this pact with your partner. Sex is more important than sleep. (Or watching that 10 p.m. show on HBO. Turn on your PVR, and romp. If you’re not drowsy after, then watch your show.) Agree to wake each other up when you’re horny. Agree to say yes—at least 4 out of 5 times. (I’m assuming you’re going to show appropriate discretion in when you’re doing the waking up. If partner’s got strep throat, you know, let the guy sleep. If the baby’s been going through a particularly tough phase—let the mama sleep. Find a different time for sex. We’ll get to that in a minute.)

Next: what do you do when that most miraculous thing of all happens and all your children are either simultaneously asleep, totally mesmerized by a movie or activity that doesn’t require your presence, or (gasp!) out of the house? If you’re a mama, I bet in 9 out of 10 cases you clean. We can’t help it: the little monsters are messy, and if we clean when they’re out of the house, then at least we have the satisfaction of a clean house for a few minutes… an hour.

I’m not going to tell you to stop cleaning. But have sex first. The children are asleep—quiet—gone. Put down the vacuum cleaner, turn your back on the kitchen floor, and go fuck. You can scrub the bath tub afterwards.

This is really easy for me, because I hate cleaning. However, if you derive some pleasure from the cleaning process, this may be harder for you. Do this: tell your partner to grab the initiative. When the children are asleep—quiet—gone, it’s his or her job to drag you to the bedroom, bathroom or living room rug. All you have to do is say yes.

Say yes.

Happy Valentine's day!

Sex is more important than work. In our case, we both work from home, so this is how it goes—one or the other or both of us is always on deadline. There’s always one more thing to write, edit, produce, revise, research. There will always be one more thing to write, edit, produce, revise, research. Have sex first. Then go back to the computer. Have a project you took home, memos to revise, report cards to mark? Fine. They’ll still be there in fifteen minutes. Five, if you’re both properly motivated. Two, if it’s been as long as I think it’s been… Have sex first. Then work.

Now before you quote Dan Ackroyd at me,* it really is that easy. If you believe that…

1. Sex is more important than sleep

2. Sex is more important than cleaning

3. Sex is more important than work

…you will have more of it. Maybe not as much as you’d like to… but more.

To have even more, embrace the next three principles:

4. Foreplay is icing.

5. Beds are optional.

6. Matinees rule.

Valentine

Remember those hours and hours and hours of sensuous, languorous foreplay that went on and on and on and on… Yeah, I don’t really remember either. It’s been 10 years. Well, there was that one night we sold the kids to the grandparents for the entire night exclusively for those purposes… but that might have been four years ago. Anyway. You now have kids. That means foreplay is being alone in a room together. Agree with your partner that foreplay is icing. Frankly, when you’ve got toddlers, it wastes precious time. You can after-play if the kids don’t barrel into the room. When you’re in one of those “OMG we never have time for sex” phases, this is your modus operandi:

A. Hey, we’re alone!

B. Clothes (but only the essential ones) off!

C. Coitus.

Everything else is icing.

Bed

Note how nowhere in the above did it say we’re alone in bed. Beds? Who needs beds to have sex? We’re alone in the bathroom. We’re alone in the kitchen. We’re alone on the landing. In the living room while the kids are in the bedroom… If you’ve got a family bed, the kids are always in the bed. Have sex somewhere else. Anywhere else. Just draw the curtains first.

Finally—especially when you’ve got teeny ones around—break the sex/night association. No law. Not mandatory. Repeat after me: you can have sex in the morning. In the afternoon. When the baby’s napping. If one or both of you has a regular Monday-to-Friday job, you’ve got less flexibility—but you’ve still got weekends. The hour before supper. You got the baby and toddler down for a nap on Saturday afternoon? Cancel the visit to Joe and Marla, and screw. Be late for dinner at Mom and Dad’s. Don’t clean, don’t nap, don’t work until after.

“But Jane… you know… the truth is… I don’t really want to. I feel blah. Unattractive. Unsexy. Touched out.”

I know. I think every mother—and many a hyper-involved father, frankly–has been there post-partum. Babies and toddlers take a toll on you. (This part’s mostly for the mamas, boys, but read along to get educated.) Your hormones might be out of whack, and you might simply be exhausted. I’m going to send you to kellymom.com or Dr. Jack Newman’s breastfeedinginc.ca to look for some evidence-based research on how pregnancy and lactation might affect your libido, because I’m no doctor. From personal experience I can absolutely tell you this: I love my partner dearly and I love making love with him—and with each child I’ve gone through stretches where it’s just not been a priority and desire’s been hard to scrape up.

Here’s what’s helped me:

1. Exercise and sunshine. Bonus: if you do the Pavlovian “I have an orgasm after exercise” association, the motivation to exercise spikes.

2. Going to Mom’s Nights Out. Really. How does hanging out with a bunch of women help your sex life? Simple. You dress up and spend an evening with adults talking adult stuff and enjoying a meal without anyone throwing up on you. You go home—and if your partner played things right, the children are asleep. S/he’s not. Woo-hoo.

3. Put it on the schedule. OK. Least romantic thing ever, right? It sounds awful. Sex Saturday. You know what’s worse and less romantic? Not having sex at all.

4. Make it a habit. Here’s the weird thing about thinking you don’t want sex when you’re not having sex–as soon as you start having sex, your priorities shift. You think, “Sweet Jesus, this is great! Why don’t we do this more often?” Hold on to that thought… and do it more often. In the afternoon. Instead of cleaning. Before working on that work project. Quickly if you’ve only got five minutes. Hey, if it turns out you’ve got more time, you can always do it again…

Heart

Photo (Heart) by mozzercork

All right then. That’s it. To recap:

1. Sex is more important than sleep

2. Sex is more important than cleaning

3. Sex is more important than work

4. Foreplay is icing

5. Beds are optional

6. Matinees rule

Get off the computer, and go wake up your partner. And if you’ve got other tips for reigniting your sex life post-children, do share them. Cleanly, eh? (I’m still a little worried my mother’s reading this. I’m pretty sure I lost my father at the “Dear God, do you realize this is the first time we’ve had sex in… oh my god, has it been three weeks?” I may be the mother of three children, but… yeah.) While I go off and ponder how to tag this post so it reaches its intended audience and not the spammers…

xoxoxo,

Jane

PS Veteran mamas, can you tell I just weaned the third? I bet you can…

PPS Play carefully, eh? Seems every time we have a frank sex post-children discussion on one of my groups or lists, someone gets pregnant. Once it was me…

English: Pregnant Elf

*(That’s Jane, you ignorant slut, the best SNL quote of all time, read about it here if you don’t know what I’m talking about, and no, it doesn’t show you how old I am, I saw it in re-runs.)

How you know he’s his mother’s son…

I.

Sean: Ugh, it’s time for this test tube full of Scope to go.

Jane: No! Not in the sink over the dishes! It’s got urine in it!

Sean: You let Cinder keep a test tube full of urine next to our wine glasses? For how long?

Jane: It’s not full of urine, it only has a little bit of urine in it–it’s mostly mouthwash. And isn’t the point here that I stopped you from pouring it over our dishes, which if you had done, would have had you rushing out to buy new dishes before our next meal?

Sean: You are so my son’s mother.

Yup. To that end, I offer more proof:

II.

Sean: Is this test tube in the sink the urine test tube?

Cinder: I don’t know. There are lot of test tubes in the house. Odds are good someone peed in one of them at some time.

Sean: Someone?

Cinder: Well, ,when I say someone, I mean me. But if it makes you feel better, I don’t remember peeing in any test tubes recently.

Ender: I do!

Sean: I want my own sterilized kitchen. And none of you can ever come in.

Well. This is why I didn’t tell him about The Floor Peas.

Line art representation of a Test tube

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Quote this: A Mother’s Prayer

I don’t pray… and I don’t really like reposting sappy “picture” quotes, but sometimes, one pops into an in-box or a feed at a time that you really, really need to hear it, and so it was with this one:

Oh give me patience when wee hands

Tug at me with their small demands.

Especially when I’m sitting at the computer desperately trying to meet yet another deadline… give me patience with those wee hands…

And give me gentle and smiling eyes.

Keep my lips from hasty replies.

I don’t want to ask for too much here: gentle and smiling eyes would be bonus, but let’s just focus on what comes out of the lips. Words are important. Words are important…

And let not weariness, confusion or noise

Obscure my vision of life’s fleeting joys.

Life’s full of weariness, confusion and noise. So be it. But yeah, let me keep half-an-eyelid and a quarter of an ear on the joy behind the noise and the weariness. Always.

So when, in years to come my house is still–

No bitter memories its room may fill.

If this were my poem, I’d end it differently. Because it’s not about what it will be like in the future, is it? It’s about how we want it to be now. And I want to be patient now, and talking-not-yelling now, and focused on joy now because… well, I’m living now. And this is my life now.

Via my friend Liz’s Facebook feed via Ask Dr. Sears via Mothering Magazine. Author unknown.

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A Quiet Moment

Photo (A Quiet Moment) by Glen Johannes Photography

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Sharing Allison Tate’s The Mom Stays in the Picture

Super quickly popping in to share Allison Tate’s The Mom Stays in the Picture, from HuffPost’s blog. Get the camera-shy, post-partum mother in your life to read this piece, and then take lots and lots of photos of her with her children.

The best quote from the post:

When I look at pictures of my own mother, I don’t look at cellulite or hair debacles. I just see her — her kind eyes, her open-mouthed, joyful smile, her familiar clothes. That’s the mother I remember. My mother’s body is the vessel that carries all the memories of my childhood. I always loved that her stomach was soft, her skin freckled, her fingers long. I didn’t care that she didn’t look like a model. She was my mama.

Now off to dress the toddler, clean the bathroom, feed the children, meet a deadline…

Ticklish warriors

Flora: I just don’t understand how I can be this awesome warrior and yet be so ticklish.

And what do you say to that?

English: Happy face

The great thing about being a crappy housekeeper…

I slop dinner on the table–noodles in colander, sauce in the pan it was cooked in, cheese on the grating board it was grated on. Flora spreads the plates. Cinder searches for forks. “Success!” he hollers. “I’ve got five. Although, really, Flora and Ender would be just as happy eating with their fingers.” To prove the point, Ender grabs two handfuls of green beans and stuffs them in his gob. I don’t so much sit down as collapse into the chair. Sean joins us. Looks at the table. At us. And says one of those things for which I love and adore him.

“You made us supper! With the Ender! Oh, thank you!”

“Thank you, Mommy, for wonderful food!” says Ender.

“Supper is brought to you by Cinder,” Cinder announces. “There is no way Mom could have made supper if I hadn’t had a bath with Ender. And I don’t know if you heard what he was doing to me in the bath, but I’m covered with scratches in places no one should ever touch.”

“Thank you, Cinder,” I say, wearily. This all is really funny. A part of me knows it. The rest of me is just too tired.

The assorted slop is well-received. Everyone munches.

“I sorry,” says Ender suddenly. We all look up at him. “I sorry,” he repeats. “Me sit on table.” And indeed, there he is, sitting on the table. I sigh. I suppose I should parent.

“Where should you be sitting, monkey?” I ask. Wearily. I be tired. Is been a long day…

“On chair,” says Ender. “Tee hee hee.”

“I think he’s sitting on the table so he can see what’s in his bowl,” says Sean. “You know, so he can spear the stuff he wants?”

“I’m just happy he’s not throwing it at me,” says Cinder.

“Me too,” I agree. “Let him sit on the table.”

“Can I sit on the table?” says Cinder, starting to levitate his bohunkus.

“No,” I don’t even think about it. I have standards. I do.

“Thank you for wonderful supper, Mommy!” Ender sings out. He knows he’s getting away with something. Gives me a beatific smile.

“And you put away all the laundry too,” enthuses Sean.

(The great think about being a really crappy housekeeper: the least effort on your part is appreciated in spades. Do your kids celebrate when they have clean pajamas in the drawers and clean cups in the cupboard? Mine do. Ha!)

“I did,” I say. I intercept Ender as he tries to stuff two noodles simultaneously into his nose. “Want to know why?” No one really wants to know why, that is clear, but they love me, so they will indulge me.

“I was in the bathroom.” Peeing. I have to pee, you know. And I like to do it alone. Sigh. But it has a price. It means I leave him alone. Just long enough… “And Ender opens the door and comes in. And says…

Mama? I find laundry basket on landing. I throw it down the stairs. Then I jump on it and pee on it. Are you angry?

And so… I folded and put away all the laundry.”

And this is how you know that I really am a crappy housekeeper, because Sean’s immediate reaction:

Um… was it my laundry? And did you fold  and put away the peed-on laundry without re-washing it?

You’ll never know, darling. You’ll never know.

Photo: Woman doing laundry in Chennai, India (Wikipedia)

English: Woman doing laundry in Chennai, India...

Quote this: Daniel Greenberg on patience

‎Of all the virtues required in the art of child-rearing, none is more important – – and none rarer — than patience, in parents, in family, in friends; patience to allow the miracle of human development to unfold according to its own internal laws.

Daniel Greenberg, Child Rearing (1987)

From my friend Swimming Through Stars.

Photo (Patience) by normalityrelief

Patience

Why I blog

I.

Cinder, upon returning inside from a nerve gun fight:

Mom, I just shot Ender in the balls. Now, under normal circumstances, you’d probably be mad at me. But as he was peeing off the balcony at the time, you should just say, ‘Good job.’

II.

Meanwhile, apparently unharmed by the attempted nerf castration, Ender is hiding from me under the kitchen table.

You can’t see me.”

Sure I can. You’re right there.”

You can’t see me because I’m not wearing any pants.”

And that, in a nutshell, is why I blog.

Couch Full of Nerf Guns

Photo (Couch Full of Nerf Guns) by animakitty

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“How to help 10-year-old boy with existential angst”

That’s the top search landing people on Nothing By The Book this week, but I’m not sure that you’re all finding the post that you’re seeking for. I think it’s this one: A love letter to the boy who’ll set the world on fire. I also think How I got deprogrammed and learned to love video games might contain some insight for some mothers of 10-year-old boys trying to understand what is going on inside their game-controller wielding sons.

I’m processing a bigger exposition on the changes my own 10–almost 10.5–year-old is going through, because it’s massive. The biggest one since five/five-and-a-half (I wrote about it here, Five is Hard: can you attachment parent the older child), and just as part of the solution at five was to make his world bigger, that certainly seems to be part of the key now.

But, that later. For now, I hope the love letter and the video game piece help you–spark off some ideas for what your little man is going through and how you can support him.

Jane

Game controller

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How to ensure children think you’re a moron

Intentionally provocative headline. But this has been weighing on my mind lately―how adults tend to have one dominant mode of interaction with children, and that is … quizzing. “What’s two plus two?” “Do you know what kind of animal that is?” “How do you spell hippopotamus?”

I don’t think, in most cases, it’s meant to be disrespectful―and although we homeschooling parents tend to get particularly tense about this when the relatives do it to our children, I don’t think it’s meant to be a real check on our children’s knowledge. It is, quite simply, ignorance. Most adults don’t know how to talk to children: they don’t think they can just have a conversation with a child the way they would have it with a fellow grown-up. And asking questions to which they already know the answers is their default mode.

Do you do this? Stop. Do your parents, your friends do this to your kids? Tell them to stop. And here’s why. A while ago, we had a visitor in the house who was invited by Cinder and Flora to read their new book to them. They cuddled up on either side of him, and he started reading… but but instead of just reading, he started every second paragraph with a question to them, testing their knowledge of what he was about to read to them―before he read it to them. (“This next section is about atoms. What are atoms?”)

Two things happened. First, Cinder and Flora abandoned what was intended to be a really fun and bonding moment for them and our friend. They did not sign up for a test here: they wanted to read a book with someone they loved. Second, as soon as our visitor left, Cinder came to me, perplexed and thoughtful, struggling to get some complex thought out. Finally it came:

“I thought Hiero was really smart. But he sure doesn’t know much about science, does he?”

Hiero could have just read to them, and what they would have remembered is, “Yeah, last time Hiero came, we read Mad Science together, it was so cool, remember that experiment?” And instead…

Here’s the thing: our friend is pretty smart. AND he didn’t mean to be disrespectful of Cinder and Flora. But he doesn’t spend much time with children, and as he tried to find a way to interact with them, he used as a model… what? The way adults interacted with him when he was a child. And perpetuated the cycle.

Do your part to break the cycle. Don’t talk to children as if you’re administrating an oral exam. Or they’ll walk away from the experience thinking you’re, y’know, a bit dim.

This is a "thought bubble". It is an...