His bones, they will be strong like bull

It is now time for my annual freak-out about how Isaac survives only by drinking milk and breathing air. Only this year, the freak is served with a side of fries (which they will eat!) because there is an additonal consumer of solid foods added to the mix.

I will confess that this post was motivated by one on our friend Ella's mommy's blog, where Ella's mommy outlines the bazillion things her vegetarian daughter eats. I'm talking lentils, couscous, BROCCOLI. Things that her mommy made with her own two hands, can you imagine? Why doesn't my child do that? If Isaac saw any of that on a plate before him he would dissolve into screams. He is broken.

The grownups in our house try really hard to eat in a health-conscious way. Not by starving ourselves or counting calories or burning pasta crosses or anything, but in the way that I try most nights of the week (in a good week) to cook something relatively lean or full of vitamins for dinner, like roasted chicken or stir-fry. We don't keep soda in the house. I try to bake desserts once a week (like I said, we're not into punishing ourselves)), and when I do they are either fruit- or vegetable-laden -- like pies or crisps, carrot cake, banana and zucchini breads -- or, when in cookie form, they are spiked with whole wheat flour. I am not very good at it and it obviously takes some time and effort, but I do enjoy cooking, and there is very little in this world that I could possibly enjoy more than seeing my babies eat the food I have prepared for my family.

The only things that I cook that Isaac will eat are pancakes and quick breads, you know, that which is the least healthy. Jacob is better. When I cook anything involving pasta or noodles, Jacob will eat it. He will also eat baked chicken if it is moist, or beans when I make chili or black beans and rice. His favorite food in the universe is scrambled eggs. In the three months since he's been weaned, he has grown to love his milk almost as much as his brother, which is saying a lot. So far, Jacob is a pretty good eater, though he has his moments. This evening for dinner I fixed the babies a can of Progresso chicken noodle soup (a meal Isaac will eat), and Jacob turned up his nose at it and dissolved into a near-constant state of fuss as he tried, unsuccessfully, to wrap his tastebuds around the spicy chicken fajitas I had fixed for Dad and I. Before he went to bed, I believe he ate a handful of pretzels, a handful of raisins, a banana, and some milk. Over the course of 2 hours.

What brings me crying to my knees most every day is my eldest one's complete distaste for anything that is not either fruit or dairy. The boy needs protein, right? But both he and his brother refuse to eat peanut butter. Even in cookies. So no PB&J, a supposed toddler staple, for them. Awesome. Also, Isaac will not eat meat -- no cold cuts, no dinner meats -- unless it has been processed and laden with preservatives and chemicals known only by their initials. For example, he will not touch my spaghetti with meatballs, but gladly eats a whole can of Spaghettios with Meatballs by himself. He also enjoys hot dogs and McDonald's cheeseburgers (but won't eat my cheeseburgers). Though he will drink chicken broth in his aforementioned Progresso chicken noodle soup, he won't eat the chicken. He will occasionally eat chicken nuggets, but again, this falls into the fried-and-heavily-processed category. Oh, and did I mention he is grossed out by breakfast cereal?

The child gets his protein by drinking an ungodly amount of milk and eating other such milk-related foods as cheese and yogurt. And so his fingernails grow, on their own. I have to cut them at least once a week. But Isaac's protein intake is a constant source of worry for me because I know that the poor guy is genetically beset on both sides by inherited dispositions toward high triglycerides, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. In the long run, dairy cannot be his friend.

I will say this about my babies: they love their fruit. They both eat almost every kind of fruit imaginable, in abundance, every day. We keep at least four different fruits in the house at any given time to have a little variety. Their fruit habit is hellaciously expensive, but it is worth it because I know that, if many species of monkey survive their whole lives eating nothing but fruit, perhaps my monkeys will not die of starvation either.

But Baby cannot live on fruit alone, and I get so tired of offering him grilled cheese or eggs for meals, imagining his little arteries filling up with cholesterol at only 3 years of age. If anybody has any ideas they'd like to share to help me feed my picky eater I would just love to hear them.

Isaac's trike

When we gave Isaac a trike for his 3rd birthday, I was a little wary of how the whole trike-riding scenario was going to operate. Our driveway is short and gently sloped towards the street; riding it there was out of the question. At first, Isaac's trike-riding adventures were limited to the small paved walk going around half our house. Very occasionally some wild idea would pop into his head about riding his trike to the park. Each time, I said no, or that he had to ask Dada to help us when he came home, and by then trike-riding would have escaped Isaac's mind. I admit I have a bit of a problem, in that when things involve us leaving the house to do something brand new, I become more than a little nervous of how l can possibly ensure that neither Isaac nor his squirmy and opinionated brother are going to bite it. So the poor red trike, it sat in our covered back patio for two months, mostly unused except as an occasional noisemaker when the babies would remember its pretty bell.

This all changed when we met AnthonyCarlos at the park a few days in a row 6 weeks ago. Each time, those boys would bring their scooters, and Isaac was in raptures with the idea of using wheels to propel his body this way and that. One day, we visited AnthonyCarlos at their house, and, knowing we would be going to their neighborhood park (accompanied by an additional pair of adult eyes in AnthonyCarlos's mommy), Isaac and I schemed to bring his trike along.

As you might have guessed, my visions of him whizzing past with his friends on their bikes were pretty far off from reality. Turtles might have beaten a trike-riding Isaac to the park, and I kept up a constant verbal stream of "encouragement" to get him to go faster. I was so, so impatient with him. Why wouldn't he even try to go faster? I wondered. At one point I actually pushed with Jacob's stroller for most of the short distance, just so we might remain within a line-of-sight of the AnthonyCarlos family. And then, as the park began, the walking trail we rode on dipped sharply 6 or so feet down a cute little hill. Accomplished daredevils AnthonyCarlos zipped down the slope. Seeing them, I thought of how easy it would be, and how much fun he would have, going fast down a hill. And if they can do it, why can't my boy? "Of course you can go, Isaac," I said when he asked.

As soon as he started down the slope I realized how dangerously far my ridiculous trike fantasy had taken me from reality. Isaac probably made it three feet down the hill, not steering, before he ran off the road and flew forward off the trike, his face planted in the grass. The helmet proved pretty useless with that kind of impact. He was freaked out but miraculously unhurt in any physical way, and as his spirits recovered remarkably quickly as I thanked every known deity that he had not landed on the pavement. Isaac was actually really cool after this hideous incident, the memory of which causes me to hang my head in stupid-mom shame, and about which I still haven't told Dada about (hi Dada!). He lost interest in the trike for a few weeks afterward, but talked with a hint of amusement about his "crash on the hill".

Last week, when he again brought up riding his trike to the park, I saw it as a chance to be brave and redeem myself, to him and to me. His helmet on, his brother firmly buckled into our wagon, we set off. He rode the whole way to the park by himself, in the most slow and cautious way possible.


This time, my head firmly planted in reality, I did not push him, verbally or physically. When he wanted to go slow, I let him. When he said he was scared of the hills, I held on to his trike and helped him down them. When he wanted to get off and ride in the wagon, I drug or carried his heavy stinkin' trike all the way home, including once in the rain. Dada has helped with positive encouragements invoking the Einsteins, wondering "Can you go presto, buddy?" Over the course of the last week, and a good four trips to the park, Isaac's trike confidence has exploded. I have to walk briskly to keep up with him, and, after I taught him how to stop himself on the hills with both his pedals and his feet, he has ridden the entire round trip to and from the park all by himself. It always amazes me, with the babies, what they can accomplish, given a little patience (and humility) on my part.

Eating your oatmeal: a contact sport

A Saturday before the golden age of digital photography

This past Saturday was our 6th wedding anniversary. We were married in the afternoon of July 21, 2001 in front of 100 of our closest friends and family in the middle of the grounds of the Indianapolis Museum of Art, a place Mike and I enjoyed visiting together when we were a-courtin'. It was easily the most fantastic wedding I have ever been to, largely because the whole affair was over in under 15 minutes. It was also fantastic because we got to visit with everyone who came, so much so that I ate exactly one strawberry for lunch in my feverish attempts to catch up with everyone and their literal moms.

i loved our wedding because it was so us, lacking in frill and intimately involving our closest friends and family. My dress, which was ungodly fabulous, cost $450. My Grandma Ross and Mom did nearly all of the alterations by hand, and I am surprised both of them did not go blind from all the intricate beadwork they had to replace when they took it in at the sides. The "professional" seamstress at the shop refused to do it for that reason. I wanted to go barefoot, but my mom insisted I wear slippers. Mike, ever the fashionable, bought his own black wool tux and accessories and was the picture of dashing. We each had one attendant -- him, his best friend from college; me, my best friend since middle school (and I let her pick her own dress). My mom and dad's ex-neighbor did the hair of my mom, my maid of honor, and myself.

We were married by Mike's godfather, handily a preacher and longstanding friend of his family. We had no "colors". We had no favors. We wouldn't have even had centerpieces (it was a garden!) except that my mom couldn't stand it and insisted we have at least a single rose at each table. We didn't hire a chauffeur, but instead had my dad drive us to our next destination, the second reception, in his new car.

We hosted about half the wedding attendance at the second reception, which we held at my parents' neighborhood clubhouse. It was catered with delicious Italian food and a keg of a beer we had consumed many many pints of during our time together in at Indiana University. My dad relished his role as barman. Mike's other best friend, who works in the Nashville music scene, DJ-ed our event for free. All our friends stayed until 1 in the morning dancing, drinking, eating, and playing games, including some excellent elementary school playground games directed by my excellent friend Matt, who is a 4th-grade teacher.

We stuck around Indianapolis for a few days before we left for a week-long honeymoon cavorting around the British Isles. Maybe one day I'll scan the pictures from our wedding, but at least now, 6 years later, I can share in this slideshow the photos we took on our honeymoon with our then-revolutionary 1.3 mega-pixel digital camera. Enjoy!

Jacob's words, 17 months

I followed him around with a pad of paper yesterday trying to record all these. It also seemed like everytime I sat down I remembered one or two words he can say that he didn't have the opportunity to use. The final count in this list stands at 58 (for now). If you combine that with the words from the last list I made (which are not duplicated here), you get a Jacob vocabulary of 88 words. Clearly, he seeks to surpass his big brother in wordiness, as Isaac enjoyed a similarly large vocabulary at 18 months.

***NO***
mine
cat
cow
dog
bunny
brother
Papaw
Meemaw/Mamaw
Dadaw
hello
bye
truck
tractor
bug
stick
park
playground
door
garage
chair
bed
wagon
lawnmower
chalk
bead
key
potty
piano
boat
book
marker
color
TV
remote
button
Wiggles
Mater
Woody
Boobah
Pooh
James
Gordon
moon
one
two
three
milk
water
noodle
grape
cracker
egg
pancake
juice
tea
cheese
berry

Absolutely 100% of this is uttered as single-words, most in near-unintelligible form. He has a few words that sound exactly as they should (water, Daddy, Mama, cracker, tea, potty, tractor), but the rest can be pretty easily understood in context. If he points up at the sky and says "MOO!", he's probably found the moon. If he runs up to the fridge and starts banging on it crying "Muh! MUH!", and that probably means 'milk'. If he's downstairs (where the digital cable box lives with its On Demandness), climbs up on the couch facing the TV, and sways his upper body back and forth, shrieking "Boo! Boo!", it's because he remembers that most nights he and Daddy fall asleep watching on-demand Boobah. You get the picture.

But to tide us over until his pronunciation gets a little better, Jacob has also added the head-nod to his repertoire, and uses it with great success. He figured out how to do the nonverbal 'uh-huh' just before we left for Indiana, and now is so good at it that he can correctly answer 9 out of 10 yes-or-no questions with an appropriate head gesture. So handy, that. It's amazing, the dialogue you can have with another person just through head shakes.

"What do you want? Do you want this car?" (shakes head no)
"Do you want this Buzz?" (shakes head no)
"Do you want the basketball?" (nods emphatically)
"Do you think Lindsey Lohan is going to jail?" (nods emphatically)

Back home again in Dela-nowhere

We returned from our trip to Indiana last Monday, way too long ago for me to be forgiven that I have not blogged about it. It was very nice, especially since both the fellers are of the age that they could care less whether they are supervised by Mommy and Daddy or Grandma and Grandpa. There are no words that could adequately convey my joy at that last statement.

Our trip accomplishments included:
* George the Green Car turning 70,000 miles old. What a coot he's becoming, with his Check Engine light
* Spending as much time as humanly possible outside in the remarkably pleasant Indiana sunshine
* Celebrating Uncle Chrissy's 26th birthday
* Visiting our friends Matt and Susan and their fresh new baby Annabelle
* Going as a nuclear O'Neal family to the Children's Museum
* Finally taking the babies to the Indianapolis Zoo with Meemaw, where I got to pet a shark
* Learning about the sumptuous rich-people kid parks in Carmel, Indiana
* Picking Meemaw's homegrown blackberries on a daily basis
* Learning how to play toilet tag with my nieces and nephews at Mamaw and Dadaw's house
* (for me) Seeing the new Harry Potter movie with Aunt Jean and friends Kendra and Brent
* Going out for a drink with my husband and Papaw
* Going out for coffee with just my husband
* Going out for our anniversary dinner (observed) with just my husband
* A side-stop in Granville, Ohio to visit Alligator Mound, built by the Hopewell tribe. Oh, and there was espresso nearby.
* Stopping, finally, at the geologically significant Sideling Hill on I-68 on the way home


We were there for a whole week. Of course it went too fast. It seems like we did a lot, but apparently we don't have the pictures to show for all of it. The pictures we do have I put into a slideshow if you care to see them.

I wish I was a little bit taller

The fellers and I had a long and fun-filled day today. Dada was out of town, so we whiled away the hours by 1) taking Mommy for an "exercise walk" this morning with the jogging stroller, ending up at a park to play; 2) hanging out at Nathaniel and Patrick's house for 3 hours to inspect their gigantic new CedarWorks playground; 3) going to the library and a nearby park to exhaust what little fuel their legs had left in them. I snapped some great pictures of our future NBA star at work, who, incidentally, is magnetically attracted to basketballs. All I ask, honey, is a nice little condo in Florida for your aging parents when you get drafted at 16.





While Jacob was engaged in his relentless ball-oriented pursuits, my other son, the nancy-boy future film student preferred to run screaming away from the ball, and also to experiment with my camera. He is still trying to process the fact that what he sees in the LCD on the back does not look the same if he swivels the camera around 180 degrees to shove it in my face so I can "look, mama!" He did take this picture of his own forehead, which I rather like.

Isaac's febrile seizure

Jacob had his 15-month checkup a week and a half ago, when he was already over 16 months. It is so annoying, him being a whole month off the cycle, but the doctor won't let us play catch up because apparently the intervals between appointments are important for giving his immune system a break from the shots.

Despite Jacob's totally dumbing down on the eating, I was both shocked and pleased to find that he is still growing. He weighed in at 24 lbs 10 oz, in the 60th percentile, and is still on his track to future NBA stardom, stretching out to an unbelievable, 97th-percentile height of 33-1/2 inches. For fun, I found a tool on the internet to estimate your child's adult height from their current height measurements. If Jacob keeps going at this rate, this particular guesstimator suggests he will end up at 6'2" down the line. His poor "shrimpy" older brother is only supposed to top out at 5'11". I can't wait to see how Mutt and Jeff-y they look together in high school.

Jacob also got two shots, a combo with DTaP and some other thing, and then his first fantabulous MMR. I was really dreading the latter because I feared that my youngest child would now be subject to the mildly horrifying experience we had with Isaac after he got his MMR, when he was 12 months old. I never blogged about it because I didn't want to freak anyone in my family out, but somehow vaccination has come up quite a bit recently among my mommy set, and with Jacob's recent vaccination... well, now I feel like talking.

Flash back to over two years ago. The nurses who stuck Isaac with his MMR told me that it was terribly common to have some sort of fever one week post-shot, and sure enough, the boy came down with a doozy of a fever exactly one week later. I remember that his temperature made it up into the 102s, at which time everyone at the doctor's office tells you to go sit down and give the kid some Tylenol, but at which time every mommy instinct you have is just sure your poor baby's brain is to be permanently damaged by such stewing in its juices. After I called our doctor's nurses' line and freaked out on them a few times, since the Tylenol was doing nothing, one nurse suggested we give him a cool bath to bring his body temperature down. I rushed his limp, tired body up to the bathtub and did just that. He didn't complain. When I was done and dressed, I brought him to Dada so I could finish getting ready to head to our neighbor's house for dinner that night. But before I left the room, I noticed Isaac's lips and the skin around his mouth turning completely and unnaturally blue. His eyes rolled upwards, out of his control, and, in Dada's arms, Isaac's body gently began to shake. He was having a seizure, and I screamed as such at Michael.

Dada wasted no time at all and ran Isaac out the door and, not to the car and the hospital, but up the steps of the apartment complex to our neighbors' door, the ones who were expecting us for dinner. Because Dada is the quickest thinker in the history of the universe, he remembered that the couple who formed our would-be hosts were made of a Pediatric Endocrinologist and a Pediatric ICU Nurse, both at the Children's Hospital in Seattle. Our nurse-friend took Isaac and laid him on his side on the floor where he continued seizing for what seemed like an hour but was really only a few seconds. When he stopped shaking, his eyes rolled back into focus and he seemed to realize for the first time that he was in a different place. He cried for us to hold him.

We ended up staying at our friends' house way past Isaac's bedtime. After his seizure, he was utterly drained for over two hours and didn't want to move, eat, or even play with their daughter Claudia, his best friend in the universe. They were getting concerned for him and were about to tell us to take him to the ER when, as soon as his seizure had come, some sort of fog was lifted from his countenance and he began to run and play and scream and eat just like our good old Isaac. That was reassuring enough for the medical professionals on hand, who told us to keep a close watch on him overnight. We did, and nothing else ever happened.

Our friends told us at the time that febrile seizures in infants are really common, so common in fact that thye surmised every baby probably had them at one time or another, though obviously some may not have been witnessed. They said that these kinds of seizures are caused by their poor little brains not knowing how to handle a high fever, and cause no permanent damage and don't serve as an indicator for future seizures whatsoever. Basically, febrile seizures are harmless, but that was seriously difficult for me to believe at the time, after witnessing my child, my heart living outside my body, seizing comfortably in my husband's arms.

So, after all this reminiscing, what became of poor Jacob? Absolutely nothing. His DTaP combo shot was way worse -- his right shoulder swelled up to twice its size from bruising for three days following the shot, but then went back down and he was never the wiser.

As freakish as this sounds, I want to go on the record as saying that I am staunchly pro-vaccination. My babies will get every shot our trusted doctor recommends, because, as a semi-retired biochemist, I know that vaccination is arguably the best gift a parent can give a child. I realize that some children react much more severely to shots than mine have, and so I feel blessed that my babies' immune systems put up with this onslaught so early in life. They and anyone they share germs with will be so much better for it in the long run.

Using his words

Jacob has picked up a few more words since last I recorded his vocabulary for posterity, for a new grand total of 30 purposeful words/animal sounds. He firmly believes that all words should end in a vowel.

Banana (Na-nuh)
Cracker (Kwa-kuh)
Chocolate Syrup (Chaw)
That (Da)
Mine (MYYYYYY!)
Cup (Cuh)
Car (Cah)
Down (Dow, used as in "Please help me get down from this chair" or "Put me down, ho-bag")
Bagel (Gay-goh)
Helicopter (Hey-kaka)
Thomas (Tah-ah)
Buzz [Lightyear] (Buh)
Eee-ooo-ahh (as a monkey screech)
Baa Baa (referring to Baa Baa Black Sheep)

Isaac and I so enjoyed Jacob's feeble attempt to say bagel that we turned it into a game. Whenever I pass out bagels as breakfast or a morning snack, Isaac and I say "GAY-GOH!!" back and forth to each other. Jacob laughs as though at a comedy club, but rarely joins in. Today, however, when Jacob saw the bagels I packed for them to eat at the park, an enormous knowing grin stole over his face as he turned to me and said, "GAY-GOH!"

Some old standbys have also changed, evolving towards how they should sound like. For example, Ball is now "Baw" instead of "Gall". Other words have properly become two syllables instead of one, but still lack final consonants. Two prime examples are how his name for Dada, "Da", has now become "Dah-eeeee", much like the "Daddy" used by Big Brother. In a similar vein, Kitty is now "Kih-eee" instead of "Kee".

We have also observed one instance of him putting words together. At the Apple store last week, waiting for Dada to get waited on at the "genius" bar, Jacob of course got impatient as I tried to entertain him. As a last ditch effort, I asked him "Where's Daddy?" He stopped his mayhem of pulling all the iPod covers off the wall to think and look around. Quickly spotting Dada, Jacob squealed with glee and started running towards him, screaming "Deryarrr, Dada!" Which unfortunately only counts as two words in my book.

Sunday in the park

Are there words for a day as beautiful as today? But of course.

We packed a picnic lunch and headed to our local state park for a family hike. The thought was to tire both boys out, but it turns out that Jacob is a terrible hiker. He refuses to walk when we're on trails because his serious Rock-Hound-Itis means he can't stop stooping over to pick up any kind of rocks, pebbles, or gravel. Isaac, on the other hand, is a champ. With Jacob packed in the stroller, we chose to hike up this gawd awful high and long hill road. Isaac did the whole thing without stopping once (and usually while running), though as we neared the top he told me that "Mountains can be hard for little boys to climb." A different kind of mountain awaited us at the top, one to please both fellers.



Jacob was not remotely interested in climbing to the top of the gravel mountain. There were simply too many rocks to pick up down at the bottom. Isaac picked up some, too, and carried them in his hands down the "mountain" to throw into the creek. Along the way, we spotted a pretty butterfly and suggested Isaac try to catch it. Without really thinking, he threw a rock at it. Dada and I told him that was bad, and so he tried to catch the butterfly instead. After we started walking again, he walked beside me and I decided maybe the rock-throwing topic needed more discussion. I launched into a little diatribe on how one should not throw rocks at animals or people, but by the end of my speech I looked over at him and registered that he was not listening. "Isaac, do you understand?" I finished, catching him a little off guard. He looked up at me suddenly, as though realizing I was talking for the first time, and said, "No, Mommy. I don't understand. Sometimes little boys don't understand why they do things."

Eventually we tore ourselves away from this beautiful park on this beautiful day, after throwing rocks off a bridge, running barefoot across clover fields, and burying our feet in the sand of a horseshoe pitch. But before we left, I remembered how Meemaw yells at me because we never take family pictures. Be happy now, Meemaw.



Featured in this picture are our sons Surly Burger (left), who wishes not to go home, and Heeeeeeeeere's Jakey (right), who intends to poke you to death with his fearsome stick.