Cloth Diapers

 changing habits, parenting  24 Responses »
Jun 302007
 

There was a time when this blog was called “Diapers and Music”. That’s why there still is a pile of diapers on he piano in my masthead. Since that days of diapers are long gone in this family, I don’t think about them very often. (And some time this year there will be a new picture on the blog, I promise.) But then I read Crunchy Chicken, prompted by the Just Posts. And I thought about “low impact” again. I started using dish towels instead of paper towels for my (almost) daily swish through the bathrooms. I tried out HagRag-pantyliners. Very comfy (and so smooth), and she sent me one with guitars on it as a sample, can you believe that. She doesn’t even know I’m a musician. And I ordered a mooncup, which has yet to be tested. (I opted for a mooncup instead of a diva cup because it came from the UK instead of the US, so it arrived faster and I didn’t have to pay tax on it, and it came 10 € cheaper.)

But I wanted to write about cloth diapers. I only realized how much I care about them when my husband’s cousin had a baby a couple of weeks ago; she took all the baby stuff I had left and when I forgot that the cloth diapers were still sitting in a closet in my bedroom, and told her I’d bring them over, she just made a vague noise and shrugged it off. And since then I have been wanting to force the cloth diapers on her. And to persuade her to use them. But I can’t. And I know perfectly well that most of the people reading this blog don’t have children of diaper age, or are well set in their ways. Nonetheless I’d like to tell you why I like cloth diapers so much:

1. They don’t smell as much.
Really. When my son went to play group the teachers there often didn’t realize that his diaper badly needed changing because there was not that much stink. On the other hand, when – for travel reasons or such – I had to use disposable diapers I kept thinking that he had a poopy diaper when in fact he hadn’t.

2. You don’t need to haul immense amounts of diapers home from the super market.
And

3. You don’t need to pay insane amounts of money for diapers.
When I first contemplated the cloth-or-not-cloth-issue I stood in the diaper aisle of the grocery store thinking, “Oh, they aren’t that expensive.” And then I started to do the math. Let’s take an average of 4 diapers a day for 2 1/2 years, and let’s say one diapers costs about 25 cent (which it doesn’t in the grocery store, I just found a discount price on the net right now), and then you’ll pay 912.50 € for diapers. At least. (That would be 1.234.25 $. But then I don’t know the cost of diapers in the US.) And I know that washing things also costs money, and cloth diapers cost money, but not that much. Which brings me to the next point:

4. You often can get used cloth diapers very cheap or for free.
Most of the diapers I have been using for years were given to me by a friend. She used them for about two weeks and was very glad to give them away. I have bought some new diapers over time because some were worn out, and I have been using disposable diapers from time to time, but the money I spent was nowhere near 900 €.

When I was pregnant I read tons of books about pregnancy and babies. In one of them the author said, “Imagine yourself on the balcony, folding nice clean diapers with your baby in a sling, while everybody else is stuck in a traffic jam because they have run out of diapers and have to get new ones in a panic.” I thought she was a little cuckoo. But really, some of my fondest memories of my son’s first year indeed involve me hanging up or folding diapers while carrying him in a sling. Of course I don’t think that much about the days when I had to do everything wearing him in a sling while he screamed on top of his lungs, and I had to rush around, sterilizing my milk pump and washing diapers. (And I am a sling fanatic too. Not that I practiced Attachment Parenting, but I really have to stop myself from pressing a sling on every new parent. It literally saved my life. I even volunteered to teach people how to use them. If you’re anywhere near Munich, drop me an e-mail, come to my house and I’ll show you.) I seem to be a bit of a missionary at heart. Sorry.

5. Cloth diapers are better for babies with sensitive skin.
My son developed a rash every time we went on vacation and he wore disposable diapers more than two days in a row.

So now about the things that people don’t like about cloth diapers:

1. You have a bucket of smelling, dirty diapers sitting around all the time.
Yep. True. Make sure to get a small bucket with a fitting lid. Contrary to popular belief you don’t have to swish them in the toilet though. Or iron them. You don’t even have to touch them after changing, or soak them. Just get a laundry net, hang it in the bucket like a trash bag, roll the used diapers up, and put them in there. Close lid. When the bucket is full, take it to the washing machine, grab the net, close it, toss it in the machine – well done. You have to clean the bucket once in a while, though. Think of it as training for when your child uses the potty.

And really, a diaper bucket doesn’t smell more than a cat litter box. And trash cans with disposable diapers in them smell too. Unless maybe you use those thingies that wrap each and every diaper in plastic, and really how environmental unfriendly do you want to get because of a little poop smell?

2. Your babysitter, day care person, or some such, won’t know how to use them.
Well, most people can be trained. And there are cloth diapers that work like disposable ones. The only two things people have to keep in mind are: a) don’t throw the cloth diaper away, and b) most types of cloth diaper require a kind of cover since they are not water-proof per se. In our family the challenge was to prevent my babysitter from putting a diaper cover on my son when for some reason or other she had to use disposables once in a while.

At first when my son was in play group (without mothers), I put him in disposables to make it easier for the teachers. But since they never changed him anyway, I just put a little plastic bag in his backpack with a fresh cloth diaper and a big handwritten sign saying: “Please us this diaper. Please put the diaper cover over it, and please put the soiled diaper in the plastic bag.” Voilà. No problem.

3. It is too complicated and time consuming.
Again, look at this:

or this:

4. They leak when the baby gets older.
Well, yes. I almost gave up when my son was about nine months old. Then I bought a couple of extra layers like these:


And there was – no more leakage.

5. But who wants to do all that laundry?
Come on. You’ve got a child. You’re doing laundry all the time anyway.
I was surprised at the amount of laundry we had after having a child. And I only changed his clothes about twice a week or so. Since then I made peace with the five loads a week concept. (Of course now I have less laundry than when I still had to wash the diapers. That’s true.)

Have I forgotten something? I stole all the pictures from the excellent shop “Wickelkinder” by the way. I can only recommend it. For Germans anyway. What do you think about cloth diapers? Have you tried them?

Pink – the third

 fashion, gender, parenting  14 Responses »
Jun 102007
 

justpostmay2007

I know I have milked the subject of pink shoes or socks enough already, but – today is the day of the May just post roundtable and there will be some new readers coming over to read the story of my son’s pink socks. All because I didn’t write anything else remotely social or just for the whole month. And those new readers – and the old ones as well – will then think that my poor son still suffers and maybe cry a little for him.

(And for those who are new to this and too lazy or pressed for time to follow the links: my son wanted to have pink shoes which I didn’t buy because I was afraid that he would be made fun of at preschool. Then I bought him pink socks. He wore them to preschool once and after being laughed at never wanted to wear them again.)

I’ll continue to be angry at gender inequality, I promise. And right now I have the feeling that maybe little boys don’t have as much choices as little girls. And then they will grow up and become men. And maybe they will be grown men in a society where they still earn more money than women, and do less housework. They might live in a world where a mother has to come home from an important meeting immediately because her child puked so she can mop it up, even when the child is with his father at the time. If said child’s father on the other hand were to be – let’s say – going out with his friends for a couple of beers, and the child got sick, there might be a fat chance that he heard about the incident only the morning after. “Oh, by the way the child will be staying home today, it got sick in the evening.”
(Disclaimer: This is not to be confused with the situation at creative family where master guitarist and creative mother share childcare duties and mopping up. Each of them is considered to be a fully grown parent without need of further assistance.)

So maybe I should shut up about the pink socks. And I will. I only want to write this post to assure you all that my son isn’t sad any more about the pink socks or shoes. He has forgotten the pink shoes entirely. For a four year old he has a remarkable memory so this shows it hasn’t been that important to him. It was important to me. Because I chose to use my powers of persuasion to change his opinion. And though I use my powers of persuasion all the time with my son this time felt a little immoral. Only I didn’t want to have to buy another pair of shoes.

So. His social standing in the preschooler community obviously didn’t suffer much. One boy who had laughed at him because of the pink socks invited him to his birthday party just last week. The little girl who had said to her mother, “The boy is wearing girly socks.” did so not in malice or ridicule but in curiosity. She found it odd and remarkable but not alarmingly so.

I won’t talk to the teachers about this issue because I doubt that there is anything they can do about it. The children already know that they shouldn’t make fun of others. They still do occasionally. They are just trying to figure out how to be social animals. Friendships are forged and broken. At least in this school the atmosphere is very friendly. When we go through the door in the morning there are children shouting, “Hello Leo.” right and left. The children are nice to one another. Unlike my memories of preschool, girls and boys play together often. A boy can play with the dolls or in the doll kitchen without being stigmatized. When I was four years old there was a boy in my preschool who liked to play in the doll’s corner. He never recovered from that. And I went to school with him until fourth grade. I don’t think that something like this could happen in the school my son attends.

Also his teacher told me that she admires my son for being quite independent. She said, “He plays nicely with others though he is quiet and a little shy. He has no problems. And when he has enough or doesn’t want to play what the others are playing he goes away and plays alone.” That made me quite proud. My son is independent and self-reliant. He won’t let himself get coaxed by peer pressure. At least for now.

Those of you with preschoolers and kindergarteners probably know that this is one of the most rigid and conservative phases in life. These children are setting out to learn the rules, and so they like people to stick to them. They try to understand what being male or female means. They try to understand what being a child and an adult means. They try to see the big picture, how people work, how one does things.

So my son goes back and forth between his likings. He declared, “I no longer like pink, I like black and brown now.” a couple of weeks ago. When I told him that one can like all three at once, he said no. You can’t. Just yesterday he declared, “I don’t like black and brown any longer. I like pink better again.”

My son’s biggest ambition right now has nothing to do with clothes but with his deep desire to be master of his own fate. He wants to be grown-up and be able to do everything he can imagine. He just starts to see how rich the world is and what range of things and activities are available to human beings. He wants to grow his own food, make his own clothes, build a space shuttle and travel to the moon, become a knight, have children, and cook.

His most persistent fantasy is that of building his own submarine, build an ocean in the backyard and then live there on his own. So that nobody can tell him what to do. He will be staying up all night, wear his pajamas the whole day and have robots who manufacture everything he desires. (No, he never saw a James Bond movie.) He plans to move out at his fifth birthday, but we can come and visit him. He even told me that I could stay with him in the submarine to travel to Brazil. Or maybe Italy. Or both.

Why it was right not to buy pink shoes for my son

 fashion, gender, just post, parenting  38 Responses »
May 282007
 

You might recall that my son had wanted pink sandals some time ago. And I decided not to buy them and to convince him that blue-beige ones are much better. And I felt rotten for it. And angry. Why can’t my son have pink shoes if he likes them? Why do I have to fear that he will be made fun of? To compensate I bought him pink socks. With horses. And hearts. He loved them. He couldn’t wait to wear them to preschool. But, alas, they had to be washed first. So he had to wait for three long days.

He dressed up with his cute socks and jeans and his new sandals. He told me, “But you will have to buy a pink t-shirt to go with them, you know. I have to have a pink t-shirt.” Okay.

He went to preschool. When I asked him in the evening, he told me that everybody loved his pink socks. That he really needed a pink tee. Have you ever tried to find a pink t-shirt without ruffles or something? Just a plain t-shirt. Not too girlish? Not too expensive, too, since I didn’t know how long he would like to wear it. What I saw in the department store made me glad to have a boy. There was not one t-shirt that I liked. (And I remembered why I keep buying my son’s clothes out of a cataloge. It’s not only the girl’s clothes that are ugly.) So I tried the second hand store. And found a pink t-shirt like this for 2 €:


Of course this had to be washed too so he couldn’t wear it the day after I bought it. But he had his socks. The next day we arrived at preschool, late as often, and a little girl sat down beside him. She told her mother, “The boy is wearing girlie socks.” And he showed her, proudly. In the evening he was very sad to learn that his socks had to be washed since they were very, very dirty. A few days later I told him they were ready to be worn again and that he could wear his new pink tee with it. He had loved the tee when I showed it to him. Then he said, “No, I don’t want to wear the socks or the t-shirt to preschool.” “Why?” “L. and F. made fun of me.” It turned out that a couple of kids had laughed at him because of the socks. And that everybody had been talking about it for days. Obviously a boy wearing pink socks is a very hot topic for preschoolers.

And that was it. He didn’t even want to wear the t-shirt or the socks on weekends. They are tainted with the laughter of his peers.

This makes me sad. I’m even sadder because I saw it coming. Of course I could have prevented this but then I thought, “Maybe it’s not that bad.” And that everybody should be able to wear the color he or she likes. I’m still angry that I’m living in a society where people can’t wear the colors they like. Not even when they are only four years old. I knew that preschoolers and kindergarteners are highly conventional. You can’t really blame them, they learn their values from the adults around them. Women do housework, men can work with computers, women are bad at math, men can’t sew, women always want to be pretty, men don’t care how they look, blablabla. As if there were no individuality.

Or am I the only one who thinks that gender inequality is creeping back?

(Edited to add: Since there were so many comments on this post where people felt sad for my son I wrote yet another post on this to round it all up: Pink – the third)

Freedom

 fashion, life, parenting  16 Responses »
Apr 242007
 

Every time we tell people that we don’t own a car they say, “Oh, I could never give up my freedom like that.” Okay. So for most people having a car equals freedom. They probably have an image in their heads like driving down the highway in a convertible with flowing hair. In summer. Not another car in sight. Like a car commercial. They think of speed and agility and power and strength. Not of being stuck in traffic looking for a parking space when you’re late and everyone wants to go shopping at once.

(Before you think I’m all “holier-than-thou” I have to add that my mother-in-law owns a car. It is sitting in our garage and we share it. But when this one dies (and it’s an old car) there won’t be a new one. For the money it costs to just have it sitting in the garage you can take a taxi to the grocery store every time and buy a piano on top of that.)

But I didn’t want to write about cars though I could go on and on, I wanted to write about what gives me a feeling of freedom. First it’s this:


It’s not because they are red though it helps. These shoes are a symbol to me. A symbol that I value myself enough to buy myself real comfortable shoes. They tell me that I can walk everywhere. That I am strong and capable. And independent. I’m not dependent on a machine; I can just walk away whenever I choose to. And my feet could carry me to China and back again. It would take a little while, I know; that’s why I’m not walking everywhere. But for my everyday life I can shop, go to preschool and back, go for a walk in the woods and all I need are those shoes. They are special walking shoes. For nordic walking to be precise, though I don’t do this often (haven’t pulled my sticks out in half a year or so). My feet don’t hurt. When I was in my twenties and had moved to the city my feet always hurt. In cities you have to walk a lot more than in the country. Then I discovered walking sneakers. With expensive shock absorbing thingies in the heels. Ha! When I visited a friend in Berlin and we went sight-seeing one day from 9 to 3 we came home and she lay down on the floor with her feet up on a chair saying, “My feet are killing me.” And I stood next to her thinking, “Well, my feet do feel a little uncomfortable, come to think of it.” And that was all.

The next thing that gives me a feeling of freedom is this:


I know, it’s not very pretty. Though it is red which is always good. I bought it when I was at my biggest. Right now I’m waiting for oversized jackets to come into fashion again.

I had wanted a gore-tex jacket since 1990 when I first discovered that there was such a thing. What I love about this jacket is that I can wear it all year round. It has a fleece jacket inside that you can zip out when it gets warmer. It is light, it is rain-proof but you don’t feel like you’re wearing a plastic bag. When I’m out walking and it starts to rain I just pull the hood up and I’m comfy again.

Every day when I’m bringing my son to preschool I have to smile when I see the other parents struggling with finding parking space and fiddling with keys, car seats and safety belts. My son and I just walk there. Quite slowly because he’s only four. Then I say goodbye to him for the day and there’s this feeling of freedom rushing in. I zip my jacket and just go. Often I take a detour for the sheer joy of walking. I move, I can think, I feel the air on my face, the pavement under my cushioned shoes – bliss. It’s even better when I got for a walk in the woods. Unencumbered I just walk and look and think. It makes me happy.

There was a time when I felt guilty about this sudden feeling of bliss and freedom I have at the door of preschool every day but then I remembered the times before my son was away from home five days a week. I remembered the walks I took with him. They were the only form of exercise I did in those days. I put him in the stroller, donned my walking shoes and my trusty jacket and started walking. And I felt the same feeling of elation. Even if he spent most of the walk screaming, it was worth it. When he was a baby I often put him in the sling. Then I could even walk in the woods. Or go to the city. I could laugh at stairs and narrow doors. I would just keep on walking. Stepping over obstacles. Free. Strong. Independent.

So don’t tell me freedom is about convertibles or motorcycles. I’m really not one of those women to whom it’s all about shoes but in this case shoes are very important. Shoes one really can walk in. Free.

My son wanted pink shoes

 fashion, gender, parenting  26 Responses »
Apr 142007
 

but I didn’t buy them. And I feel like a bad mother for it.

It isn’t as if he had expressed a liking for pink and girlish things only yesterday when we went to buy new sandals. For weeks he has been saying that he only likes colors like pink and purple and that he wants pink sneakers or pink socks or whatever pinkish clothing caught his eyes in the supermarket.

I have been thinking about this for ages. Periodically he wants to be a girl or a woman. He then wants to be called like Leah instead of Leo and pretends that he is a female astronaut or the mother of his teddy who’s then called Kokolishba (he made that name up). Leah by the way is Brazilian. Kokolishba is her son, they are both visiting Germany and Kokolishba is four years old. Sometimes Leah is married to the child’s father whose name is Kokolishba too. Of course Leah wears skirts and dresses and likes to got to the spa, dye her hair and wears make-up. As a mother I can say that this Leah is much easier to bath than Leo. After a few weeks of pretending to be female my son always finds something else to play, reacts to his real name again and that’s it. Until the next time.

Of course at four he is the age when all children are thinking about gender roles and about what things are appropriate or not for men and women. It is the age of conventionality. We meet a man with long hair, my son starts laughing, “But men don’t have long hair!”, how ridiculous. I say, “But of course there are men with long hair. Just like women can have short hair. “But women have long hair!” So what about your grandmother and the kindergarten teacher and …

He come home one day and says that he only likes colors like black and brown nowadays. Because he’s a boy and boy only like dark colors. Like a good feminist mother I say, “But you can like all colors. Whichever you want.” “But only girls like pink and purple.” “But boys can like pink and purple too.” Obviously he took that to heart. When we went to the supermarket two weeks ago there was a display of children’s clothing up front. My son wanted to have pink, um, “Gymnastikschuhe” (the nearest would be ballet slippers I think but in Germany small kids wear those during gymnastics). I said that he already had some. He wanted pink socks. They were too big. I was relieved.

So yesterday I bought him new sandals since the old ones were too small. We entered the shop and looked at sandals in his size. “I want these.” he said, pointing to very, very girlish pink ones with flowers. “Or these.”, he said clutching those:


Well, if they were to be pink those would have been acceptable to me. But then what if the other children in preschool would laugh about him. “Look at Leo”, they’d say, he’s wearing girly shoes!” and then they’d laugh like my son laughed when he saw a man with a ponytail and then he wouldn’t want to wear them again. Shoes for 45 €. I tried to interest him in the same model in blue. No chance. A sales woman came. “But you can’t have pink shoes. You’re a boy.” and then to me “Is he in preschool?” “Yes.” “The other children would make fun of him. Children can be cruel.” In the end us two grown-ups showed him all the advantages of pretty blue and mud-colored sandals. Now he has a pair that is very suitable for jumping into puddles:

He’s very happy with his new shoes and claims that he can jump better and run faster with them. But I feel rotten. I never would have thought that I would discourage my son to follow his taste. Mind you, I wouldn’t want a girl to be dressed all in pink either but I’d tend towards brighter colors, more orange, yellow and red. Have you ever compared the boy and girl section of a clothing department? Well, I suppose you have. Rows and rows of bright and colorful girl’s clothes followed by about half the amount of things for boys. And then you can choose between blue, grey, and mud-colored. With pictures of trucks or skaters.

Why isn’t there more unisex clothing for at least the smaller children? Bright and cheerful colors? Why does everything for girls have to be pink and frilly? Why are horses girlish? Since when? Horses used to be for knights and warriors and work. Now they are girl stuff. Why does there have to be so much gender distinction? Why did my mother-in-law fear that my son would turn out gay when we gave him a doll for his first birthday? (And for his third another one?) Why aren’t there more male dolls?

I don’t know if I should have made a statement. Buy my son pink sandals. They would have looked mud-colored after a few weeks anyway because, seriously, white soles? Very funny. Are they machine-washable?

When I became a feminist at age 13 I never would have thought that 18 years later people would still say things like, “But everybody knows that men can’t iron.” “Men just can’t talk about feelings.” , “You know, I never can figure out computers, but that’s because I’m a woman.” Okay. So women don’t have brains and men don’t have feelings? A boy has to be interested in sports, computers, soccer and fighting and a girl has to be interested in dolls, horses, fashion and housework. Wow, I’m glad I figured that out.

And the other thing I never would have thought would be that nowadays it’s okay for a girl to play soccer but a boy still isn’t supposed to play with dolls. I’m really angry about this. I’d like to live in a world where everybody can wear what he or she wants. Pink, blue, high heels, sneakers, who cares.

But I’m not living in such a world and so I wonder: Should I have bought him pink sandals?

Oh, and later that day I went out and bought him pink socks. With horses. And hearts.

(There’s a follow-up to this post here.)

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The "Cinderella-Princess-Unicorn-Play-Party-Sleepover"-Project

 parenting  10 Responses »
Mar 212007
 

Last Friday my son woke up half an hour early and said that he had had a dream where he had danced a unicorn-dance with A, a girl from preschool, and that he needed to make Cinderella-princess-crowns out of metal and wood right now. And then glue paper to them to add color.

Since my husband and I had been to a very, very loud nicotine-infected concert the night before all I managed was, “Um. Not right now.” I was so grateful that my mother-in-law had said she’d make him breakfast and take him to preschool and so I took him upstairs and went back to bed.

Grandmothers seem to be more patient than mothers because in the evening he proudly showed me this:


Cinderella-Princess-Unicorn-Crowns modeled by Teddy and Mikesch, the Cat

All evening long he talked about which crown was his and which was A’s and that his had to have long hair glued to it so he’d look like a girl.
And there would be a play and the unicorns would dance and there would be aparty. And that he would go and make scenery with his father on Saturday. (We had persuaded him to wait until the next morning.) And that I should go and prepare the food and freeze it.

On Saturday morning he woke up, early again, and told me to go and sew the costumes now. While he would build scenery in the cellar with my husband. And that he had already started on that.

In his room I saw that he had started to draw a “castle” on the big piece of cardboard that we use in lieu of a blackout blind so he doesn’t wake up too early. He even had tried to cut out pinnacles. Actually he woke us to say that he needed the big scissors. Fortunately I could discourage further cutting and promised to buy a real blackout blind soon so he could use the cardboard for his play.

All my poor tired husband wanted was a little sleep. So I told my son with all the authority I could muster that real theatre people always make sketches of everything. Costumes, scenery and who’s supposed to be where. Here they are:

The Unicorn’s Costumes
(Notice the unusual colors, red unicorns with black hooves. Also the “cinderella-princess-crowns” with their golden unicorn horns and eyes with extra-long eyelashes.)

The story of the play goes like this:

Two female unicorns are having a wedding. They have a picknick. Suddenly there is a knight who hurts the unicorns.


The Knight’s Costume
Very traditional though his sword is quite thin and cross-like. The knight is to be played by J, another preschooler.

The unicorns say, “Oh, don’t hurt us, knight, we are very nice unicorns.”
The knight stops.

All this is happening in front of a castle:

The Castle
(Very old with a sagging tower.)

At the end there is the unicorn dance. The two (played by my son and A) are dancing gracefully.

The Unicorn Dance

The audience is delighted.

The Audience

Afterwards there is a party with food and then A and J are to stay overnight.

How not to make your child a picky eater

 parenting  22 Responses »
Feb 192007
 

You know, I only write these headlines so that many, many people will find me through goggling. Because I so totally know that there is no foolproof method for anything in child-rearing. But then, I am a little tired of hearing all these mothers saying, “But she doesn’t like anything. If I don’t give her [enter food of choice here] exclusively she’ll starve herself to death.”

First of all I very much doubt it. Most children tend to have that much survival instinct that they don’t starve in front of a full plate. As the wise Moxie always says food is one of the few things that children can control. The more it is important for you the more you will have a power struggle. So now I tell you what we did. And our son eats absolutely everything. So when he was about nine months old we started giving him part of the meals that we were eating. When he was older than a year he ate everything we did. We continued cooking the same as ever, only, we found out that eating hot food caused his diaper rush so we cut back on that.

What we do is this: At mealtime we sit down and everybody gets a plate with the meal of the day. With all of it. My son then eats. When he is clearly done, the rest will be thrown away. If he decides to eat nothing, well that’s fine too. But then this is it. No substitute, nothing to eat until the next designated snack time. Period. If he decides that asparagus is not to his liking, well, then he’ll just have to eat potatoes only. The next time we have asparagus there will be asparagus on his plate again. Interestingly he often then decides to eat the exact same food that he left over last time and to shun the potatoes.

It also helps that we eat everything. You know that children learn more through example than through your words, don’t you? And I have to tell you that I was a very picky eater as a child. And to be honest I still don’t like strawberries and raw tomatoes. Though I’m not allergic to them. So, when I’m at home I don’t eat them – mostly. When I am somewhere else and somebody makes strawberry cake I say thank you, smile and eat strawberry cake. I come from a family of picky eaters. My father doesn’t eat: rice, pasta, poultry, fish and innards. My mother doesn’t like mushy foods, peas, lentils and beans, anything with a strong taste (like brie), hot or spicy. My sister’s a vegetarian and doesn’t eat: eggplant, bell peppers, mushrooms, zucchini, and I don’t know what else. In addition to the strawberries and raw tomatoes I used to be a vegetarian too from the age of 18 to 29 and didn’t like celery.

Imagine cooking for that family. You make something like pasta bolognese and end up cooking potatoes too for my father and have your two children eating pasta with ketchup. Or you make something like bean soup and have three people eating bean soup (vegetarian bean soup) and one eating leftovers from the day before. My father doesn’t like vegetarian meals, when my mother wanted fish she had to make something else for the rest of the family, it took all the fun out of cooking. Interestingly even the people who clearly dislike certain foods will eat them when they are prepared differently. The on not eating peppers will like the vegetable quiche with bell peppers, the one not eating poultry will eat Tandoori chicken every day when in India, it’s all a bit mysterious. And every single one of them will at least try everything that my husband has cooked, because he is a formidable cook.

When I moved to Bavaria and started living alone, life became a culinary adventure. New kinds of pasta! Eggplant! Greek cheese! French cheese! Wow! Then we went on vacation in Italy, the whole family together and everything was just so delicious that I gave up being a vegetarian and started eating meat and fish again. Imagine having the whole menu to choose from! When you’re in a traditional German restaurant and you are a vegetarian you have actually about two or three choices: vegetables with a fried egg on top, Kasspatzen (which is a special kind of pasta with cheese), and Semmelknödel with mushrooms (not strictly vegetarian since there is broth in the sauce). In Bavaria especially they even have bits of ham in your vegetables, because obviously there has to be something in it to make it edible. So after ten years of that I started eating everything. I tried things I never ate before, seafood, exotic vegetables (garlic!), cheeses from all over the world, Italian salami, chick peas, Indian food, Greek food, Thai food… Marvelous.

My husband is not only a fabulous cook, he comes from a family where there are no picky eaters. None. Period. So we decided to make our son a non-picky eater. So far we have succeeded quite well, but I found out how this picky eating thing might have gone. When he started eating the same food as we there were often things that he obviously didn’t like. He left onions on his plate, he didn’t eat the outsides of his bell pepper, he didn’t like asparagus. And I found myself panicking, “Oh, he doesn’t like onions!” But I didn’t stop giving him onions to eat. Also we tried to introduce our son to every food we could imagine because I had read that all children get picky at age 3 to 8 or so. And right, for the last year or so he has started announcing that he doesn’t like this or that and wouldn’t eat it. This has become a little more since he started eating lunch at preschool because all they get there is traditional German cuisine. And pasta bolognese. But since we always respond with, “You can stay hungry if you want to.” he just eats. Sometimes he doesn’t eat his potatoes, sometimes he doesn’t eat his meat, sometimes he eats all the meat first and wants seconds, sometimes he eats only potatoes… All in all he gets a very rounded diet. Sometimes he eats only one or two bites, sometimes he eats more than me. His needs obviously are changing.

When we go to a restaurant he gets part of our dishes too. He may choose which one to have, but he can’t choose his food. We don’t have to order something special for him since restaurant portions are too big anyway and he doesn’t eat that much. One thing I found is that people seem to suggest to him that some foods might be unsuitable for a child. Like, “What? You’re eating FISH!” or “And when you’re going to an Indian restaurant, what do YOU eat?” Well, the same as Indian children I’d say. If it’s too hot he gets a little yoghurt stirred into the dish and more rice. My husband and I are a little jealous of him because our childhoods didn’t include olives, foreign cheese or even Chinese food. When we grew up pasta and pizza were considered exotic.

You might think that I’m only lucky and maybe I am, but I didn’t make this into a power struggle and I think this is key. You might also think that I wouldn’t have done this if my child were underweight, but you’re wrong. I recently found out that according to US growth charts my son would be considered seriously underweight. By German standards he is on the light side of the chart with no need to worry. My mother thinks he should gain weight because one can see his ribs sticking out. I think he is like me and like my husband’s brother, a skinny kid. Since he is healthy, growing, smart and active I don’t worry.

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diaper-free

 parenting  14 Responses »
Dec 012006
 

Big news: My son is completely diaper-free! Yeah.

This whole diaper-thing has been bothering me for quite a while. I even once wrote to Moxie because of it. Of course, the moment I asked somebody for advice my son changed tactics and became content with wearing diapers at night again. Then another problem surfaced: there was leakage. During the last months there would be little (or not so little) puddles in his bed. Three mornings out of four. Yuck. I changed from cloth to disposable diapers. That helped a little. Then we thought, maybe the problem is not the night, maybe the problem is that he dreamily empties his bladders in the morning into his convenient diaper. We tried to teach him to go the toilet first thing in the morning. You know, like all the adult do. We even reestablished the potty. Well, he just isn’t at his best in the mornings…

Then, one evening – about two weeks ago – after I gave him the “and then when you get up you use your potty immediately”-lecture he said, “I’ll just go to sleep without my diaper. Just like the adults do.” My first reaction: PANIC! my second: “What the frell, we’ve been having wet sheets anyway.”

I didn’t sleep well that night, I can tell you. I thought I’d be woken up sometime in the night by a crying child in need of fresh linens. Surprise! Everything was dry in the morning! The second day he forgot that he wasn’t wearing a diaper anymore. And that’s been it. No more diapers ever.

I have been washing two to three loads of diapers for 3 1/2 years. When he was about nine months old, the first round of leaking started. Fortunately I found a website about cloth diapers and the problem was solved with the purchase of a little more padding. I’m really fond of cloth diapers. They are much cheaper (especially when a friend just hands you her stack of almost unused ones), they don’t smell as bad (Really, really true. In playgroup my son would often run around for an hour with a full diaper, because the women there hadn’t smelled it.) and the child has that adorable duck-like butt.

Of course I had just opened a new pack of disposables. But I don’t mind. So, what shall I do with the blog now? Keep the title anyway? It isn’t the best title in the world. Substitute something for “diapers”? Please help me out here.

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My very own interior decorator

 parenting  4 Responses »
Nov 032006
 

For a few weeks now my son has been drawing like crazy, there’s paper everywhere. Then he decided that we need signs on all the toilet doors. He did them himself, all alone:


pee man

Note the full bladder and both genders:


pee woman

I love those signs so much we even have one on the toilet that our students use – posted at the right height for a 4.year-old…

Trojan Horse

 parenting  18 Responses »
Oct 222006
 

This is one of those stories that I’m hesitating to tell because I’m afraid of being accused of bragging. My almost 4-year-old built this:


Then my husband said, “This looks like the Trojan Horse.” (Well, actually like the Tojan horse with its foal.) We didn’t quite remember the story of the Trojan Horse, so of course we looked it up. Then, because that’s the way those things go in our house, my husband fetched his copy of the Ilias. In German though, not Greek, we don’t go overboard with this. My husband began reading a passage out loud and our son said, “And what happened next?” … “And what happened next?” … “And what happened next?”

Storytelling time (and before breakfast as you can see by my husband attire).

And then the Greek made war with Troja. And the Trojans didn’t want the Greeks to come into their city. Then the Greek built a big wooden horse. The Trojans took the horse into their city and then the Greek opened the gates from within.

“And what did Helena do then?”

Does anybody know the answer?

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