1m2aSandbox

Ok, so I know I said I’d start with
breakfast, but I started to sketch this series of articles out and
quickly realized that you can’t tackle the actual meals until
you’ve done some of the planning stuff.


Oh, you don’t plan ahead with meals?

When Maddie first started solid foods, I
was so excited, flying into a flurry of steaming and pureeing and
freezing and spooning. I experimented as much as I could with
baby’s first foods, and enjoyed coming up with new and
unusual things for her to try. I was Mommy, the Super Nourisher,
willing to do whatever it took to feed my baby.


Fast-forward three years, and I’m not so excited any more.
The past three years have felt like one long, continuous dicing
session: dicing mango, chopping turkey, cutting up grapes into
eight (!) uniform pieces, slivering cheese – the list is
endless. I feel as if I spend half of my mommy life dealing with
the subject of food: planning meals, shopping, making meals,
organizing snacks, packing lunches, cleaning up from meals. And no
matter what I do, no matter how elaborate and delicious and
nutritious a meal turns out, I know that the clock moves inexorably
forward and the next meal is looming mere hours away.

So Maddie’s been in school for a few
weeks now, and I’m starting to see how this school thing
works. Truthfully, it seems pretty exhausting.


I’m not talking about all the work Maddie does – though
she is prone to meltdowns on school days, simply from overload. No,
I’m talking about all the work that the parents are supposed
to do.

So yesterday morning we were all sitting
around having our typical school morning – fixing lunches,
eating breakfasts, packing bags. Cora had gotten up early and was
finished with her meal, and so was roaming around the house playing
with toys and entertaining herself. Maddie, in an astonishingly
good imitation of a teenager, was half-awake and crabby, curled
around her cereal bowl.

Cora’s spent one night and one nap
in the toddler bed air-mattress now, and it’s been relatively
easy, thank God.


We’ve got the toddler mattress set up on the floor right next
to her crib, with all her stuffed animals and blankets spread out
around her. When she first climbed in, she grinned as if
she’d just won the lottery and rolled luxuriously all over
it. I can tell just looking at her that she’s insanely proud
of herself for “finally” becoming a big enough girl to
rate a little more space.

As many of you know, I’ve got Green
tendencies – I lean towards the whole recycle, earth-friendly
momma movement. A couple years ago I tried to empty the house of
plastic water bottles, partly from a “rid the world of those
mounds of single-use water bottles” point of view, and partly
from a “rid my house of BPA” point of view. So I went
out and bought several Sigg water bottles – the metal,
reusable bottles that come in a variety of sizes and are dishwasher
safe and BPA-free.


Except that they’re not.

When Cora was born, Maddie was three weeks
shy of two years old. I’d been thinking for months of how to
transition her to a big-girl bed because we’d need the crib
for the new baby. I didn’t want it to look as if we were
kicking Maddie out to give the crib to the new edition, and so I
spent a lot of time making the transition smooth.


First, Cora went into a bassinet for a few months, which gave us a
bit more of a breather. Then I bought a toddler-sized aero-bed and
put it on Maddie’s floor, talking up the “big-girl
bed” and getting her excited. While Cora still slept in the
bassinet, Maddie moved quickly to the aero bed on the floor of her
own room, right next to her crib. A few times she asked to move
back to the crib – bad dreams and the illusion of safety
behind bars – but we always dissuaded her, and finally I
broke down the crib and set the pieces casually in my room, where
Cora slept. About a month later, we put the crib together in our
room and Cora moved in, with absolutely no comment from Maddie
except, “Yeah, the crib is for babies.”