Dinner together, the first post.
Okay, let's get down to business with this dinner thing. We all know it's a good idea. Why is it so stinkin' hard?
Not that I am the best person to give advice. On anything. I'm just here because it's like when you're in a class, and someone asks a question, and the smart kids are busy with something else. Eventually, you just have to pipe up. That's me.
For instance, once our first child (who shall remain nameless, as this is an embarrassing story, even if he was only one) was cutely wandering around the living room as we entertained a newly married couple (even more newly married than we). It was a hot Washington, D. C., night, and I thought it would be refreshing to serve a nice watermelon (neatly cut up in bite-sized pieces) as a starter while we waited for our leg of lamb to grill.
I think we were grilling it. In any case, it wasn't getting cooked, and the evening was wearing on. The couple gamely sat, with little other than watermelon to sustain them, chatting with us. The baby (who loved fruit) kept toddling up and eating watermelon. The lamb kept on not really cooking, even though I switched it to the oven, and kept cranking up the heat, and man, it was getting hotter in the kitchen all right.
I remember that we were maybe on a bit of a mission to convince this couple that having a baby was a wonderful, life-affirming thing to do. Not a way to cramp your style at all. When we finally sat down to eat, and it was really late by that time, I put the baby in his high chair at the table. Still talking brightly, I began to carve into the lamb (which actually was quite rare), when the baby coughed and, I think, started to choke a little on his millionth piece of watermelon.
Really, he was amazingly good, for a toddler -- very patient and not fussing at all. He had been happy with his fruit!
Until, quite surfeited, he -- yes, the worst happened.
That little choke caused a mighty, projectile, and definitely
pink upheaval, all over the table.
I can't remember how the evening ended. I'm sure that this couple went on to embrace a large family... or else they remain childless to this day, and it's all my fault!
So early on, a vividly hued vomit warned me that I'm in no position to give advice.
I was laughing the other day with Rosie, because she was telling me about all that Pippo was eating for his supper, "and now I'm cleaning him up and getting him out of his high chair." I told her that if he ate and was still sitting in the chair, she was doing great, because I have very strong recollections of Nick and her sweet little self literally jumping on the trays of their chairs, such that when Sukie came along, I opted for a sturdy wooden version, having replaced the previous model once and the plastic tray of same twice.
I admit to having that collapse of judgement and will: Despite securely locking them into their chairs as well as trying to discipline them, I basically just gave in to them standing, and even jumping, on their tray while I tried to clean them up and get them out. I'd say I regarded it as a win if they didn't plunge to their deaths, although their balance was amazing and impressive. Might as well have a strong tray; and indeed, it has endured 5 children and exists to this day.
I remember my sister-in-law warning me about "gunk on the legs," (of the high chair) -- a phenomenon she noticed with
her toddlers when a friend was visiting and she happened to glance down at the nether regions of her child's eating area. Ew.
I remember wondering why a friend's floor was covered in crud -- her kids were the same age as mine, and seemed to have the same basic habits. Then it dawned on me. She didn't have a dog and I did. Note to young moms: Get a dog. (Not really, unless you want to, because dogs exponentially increase other types of dirt. And it's not like the floor is clean. It's just crud-free and covered in dog saliva.)
We're just so eager to start, aren't we? We want to be a family! Eating dinner together! It just seems like there is a lot of... crud... while we're waiting for it all to come together.
Later, I seriously questioned the sanity of trying to eat with my husband in the presence of children whose sole aim in life seemed to be to test the maximum amount of nagging I could produce in the space of one meal. The dear Chief would beg me not to correct them. I would beg him to correct them. Obviously you can't
not correct them! They are sliding off the chairs! Exclusive of ever actually sitting in them! They are literally under the table! They are deliberately making me insane! Do something!
But what can you do?
Let's just take a deep breath and conjure up a mental picture. In ten years these same little unruly beggars will sit around this table and actually speak with you, if only for a few minutes. True, we can't really make out their faces right now in this mental picture -- it's a little blurry. True, there are other little beggars sliding off their chairs -- I think one of them might be wriggling out of his five-point harness and making his way up Mount Tray. But some conversation is taking place.
In a mere fifteen years, the number of upright bodies forms the majority. You hardly notice the giggling under the table when you aren't correcting it, and occasionally one of the gigglers comes and sits on your lap and just listens. In this mental picture, you have the ability to hear what some of the beggars are thinking. The little giggler on your lap is full of wonder at the amazing people, her siblings, who can capture the attention of Mama and Papa. She secretly thinks, "Some day, I'll talk to them too."
This picture can keep us going for a while. I and some others have survived to tell you that it will happen if you are persistent and also patient.
It takes time.
Meanwhile, here are some things you can do today to make this picture come true.
1.
Know what is for dinner and
make it 20 minutes earlier than you think you need to, so that you can clean up, so that you can sit and eat somewhat peacefully, without the sense that the kitchen will explode. Work backwards with me for a second: If what dismays you (other than jumping, sliding children) is facing an exploding kitchen after supper, you need to have cleaned up the cooking mess before you eat. To do that, you need to start the cooking a little earlier, so that you have time to whisk things away. To do that,
you have to have known what was for dinner in time.
2. Have dinner a little earlier than you think you might ordinarily have it. Not quite the same as 1. This is moving the whole shebang earlier, so that infant meltdowns don't coincide with adult meltdowns.
3. Light a candle at the table tonight. (Perhaps a pillar candle or votive is the best choice at the moment, for the sake of not setting the house on fire.) It's your beacon of culture. It's your promise that someday, that mental picture, above, will be yours. It's your promise to yourself to be patient. If you don't have a candle, put it on your grocery list.
If we were sitting at my kitchen table with a cup of tea, this is what we would discuss, if where you are is at the very beginning, with, say, a toddler and a nursing baby. At first, what I say will sound like the opposite of "eat dinner with your kids," but bear with me.
1. Focus on having dinner with your husband and try to enjoy it and him. You have many, many years to get this thing down. What is important is that you and he have a conversation at dinner. You can talk, among other topics, about how, gradually, to make dinnertime family time.
{Can I tell you what I really think about date night for young married couples with babies? I think that it's fine to go out, and you should take your infant with you. He wants you and he needs you. I think it's only going to make you cry to leave your tiny baby home. I know I would not have enjoyed it, and that's why I never did it. My friends who have big, happy families really never did it either, as far as I can tell. None of us ever had the money, for one thing.
But the more important fact is that the time when the baby is little is for concentrating your energy on him, yes, 24/7, yes, not leaving him. It's a little premature to be putting romance front and center in your lives right now, and the strained quality of your time out shows that. Your love is starting to have a different quality from what it was before the baby came, and that is something our society and its experts know very little about. I mean, if you had fun, great. This isn't a guilt trip. But don't be surprised if date night isn't all it's cracked up to be in the first few months of your baby's new life. And don't feel pressured to have one if it seems more tragic than exciting. When you're ready for date night, when that tiny baby is so big he's jumping in Grandma's arms and waving goodbye, you'll find you don't have to yank yourself away from him to go.
}
If your husband tends to come home late during the workweek, why not get the babies fed and bathed and in their jammies. You know, tender young bodies can only take being buckled and strapped and shod for so many hours!
Get them clean and in their soft night clothes. If they go to bed before he gets home, that's okay -- you can always aim for breakfast together, usually a less stressful meal. Maybe some days their naps will allow them a later night, or the weekends can be for hanging out together. Soon, they'll be older and more able to stay up with Dad.
If they stay up, or one of them is up, for dinner, don't try too hard to feed them at the table when you are trying to eat as well. But play it by ear, every day if necessary. Some days,
it might be helpful for Daddy to try his hand at "shoving the oatmeal into him." (Not how Auntie Leila would say it, as you know, but the Chief has been known to express it this way. He is a professional writer, after all.)
Some days, it is not helpful to try.
Here is a little bulletin that I hope makes things better: Your children experience things this way -- "We
always did X." Even if you did X only a few times at first, and then gradually more often, but not by any means actually every single time, that's how they will remember it! (Sometimes they say it about something you are morally certain you only did once. Don't know what that's about, other than to console you for all your failures!) So give yourself a little break if things seem stressful and downright impossible right now with your little ones.
Better to give them an early supper/nursing and have
twenty-five twelve adult minutes at the table. Not alone, probably, but not stressed-out, either.
What would this look like?
The toddler sitting up at the table as if to join you, but with a token plate of something appealing to him (dessert, perhaps), since he's already eaten earlier. After a few minutes (or maybe longer! who knows! toddlers are so hard to figure out!), he wriggles down and goes to play, and that's fine.
The toddler and baby on a blanket on the floor or in the baby's playpen (topic for another day; try not to hyperventilate at the idea of a playpen, it's a good one), playing with baby's toys.
Do you have a little table and chair in the dining room or nearby where you eat? Maybe now is a nice time for special coloring.
Toddler on Dad's lap, baby on Mom's.
Very small infant asleep in a bassinet, having been bathed and nursed before supper-time, near the table while you enjoy dinner with Daddy.
Papa enjoying holding his infant, giving Mama a break so she can eat, toddler playing with his toys nearby.
Mama nursing the baby right at the table. I think, in fact, that's what I mostly did, since I personally have a little trouble being on time with dinner. (Shhh!) If you feed the toddler beforehand, it works out. What won't work out is not feeding the toddler until it's too late!
Did you know that children sometimes get too hungry to eat?
2. Another day I'll go into what young children should be expected to eat. But very young children do not need to eat an adult's idea of a balanced meal. (
This is my post on starting with solid foods.) This is where your childhood reading comes in very handy. Remember
The Secret Garden
? Remember
your E. Nesbit
?
Whenever I worried that my children weren't getting all food groups, eating plenty of fruits and vegetables, etc. etc., I remembered that for most of history, children were just fed simple diets, and nursed for a good long while. If it was good enough for
Laura
, I think our kids can survive. After all, the reality is that we in the United States have the most varied diet imaginable! So stop worrying about that spinach salad (which, by the way, is a leading cause of e. coli poisoning) and give the 18-month-old another helping of whatever home-cooked simple food he seems to like this week. I promise that as he gets older we'll change our strategy a bit.
As much as I'm trying to convince you that dinner with the family is your goal, for now, try to wrap your mind around the paradox of how enjoying dinner with your husband every evening will get you there.
Trust me, if the two of you focus all your energy on your two little barbarians, making them the center of every moment of your day, in a few years you will not have much to say that isn't in baby-talk.
Young children take their cue from you. When our bigs were littles, I was very blessed to have my husband sometimes say to me, in so many words, "Look at me! Talk to me!" And we would talk right over the din, right through it, sometimes even running away from it. (Yes, he once took me by the shoulders very gently and maneuvered me right into the bathroom and closed the door! So he could finish his sentence!)
Here is a test for tonight.
When you say grace, which of course you are trying to teach your dear little ones, are you looking at them when you say it?
Nodding and smiling as your toddler blesses his little heart?
Chuckling?
So, is he... your god?
Don't get me wrong -- I'm as delighted and smitten with the cuteness of it all as the next person when it comes to lisping tots learning their prayers. But! If night after night, year after year, you look right at your children when you pray, well!
Bow your head and say grace, and I guarantee you nothing terrible (well, nothing that can't be undone eventually) will happen for that 30 seconds. You can peek if you need to. The point is, it's good for even a small child to experience the shocking, yet ultimately liberating, experience of not being scrutinized for a bit. Of not being the center of everyone's attention, even if it's just for the time it takes to say grace.
Next time I talk about dinner, I'll look at what happens when they outnumber you.
