The Raspberry Conspiracy

Mealtime is always a challenge.


I've spoken before about Kiernan's tastes. What I did not know at the time was how rapidly they would develop. Indeed, what I could not have known was how much they would morph, not only over time...but from meal to meal. For awhile he refused steamed carrots, for example. Then one day--DING!--he gobbled them down. The next day...nope.

At his last checkup, his pediatrician assured me this was normal. I brought up concern about his appetite, and he basically said, "Don't worry. When he's hungry, he'll eat." Then he capped this off with, "If we all ate like toddlers, there'd be no obesity in America."

I was a little uncomfortable with the way he pointedly looked at my mid-section when he said this, but I tried to put that out of my mind.

Tonight was a good night for eating, though. He downed all of his mushroom turnovers (from Trader Joe's--best store on the planet). He ate a little bit of corn. Chewed on a bit of cucumber.

I wanted more vegetable action though, so I brought out a carrot. Kiernan has forsaken steamed carrots of late, so I just presented a raw, freshly peeled, carrot.

No interest.

So I started eating it.

Interest.

It was a great game. I'd take a few nibbles and he'd grab it from my mouth and take a couple of bites. Then I'd reclaim it and he would say, as he is recently wont to say..."Kiernan turn." We're trying to teach him the concepts of sharing and taking turns. So far he fully understands when it's "Kiernan's turn." It's a simple concept, though, since "Kiernan's turn" is apparently happening all the time.

We ate most of the carrot and moved on to dessert, which was, tonight, raspberries. He loves berries. Blueberries. Raspberries. Strawberries. His hand-sign for "berry" is perfect. It was, in fact, one of the first signs I remember him translating without any sort of cue. We could say, "Kiernan, what's the sign for 'berry'?" He would do it without hesitation. Or we'd do the sign, saying nothing out loud, and he would say his approximation of the word "berry." It's shocking how quickly he has learned the signs and words for the things he really wants.

The way he picked up the sign for "ice cream" leaps to mind.

I took to washing and cutting up the raspberries. At one point, I dropped one of them. It simply disappeared. I looked all over the floor. Under the cabinet ledge. In the cat's bowl. It was just gone. I even checked my earlobe, to no avail.

Then Kiernan smiled and pointed at the little drawer where we keep the scissors and twist-ties and rubber bands.

We had a huge laugh...then it was off to the bath.

Put Me Out, Coach

My son, the jock.
I apologize for the quality of the photo above (as with any of the pictures, you can click on the photo for a larger version), but the picture was taken on the sly without a flash. Kiernan had just gone down for his afternoon nap. I'm generally paranoid about waking him during his afternoon nap, especially during times like this when Wendy is out of town on business. She is in Alabama for a week and a half (!)--a statement that deserves an exclamation point for a variety of reasons--and while I have more help from friends and a fantastic babysitter during the week, the nap time during the weekend is very, very precious. But I just had to get this picture. I cracked the door to check on him, saw the above scene, and ran for the camera. I shut off the flash just to be safe, and snapped the picture as quickly as possible. Hence the poor lighting and general blurriness.

In case it's not clear what's going on in the picture, Kiernan is sleeping clutching his basketball under one arm, and his little football under the other.

A semi-recent development has been his tendency to cuddle up to his stuffed animals when he goes to sleep. This was not always so. He has never really had one special little animal or blanket, nothing we could dub his "woobie"...or whatever people call that special thing kids latch on to and drag around with them until they get sick and their parents toss it into a junk pile out back because they are afraid of germs and then a fairy comes and makes it real.

Um. Sorry about that. Didn't mean to go all velveteen on you. Blame Karen Hardcastle.

But lately he has been developing an affinity for certain of his animals. Most notably his Pink Panther, gifted to him by my Aunt Claudia and Uncle Jim, a man so unbelievably laid back that as I kid I had no choice but to refer to him as the Pink Panther. Usually Kiernan's affection for his stuffed Pink Panther is expressed by chewing on said Pink Panther. Kiernan chews on many things, but he especially loves chewing on certain of his stuffed animals. Pink, also Fluffles (a little stuffed lamb), and Pooh (his Classic Pooh Bear, not the Disney version). Of late, when he falls asleep, he has taken to throwing an arm over any or all of these three and sleeping with them held close.

Today when I put him down for his nap, the basketball and football were already in the crib. I knew this was a mistake, but I caught it too late. He was fairly drowsy by this time, but still lucid enough to notice the basketball in his crib. I was concerned that seeing the ball would make him want to play with it, and that this would cause him to pull away from sleep. Still, I knew that if I tried to remove it, he would snap awake and complain (by which word I mean, "freak out"). So I left it in the crib with him. The football was down near his feet, so I was able to surreptitiously cover it with his blanket. I made for the door.

He opened his eyes a bit more and said, "One more. Sing."

"One more" is one of those little things that Kiernan has picked up, something we did not try to teach him but that he adopted on his own. It came about fairly simply. Whenever we were done with something, say a snack, we would tell him, "All done." He would give us the sign for "more," and we would say, "Okay...one more then. Okay? One more, then all done." And he would nod. One day he turned this on us. We were finished with something or other, say a snack, maybe a cookie. We told him he was all done. He held up a single finger and said, "One more."

Talk about being totally disarmed. How do you deny something like that? It is unbelievably adorable. He, of course, uses it for everything he wants to continue now. Like reading. When you finish a book he wants to read--current favorites are Papa, Please Get the Moon for Me, and Chicka Chicka Boom Boom--he will hold up his index finger and say, "One more." This indicates he wants to read that book again. The problem is that "one more" in this instance--indeed, in most instances--doesn't really mean "one more" in the spirit in which we used it originally. It means, "one more until you finish this readthrough and I hold up my finger and say 'one more' again." And again. And again. And again.

Yesterday he made me read Curious George and the Bunny to him eight times in a row. This is mind numbing, but who am I to object to my boy being crazy about his books? I want him to be crazy about his books. If this means my brain goes a little numb, so be it.

So he said, "one more, sing," which meant he wanted me to sing some more as he fell asleep. I went back to the chair in the corner and kept singing to him. At one point I fell asleep myself, and he helpfully woke me back up by saying, "one more, sing," again. I know I've mentioned this before in these pages, but I cannot for the life of my figure out how single parents do it.

As I feared, instead of getting sleepier, Kiernan began to get more restless. He rolled around with his basketball, trying to find a comfortable spot. He said, "Football...go?" He is forever asking where someone or something went by putting the word "go" after it. This week has been a cycle of "Mommy...go?" and "She went to Alabama to do a project with Lisa and Pokie." A never-ending cycle. Mommy-go? Mommy-go? Mommy-go? And after I answer "Mommy-go?" with the above about Lisa and Pokie--two of her colleagues--he will then ask "Pokie-go?" and "Lisa-go?" Even though he doesn't really know who these women are. Sometimes he mixes in "Dada-go?" because Darren and Daniel are out of town too. So I've got that going for me.

I avoided the subject of where the football was, to no avail. He eventually located it, holding it aloft with a clear air of victory. I gestured for him to lie back down. He did, and continued rolling around. Eventually the restlessness grew less and I got up to leave the room, singing a couple more verses before squeezing out of the door. He complained a bit, but much to my surprise fell asleep within a few minutes. Sometimes staying in the room to sing some more actually keeps sleep from coming. Maybe he feels falling asleep during a performance would be rude.

So I took a peek at him about fifteen minutes after the complaining stopped and there he was, cuddled up to his basketball and football.

What an incredible kid.