Aurora Wells

I gotta be brutally honest here: life here at Chaos159 is not all giggles and jellybeans. Although, I fear, there may be too much of the jellybeans. We’re having a real challenge in the eating department these days (the potty struggle is ongoing, too, but I’ll just talk about the food today). I wouldn’t bother to blog this, except that I have the feeling that I am not alone in these issues, and would like to hear some other war stories to bolster my resolve.

Has anyone else out there got a picky eater? I don’t mean your run-of-the-mill, I-don’t-like-brussels-sprouts eater. I mean a kid whose entire food repertoire includes only about a dozen healthy choices, another dozen less healthy ones, and those choices seem to get narrowed by the month. The situation is bad, real bad, and I admit that it is largely of my own making. When faced with a one-year-old who was not eating enough to make it above the 5th percentile in weight (and who later dropped down below the 1st percentile), I began to offer, let us say, more palatable choices. Like deli lunchmeats instead of unprocessed chicken & beef. Like crackers instead of whole grain bread. Like cheddar bunnies (the organic version of goldfish) and juice for an on-the-go snack instead of apple slices and water. Each little slip into less healthy territory added up, though, and now Aurora won’t eat anything but those more processed choices.

I think the worst part is that she simply won’t try anything new, or new in the past few months. Even though she ate fresh blueberries by the bucket last summer when they were in season, as well as cantaloupe, cherries, peaches, and a bunch of other delicious fruits, they are all met with lips clamped shut this summer. Brian and I shared the most awesome cantaloupe a few nights ago, and Aurora wouldn’t even put one tiny bite in her mouth. She used to pick and eat cherry tomatoes off our neighbour’s bushes last summer, too (of course I split them in half for choking prevention). I understood that maybe the fruit was less desirable once it was out of season, but now that everything’s delicious again, I can’t get her to give it another shot. And that’s just the fruit. Vegetables are even worse.

We’ve tried bribery and rewards to get her to try things, but according to all the experts that’s a good way to develop an eating disorder later in life. We’ve tried eating healthy foods in front of her and demonstrably enjoying them. My newest (and most painful) tactic is to serve only fresh fruit and yogurt for dessert. So far, this option has been met with hysterical cries of, “Where’s the REAL dessert?!?” Trying to limit her juice intake to only 1/2 cup per day, diluted with water, has resulted in constipation and dehydration when we rigidly stick to it.

So, until I hear any better ideas, I will try to be strong, and take the healthy path. According to the book my doctor recommended, I’m supposed to offer Aurora a variety of healthy choices at each meal and put absolutely no pressure on her to eat any of it. If she doesn’t eat it, just offer it again, and again, and again (they say it can take a lot of exposure to a new food before a child is willing to accept it). It certainly wouldn’t hurt me to cut junk food out for a while. I’ve heard that it takes three weeks to start a new habit or break an old one, so wish me luck for the next two and a half weeks!

In the ongoing nature-nurture discussion, Aurora has once again made it clear that she is her own person, not impressed by my careful and steadfast encouragement of musical interests. For almost two years now, we’ve been attending a weekly music class at various community centres near our house, taught by the inimitable Barbara Duncan. I love it, and look forward to it every week. Barbara gears the songs, rhymes, and fingerplays to the various age groups she teaches. Most of the kids seem to love it, and they jump up with glee to grab musical instruments (primarily percussion) for making a happy cacophany.

Most of the kids, that is, except Aurora. Some parts she really enjoys, like the insect number countdown (you jump up and grab a plastic bug from the line when Barbara calls your name), the caterpillar puppet who turns into a butterfly, and “Monkey See, Monkey Do.” Other parts of class annoy the heck out of her, like when Barbara pulls out the guitar and all the kids are able to cut lose with their drums, triangles, bells, and maracas. She really doesn’t like “Zoom, Zoom, Zoom,” either. I had various excuses and rationalizations for Aurora’s negative, fussy behaviour during some parts of the class, like shyness, unwillingness to perform in front of others, and so on. I still thought she was getting something out of it, though.

Then three weeks ago, after another temper tantrum halfway through class, she finally let me have it in language I could understand. “I don’t like it, Mommy. It’s TOO LOUD!” Well, okay then. I didn’t want to just skip the last two weeks of class, particularly because Aurora seems to mostly enjoy the first half of it, so I talked to Barbara about it. She kindly offered to extend the puppet and finger play part of the class and soften the music (and hold back the drums) for the last two classes of the session. Aurora managed to hold on until the end.

Music is such an important part of my life, and so integral to my daily happiness, that it’s going to be a real challenge to find a way to compromise with someone who covers my mouth when I sing (and has since she was a baby), and complains when I turn on the radio that she “doesn’t like that song,” whether it’s Classical, Rock, Folk, or Showtunes. I really had no idea that this sort of thing was genetic. I thought that if I introduced music, and plenty of it, from a very young age, that she would take to it like a fish to water. I’m not complaining, I’m just surprised. I guess it makes me appreciate even more the good luck I have in having a child who loves to read, playact, tell jokes and stories, make art, and build things. She’s a wonder, and I love her, but she is definitely her own person.

My friend Judith and I are both big fans of Cocoa Camino chocolate. It’s fair trade, organic, and a Canadian company; what’s not to love? Unfortunately, it’s a bit pricey, but if you’re not my Dad and you can tell the difference between Hershey and the good stuff, you might be willing to pay a premium. So when Judith asked her hubby to pick her up a bar of fair trade, Cocoa Camino dark chocolate at Choices, the cute little organic grocery store near my house last week, and he came home with a non-fair-trade, Green & Black’s ginger chocolate bar, she didn’t know what to make of it. She asked me to taste it, and my response was, “Why would you do this to good chocolate?” Aurora, on the other hand, loved it. She couldn’t get enough of the stuff, so Judith sent her home with a good portion of the bar, to be doled out, square by square, by us parents when dinners are fully eaten.

Most nights I can handle the making of the dinners, the supervision of the kid’s dinner, the getting ready for bath & bed, etc. by the time Daddy gets home, but the other night I was in over my head, and I didn’t actually see Aurora ingest the chocolate I’d given her for dessert. Then Daddy gets home and he’s doing the bedtime stories and toothbrushing, and Aurora is complaining that she didn’t get her dessert – that she wants some chocolate. I got stern and said, “You’ve already had your chocolate. You’re not getting any more.” As Daddy was putting Aurora in bed she repeats that she wants her dessert. Most of the time this is kid code for, “I’m still hungry and if you don’t feed me more I’ll wake you up at 2:30 a.m. with bloodcurdling screams.” So for an extra hour Daddy sits with her and makes her eat a bagel with cream cheese. When she’s most of the way through the bagel I notice, as I’m straightening up, two tiny squares of chocolate sitting on the very edge of the kitchen island. Oh dear. Guilty parent sheepishly admits to child that yes, you were right, you really didn’t eat your dessert, and here it is. Sigh. Bedtime has been getting later and later with the lengthening of the days, but we can chalk that one up to Mommy’s mistake. Aurora has no hard feelings, though, and graciously offered to share her chocolate with Mommy.

Thanks, but no thanks, sweetheart. That chocolate is UCKY!

Sometimes it’s like a switch clicks in my head, and all of a sudden everything I was interested in yesterday is old hat, and I have a new obsession. For me, a few days ago, I suddenly began to see my house through the eyes of someone who actually cares about dust and grime, and I couldn’t stop cleaning for a couple of days. Yuck! How could I live like this?

But this blog is not really about me. However, I do seem to have a child who, like me, jumps from obsession to obsession. Do you remember the Olympics Guys? She barely ever mentions them now, even though they were best buddies for most of February and March. Now she’s into two things: Puzzles and Buzz Lightyear. Two weeks ago I took Aurora to the Family Centre, and looking around at the shelves, discovered a stack of 24-piece jigsaw puzzles that we had yet to try. Aurora’s not (or so I thought) a puzzle person; she’s never really shown much interest in the wooden toddler puzzles. Jigsaw puzzles, on the other hand, are super-cool. She was so excited about the two at the Family Centre that we stopped at a second-hand store on the way home and bought two Disney puzzles for home. After doing each one several times a day, and then moving on to the Dr. Seuss puzzles I’d put away for a rainy day, I knew she was ready to step up her game. I found a set of eight puzzles for $24, half of which are 100-piece puzzles. She needs more help with those, but they’re also more interesting for Mommy and Daddy, so we don’t mind.

The other obsession, with Buzz Lightyear, just started a couple of days ago. We were reading an old story about Buzz going to school with Andy for show-and-tell (for those of you who haven’t seen a kid’s movie in the past 20 years, Buzz is a space ranger toy, one of the heroes of the movie Toy Story). She wanted to see more of him, but that was our only story about him, so I showed her the clip from the movie where he proves to (most of) the other toys that he can really fly. From that moment on, she was Buzz Lightyear. Wearing a Lightning McQueen t-shirt that day, she told me that she was Buzz, dressed up as McQueen. Later on, with a pair of tiger ears and tail on, she said that Buzz was wearing a Tigger costume. Here’s a picture of Buzz on the way to get her haircut:

And Buzz’s “after” photo:

Now Buzz can fly even faster, because she doesn’t have to stop all the time to brush her hair out of her eyes and mouth (and Mommy can kiss the fuzz on the back of her neck again). She was so good at the hair salon that I got her a collection of Toy Story stories afterwards at the bookstore. Lucky me, I get to be Woody the cowboy. Hopefully Daddy doesn’t mind being Hamm, the piggy bank!

Disneyland is kind of a big thing in my (Nestor) family. It’s like hockey for many Canadian families; we discuss things like E tickets, annual pass benefits, and the best way to get from Space Mountain to Pirates of the Caribbean during a parade. We know all the songs from now-defunct rides like America Sings and The Bear Country Jamboree, and my uncle hired Billy Hill and the Hillbillies (Frontierland’s live music group) to play at his wedding. I used to have a season pass when I was in school, and even now I could probably draw you a better freehand map from memory of Disneyland than Canada or the States. Plus, it’s especially cool that my sister-in-law works there, and can get us in for free when we come to visit.

So it’s incredibly funny to me that Aurora, whose last trip there was last December, really remembers only one thing about the place. Not Minnie’s House, which we visited after posing with her for pictures, or Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, or even the rockets, her first ride that day. What Aurora remembers with crystal clarity is that she was not tall enough to go on the bumper cars (Tuck-and-Roll’s Drive ‘Em Buggies) in Disneyland’s California Adventure theme park. She brings it up on a weekly basis. The conversation goes something like this: “When you’re bigger, you’ll be able to (read, ride a bike, use a toilet, etc.).” “And go on the bumper cars? Right? The BUMPER CARS?” Everything else has faded, but those bug-shaped bumper cars that she was too little to ride have grown to inhabit an enormous fraction of her long-term memory. She’s never even been on bumper cars before, and has no idea how idiotic and jarring they are, or that she still won’t be tall enough to make them go, even if she does get to sit in one. I harbored a terrible fear that she might not grow enough between now and our next visit to enable the expected ride. Would I have to buy her platform shoes?

Today, however, I decided to look it up. The Internet is a wonderful thing. I now know that the required height is 36″ (91 cm), and being 35 inches tall right now, Aurora will certainly be tall enough when our next trip to SoCal occurs, in December. Thank Diz.

(Insert Aurora here…)

1. When she’s willing to hug you, she grips her arms around you with all her might.

2. She gets excited reading house numbers.

3. She sleeps 11 hours straight at night, about 90% of the time.

4. She tells her stuffed animals stories during “Quiet Time”.

5. Those eyes – unbelievable.

6. Her laugh is even better.

7. She only wants to be the most exciting characters, but she always lets me be the princess.

8. When Daddy tells me I’ve made a mistake, she hugs me and tells me I did great.

9. We could both spend hours reading each day if other stuff didn’t get in the way.

10. She’s naturally cautious, but once she deems it’s okay, she jumps right in.

11. Life with her just keeps getting better and better and better.