Fordham Miller Fare

attempts at routine

in an attempt to serve varied, nutritious and regular meals (and also to enjoy the process of preparing food for the family), the day before yesterday i made zucchini bread, carrot ginger soup, and tomato onion cheddar quiche.  for the kids benefit, i made little quichettes, consisting of only the egg custard mixture and cheese.  oh, and i made the crust from scratch.

when morgan came to the table, he dissolved into tears at the sight of his dinner.  keep in mind, this child currently survives on the following staples: (whole wheat) bread & butter, bananas, yogurt, and some breakfast cereals.  now, i made the quichettes knowing that both of my kids like eggs, and cheese, and bread/crust.  i tried very hard to convince morgan that the zucchini bread was really like cake (and really, it is), and that the quichette is just eggs and cheese.  i did not even TRY to serve him the soup.  he refused the eggs outright, and told me the zucchini bread, which is made with cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and cardamon, smelled like zucchini.  what the heck does zucchini smell like, anyway?  the meal ended with morgan eating a piece of bread and butter, and me barely holding back-- okay, not holding back -- my fury at his refusal to even TASTE the eggs and zucchini bread.  madeleine, i'm happy to report, love the quichette, and zucchini bread; she tasted the carrot soup and gave it a thumbs down, but she did try it and remarked that it seemed "interesting" in color and smell.

i know i shouldn't engage in power struggles over food, but i'm at a loss at what to do with this child who wants to eat bananas and yogurt 3 meals a day.  i truly don't care if he won't EAT what i make, but the fact that he won't even TRY it is what gets to me.  i know he has some serious super-taster/texture issues going on, but it's hard to get excited about cooking and serving food to your kids when one of them (and sometimes both) reject just about everything, even things they've previously eaten and enjoyed.

yesterday morning, it was madeleine's turn.  while she has become a very game eater, and expresses a lot of interest in the health value of foods, getting her dressed these last couple of days has been complete torture.  madeleine is one of those "it doesn't feel good" kids.  when she was a toddler, putting on a coat which caused her sleeves to bunch up was a regular meltdown experience.  i had to buy her shoes a size too big in order for us both to cope.  but the strange thing is, this sensitivity seems to wax and wane.  i would have thought that we were gradually outgrowing it, but this week has seen the "princess and the pea" return with a vengance.  suddenly, the clothes she's been wearing for the past 6 months don't feel good (and it's not because they're too small).  nothing feels good, and she turns into an inconsolable and rather nasty puddle of despair.  this shirt is too long, this skirt bunches up when i sit, this waistband doesn't feel good.  we managed to work through some hysteria over her sneakers, which are relatively new and which she had worn for several weeks without complaint, but the rest of it is going full steam.  good god, i can't imagine what it's going to be like when she's a teenager, and has adult size wardrobe crises.

yesterday she had her first ballet class, where they are very particular about the uniform.  we needed a blue leotard, and the one she had she had outgrown, but just barely.  still, the tears and the trauma came again.  i got her into a looser fit black outfit, but when we arrived at class and she saw the eight other girls in blue capezio leotards, she became despondent again.  the director managed to find us a blue one in roughly her size, but it was only a minute before i heard her sobs coming from behind the bathroom door.  we managed to pull it off after i cut out the tags, but i thought "if i have to endure much more of this i'm going to go mad."

today was better.  she dressed herself in a skirt and shirt without a tear, and only got my ire up when she went into a screaming rage at her little brother over the "theft" of the swing she had been using.  tonight at dinner, i served whole wheat spaghetti, Ian's fish sticks, and peas.  neither child cried.  i did not raise my voice.  maddy started off with an "i lost my appetite" speech after one look at her plate, but bucked up and ate both fishsticks plus her pasta plus a copious amount of peas.  morgan whimpered at the fish sticks, proceeded to peel the breading off of them and eat what remained, ate about 3 strands of spaghetti, and ignored his 5 peas.

on an unrelated note, just before dinner maddy was doing a ginsberg-esque chant with the aid of a tamborine, while morgan provided the interpretive dance segment.

what is cool?

i seem to have fallen off the blog horse a while back, and have been trying to think of a way to get back in the saddle again.  luckily amy seems to have had this same problem, and since her return-to-posting post was on the subject of cool, i figured i'd make it easy for myself and throw in a variation on a theme, namely, why i am un-cool.

it recently came to my attention, through my university of wisconsin alumni mag, that in my college days i apparently hit on a Black Eyed Pea -- albeit quite unsuccessfully, and therefore evidence to my status of uncool.  now, i know what you're thinking -- i hit on one of these guys?  that's pretty cool.  no, no, no.  i actually hit on one of the founders of the black eyed peas.  to be more specific, this guy (bottom left).*  and to add more fuel to the uncool fire, i can't really explain to you why these guys are who you find when you image-search for the Black Eyed Peas, while the guy in question was one of the group's founders** but appears to be pictured nowhere else on the web.  i only know what my wisconsin alumni mag told me, and that a name like mike fratantuno is hard to forget, especially when he makes the point of telling you that it's actually michelangelo guiseppe frantantuno the third, which is why i remember it sixteen years later.

also, do you remember my blue uggs?  and how lots of people gave me compliments on them, which had me thinking they were cool, when really i thought they were the epitome of uncool?  well, phew for me, because they ARE uncool.  in fact, i was reading this article about lindsay lohan in W magazine, i think, and her agent or somebody was recollecting back to a time when lindsay just HAD to have those cornflower blue boots -- and yes, that meant it had to be at least two years ago, because she wouldn't go anywhere NEAR them now.

now this next one may be uncool, or it may just be being middle-aged, or being a parent, but i am seriously considering ebaying my 20gig ipod that i won (i won!) from verizon, and which remains in its factory sealed box, in order to get the funds to pay for a SANDBOX for my kids.

finally, how cool would you feel if you knew that some stranger who searched on ask.com for "how to make unwashed hair look clean" had your blog as their third hit?  hmmmmm?  i rest my case.

*which should in no way deflect from Mr. Fratantuno's coolness -- in fact, he is clearly quite cool, what with penning a grammy-award winning song and all.  it's just to say that he doesn't LOOK as cool as those other guys that you see in all the promo pictures.

** should you doubt me: "As founding members of one of music’s most creative and unique groups, the Black Eyed Peas, Terence Yoshiaki, Brian Lapin and Mike Fratantuno helped to define a groundbreaking sound and vision for the multi-platinum selling recording artists."  QUOTE FOUND here

these boots were made for walkin'

i have owned these boots for about a month and a half now.  i have received 5 compliments on them in that time.  i have probably received less than 5 compliments on any part of my dress in the last 15 years.  and i have to say, i'm stumped.

i fell in love with Ugg boots when i tried some on up at my dad's house.  i managed to find a pair (they only came in brown back then) at a tag sale in the summer of 1998.  there was a small hole in the toe of one boot, but other than that they were hardly used.  i paid $5.  i lived in them each winter thereafter, getting around the toe hole problem by wearing them with smartwool socks (the best wool socks ever created).  then last year, they started to get a little...sweaty.  and cold.  oh, and there were all these new colors out there.  and i fell in love with blue.  so out with the old, in with the new.

yes, there was that whole jennifer lopez pink Uggs craze that touched off everybody wearing them.  but i just can't get how these boots are so eye catching, to TOTAL STRANGERS even.  because these boots are NOT fashionable.  i mean, really.  look at them.  they are big and formless, warm and comfortable -- utterly, utterly practical.  i mean, isn't that the antithesis of fashion?