In between writings...

It's been a little while since I've been able to craft my next entry. But in the meantime, check out my brilliant (and, of course, adorable) kid. She's not even 3 years old yet.

Food Management 101

A family home should be a place where all members can find satisfaction for their most important personal needs (shelter, nutrition, love, and safety).  When people get together to form a family (whether it’s two adults who get married and have children, a single parent plus children, or even a childless couple), certain roles are established in order to meet those needs.  Often, those roles are looked at strictly in terms of “tasks” or “chores” (someone takes out the garbage, someone washes the dishes, someone does laundry, someone brings money home, etc.) that are performed by one or more family members.  Over time, these tasks coalesce into a “role.”  One role that is often overlooked but totally indispensible to a household is that of the food manager.

A food manager is more than simply “the one who does the cooking.”  They are the food preparer, the family shopper, the dietician, the storage manager, and more…all rolled into one lengthy job description.  Moreover, the term “manager” is apt, due to the opportunities to delegate work to other family members (most of whom are happy to help out with something simple, like washing the vegetables, rather than be asked to prepare a full-on meal).  The food manager may start out as simply “the cook” (in my household, this is me…and it was one of the big “selling points” that helped to attract my wife in the first place), but inevitably, this cook will voluntarily take care of the grocery shopping and plan for the use and storage of leftovers.  Is it because they want more work?  Of course not.  They’ll do it because “no one else does it right.”

As with any job, the more you learn about it, the more work it sounds like.  Fortunately, once the role is embraced and fulfilled, the food manager learns short cuts and can trim the work down to a matter of mere hours per week.  The rewards are intangible…and formidable.  I get a genuinely strong feeling of satisfaction from knowing that I am not only pleasing my family’s taste buds but caring for their nutritional needs and keeping expenses minimal.  If you live in a home where no one has stepped up to accept this role, then consider the following as a checklist of qualities that such a person should possess.  If you have these qualities, then perhaps you will embrace such a managerial position in your own home. 

A food manager must have medium-term vision (which would fall somewhere in between “short-term” and “long-term”).  Planning out meals for months at a time is impractical and unnecessary.  On the other end of the spectrum, only considering the next meal in front of you is too short-sighted.  A good food manager thinks at least a few days in advance.  This evening’s dinner is obviously most important, but how will it impact tomorrow’s meals?  Will there be leftovers that can be used (perhaps even re-packaged) for the next day?  What (in the name of variety) will the next night’s dinner include?  If you are going to make a nice London broil steak tonight, it would be good to know that you can slice it up nice and thin for sandwiches (or tidbits, if you have some cheese) for tomorrow’s lunch.  You would also want to plan a different main course for dinner the next night (i.e. poultry or fish) for variety’s sake.

Another quality of a food manager is frugality, with both money and time.  I will admit to being conscientious of the family spending, though I don’t think I could be described as “cheap” (some little splurges now and then are just downright necessary).  I buy generic brands whenever possible.  I try to follow the supermarket circulars to keep up on sales.  If that night’s menu requires a green vegetable, I’ll choose between broccoli, cabbage, green beans, etc., based on what is on sale.

Of course, there are many frugal foodies who swear by the savings of coupon-clipping.  While I commend their vigilance, this behavior conflicts with the “time frugality” mentioned above.  With three young children in the house, I don’t have much time to spare…especially for the small savings that each coupon may yield.  Another factor in the decision of what meal to make is how much preparation time it takes.  I have a bank of meals that I use in rotation…some of which take only 10-15 minutes to prepare, some that take about 30 minutes, some that take 45-60 minutes, etc.  If errands need to be run that day, I may not get home until after 5pm (time for a 15 minute meal).  If a recipe has more than eight steps or requires more than two hours of work, I don’t even bother with it.

Of course, the nutritional needs of the entire family are of highest importance to the food manager.  In today’s bustling on-the-go culture, most people (when left to their own devices) would prefer to just buy a quick meal, which is seldom the healthiest option (pizza, burger, etc.).  And even when we do eat at home, it needs to be fast and convenient.  As a result, a sandwich is usually rounded out with some potato chips or pretzels---instead of a green salad.  When my wife comes home for lunch, I always have a salad ready (and I feel good knowing that I have snuck some vitamins and nutrients into her body that she otherwise wouldn’t have had).

I’m not a nutritional expert, but a good approach is for every meal to consist of some amount of protein, starch, and fruit/vegetable.  With this approach in mind, putting a meal together becomes almost like a puzzle.  Need a meat?  Choose from beef, chicken, fish, turkey, or tofu.  Got it?  Now what starch will complement it?  Rice?  Potato (baked, roasted, mashed)?  Pasta?  Okay, time for a vegetable…lots of green choices.  Want a fourth course?  Pot luck choice! 

Another component of meeting nutritional needs is to accommodate allergies and preferences (which, for a toddler, is often referred to as “fussy eater syndrome”).  My oldest daughter is allergic to dairy and soy, which cuts out a lot more than you’d think (seems like 90% of baby or toddler prepared meals and snacks are just a delivery device for cheese).  Of course, she’s also in a fussy eater phase, which makes it even more challenging.  My wife has no allergies but some difficulty with foods of various textures.  And it’s just a matter of months before my twins are off breast milk and in my nutritional jurisdiction.  The food manager keeps all this information in their mental rolodex (which comes in especially handy when visiting family or friends who are preparing food…or going to restaurants).

The food manager also utilizes various techniques for extending food shelf life.  We all have had the experience of buying something at the supermarket (likely because it was on sale), bringing it home, and then watching it turn brown in the fridge over the next week before throwing it away.  Apart from the monetary cost, the waste of healthy edible food should never be taken lightly---as long as there are still people who go to sleep hungry every night.  Most meats and many fruits and vegetables (the most perishable items in your refrigerator) can be frozen and still be quite tasty for up to six months.  See the excellent “Frozen Cache” episode of Good Eats (with Alton Brown) on The Food Network for some good tips.

I find it funny that every family has one person who takes responsibility for throwing food away that has gone bad in the fridge (all the while complaining about being able to “feed the starving people of the world with all the food we throw away around here!”).  Only the experienced food manager can minimize this problem by keeping track of what containers and plastic bags in the refrigerator contain food that is one, two, or three days old.  My wife playfully teases me for that twinkle in my eye when we “use stuff up” from the fridge…sparing some perfectly good food from an unfortunate fate in the refuse.

I realize that I’m not creating a new job with this analysis as much as highlighting the existence of it.  For the stay-at-home parent (mom or dad) especially, it’s important to recognize and value the specific contributions that you make for the family.  Sure, you’re “raising your kids” which everyone takes a moment to remind you is a wonderful thing.  But that’s a continuous process with no real beginning or end (since one day bleeds into the next in a continuous feeding-changing-playing-teaching-singing-television-reading routine).  It’s nice (and I think downright necessary) to validate your contributions to the family in satisfying some of the basic necessities of life.  Yes, if you didn’t do it, someone else would.  But would they do it as well as you?

Regression (Not Fair!)

“It’s not fair!”

Bet you think I’m quoting my toddler, don’t you?  Perhaps she was complaining about not getting a cookie or toy that she wanted?  Nope, that was me.  I actually found myself voicing this lament, using the same inflection that a pouting child would use when they just can’t understand why things aren’t going their way.

As we reach adulthood, most of us learn to accept disappointments, inconveniences, and even losses with a bit more dignity.  We bite our tongues, roll our eyes, and think “oh well.”  We keep quiet in the moment and wait to vent about the problem to a close friend or spouse later that night. 

When an adult isn’t able to find a dignified, reserved way to express their frustrations, they are said to be emotionally immature or stunted.  When someone who previously demonstrated that dignity and reserve only to suddenly lose it, it’s called “regression.”

One day’s worth of sleep deprivation won’t do it.  I’m not too far removed from my late night party days, so I’m no stranger to a night without sleep.  But when you go more than a couple of days in a row with only 2-3 hours of sleep (experienced in the form of 20-30 minute naps) and you look into your future and don’t see any sign of that changing, that’s when regression can set in.

When one is in the middle of one of those nights, there’s a thought that repeats throughout the night in a 5 second loop in one’s brain: “It’s not fair!”  It’s an irrational thought since the newborns causing the situation sure aren’t planning to make the adults’ lives difficult (they wait until they’re toddlers to do that deliberately).  But in that moment, you just want to yell and scream back at the person who’s causing this unfair situation.

How old was I when I stopped saying such things?  “It’s not fair!” is something you say on the playground when another kid gets to go down the slide before you.  It’s something you say when your junior high school teacher makes you stay after school for detention…when the kid who started the trouble skips out unpunished.  But once you’re in college and have a career, you learn to stop voicing that thought aloud.  Yes, there is unfairness in life on a daily basis, but we learn to stomach through it…with some faith that the scales will balance out.

We learn to deal with a 25 minute wait “on hold” when calling customer service.  We learn to wince through the pain when the nurse takes our blood.  We learn to put up with ignorant people at work…or some genius ahead of you on line at the store arguing about an expired 75 cent coupon.  Ultimately, it’s because we know that each of these unpleasant experiences will end eventually, and we’ll be able to just go home, go to sleep, and then start over fresh.

However, there’s no “going home” from this experience.  Especially when nearly every evening follows a pattern of:

·         Tucking the toddler into bed,

·         Joining the wife in bottle-feeding the twins,

·         Re-tucking the toddler into bed…after she has come walking and moaning out of the bedroom for one of us to lie down with her,

·         Playing the pop-the-pacifier-back-in-the-mouth game for the next hour until it’s time to feed again,

·         Managing to finally get onto the computer to check social media, news, messages,

·         Running back into the twins’ room to try to stop one of them from screaming loud enough to wake the other one,

·         Picking up the other one when she does eventually get awakened after 10 minutes of full throated screaming from the first one,

·         Going to sleep,

·         Waking up 45 minutes later in order to have any one of the above-listed items happen again.

It feels like you are pushing that boulder up the hill in hell, and when you lose that sense of reaching a finish line, you start to regress back to childhood.

The reason why children make such a fuss when something happens that they don’t like (or something they would categorize as “not fair”), is that they think that the pain will go on forever.  They haven’t learned to be patient and endure the unpleasantness; it’s a lesson that can only be learned with age and experience.  Of course, an experience of exasperation and exhaustion can eliminate that endurance in any adult.

You’d think it would take a lot to strip away all that composure and finesse that you’ve been developing throughout your adult years.  Turns out, all you need is a few nights without REM sleep.

WTHDTH?

I recently went to the supermarket to pick up the following items:

1.      Breast milk storage bags

2.      Beer

3.      Cheese

4.      Sanitary napkins

Now, I’ll bet that most guys reading this are glaring at that last one (or even the first one) and saying, “No way, man…my wife can buy that stuff herself…no way I’m walking up to the register with those things.”  My wife actually offers to make a separate trip to the store to spare me from having to buy them.  But here’s the freaky part: I really don’t care.  I have absolutely no awkward feelings about being seen in a store buying feminine hygiene products.

I’d bet that, even into my late 20’s, I would have cringed at a girlfriend saying, “Would you mind picking me up some pads?”  I don’t know when this change occurred.  Maybe it just came naturally after a few years of marriage (no longer being concerned with trying to impress other women or portray masculinity to other men in public encounters), or if being a parent of a toddler and newborn twins nudged it along (especially when going out on errands; I’m usually just too damned tired to care what people think).  In a brief moment of clarity, I recognized a personal growth, a change in my personality…all while standing on line holding a box of maxi-pads.

I stopped myself and thought, “When the hell did that happen?” (WTHDTH?---I’m hoping to have now coined a new LMAO or WTF type abbreviation.)  A moment of WTHDTH is when you realize a personal change that happened so subtly that you can only observe it after the fact.

Another moment like this occurred while driving when I noticed that I always come to a complete stop at signs and red lights.  I’ve always been a pretty good driver (in twenty years of driving, I can count my total accidents and moving violations on one hand).  But who among us hasn’t done the “California stop” at some (if not all) intersections?  Who hasn’t raced up to a light that just turned red to make a right turn (without the expected full stop first)?  I know that I can’t prevent any and all traffic accidents, but I don’t want to have any regrets about what I could have done but didn’t behind the wheel when I’m responsible for the safe transport of my wife and daughters.

Most of my other examples of WTHDTH moments revolve around my daughter.  She comes out with new sentences or expressions every other day it seems---leading me to wonder when the hell she started doing that.  This is, I believe, where the concept becomes universal.  Every parent can relate to thinking, “When did my child start doing that?”  And therein lies the message: whether you acknowledge the change in your own personality (hopefully, a change resembling growth) or in your child’s, these moments are worth fully absorbing.

A quote from the late John Hughes (through the voice of Ferris Bueller) brings appropriate closure to this lesson.  “Life moves pretty fast.  If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Friendship Evolution

The older I get, the more I value my close friendships.  I am fortunate to have several guy friends---many of whom I’ve known since school age---achieve the level of “honorary brother.”  Another categorical description might be “people who you call in the middle of the night when you need someone to post bail,” (no, I’ve never been arrested, but it’s good to have a few of these on retainer).

I do subscribe to the idea that your spouse should be your best friend and am happy to report that it’s true in my case.  Fortunately, the addition of my wife has not caused me to sacrifice my longtime friends.  Since I didn’t get married until my mid-thirties, most of my life’s big events have centered on good times spent with these people (New Year’s Eves, camping trips, concerts, etc.).  I must admit, though, that marriage and fatherhood has created an important period of change in my relationships with them.

Crossing the Threshold

It’s a common experience among men that when one of us gets married, the remaining single guys lament, “Oh well, we’ve lost another one.”  I remember being among those “remaining” single guys…and seeing even less of those married guys when children entered the picture.

Of course, I promised myself that this would never happen to me…that when I eventually got married and had kids, I would do a better job of maintaining my friendships than my predecessors had (naïve, right?).  I am in my fourth year of marriage, third year of parenthood, and first year of having multiple kids.  And I see the landscape of my friendships changing.

Sure, the wedding itself (and, of course, the bachelor party) was an awesome time to share with those closest to me (family and friends).  It’s sadly ironic that I can now pop on my wedding video and see old friends that I’ve only seen once or twice since that day.  They were important enough to me to invite them to my wedding, right?  So where are they now?

Now that I have crossed the threshold of marriage, I recognize some tangible reasons why I don’t see my single and/or childless friends as much as I once did:

·         My interest in hanging out at bars has diminished – Why does anyone pay $7/beer at a bar when they can buy a six-pack for the same money?  The answer is: you can’t meet women by drinking alone in your home.  But once you’re not looking to find a date, going to the bar makes less and less sense to me (unless there’s karaoke).

·         My childless friends aren’t that interested in hanging out at my house – I’ve moved a little further away, but distance isn’t the biggest barrier.  When you come to my house, all activities revolve around the children.  This won’t always be the case (when the kids are older, they’ll be able to play with less supervision), but there’s no escaping it right now.  It’s hard to hang out when you have to keep the volume down, drink less, censor your conversation topics, etc.

·         Conversation with them isn’t as fluid – A good friend is someone with whom you have natural rapport; talk just flows naturally.  But right now, my kids take up about 70% of my brain activity, and I don’t want to be one of “those people” who talk about nothing but their kids (regardless of how adorable and wonderful they are).  My single friends do make a conscious point to ask how the wife and kids are, but I don’t want to overwhelm the conversation with that stuff.

·         I can’t party as late as I used to – I’m just damn tired most of the time.  These late-night feedings are kicking my behind…and that’s combined with a toddler who doesn’t want to go to sleep and can’t wake up early enough; therefore, I walk around like a semi-lucid zombie most of the time.  So even when I can find a night to go out and hang with the guys, I start to over-ripen by about 12-1am.  

·         Neither my friends nor I are big “phone-chatty” people – To me, the phone is for making plans.  I don’t like spending a half hour on the phone “catching up” with people.  And even if I was a long phone call kind of guy, who can devote 30 minutes to a phone call anymore?

My Married with Children Cohorts

The above reasons have made maintaining friendships with much of the old crowd a lot harder.  Subtract get-togethers and phone calls from the relationship, and all of a sudden, someone who was a weekly fixture in your life becomes someone you may run into only twice a year.  Fortunately, not all of my old close friends are in that group.

I was very lucky to have several of my best friends become coupled up, get married, and have their first children within a year of when I did.  All the wives get along well (a luxury, to be sure), and now, our group of friends has the added benefit of providing our children with their own first friends.  Our regular late-night parties have simply morphed into family friendly sleepovers or fresh air excursions.

These changes have done nothing but enrich my life.  It’s nice to have other guys I know who are going through the same things at about the same time.  If one of my friends has an argument with his wife, I can be a more helpful sounding board.  When I found out that my oldest daughter had allergies, it was just in time for me to advise a friend on seeing a pediatric allergist for his son.  One of my other friends recently had his second son, so I’ll have a confidant in the More Than One Kid Club.

(Abbreviated) Tale of Two Friendships

One of my best friends, Ralph, is someone who I’ve known since elementary school.  A lot of my childhood memories (playing video games, Boy Scout camping trips, coping with bullies, etc.) include him.  In elementary and middle school, we’d go to the arcade together, get pizza after school, hang out at each other’s houses until one of our moms would drive us home, normal kid stuff.  We were close friends through high school when we began to drift apart, moving with different crowds.  Our story could have ended there, as so many childhood friendships become little more than wistful, nostalgic memories.

Thankfully, we reconnected when I got back from college.  It was a chance encounter at a party that, surprisingly, rekindled our friendship.  We were back to having regular phone calls and chances to hang out---doing more adult things, but maintaining that childhood element of fun.  I then realized that strong friendships can be built on something as simple as common history (there are very few people who have known me as well or for as long).  There’s a great comfort in hanging out with someone when there is no pretense, no planning necessary.

Through Ralph, I got to meet someone who became another close friend.  I agreed to manage his band for a couple of years, and I got to know the other guys in the group.  Carlos, the band’s founder, seemed genuinely appreciative of my efforts to organize and promote the band, and we also had similar senses of humor.  Ralph and Carlos had a natural rapport (with some good-natured bickering thrown in) that I felt very comfortable with as well.  Carlos eventually went from being just a “friend of a friend” to being someone I invited to be part of my wedding party (joining only four other guys who I had known for many years longer).

Now here’s where the paths diverge.

Carlos got married and had his first child within the same year as me.  Ralph, though he has been in a committed relationship for several years, is still living the no-child lifestyle that I had long enjoyed (but peacefully said goodbye to).  Now, it’s unusual for a week to go by without talking to or seeing Carlos and his family (if only through the endless cycle of kids’ birthday parties).  Ralph, on the other hand, seems to be fading into the woodwork right now.

I don’t have anger about it, and I do not blame him for the situation.  When I was in that position, I was plenty guilty of losing track of friends who were married with kids. I can’t blame someone for having a job, a girlfriend, regular music gigs, and an active social life…any more than he could blame me for getting married and having kids.  The problem, as I see it, is that we became very used to having such an easygoing, effortless friendship.  But now, if we want to hold on to it, we will both need to make more effort.  And if the friendship is worth saving (which I think this is), then it will happen…eventually.

As a closing thought, I must acknowledge that all these observations are coming from a fairly new father.  When all of my kids are 8-10 years older (and reasonably self-sufficient), maybe my life will open back up again and allow more and differing opportunities for hanging out with the guys.  Will it go back to the way it was?  Will it be something entirely different?

Update

My newest entry has been over a week in coming but not for any lack of ideas.  When I first started this blog, I was a father of one with two on the way.  I now am a father of three girls, who I will refer to by the names of Sonia (my two year old), Ally and Beth (the newborn twins).

The reason for the delay after “Focus on the Small” is the lack of REM sleep.  I know it’s a cliché for people to joke about getting no sleep with babies in the house, but (a) it’s true, and (b) when you’re trying to write something meaningful, it’s a little hard to revise for coherence when you don’t have it in your head.  I’m lucky that my daughters don’t wake up crying or screaming, but since they are breast milk-fed, we’ve got to feed them every three hours.

It’s funny; when Sonia was born, I was still working full-time.  My wife was on leave from work, so she shielded me as much as possible from the late night feedings and changings (for which I was quite grateful).  In this house, we don’t cling to old-fashioned “woman” and “man” roles: we tend to look at all the tasks that need to get done and just try to divide them up equally and reasonably.  Of course, that even division leads to my current situation:

·         We’re both home full-time for the next couple of months

·         We have TWO newborn babies to care for this time

·         We also have a two year old who is insisting on plenty of attention

Therefore:

·         I haven’t gotten more than four straight hours of sleep in a while...

It has been a little frustrating (not getting to share my thoughts with my readers), but I’m trying not to push myself too hard.  As my wife reminded me, we’re still only in the first month, so it is going to get easier.

So thanks for reading my entries so far, and I look forward to sharing more with you this week.  If any of you would like to post a comment, please feel free.

Focus on the Small

My employment situation changed radically at about the same time I became a dad.  There wasn’t an A to B relationship; it just worked out that I became unemployed (or more accurately, underemployed) right when my wife finished her maternity leave.  In no way would I call this a “fortunate” turn of events, but I have learned to take something positive from the situation as it relates to my parenting.

Many men (including my own father) have commented on how they envy my opportunity to “be there” for my daughter in these important early years as she transforms from “baby” to “child.”  I appreciate their sentiment; however, my focus here is not on simply “quantity of time” spent with my child.  It’s about trying to live my life more in the moment, taking small amounts of satisfaction for a job well done…even for something rather minor in the “grand scheme of things.”

This sense of satisfaction stemming from day-to-day life was something I noticed even before fatherhood.  Here are a list of mundane, household tasks that give me this feeling of minor accomplishment:

·         Getting caught up on laundry

·         Monitoring online payment of monthly bills

·         Cooking a complete meal for guests (balanced nutrition, using fresh ingredients)

·         Completing a grocery shopping trip (seeing a fully stocked fridge and pantry)

I know what you’re thinking: nobody gets the Nobel Prize for Laundry Completion.  Or, to tap a more contemporary way of thinking: no one gets paid (at least, not very highly) for doing laundry…certainly not their own.  Likewise, I may be a better-than-average cook, but I’m nowhere near the level of a professional chef---so I’m not going to get paid for this talent anytime soon either.  We tend to only focus feelings of accomplishment on tasks or skills that produce MONEY.  As children, most of us were told that money wasn’t the most important thing in life…until we became old enough to get jobs.  But sometimes, it’s healthy to shine the old mental flashlight on things that make us feel good about ourselves that aren’t connected to taxable income.

Applying this concept to day-to-day child-raising is a natural fit.  If you are accustomed to thinking in terms of long-term goals, then you will often lose patience with your child (and your own experience with raising and teaching them).  At our jobs, we tend to think of “finish lines” (planning and executing a meeting or event, submitting a report, sending a company-wide e-mail, etc.).   With parenting, your child may pee on the potty one day and then soil themselves the next 3 days.  If you can let go of that disappointment (by expecting a few steps back for every step forward), then you can begin to enjoy the little moments of brilliance.

For example, my wife and I would like our daughter to learn to eat three meals a day.  Seems like a modest enough goal toward her socializing with other humans, right?  We’ve always made meal time clearly known (we try not to just put food out while she’s watching TV too often).  But of late, she has rebelled against dinner.  Not sure why…could be the kind of food (I can relate---it’s hard to top breakfast)…could be the darkness (thanks to the shortness of winter days)…could be that it’s a sign that bedtime isn’t far off.

So even though she, in the past, has eaten (and liked) all of the foods we offer, she has decided not to eat at dinner time.  A regression, to be sure.  However, my momentary flash of personal satisfaction came when I heard her say---after firmly waving away any meat, sweet potatoes, green veggies, etc.---“no food, no milk.”  This is the same sentence I would say as a threat (if she didn’t eat dinner, she could expect no treat later), and she had learned that it would be voiced when she chose not to eat.

Once I got past the frustration of her not eating, I had to smile at the fact that she at least understood the consequences of her actions.  She was taking a stand---perhaps even testing Mommy and Daddy’s resolve---and was perfectly willing to take her punishment.  Does she still ask for milk later in the evening?  Sure.  But when she gets the “no” answer, she doesn’t throw a fit…

Now is the lesson fully taught yet?  No…she still isn’t eating dinner.  But I can take some personal satisfaction of having given her a boundary and observing her respect it.

They don’t learn to walk every day.  But sometimes, it just feels good to get the laundry done.