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There was a nice area specifically for preschool age children, with fun activities, a little puppet theater and lots of things to crawl on and touch.

Jocelyn had a grand time, running around, staring at other kids, chatting up the other parents.

She probably would have stayed there until she ran out of steam completely, she had such a good time.  A great way to spend a rainy afternoon.

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Note: No real raccoons were hurt in the making of this video.

Spending quality couple time is a serious challenge when little ones come along, so when such an opportunity is arranged, the hopes are high.  Matthew and I hadn’t had a “date” in many, many months, so with the romantic holiday coming up, we thought it would be nice to get someone to watch Jocelyn and go out and do something together, an afternoon at the movies sounded nice.

If you’re making the effort and incurring the expense, you want to pick a movie that will benefit from a large screen showing.  Naturally we chose Avatar 3D.  About an hour into the movie, I started to feel unwell, my stomach was tying up in knots and my head was pounding.  I tried taking off the 3D glasses, not watching, but I had to leave the theater.  Now a movie ticket in Cali is crazy expensive, even a matinee, so I decided after a breather, to head back in to the show.  I didn’t watch much, didn’t put on the glasses, but after about another hour (it’s a long movie), I had to run out of the theater.  I’ll spare you the details, they weren’t pretty, and I think I scared a bunch of ladies in the restroom.  I couldn’t text Matthew because my phone was in my purse under the seat in the theater, along with my wallet and gum, which I so could have used at that point.  So I went and waited in the lobby, as long as I could before I was afraid Matthew might think I was dead and come looking for me, then I went back in for the last 10 minutes.  I don’t think I’ve ever been so glad to see credits roll in my life.

To Matthew’s credit, he kept suggesting we go, but I didn’t want to ruin our afternoon, I didn’t want to make him leave the first movie he’d gone out to in six months.  In the end, though, my determination to stick it out made things much worse.  If we’d left, we could have just enjoyed our afternoon together, instead of me praying to the porcelain gods and Matthew worrying about me.  I’ve suffered from minor motion sickness before, flying, windy roads, but never at the movies.  I’ve seen other movies in 3D, though none as motion-intense as Avatar.  Turns out the not wearing the glasses thing, which I thought would be helpful, probably made things worse, causing my brain to be even more confused by what it was seeing but not feeling.

When we got home, I did a bit of research.  Turns out a lot of people had similar reactions.  Motion sickness is a quirk of our anatomy, an unfortunate side effect of biology.  Kinetosis, or motion sickness, is caused when there is a disconnect between the stimulatory signals received by your brain.  When flying, your body feels you moving, but your eyes do not perceive the motion, confusing your noggin; in a 3D movie, it’s the opposite problem, your eyes tell your brain you’re flying through an alien world, but your inner ear is saying you’re simply sitting in a seat in a theater.   These conflicting inputs cause your body to conclude you are under the influence of a toxin; by vomiting you might be able to expel any toxin that’s still in your stomach before it affects you further.  Great for poisons in the jungle, not so great for 3D movies.

After our less than stellar attempt at romance, we spent the actual holiday doing family activities.  We took Jocelyn to the Little Farm at Tilden Park; she was interested, if a bit frightened of the strangers and huge animals.  Later in the day, we went to the tot park and pushed Jocelyn on the swings.  All my disappointment over our previous-day’s outing evaporated as she laughed with glee when flying through the air.  You see, baby smiles and laughter are addictive to parents, they stimulate the reward centers in your brain, much as drugs do.  So here it is, my own personal perfect drug.

P.S.  I hope you’ll forgive me for getting a little photoshop happy with the last image, I loved Jocelyn’s smile in it, but as she was moving, the focus was a bit blurry, I did some extreme sharpening and ended up with this, which I thought was pretty groovy.

Babies are notoriously difficult eaters, and yet you have to be either feeding them, cleaning up after feeding them, or preparing to feed them what feels like the vast majority of the time.  Now that Jocelyn’s a toddler with a mouth full of teeth, including a lot of molars, more solid foods are on the menu at our house.  Deciding on that menu may be giving me ulcers.  From one day to the next, there are very few things I can count on her to actually eat.  She never seems to refuse a cheese stick, but something she seemed to love and ate tons of one evening, she may turn her nose up at and refuse to even taste the next day.  Timing is important, if she’s tired, feeding her becomes a battle of wills, with Jocelyn’s apple-sauce coated hands ripping at her own hair and rubbing her face.  I know I should trust that when she’s hungry she’ll eat, but then we’re also told it’s important to keep to schedules and that we should offer meals and snacks at consistent times.  She reaches for anything on the table, if it’s not what you’re already trying to feed her, and is so intent on those other things, she refuses to eat.  Thus bringing multiple items for a meal is problematic, but running back to the kitchen three or four times during lunch doesn’t really work either.  The same principal seems to be at work when she’s drinking her milk; she’ll drink twice as much in the quiet darkness of the bedroom compared to sitting in the living-room or at the table.

She doesn’t really seem to like meat or fish, even soft and chopped into tiny pieces or mixed in with rice or veggies.  Potatoes are inexplicably detested; how can you hate potatoes?  She won’t touch them.  Some days she’ll scarf down eggs, other days she won’t allow them to touch her lips.  And suddenly during a meal she’ll go from eating something happily, to using her tongue to push the offending food out of her mouth, making as big a mess as possible in the process.

Fundamentally, feeding our children is one of the most important jobs we have as parents.  When a child won’t eat not only is it frustrating, it’s worrying.  Last week Jocelyn was sick, and though she had other symptoms, it was the refusal of food for two days that drove me to call the pediatrician.  It turned out she had a viral infection which gave her sores in her throat, making her, understandably, reluctant to swallow.  But before I knew this I was at my wits’ end, enticing her with her favorites, begging her to try anything and everything I could think of, through any means necessary.  When it didn’t work, it was hard to stifle my irritation, I was even wondering how anyone could choose to have multiple children when the initial go round was so aggravating.  The sleep deprivation caused by a fever and the refusal of food caused by a sore throat is a recipe for a parental meltdown.

Despite her illness, I swear she got heavier and taller last week, my arms started to feel tired carrying her when they didn’t before.  It seems she’s doing fine, growing, healthy, but I can’t stop my worrying about her eating.  At its core, I think the problem is with me.  I’m afraid of raising a picky eater, of years of fights at meal-times.  I’m old enough to remember the constant negotiation between my youngest sibling and my parents at every meal.  I’m scarred by the fact that two of my brothers refused to eat at any restaurant but McDonald’s into their teen years.  Any battle about food is fraught with peril, so we must tread lightly, but it’s a war we have to wage every day, and it’s wearing me down.

Jocelyn would rather sit on her gifts than open them!

Helping Daddy open his presents.

Monkey Bread

4 cups biscuits (one can “Grands” biscuits, I like the flaky layer kind, but plain work well too)

1/2 cup sugar

1 tablespoon cinnamon

1 cup brown sugar, loosely packed

1/2 cup butter (1 stick)

1.  Preheat oven to 350oF.  Grease a simple bundt cake pan.

2.  Mix together the sugar and cinnamon.

3.  Cut the biscuits into 1/2 inch pieces.  Roll the pieces in the cinnamon/sugar mixture and then distribute evenly in the pan.  Sprinkle some of the remaining sugar mixture over the biscuits if you’re a fan of cinnamon like me.

4.  Melt the butter in a sauce pan, add the brown sugar and bring to a boil.  Pour over the biscuits.

5.  Bake approximately 20 minutes or until well browned and cooked through.

6.  Try not to eat the whole thing by yourself!

She insisted on wearing these and showing off her new teeth!