IT TAKES A VALIUM

I remember sitting in a restaurant with my husband Chris, long before we had kids. At the table next to us sat a family of six: Mom, Dad and their four kids, ranging in ages from five to twelve, or so I guessed. They all sat, quietly enjoying their lunch, chatting back and forth with one another. Chris and I turned to the couple and asked “What’s your secret? Your kids are so well-behaved.” They sort of shrugged their shoulders and said their kids always behaved this well. I told Chris that if we have kids they’ll be equally disciplined, unlike those animals our friends have sired. Ah, such a foolish and naïve statement made by one who had yet to bear fruit…

Looking back I wonder if perhaps those kids were lobotomized because I’ve yet to see children so well-behaved in a restaurant, unless of course they have something electronic entertaining them. Or maybe those kids, like Lady Gaga, were born that way. The parents seemed to be sweet, quiet people, probably from the Midwest where values are more homegrown. These parents didn’t look like they’d ever caused anyone an ounce of trouble and the kids were following in their footsteps. If this was the secret, Chris and I were screwed. We are not laid back, sweet, trouble-free people. As I’ve mentioned here before, I come from a line of Italian women, which explains a lot if you’ve ever seen “The Sopranos.” My husband is of German descent– can you say intense? We met in a bar in Boston after way too many martinis; I as a newly divorced thirty-something lawyer and he as a 29 year old who was “in between careers.” He formerly worked as a bouncer on Landsdowne Street, where he’d been threatened at gunpoint, more than once. He was known to smoke cigarettes, drink Jack and Coke and wear faux leather pants. I was known to be buying bagels and coffee on a Sunday morning, still wearing the previous night’s high heels. We are not the type of people who breed and create sweet, innocent, laid-back off-spring. But we could hope, right?

When my first son Cole was born he was quite the chill baby – surprise! We brought him everywhere. As an infant he would sleep in his little bucket while we wined and dined, and our waiter ooh’d and aaah’d over his cuteness. Right after Cole turned one, I turned forty so my husband planned a vacation in Sonoma to celebrate. Cole accompanied us to wineries, fancy dinners, and even a loud bar in San Francisco where he slept in the ergo on my chest while I drank a scorpion bowl. We smugly attributed this to our parenting style: bring your kids everywhere and they will adapt! We scoffed at people who told as that having kids would change our lives. Not OUR lives. We must be doing it right.

Baby's sleeping. Let's hit the bars!

Then we had Gage. He blew our world apart and showed us what life with a baby is really like. Although we were still able to do our bucket trick when he was an infant, life quickly deteriorated as he got older. Going anywhere with him has always been a challenge to say the least. And although Cole was once as laid back as Bob Marley, he’s now got some fire in his belly thanks to his brother. Together they are like dynamite: explosive.

Every restaurant outing is a fucking nightmare. Take one night in February for example:  We went to a local restaurant/watering hole called Simply Simons. It’s the type of neighborhood joint where the fish and chips are salty and the clientele is saltier; where the wine list is short and the waitresses are even shorter (thank you osteoporosis!). It’s the type of place I desperately missed when I lived in Southern California. Not having had more than a ten minute conversation with my husband in two weeks, we were determined to have a nice night. Having no sitter on hand, we opted to bring the boys but decided to also bring an arsenal of entertainment: portable DVD player, iphones (to play Angry Birds or watch something on Netflix. You know, in case the DVD selection got boring), crayons and coloring books, trains, cars, snacks (yes snacks in a restaurant, in case the food didn’t arrive fast enough – I know, I know). These kids lacked nothing. We even sat near the jukebox so they could play with the buttons.

How was it you ask? It SUCKED. Gage stood up in his chair and began howling like a werewolf who just turned at the full moon. He wouldn’t stop. So we turned on a movie but he kept pushing the buttons on the DVD player and turning it off so now Cole’s whining and complaining, so Chris gave him his iphone so he could watch something on Netflix. This worked for a few minutes until he encountered the dreaded “buffer” (kids have no patience for buffering, have you noticed?). Gage sees his brother with a phone and wants one too so I offered up mine but he gets frustrated every 45 seconds because he’s really too young to refrain from pushing the buttons and eventually turning it off (didn’t we get that from the DVD player fiasco?). My husband and I ate and drank at record speed, so quickly that I didn’t even notice I’d had three glasses of wine. My husband too had several Jack and cokes; the booze coupled with the kids’ meals, the appetizers and our dinners all combined for a whopper of a bill, which at this place I would think impossible. When we finally got to the car I fell into my seat and said “Are you kidding me! We just spent $85 to eat in hell???”

Why do we bother? I’m not sure I know the answer to this question. In part it’s because I like to go out to eat. Sometimes I don’t feel like planning, cooking and cleaning up after yet another meal. It’s a lot of work you know! It’s also partly because I think my kids should learn how to behave in a restaurant so the more we go the more rote this will become, right? Wrong…so very, very wrong, as we have proven. It’s time to either change the status quo or give up on going out to dinner. My husband is fine with the latter; easy for him to say when I do all of the cooking. So we’ll change our strategy instead.

I decided to once again try the minimalist approach. It’s so far been successful with the toys and the food so I thought maybe it will work in a restaurant. Maybe, just maybe, all that crap we bring with us has the same overstimulation effect it has at home. I didn’t start out that way; I used to only bring a few toys with me, but they weren’t enough so I started bringing more and more; next thing you know we’re at Simply Simon’s with a useless DVD player, two whiny kids and two drunk parents. Let’s start from scratch and bring NOTHING.

Next trick: bribery. I told my five year old that if he behaved in the restaurant AND helped teach his brother how to behave, I would give him a sticker. Five stickers = one Power Ranger (please don’t point out my hypocrisy here…I’m aware and am ignoring it, thank you very much).  He was thrilled. Before we arrived at the restaurant we reviewed our plan. I asked him what “behave in a restaurant” means and he told me “sit quietly and don’t have any fun.” I’m impressed that he was willing to forgo fun for a mere sticker but I made sure to tell him he was allowed to have fun; he just wasn’t allowed to throw food, get up from the table, yell, stand up in his chair, scream, fight with his brother or harass fellow diners. I’m not sure what that leaves other than eating but we’d see.

I held my breath and walked into the restaurant with nothing but my wallet, car keys and cell phone (which I kept hidden – sorry kids, no Angry Birds today). I use the term “restaurant” loosely because it’s really more of an ice cream parlor. Those of you from Rhode Island know it well: Newport Creamery. It might seem wimpy to start here as it’s one of the most kid-friendly places on the planet but I certainly wasn’t going to experiment somewhere fancy, especially being completely unarmed. We sat down and ordered our food. I tried to be relaxed and not feel like we had to order our food immediately, then scoff it down without swallowing. The waitress brought over crayons and I sneered at them as they typically provided zero entertainment value for my kids, other than something to throw at one another.

Then something miraculous happened. Cole started to color. He focused all of his attention on his placemat, which featured an alien eating an ice cream cone. He colored that placemat like it was the Sistine Chapel.  Gage, seeing his older brother so engrossed, was content to race his one, lonely car up and down the salt shaker (he doesn’t go anywhere without Lightning McQueen). He even tried coloring like his brother. I don’t know if it was the sticker incentive, or the lack of anything else to do, or my “I’m not taking anymore of your shit” demeanor but whatever it was, it worked! We enjoyed lunch in a restaurant! I couldn’t believe it.

is that my son, coloring in a restaurant???

We’ve since gone out to eat several times and it’s not always seamless, though I will say that Cole quickly earned his five stickers. There are good times and there are bad times; better when there’s not a full moon. I’m starting to realize that that’s the best you can hope for when you have kids, unless you’re willing to give them Benadryl before every outing. Despite the name of my blog, I’m really not one for abusing controlled substances so I guess holding on to those good times and riding out the bad ones is the only way to go.   I do know one thing:  I will not give up going to restaurants, no matter how miserable it may be at times.  I refuse to give up everything I enjoy and permanently enter the world of kids.  That’s one place I’ll never survive.

who knew they liked ice cream?

© 2012 KIM KINZIE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPUBLICATION OR REDISTRIBUTION OF CONTENT, TEXT OR IMAGE, IN PART OR IN WHOLE IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN CONSENT FROM THE AUTHOR.

Growing up, my mom pretty much let me eat anything I wanted, and mostly I wanted to eat crap:  peanut butter and fluff sandwiches, TV dinners, olive loaf (what was that?), ravioli that came from a can, cereal with chocolate chip cookies in it; the type of food that doesn’t even pass for food in this day and age.   I can’t recall ever being restricted in what I ate.  She certainly never forced me to eat liver or brussel sprouts or anything I didn’t like and believe me that category was huge.  I even hated milk and cheese so the fact that I escaped rickets is a minor miracle.   As a matter of fact I’ve had no major health issues my entire life and have managed to always stay thin.  This too amazes me given that I come from a line of Italian women who’ve always struggled with their weight.  If they weren’t cooking food or eating food, they were talking about food, especially if they were on a diet.

How did I accomplish this?  Do I credit a fast metabolism and/or good genes?  Maybe it’s the fact that I’ve never used food as a vice (I’d much rather drown my sorrows in a bottle of wine than a box of cannoli thank you very much.  I’m only half Italian after all).   Perhaps it’s all that formula I drank as an infant.   Or maybe, just maybe, it was the lack of limitations of my diet.  Perhaps because I was allowed to eat anything and everything, I never felt deprived and therefore did not need to binge.  I remember my grandmother always had a dish filled with candy in her living room.  It never occurred to me to dump its entire contents into my mouth when no one was looking because I didn’t need to.  If I wanted candy, all I had to do was reach out and take some.  My friends who weren’t used to unfettered access to candy would attack that dish like Augustus attacked the chocolate river in the Willy Wonka movie.  Once free from their parents’ tyranny they ate and ate until they threw up (and yes, that did happen).

As a parent, I have decided my kids can eat whatever they want, within reason and in moderation of course.  I always prepare healthy food for them but rarely say no when it comes to treats.  I don’t want to raise an Augustus.  To boot, my kids are small.  My older son Cole’s pediatrician was concerned about his weight as a baby.  On that crazy growth chart his height was average, his head freakishly large and his weight barely got him in the fifth percentile.  Contrary to what you might think, he did not look like an orange on a toothpick.  He looked to me to be a perfectly healthy kid but when your doctor is concerned about weight the last thing you do is impose dietary restrictions.   Now my kids are at a healthy weight and seem to enjoy a wide variety of food.  Granted, tan and brown are their favorite food colors and they LOVE junk food but they will also eat things I would never have touched as a child (and some I still won’t eat as an adult):  salmon, edamame, asparagus, hard-boiled eggs, lamb, kale, cheese of all flavors and textures.  I once saw Cole eat an entire can of sardines.  When he asked for a second can I finally put my foot down: enough!  Have some gummy bears for God’s sake!

The downside to this parenting philosophy is that my children think life is a Carnival Cruise.  You can eat whatever you want, whenever you want.  “What time is the midnight buffet Mom?”  I have created two dictators who demand food and beverage all day long, dooming me to the kitchen and an ever-growing cooler that joins us on each and every outing.   I remember going on a quick trip to the store and I didn’t have any water with me.  Cole complained the entire time about how dreadfully thirsty he was so I ended up buying him a bottle of water.  Since then I have not left the house again without two freshly filled water bottles because once one child starts drinking the other gets as thirsty as a camel.  A good friend observed this behavior once and said “What the frig, are we going to the mall or the desert?” I felt slightly ridiculous, especially having grown up in the seventies when they had yet to invent bottled water.  We drank from a bubbla (aka “bubbler” which, for you non-Rhode Islanders is a water fountain), and we liked it that way.

Food presents another challenge.  I used to pack a simple bag of crackers or goldfish but now when we’re out my kids can’t stop eating.  They eat the crackers and then want more, but not the fruit…something else.  So I find myself packing an insane array of snacks:  goldfish, pirate’s booty, apples, grapes cut in half, cheese, seaweed snacks, yogurt squishers, etc. so they have healthy options.  When we’re home, I feel like I can’t leave the kitchen.  They finish breakfast, and by the time I clean up that mess they’re ready for a mid-morning snack.  This pattern continues all day until we sit down for dinner, at which point they’re no longer hungry.  Ugh.  Who’s running this asylum???

Keeping with my plan to enjoy motherhood and regain some of my dignity, I have decided to dock the cruise ship.  First order of business:  the kitchen.  I sat down with the boys and showed them a schedule of when the kitchen would be open and when it would be closed.  Once the kitchen closed, food and beverage would not be available.  If you want to serve yourself some water from the fridge door, go for it.  Otherwise, keep the FUCK out of the kitchen!  Second, I will not bring a bottle of water on every outing unless we are going somewhere where they might work up a thirst.  Ditto for the snacks, and if I do bring snacks I will bring one snack per child.  I will let them choose that snack, within reason.  I’m not doing this to dehydrate and/or starve my children but rather to say enough is enough.  Just like the toys, I don’t think they need all this food and I shouldn’t be stressing myself out to fill water bottles and pack a cooler every time we get in the car.

Third and final rule: no food (dessert or otherwise) after dinner unless a reasonable amount of said dinner has been eaten.  I spend a lot of time making healthy, home-cooked meals that contain plenty of the preferred brown/tan food group.  Yet every night those kids (mostly Cole) sit down to dinner and act as though I’ve fed them brains.  Actually, on several occasions Cole has told me my food looks like brains.  I assure you it does not.  I feed them such exotic dishes as chicken, rice and pasta but if it’s not in the exact form they want (chicken nuggets, rice pilaf, macaroni and cheese) they don’t eat.  This is especially frustrating knowing they enjoy a wide variety of food and would probably eat brains if I served them in nugget form.  I hope limiting snacks will make dinner more appealing.  Perhaps I’ll also try involving Cole in the meal planning.  Either way I’ve had enough.  They will eat my food or go hungry.  So there!

Last week I smugly exclaimed how wonderfully my toy experiment went.  This week I come before you and humbly admit that this one has not gone so well.  It all started with the kitchen schedule.  I explained the new rule to Cole and his response was “ok Mommy.”  Gage, my two year old, just looked up at me and repeated “Kitchen cwosed.”  He had no clue.  Later that day when they asked for food I reminded them the kitchen was closed.  They revolted.  “I’m hungry!” screamed the five year-old. “I’m hungwy!” repeated the two year-old.   “Tough luck” I told them.  “You can wait to eat until lunch time.   You had breakfast.  You had a mid-morning snack.  You can suck it up for a mere 45 minutes until the kitchen re-opens!”  They weren’t impressed and continued their relentless requests for food and drink.  It’s hard to listen to your kids tell you they’re hungry.  I don’t let myself go hungry so why should they?  But are they really hungry or just bored?  Also, if I let them eat now they won’t eat lunch.  Is this a bad thing?  Fuck, I’m so confused.

Employing minimalism on the road has been equally trying.  The other day I got ready to drive Cole to pre-school and I almost grabbed the water bottles.  Then I remembered this was no longer part of the plan.  Sure enough, two minutes into the journey Cole tells me he’s thirsty.  “I don’t have any water with me.  You’ll be fine.” I tell him with confidence.  He bitches and moans a bit about how thirsty he is but eventually lets it go.  Phew!  Then Gage chimes in:  “WA-WA” he screams.  “Want some WA-WA!” over, and over again.  It was so annoying that I debated pulling into the nearest Dunkin Donuts drive-thru to buy him a bottled water.  Can you believe this?

Then it hit me:  I’m afraid of my two year-old.  It’s not his physical being that frightens me but rather the prospect of listening to a full-blown tantrum.  Gage is a screamer.  He has that sort of scream that you will do virtually anything to make it end.  I have been known to pull off a highway to retrieve his Lightning McQueen off the floor of the car just to make him stop.  It’s worse than nails on a chalkboard and he screams all the time about everything.  The first time he let out his incredible wail I remember being in the other room and went flying to him as I assumed his arm was hanging off by a thread.  Oh no, he had a hair on his pajamas, or his car got stuck under a chair, or his brother smiled at him the wrong way.  What the fuck!  I now fully understand the saying “terrible-twos.”  I didn’t experience terrible-twos with my older son.  He didn’t become a nightmare until he was three, at which age you can sort of reason with them.  Also they’re not quite as cute so it’s much easier to say no.  With my two year-old though I’m lost.  First of all he’s adorable, even when he’s a terror.  Second, when it comes to food, it feels sort of innocent to give in.  I’m in survival mode and the best I can do is to try to avoid the tantrum as often as possible.  Yes honey, you can have that lollipop, popsicle, cookie, cup of coffee, cough drop, fifth slice of cheese, anything you want if you just stop screaming!

On a positive note, I have enjoyed some success with dinnertime.  I’ve been involving Cole in the meal planning. We went food shopping and picked out a bunch of food he’d like for dinner.  Then each day he helps me decide what we’ll eat that night.   This, along with limiting the afternoon snacks and saying “no” to dessert, seems to have made a difference as Cole is eating more of his dinner.  I don’t know if it’s the incentive of that post-meal popsicle or if he actually likes the food.  Who cares?  I won this one!

So where does all of this leave me?  I will not yet abandon my kitchen schedule or my quest to leave the house without a cooler.  I will soldier on because I think it’s the right thing to do. My kids need a schedule for snacks and meals.  More importantly, I need them to have a schedule, and I’m done bringing a plethora of food and beverages along every time we leave the house.  I will also attempt to stand up to my two year old.  I’m horrified to learn that I’m afraid of him as I never considered myself a particularly fearful person, other than heights and rats.  Maybe it’s not fear but laziness, or cluelessness, or just plain normal.  I’m not sure but I intend to pay more attention to these feelings from here on in.  In the meantime perhaps I’ll just invest in a good pair of ear plugs.  Onward!

© 2012 KIM KINZIE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPUBLICATION OR REDISTRIBUTION OF CONTENT, TEXT OR IMAGE, IN PART OR IN WHOLE IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED WITHOUT PRIOR WRITTEN CONSENT FROM THE AUTHOR.