Search and Replace: Goldfish to Sweet Potatoes

I am famous around our house for getting really geeked up about something and then promptly losing steam. Projects abandoned. Great ideas shelved. Blogs ignored for months. Hmmmmm. Thankfully, I have a spouse that finds this somewhat endearing and harmless. However, it's really staring to bother other people. Namely, me. 

I read a great book recently called The Power of Habit that delves into the fascinating world of human habits. One revelation that emerged was that the habits we develop are never truly gone, we just replace them with other habits. For instance, maybe you always eat a candy bar at your desk around 4pm (and your gut is the proof), and you want to get rid of that habit. So you decide to take a brisk walk outside every time 4pm rolls around. Eventually you replace your 4pm Candy Habit with a 4pm Walk Habit. This is grossly oversimplified and that doesn't sounds like a great trade to me but you get the idea.  It's an empowering way to view habits. 

Like most people, I have some stale and unhealthy habits that I'd like to replace with some fresh ones. With that in mind, this kicks off a weekly post about some small change that I'm attempting to implement in the New Year. I am trying to feed my family more real food these days and cut back on the processed stuff that has slowly but surely crept into our pantry. This week's "Search and Replace" is for the beloved snack of small children (and me): Goldfish. Man, I love 'em. They are cute and crunchy and deliciously salty. But along with their cute little fishy faces comes a pile of preservatives and junk that tiny bodies (or not-so-tiny-mom-bodies) do not need. So out they go.

This was a pretty easy switch. Here is their replacement: Sweet Potato "Cookies." Equally delicious. Equally salty (the way I make them). Equally orange. And just look how thrilled Judah (below) is to see them hot out of the oven!! Ok, he was seriously skeptical but he stuffed his face shortly after this picture was taken. Here's the recipe.

Baked Sweet Potato Cookies

1. Preheat the oven to 400

2. Peel sweet potatoes and slice into 1/4 inch rounds

3. Toss with olive oil

4. Put on cookie sheet in a single layer

5. Sprinkle with sea salt 

6. Bake for 12 or so minutes (when they start to smell good, they are done!)

7. Let them cool for a few before handing them off to tiny people

They are seriously good. I ate way too many. But I have absolutely no weight loss goals in the new year so that's nice. Not because I'm at some ideal weight - far from it. But who knows, maybe all of my "excess" weight was just Goldfish weight. We shall see. 

Let me know if you have anything you want to find a good replacement for and we can be in this together! 

Happy New Year. 

The Booger Lady and other helpful strangers.

Any mother living in Washington Heights (on the northern end of Manhattan) knows that if you haven't been yelled at by a Dominican grandmother about how your child is dressed (read: underdressed) for the weather then, well, you don't get out enough. Usually some well-meaning woman gives me a look of great concern and points emphatically to whatever part of my child's body is slightly exposed. I would love to say, "I have kept my children alive and relatively well for a while now so I think he'll be just fine, thank you," but I don't know enough Spanish. I could probably say something like, "Thank you, woman. We are good. See you later."

There are people who are actually helpful. People who give up seats, help the kids down from the bus, haul stroller up multiple flights of stairs.

Today I was riding on the subway with the kids and I watched as a grown woman went to town, mining a booger out of her nose. I've definitely seen people do a discreet brush or flick (we've all done it) but this woman was unabashedly digging for gold. And she found some. Then she examined it and flung it on the floor of the subway.

Mercy was happily singing to herself,

"I'm a low-ie, I'm a low,

I'm a low-ie, I'm a low,"

to the tune of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star.

I have no idea what a lowie is but I'm glad that the lowie was not paying attention while I tried to wipe the look of disgust off my face. We came to our stop and got off with a few other people. We were slowly climbing the stairs when, about half way up, a friendly voice asked if she could help Mercy (since I was carrying Judah and the stroller). I looked up and saw the smiling Booger Lady reaching for Mercy's arm.

"She's ok!"

"Come, baby, let me help you."

"NO! She's ok!" I frantically waved her away and she moved along.

Now, I am not a germophobe. I don't use hand sanitizer. I don't obsessively wash my hands. I am definitely a lick-the-dropped-pacifier-then-pop-it-back-in-their-mouth kind of mom. But I couldn't shake the image of her fingers deep in her nose and then those same fingers picking up my child.

What struck me later was this: if I hadn't seen her pick her nose, I would have absolutely let her pick up Mercy and drop her at the top of the stairs. Really, what harm would a little booger on her jacket do? Build up those immunities, right?

In hindsight, I should have just gone for it, thanked her kindly and gotten over myself.

If I have to choose between kindness and cleanliness, I choose kindness.

Well, maybe kindness and hand sanitizer.

Home birth and chicken nuggets.

Have you ever found yourself frozen in fear, holding every shirt you own over your trash can? You think, "I don't want these perfectly good shirts to be sitting in a landfill somewhere but I have to get rid of everything I have that's made in China!" I like to call this, "Paralysis By 90-minute Documentary."

Well meaning humanitarians have discovered that the key to our hearts is in a well-produced, star-studded, emotional documentary that will have us shaking our heads in disbelief, crying, laughing (bonus points for that) and then immediately taking up whatever cause is being preached. Blogging, posting to Facebook and getting in fights with our parents.

"No, you are not taking the kids to Sea World, Dad! Didn't you see The Cove??!!!"

Ok, so I didn't see The Cove (my husband told me not to) but I've heard that it's deeply disturbing. There is one documentary that I can say with all honesty, did change my life. It involves Ricki Lake, naked in a bathtub.

When I was pregnant with Mercy, I was getting prenatal care at Mt Sinai hospital on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Around my fifth month, a friend recommended Bryce and I check out a movie called, The Business of Being Born. We watched as the documentarians (Ricki Lake and Abby Epstein) explored the state of maternal care in the US (dismal) and the increasing trend toward midwife care and home birth. Video footage of Ricki's home birth is part of the documentary (hence the tub nudity). To make a long story short, we ended up leaving our ob/gyn in favor of a natural child birth at St Luke's hospital with a midwife.

With our second child, Judah, we opted for a home birth. When people ask me how his birth was I can honestly say, "Fun." Now before you mothers punch me in the face, let me clarify. It was incredibly painful and there was a lot of crying and blood. But, there was also a ton of laughing, relaxation and honest-to-God fun happening that I didn't have the first time around.

(shortly after Judah was born, with our midwife Dina)

My sis in law, Bevin, pointed something out to me recently.

"Don't you think it's weird that you're all hippie about birth but you always show up to my house with McDonalds?"

This is true. She lives in Wildomar, CA (aka suburban heaven) where there is a drive-thru Starbucks next to the McDonalds down the street. It's harder not to pick up some McNuggets after you get your skinny vanilla latte. Decaf of course (caffeine is bad for breast feeding). This is honestly my thought process. Make sure my caffeine intake is low but never mind the hormone-packed, nasty "chicken" pieces I'm shoveling in with some sweet and sour. And yes, I have seen Food, Inc.

So, yes, I am a breast-feeding, baby-wearing, home-birthing mother who eats at McDonalds.

The bottom line is you simply cannot care about everything. Let me sum up all of the documentaries you've seen in the last few years:

Really bad things are happening all the time.

It's true. It's sad. It demands attention. But you must choose what gets yours. We chose birth and the birth experience. You might choose the pharmaceutical industry or educational justice or sex trafficking. My only recommendation is to keep it judgement free. That means no glaring at the woman carrying plastic bags if you are passionate about the environment. Who knows, she might be working with homeless families on the weekend while you're drinking your fair trade coffee in your American-made pjs.

And I won't begrudge any woman her epidural or elective c-section. I will not shake my head at the formula-feeding mother. I will happily eat my nuggets with my mouth shut.

If you want to talk further about home birth (or your love of McNuggets) email me at meredithryness@gmail.com.

No, thank you. Still pooping.

Welcome to my first post. I promise not all of these will be about poop.

As we begin the journey of potty training our 2 year old daughter, Mercy, I've been asking around, taking an unofficial poll of family and friends. What age did you start? How long did it take? What tricks did you use? A lot of parenting involves trickery.

I wasn't in a huge hurry to potty train until the birth of our son 6 months ago. Now that I have two in diapers I've hit my limit of cleaning other people's poop by lunch.

The other day, after breakfast, Mercy was unusually quiet and extremely focused.

"Mercy, do you want to go to the potty?"

"No, thank you. Still pooping."

Her manners are impeccable.

My mom told me she used to drag me out from under the table where I went to do my diaper business and demand that I go on the potty while I screamed and cried.

"I wouldn't recommend that," she said.

Regardless of what was done in the past, the current trend in potty training is a rewards system:

1. Get a chart.

2. Get sparkly stickers.

3. Chose a motivating prize.

Every time the kid goes on the potty he gets a sticker to put on the chart. Once he hits, say 30 pees or poops in the toilet, he gets a sucker! a toy! a trip to Disneyland! (If you think I'm kidding, just ask potty trainers in the Southern California area).

Every elimination is celebrated and cheered like a game-winning touchdown. And for the lazy parent, there is a "Cheer For Me" potty that will do the cheering for you. Hooray!

Do I believe that acquiring an important life skill such as toilet training should be celebrated? Absolutely. But there is also a big part of me that says, Hey wait a minute? Isn't this already intrinsically rewarding?

That's so great that you used the potty! You know what your prize is? Not having crap in your pants.

We don't have any princess potty charts or sparkly stickers at our house. We also have a whole lot of poopy diapers.

So, I was going to buy some "potty M&Ms:" candy reward for each use of the potty because Mercy will do anything for chocolate. Then this morning she disappeared for a few minutes while I was tending to the baby. She ran into the living room beaming, completely naked.

"I went pee pee on the potty all by my big self!" she yelled. And indeed she had.

Her reward was dumping her pee from the little potty to the big one, patting herself dry with toilet paper and flushing everything. She was thrilled. I optimistically put some underwear on her and cheerfully made the coffee.

I asked her repeatedly for the next hour if she needed to go again.

"No, thank you."

Then she peed on the ground.

"Mercy, how about we get some potty M&Ms today?"

"Yes, please."