Complete and utter writers' block/brain failue. Mostly the result of sleep deprivation, which is in turn the result of the extension of Project Night Wean. I feel good about my discipline, though. As I've been, in my day, a bit of a fuckup, and a bit of a mess, I'm a little hung up on providing structure and routine. Also, I'm rebelling against the irreproachably loving and supportive but chaotically bohemian way I was brung up. So I have a bedtime schedule, dammit, and I stick to it, dammit. Anyway, after a couple of nights in a row of Chas falling to sleep sans sucking, I knew we could do it this way from now on.

He lets me know pretty clearly that he's done for the day. Often he'll put his baby doll, Carew*, in the dolly cradle, rocking it back and forth, saying "Seeepy. Seeeeepy." I have to catch him in this stage, not let him get overtired and antsy. We brush our teeth in the bathroom, me holding him up to the mirror, doing our routine:

"Brush the teeth in the front!
Brush the teeth in the back!
Brush the bottom teeth!
Brush the top teeth!
Brush the teeth on the left!
Brush the teeth on the right!
Brush the teeth on the outside!
Brush the teeth on the inside!

Now freestyle! DO WHATEVER YOU WANT!"

Then I change his diaper and we round up the bedtime animals: Little Baabaa, Kitteh, and Koala. Upstairs and into his little blue bed, with still some protests and gesturing at Mummy's big bed. Into pyjamas, and no, we're NOT getting into the big bed, sweetie. We might read a book two or ninety times, Goodnight Moon or The Going to Bed Book.He lies down, cuddles Baabaa with one hand, and I lean over the bed so he can cop a reassuring feel with the other, and I sing him to sleep. His current favourite (Read: only acceptable) bedtime song has both an explicit drug reference AND a questionable racial appelation. Hope he finds a new one before I end up singing it in front of Other Mums.

The whole process can take thirty minutes, or two hours. In some ways, it is a lovely, fleeting, wonderful chapter in my child's life. In other ways, though, it is tiring and tedious and a complete drain.




*Named, by my father, after the baseball player.

I have eaten the kid's easter chocolate that his Grandma sent him from Saskatchewan.

In my defense, he is really too young for marshmallow bars.

Just when I thought it couldn't get any slimier...

...We have added another couple of bodily fluids to the mix. While wiping the BLOOD off of the kid's split lip (Lack of sleep+growth spurt+sickness+climbey adventurous child=lots of fall down go boom) I noticed that the abbrasion under his lower lip from yesterday's faceplant has gone all PUS.

Factor in the ants all over our kitchen, and the rainstorms, and it's all starting to look terribly seasonal. Pardon me while I go swipe a little sacrificial blood across our threshold, would you?

The BRAT Diet

"Bananas, rice, apples, toast," said Anne, our nurse down at the Women's College family clinic. The diet of choice for the discriminating fluxy child. Gets potassium and other nutrients back into the kid, as well as being, shall we say, beneficial for the digestion and the bowels.

(Look, I don't really like talking about poo. As foul-mouthed as I've always been, my swears and humour have never been very scatalogical. So this has been a bizarre aspect of becoming a parent for me: talking about shit. All the time. With descriptions. And it's worse when he's sick.

Yucky. Swash.)

Anyway, I've been trying to come up with interesting and tasty ways to get the BRAT into the brat. Especially since, for most meals, I eat exactly what he eats. For conveniance sake, but also because if I'm eating something else, the Dude assumes that whatever I've got must be better, and won't take a bite of his lovingly prepared baby food.

This was breakfast this morning. It was pretty damned good.

BRATty Rice Pudding

2 cups (or thereabouts) cooked basmati rice
soymilk
1 pink lady apple, peeled and cored
cinnamon
treacly brown sugar/maple syrup

Put the rice in a saucepan with just enough soymilk to cover it, and bring to a simmer. Add a tablespoon of sugar, and a teaspoonful of cinnamon. Take the pudding off the heat, and dish it out.Grate the apple, (I use my mini Kitchenaid hand blender attatchment) and either stir it into the rice pudding (for kids) or pile it on top. (Very fancy looking for the Fella and I.) Drizzle a little maple syrup on top of it all.

You could probably add some raisins or dried apricots at the beginning if you like that sort of thing. Personally, I'm aesthetically opposed to rehydrated fruit.

About the "two cups of cooked rice" that will make frequent appearances in my recipes: I always make two meals worth of rice at a time, so if we have curry one night, I can make rice pudding, or a grain salad, or add it to soup the next day. My beloved rice-cooking pot (Which really deserves a post of it's own) makes about four cups of rice altogether, so half of that will go in the fridge at the end of the night. And we're eating SO MUCH rice these days because of the BRAT mandate. Wheaty goodness will resume once the Dude is well.

Today, on Sick, Sad World!!!

First, the wee sma' Dude had a cold. He got over the cold, and developed a fever. He started throwing up the same day that I got the Insane Viral Sinus Migraine. Two days later, he started having vile diaorrhea and we spent an Extra Super Fun day and night in and out of St. Joe's Pediatric Emerg. (His new word that night, after enduring two rectal thermometers and a pee-catching bag taped over his crotch, was "Go". As in, gesturing madly at the door, sobbing "Go, go-go-go, GO!")

He recovered for about a day, then sickened with his own Insane Viral Sinus Migrane. Then he got a cold. Then he got well for the better part of a week, only to start with the diaorrhea again, though rather less liquid and odourous this time. Now he's got the worst cold yet, and the wettest, saddest cough ever. I feel like I'm drowning in toddler fluids, and haven't had a decent night's sleep in a month. So that's why I've been not so posty with the tasty recipes.