If I were a vegan we'd be doomed

Foods my son will not eat:

- Any fruit except bananas, apples, and (occasionally) mango

- Pasta (no spaghetti, ravioli, mac & cheese... Are we sure this kid's mine?)

- Carrots, unless kept warm, which gets annoying quick

- Tofu (okay, not entirely surprising)

- Soup

- Cottage cheese, plain or sweetened (see: fruit)

Foods my son loves:

- Meat (if I would just allow him to go on an all-meat diet there'd never be a problem at dinner time)

- Soy meat (now verboten in our house, which kills me)

- Fish (detecting a theme?)

- Cauliflower

- Crackers (if I won't go for the meat diet, he'll settle for an all-cracker one)

- Plain yogurt with flax oil, agave, and wheat germ (score!) but only if he can dip nonsensical food items into it. (Soy sausage? Sweet potatoes? Check and check.)

What won't your kids eat? And did they all drop food on the floor while grinning like scoundrels? Because god knows I love that.

COOKIES

Before I get to the cookie recipe, allow me to bore you with talk of my latest dental appointment. First off, trying to find a dentist off the internet? Nervewracking. That said, I found a winner. And man, upscale dental offices in New York City do not disappoint. Instead of the usual "bite on this", for X-rays I stood and in the middle of this thing that circled my head, then the images were downloaded onto a Mac and projected onto a flat screen above the dental chair. Even more space age? No doctor exam. The COMPUTER tells them if there are cavities. The doctor did a cursory exam after the cleaning but mostly she was there to answer questions. (And, you know, do surgery.) Long story - I'll be getting fancy teeth next month. Nervous about it, mostly due to my still-unresolved-even-after-epidural fear of needles. I haven't had a novocaine shot since... ever. I always had to be put under, even to get a cavity filled, but I hear they hurt. (SHOTS! IN THE ROOF OF MY MOUTH!) This doctor was noted for her pain management techniques and promised to use a numbing gel first, so that should help, right? (Right?) The office also offers something called "The Wand" which sounds like a sex toy but is apparently some Star Trekian injectable that is completely pain-free. Of course, pain-free costs more.

Oh, the cost. Can't quite bring myself to think about it...

In other news, got the results from the boy's Early Intervention. Looks like he's behind, but not behind enough. Would have been helpful if they'd included some DIY exercises or something but it looks like we're on our own. But a friend made a good point about all this intervention: "Unless there's a physical problem, everybody eventually learns to walk. What are they afraid will happen?"

Um...

I'm not sure why we're all so quick to offer aid. The doctors, the city, me - we're all like, YOU SHOULD BE WALKING BETTER! But why? There's no physical issue, no loss of muscle. Even if he loses muscle, so what? People with mono are bedridden for a month and they rebuild strength. What's the big deal? Why are we so pushy? Speaking of pushing children before they're ready, there was a great article in the NYT about how Kindergarten has changed since we attended. (One word: Homework.) Speaking of children - sorry, it's late and I'm fond of tangents - I've decided that I take umbrage at the phrase "Stay-At-Home Mother". While the words may be accurate, the implication behind them is not. There's a sense of laziness, of lounging, in the "Stay-At-Home" bit that bears no resemblance to any parent I know. I was listening to an interview with the actor Jason Segal on a Fresh Air podcast (iTunes that thing! I've never been a fan, but dude was really funny) and when he was asked what his parents did he said that his father was a lawyer and his mother "raised us". Now that I like. It sounds proactive and worthwhile. I battle daily with the guilt of not contributing financially and being dubbed a SAHM just feeds the feelings of inadequacy. From now on I'm "raising our child"! (Anybody else hate SAHM? Just me?)

Bed time, but before I forget:

COOKIES!

For the record:

A) this website is amazing, and
B) if you go to her SEARCH and type in "cookies", she has a new chocolate chip recipe about 5 cookies down that looks even better than this one. But this one is pretty damn awesome.

(Did anyone catch the Real Housewives reunion? Talk to me.)

Can you really put a price on love? (The stuffed, trademarked kind?)

Blegh, waiting for the phone to ring, blegh.

In other news - meaning I'm totally hitting you up for advice - any thoughts on getting this kid to sleep in? This morning he was up at 5:20 am. While this is an improvement on yesterday's 5:12, it's still not enough to calm my cranks. He goes to bed between 6:30 and 7 pm, wakes up at the aforementioned ridiculousness, naps from 10:30 for 2-3 hours. We've tried the 15 minute inching thing that all the books talk about. Won't fly. Is it just an age thing? He'll sleep later as he gets older? Or do I just need to suck it up and go to bed at 9?

Not much else going on 'round these parts. The boy is a toddling FIEND which is awesome. We still haven't heard from the Early Intervention people. Apparently they have to mail the results, which seems like a waste of a (now more expensive) stamp. Can't they just call? Or better yet, when they called to say they would be mailing the results, COULDN'T THEY HAVE JUST TOLD ME THEN? Jeezub.

In other, other news:

I don't have pink eye. I think it was allergies.

I discovered the world's best chocolate chip cookie recipe and I'm happy to share.

I just spent $60 on a giant stuffed Winnie the Pooh and it was worth every overpriced penny.

We can't afford to buy an apartment. Probably should have thought about that before buying that bear.

I've decided that summer clothes suck. Too old for shorts, too hot for jeans, too active for dresses. Got any favorite shops? Point me in a direction, peeps.

I'm waiting for my awesome neighbors to show up. They're going to babysit the boy while I lie about my love of air fresheners for a focus group.

I'm also waiting for the phone to ring. Did I mention?

This one's for the ladies

Gents, if you enjoy reading about gynecological issues by all means read along. If not, you might want to skip this one...

Okay girls, real quick (I hear the boy stirring): have any of you had a colposcopy? I had an abnormal reading on my latest pap, and because I had an abnormal reading 8 years ago they're required to move on to this scary-sounding step. My doctor has reassured me that they're not doing a biopsy and that it won't hurt (normally when a male doctor tells me it won't hurt I make a run for the Advil, but my doc is a charming gay guy whose love of high-fives and the word "awesome" belies his skills. He delivered the boy without a hitch and performed some seriously beautiful repair work, and his paps are pain-free) but I'm feeling pretty nervous. Not so much that I think it's the Big C - they've ruled out HPV which means I'm "totally, totally" fine (his words)- but I'm worried that because I have a yeast infection that I can't seem to shake, the results will stay squirrelly and they'll need to do a biopsy. Has anyone gone through this b.s.? How'd it turn out?

Baby calls!

* UPDATE: So apparently "no biopsy" means "okay, maybe biopsy" because I totally had a biopsy. It's never good to hear the doctor say "well, I can definitely see the cells they're referring to" when you're talking about potentially cancer-y ones but in his opinion, the cells look like a strain of HPV that they don't care about. Seems to me that if nobody cares about it than it shouldn't send off biopsy bells, but what do I know? He told me over and over that nothing he saw concerned him so I'm taking that at face value. Now I just have to wait for lab results.

(staring at phone)

Team Malik

Yep. That's him.

Early Intervention, Part Deux. Unlike the cognitive evaluation, the man who administered the physical eval was giving nothing away. No clapping, no playing, just "Get up", "Get up", "Get up". The guy wasn't a douche but the whole thing was definitely more boot camp than I was expecting. Right now the boy appears to be about 4 months behind. Whether that qualifies for physical therapy, we still don't know - the test that was administered was some sort of standardized deal and he had to crunch the numbers. I'm annoyed that I'm waiting for the call but I'm even more annoyed that I'm WAITING FOR THE CALL. I mean c'mon, what's the worst that can happen if he's a late walker? No football scholarship? It's not like there's a genuine, physiological problem. He can walk. Give him a large, open space free from distracting objects and he does just fine. So why do I bother with the worry? My time could be much better spent writing stuff or watching Taking The Stage. (All in the name of research. Ahem.) But there are moments, the really self-indulgent ones, where I suspect that the reason he's behind in something so fundamental is because somewhere along the lines I didn't do my job.

In other news, I signed the contracts for my first national magazine piece. Seeing Conde Nast plastered all over the pages... awesome. I don't care if it's a totally flip past-able nothing of a thing - it's there, it's mine, and gosh darn it, the Editor-In-Chief liked it. Maybe I'll even have a byline. (Dream big, Ali. Dream big. )

Oh, the ammunition.

The boy had his first Early Intervention appointment on Saturday (who knew City workers did weekends?) and it went gangbusters. Granted, the woman didn't have a chance - the boy knows when to dial up the cutes. Phase 1 was cognitive, checking to make sure that his brain is firing. Lucky for us (and hopefully Harvard) the boy is doing great. He may be no match for the Mensa toddler but he definitely inherited his daddy's brains. It's not that I'm a complete dumbass but let's put it this way: when Jessica Simpson posed the infamous Chicken of the Sea question ("Is it chicken or fish?") I had to think a minute.

I blame my lack of intellectual curiosity on Tamara Yaffe. She was my best friend Freshman Year - a cherubic, Jewish (so foreign!) whirl of wisecracks. We passed roughly 800 notes back and forth each day which left little time for things like "math" and "facts". What lesson plan could compare to Tamara's whip-smart analysis of her latest crush's kissing technique? Which is how I ended up with a 2nd grade understanding of the cosmos.

This fact came to light as I attempted to explain the universe to my son. Most mornings we start our day with a little thank you to the sun "which lights and heats our planet". Since it was the weekend and Matt was there, I decided to expand my repertoire to add the moon. ("Which controls the tides"). Which is right about where things got ugly. NPR was doing a story about the recent discovery of the oldest known object in the universe, which led to a talk about the galaxy, which led to me embarrassing the shit out of myself.

"What exactly are stars? I've never really known."

"They're suns."

"What?"

"They're suns."

"But then why is our sun so much bigger?"

(pause)

"You understand that the sun is a star, right?"

"Of course."

"You also realize that the sun only appears bigger because stars are millions of light years away. They aren't even in our galaxy."

"But I can see them."

(pause)

"Each star is a sun. With its own set of planets. Not annnnywhere near us."

"No way."

"HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THIS?"

"I don't think they ever taught us that."

"I GUARANTEE they taught you that! Do you know about the Big Bang?"

"You don't have to get condescending."

"Oh, in this case I think I do! Did you know that the universe is continuously expanding and contracting, and all matter - everything that exists! All the galaxies! - was once compressed into a mass small enough to fit on the head of a pin?"

"NO WAY."

"READ A BOOK!"

And I got into college, kids. (Sarah Lawrence, NYU, Webster. Holla!)

I choose to believe that I have a different type of intelligence to pass on to my progeny. Charm smarts. Wow 'em with wit and they'll never notice the dumbass. (Unless you point it out to them. Fire away, Gunderman. Fire away.)

I'm working on it...

There will be an entry today, come hell or high water!