Articles from February 2008

B-mama brought up a great question about fish and mercury levels during pregnancy. Many pregnant women are nervous about fish and so they don’t eat it during pregnancy, and many don’t eat it at all, which is a huge shame because fish has so many beneficial omega fatty acids that are not found in other foods–fatty acids that are very beneficial for a developing baby–maybe better than mad-cow beef. Most health care providers give women a list of fish known to be high in mercury (large fish that live in the ocean for a long time). For mercury levels of various fish see this chart. Personally, I would avoid fish on the top of this list or have them no more than once per month during pregnancy and with small children. All other fish, especially those low in mercury, can be consumed regularly. Tilapia is a favorite in our house because it is relatively inexpensive and fairly tasty. I’d recommend buying fresh fish, not frozen, because I find that frozen fish can be mushy and taste, well…gross. We try to eat fish on Fridays. DH doesn’t like fish very much, so eating fish for dinner on Fridays is a real sacrifice for him, but the kids love it. I think serving it regularly really helps them think it is “normal” to eat fish, and the texture seems easier for them to like and chew than meat.
**This picture is not meant to promote dolphin consumption

Someone forwarded me an article, from the Catholic Exchange, I thought it might be of interest:

Why We Are Not Losing the Battle

I was recently at a party where my picture was taken, I was an Ivy League educated, under 30 mother of 5 and I was sitting next to an Ivy League educated, under 30, fully habited religious sister! By the grace of God, we had both found our vocations, and I think it is a pretty hopeful picture!

I have loved reading the food chat, and I hope that the conversation continues. I will post the penne bolgnese recipe soon (it was really good!), but right now it is 5 am and the lights are off, so I just wanted to say that all of this puts me in mind of a line from one of my favorite folk songs (thank you Dan Zanes!) “Hungry babies must be fed!”

Okay everyone.
It’s time to fess up…
Last week, Mary Alice challenged all of us to an honest food log of 5 days of our children’s/family’s meals. What a great test this was for me. To see my kids’ meals in written form was incredibly illuminating, insighting some pleasure and some shame. The beauty of such an endeavor, though, is for all of us to be REAL and life-supporting to one another! I can’t wait to read your thoughts.

Here’s our list from last Tuesday through Friday (I only made it four days).
Note: quantity is undefined due to one/or both children eating all, some, or none of the food offered. Here, at least, is what was placed on the table (or given for snack). Nothing more or less.

Tuesday
Breakfast: Life cereal, whole milk, ½ juice/ ½ water
Snack: goldfish crackers
Lunch: peas (from frozen), turkey and cheese quesadillas (white flour kind—they haven’t taken to the whole wheat version), strawberries, banana
Snack: lollipop potty reward
Dinner: mixed veggies (from frozen), McCain’s Smiles (trans-fat free! J), cheeseburgers on wheat buns, plenty of ketchup (why do they love this stuff so?), cut up apple; (GG and I also had a salad)

Wednesday
B: Life and Multigrain Cheerios, whole milk, orange juice/water
S: goldfish, Nutri-Grain cereal bar, part of Panera bagel
L: carrots (cut up into “coins”), chicken nuggets (from freezer), green grapes
S: wheat thins, apple; lollipop potty rewards
D: corn (from frozen), Orange Chicken (made from scratch), brown rice, Yoplait kids yogurt; (salad for GG and me)

Thursday
B: same as Wednesday (we’re rather boring for breakfast; this is all I can muster)
S: goldfish (I’m realizing we’re rather boring for snack too!)
L: McDonald’s chicken nuggets, French fries, orange slices, mozzarella sticks
(I’ll comment more about this meal later)
S: lollipop potty rewards
D: steamed broccoli and cauliflower (reheated), scrambled eggs and cheddar cheese, Lundberg Risotto (“eco-farmed”, box) (GG and I had open-faced chicken salad sandwiches with cheese—I didn’t even try to pawn this off on our boys.)

Friday
B: same but add an apple!
S: animal crackers/ juice and water
L: carrot coins, whole wheat English muffin pizzas (made with spag. sauce), mozz. sticks, apple
S: lollipop potty rewards
D: peas (from frozen), whole wheat spaghetti with jar sauce, Yoplait kids yogurt

Regarding the McDonald’s lunch on Thursday, I definitely have misgivings. I’ve seen “Supersize Me”; I know McDonalds isn’t the healthiest fare on the planet; I know they slither into children’s subconsciouses with happy characters and golden arches. Yet I still find myself defying those facts and saying, “So what, they’re just kids!” Am I really creating tiny fast-food junkies?

A Mickey-D’s (or similar fast-food) trip is a special occasion for our family and one that happens rarely (though, wouldn’t you know it, occurring during my meal logging!). We also tend to tap into the red and yellow frenzy whenever we’re traveling. What do you think? How does one approach McDonalds and children? “All systems go”, “All things in moderation”, or “Not with a 10-foot pole”??

I took Gianna (age 4) to gymnastics last week. As we waited for the class to start a new girl and her mother entered. I introduced myself and the mom started peppering me with questions about the class. I was answering them to the best of my knowledge when suddenly the baby started to cry, and Charlie (age 2) made a mad dash for the bathroom. As I yelled for him to stop, she glanced down at Gianna, who was waiting patiently for me to help her with her hair. The woman immediately asked, “are all three of these yours?”

I smiled and said, “yes.”

With a slightly disapproving edge to her voice she stated, “I guess that’s the in thing now.”

Taken aback, I immediately responded, “excuse me?”

She clarified, “it’s the in thing to have 3.”

I wanted to say, oh, “I thought you were talking about my shoes.” But I just stood there, awkwardly silent.

The “in thing!?!” are you kidding me? Yeah, I have three young children because I think it looks cool. It is even cooler when one of them is crying in your arms, another is about to put his hands in the toilet at a dirty gym, and a third is hugging your legs. I have had this strange desire to be popular since high school and now I have finally succeeded. Who would have thought that having 3 kids was so darn cool.

Wow, talk about materializing our children. In an age where one boy and one girl have become an accessory for many parents, I didn’t know if I should laugh or cry at this woman’s statement. I wish she were only talking about my new shoes.

We’ve hit this topic a little in our email discussions about midwifery, but I wanted to revisit it more generally. What’s with the larger-than-average number of Catholic moms who harbor a suspicion against the medical status quo? I wouldn’t pin myself as a “granola” or “homeopathic” mom, but this weekend when I found myself formally declining Pedialyte solution during a late night visit to the emergency room with a 105-degree 18-month-old Bean, I had to stop and wonder. It’s just Pedialyte! But on the other hand, I had explained to Mr. Nurse that Bean drank 32 oz. of diluted juice and had several wet diapers over the course of the day, so why pump him full of dextrose and dyes at midnight just because Mr. Nurse says to? Besides, I was still dealing with the guilt of giving poor sick Bean only watery juice to drink when I saw that Elizabeth Foss was spoon-feeding her feverish 18-month-old ice cubes blended with whole oranges. While homeschooling 6 other children with her husband out of town. She rocks.

Quite a few of us tend toward midwifery and natural birth before obstetrics, natural remedies before medications, observe and wait before rushing to the doctor for sure treatment… and it seems to me that a disproportionately large number of Catholic moms are the same way. Bean had ibuprofen, acetaminophen and an antibiotic for the first time ever this weekend, and this is certainly not the first time he’s been sick. I’ll admit I can be an obnoxiously inquisitive patient or mom when I do find myself or my children under medical care. I’m not proud of being a thorn in the side of the noble doctors and nurses who help keep my family healthy.

So… why? Is it because of a leaning away from things artificial—such as artificial birth control and baby formula (not to compare them morally)—that we lean away from technological solutions and trust our bodies? Is it because we’re subtly influenced by some complicated mind-body unity philosophy that has Catholic origins? Is it because of a more recent cultural trend to get back to nature/back to the earth among religious parents, evidenced also by attachment parenting and the like? Is it because we’re micromanaging, hands-on, stay-home, potentially-homeschooling moms (versus moms who have help from day cares/nannies), so we expect to know exactly what treatments our kids are getting and why? Or is it not Catholic at all, just a swelling trend among a certain segment of moms?

May God bless all the doctors and nurses out there. Maybe our next batch of cookies will be for the emergency room personnel, Saturday pm shift.

Since we are all talking about what we are feeding our families, I am wondering if anyone does a rotating meal plan. I’ve seen lots of versions on-line. Some moms use a 3 week rotating schedule, some a monthly schedule, some cook and freeze for weeks at a time with tired and true (and easy) recipes that take a lot of the guess work out of meal planning and grocery shopping.

At this stage in the game, we don’t do anything of the sort. I generally meal plan the same day or, possibly, the night before. I have the flexibility to pull something out of the freezer in the morning and if I realize I am lacking an ingredient, run to the grocery store with my 1 and 2 year old. This may happen 3 days a week. Totally doable now, but as schedules fill up these fun and educational grocery outings (we talk about what we see, etc.) will be more of a struggle.

I bring this up in the spirit of Lent. I have been thinking of ways to simplify our lives to leave more time for just being. And, since unpacking the Last Box this afternoon, I am returning from a bit of survival mode to maintenance mode. I do, however, foresee more times of slight chaos, be it from moving or new babes, or sick kids, etc.

As stay-at-home mom beginning to homeschool my kids I find less time than I’d like for planning and thinking. About 18 months ago I started to feel very overwhelmed and inadequate, perhaps not too differently from the feelings articulated by this reader of Elizabeth Foss’ Real Learning blog. I didn’t know where to begin. So many cirriculums, educational philosophies, resources (ahem, my first baby was 1 at the time). I wanted to read everything. The impossibility of this project never crossed my mind. Until I became overwhelmed. So I started to think of what I really wanted our family life to be. Peaceful, uncomplicated and, most importantly, centered around the Liturgical Year. No need to figure out math manipulatives or a high school curriculum just yet. Just focus on the seasons of the Church.

To that end, I made a plan.

Year One: Read, gather ideas, pray.

Year Two: Begin compiling ideas and sketching out an annual calendar, pray. Pay attention to Feast Days special to our domestic church.

Hopefully, the fruit of this labor in the form of monthly and daily sketches will serve to simplify our lives in the years to come, especially during those busy baby times. I don’t want this kind of planning to give me the illusion that I am in control. That is the last thing this control freak needs. Rather, I hope that it allows us to relish in the seasons of the church year by having some ideas and plans sketched out and in one location.

All this to say that, while we don’t need a weekly meal plan now, it may be a good way to simplify things around here and establish a routine for the more hectic times. Does anyone plan weekly, monthly?

For the past couple of nights, my almost 4 year-old C has been calling out in his sleep, “Mommy, mommy” in such a sad, almost pathetic, tone. It’s heart-breaking, at least for this mommy, and the reason is that I fear that I’ve been a bit too harsh with him over the past couple of days. I’m usually a fairly calm, upbeat person, but over the past couple of days I have been “laying down the law” and in the process, I fear that I have been traumatizing C.  This is not to say that I’m not firm in general when it comes to our family rules, but the past couple of days have been different because I’ve been doing a lot of the disciplining right before bedtime.  I find discipline in general to be the most difficult in the evening hours, because it is hard to come up with and enforce consequences around bedtime, and also because my patience is sometimes running lowest this time of day. We work on the understanding that if Christopher wants certain privileges (stories before bed, dessert, a video during the day, etc.), he needs to fulfill certain responsibilities (taking care of himself by getting dressed, brushing teeth, eating good meals, etc.; taking care of others by being kind, helpful, etc.).  If he doesn’t fulfill his responsibilities, there is a consequence.  Around bedtime, the only immediate privilege that can be taken away is bedtime stories – all of the other consequences must wait until the next day. Maybe some of you have other ideas for consequences in the evening?? 

Do any of you mamas ever struggle to find a balance between being firm and loving at the same time? Any ideas on how to handle situations around bedtime? And any suggestions on how to deal with very stubborn kiddos who won’t budge once they get a certain idea in their head?

These conversations about food are challenging; feeding a growing family is a big part of a mother’s job, and picky eaters, dietary restrictions, and environmental concerns make decisions seem so complicated!

In this month’s Domino magazine there was a woman who tried to eat locally for a month and wrote about the fact that it was hard and expensive but also delcious and satisfying. In O! Magazine, there was a woman who tried to “do everything right” for a month — exercise, eat right, floss, wear sunscreen. She also found it hard and time consuming, but did find some new habits that were easy to maintain.

I have recently been eliminating all simple carbs for health reasons and it has been an intense experience, but I have learned alot, too, and now that I am working carbs back in I will continue to eat Fage plain yogurt for lunch and a grapefruit instead of orange juice in the morning, among other small changes.

My friend K has been listening to our conversations so far, and she asks: what are people really eating? K proposes that we keep track of what we eat/serve our kids for 5 days and then post it, and I do think we could all get some good ideas from one another. This is a call for honesty, so I will begin by saying that yesterday my children had Chex for dinner.

Are you game? No recipes needed, just a simple list, to be posted next week?

I just finished reading Fast Food Nation, and the book was quite disturbing. One of the most upsetting parts–the gory details of the U.S. beef industry. And now we have the largest beef recall in American History. See story here:

Huge Beef recall stems from California plant

The beef industry regularly mistreats cattle and serves meat tainted with e-coli and other diseases. The entire system is set up with a drive for higher productivity, and higher profits, at the expense of safe food, safe working environments for workers, and animal rights. This beef recall is really telling and I find three things particularly disturbing about this article.

1st–this meat was served to school children, where the government has a policy to buy the cheapest–and often times unsafe–meat for our children. Low bid contracts, without concern for food safety–is a real problem of school lunch programs. As a mother I find this appalling.

2nd–regular workers and plant managers were fired as a result of the recall. Laying the blame on low level employees for abusing cattle and selling beef from sick cattle to our nations schoolchildren is really disturbing. At most of these slaughterhouses, policies as to how to handle sick cattle come down from the top, and I highly doubt some immigrant and likely illiterate workers made the decision to shuffle sick cattle along and sell the stuff. I’m also skeptical that such a decision was made by a plant manager–unless intense pressure for higher profits was put on him from the top of the company.

Finally, the most disturbing fact of the article–
“Officials estimate that about 37 million pounds of the recalled beef went to school programs, but they believe most of the meat probably has already been eaten.”
Great. And that is the problem with a system that uses recalls–rather than proper prior safety inspection of plants–to regulate the beef industry.