More on Food

While sitting in the sand with Zoe at the park the other day I made a nostalgic observation. Zoe doesn't intentionally eat sand, but she does like sticking her finger in her mouth. And she likes playing in the sand. The result reminded me of those candy dipsticks (Dip’N’Stick, Fun-Dip, Lik-M-Aid, Lik-M-Stix) we had as kids, but with sand instead of sugar. Yum!

Here’s one way children cause their parents to gain weight. We’ve been trying to find new foods for Zoe, mostly because we feel guilty feeding her hotdogs three meals a day (and sand has no vitamins). Every time I go to the store I try to find something different for Zoe to try, and then she will usually reject it. At the end of the meal I will usually eat what she has left behind. We don’t give up right away but if she still won’t eat it after a few tries I will finish off whatever is left. Since we are less concerned with the fat content in Zoe’s food than our own they are not always the lightest items. I’m confident that if this keeps up—and I don’t see an end in sight—that come December I will be a shoe-in for that Santa role I’ve been coveting.

I'm afraid. Tomorrow we leave for a week in Baltimore and we will be staying in hotels the entire time. First, though, a little prologue. Last Monday we stayed in a hotel for one night while we had some work done on our house. In was a beautiful hotel and we had a large room that was very quiet. However, normally when we put Zoe to sleep we put her in her crib and she will usually cry for a short period of time (or long period of time) but she will eventually realize that we are not coming back for her and she will fall asleep (or exhaust herself crying and pass out). In the hotel room we were not comfortable with the level and duration of crying necessary to get her to sleep in the crib they provided, plus she can see us so she may never have stopped screaming. So we tried to get her to go to sleep in the bed with us. However, she is too distracted with us both there so it took us two hours to get her solidly to sleep, at which point we are exhausted from having spent two hours shushing her and trying to keep her from climbing off the bed. So we spent the evening of what we had been calling our "mini-vacation" lying awake in the dark while Zoe fidgeted around us. Is this what we are doomed for in Baltimore? In bed by eight and drawing straws in the morning to see who will take her down to the lobby to crawl around so the other person can sleep? I'll let you know when we return.

See photos of Zoe at http://picasaweb.google.com/dbglass
Buy the book at http://blurb.com/bookstore/detail/193034