Hello… Hello… Can Anyone Hear Me?

For those of you that know me (let’s face it this blog is small, you all know me) it is a well known fact that I like to talk.  As Mason begins to come into his own, and by own I mean attitude, it is becoming more and more apparent that I will soon be talking completely to myself.  Living in a household with two males is hard enough, pee in places pee shouldn’t be, sports all the time, and pizza as the preferred food choice, now apparently I have to deal with selective hearing.  I thought I had at least until Mason was a young adult to talk his ear off while he listened contently to everything I said, not! I can say, “Mason, Mason, hey buddy, Mason” over and over again until I am blue in the face and the child will not even acknowledge that I am making a sound.  It appears that he only can hear me when I say, “Snack, Walk, or Bye-Bye”. 

This would be hard enough to deal with if I still had a husband that listened to my every word, yeah right!  There are days where I can tell Scott a funny story about something that happened at the park or something cute that Mason did and he will look over and say “Sure that sounds fine”, believe me that is not the appropriate response.  A particularly disturbing incident happened one day after he came home from work.  To be fair, he works very hard and I understand he wants a few minutes to relax in front of the T.V., but on this day it pretty much threw me over the edge.  I went outside to grill us a wonderful chicken supper and Mason thought it would be funny to lock the back patio door, something I didn’t know he could do.  I am standing outside with a plate of hot chicken in one hand and a half-full cup of marinade in the other saying “Scott, Scott, hey, open the door”.  He doesn’t even move his eyes away from ESPN.  I should note the window was open and I was yelling rather loudly, I’m pretty sure they neighbors even felt sorry for me.  I began to bang my head against the door, not in angst but in an effort to get him to remember I was alive.  Mason was standing at the backdoor this entire time looking at me and laughing, I am convinced he knew exactly what he had done, probably revenge for the diaper change I had just subjected him to. 

Finally Scott looks up and says “Oh, do you need a hand”.  Yeah, I could have used a hand five minutes ago when I started yelling at him in the first place.  He thought I was yelling “Stop, Stop” to Mason instead of screaming “Scott, Scott” at the top of my lungs.  My biggest question, shouldn’t have five minutes of yelling “Stop” at Mason elicited a response as well?  It looks as if this is only going to be a growing problem in the Jowers household, my only defense will be to keep a spare set of keys on me at all times and talk to any available adult that shows interest J

Living Life with the World’s Smallest Food Critic

I have never claimed to be a great cook, I’m moderate to good on my best days, and I am the first to admit I have had some epic failures in the kitchen. One dish that comes to mind as completely atrocious is spaghetti pizza, pasta on top of crescent roll dough; it was mushy, heavy, and disgusting. I have learned from my mistakes in the past few years and I have a recipe box filled with several standby’s that get us through weekly dinners. Occasionally though I like to branch out, especially now that we are eating healthier and Mason eats most everything that we do. With that said, almost everything I have made the child has ended up on the floor, in my face, or a delightful combination of the two at one time or another. Something that he loves one day is like kryptonite the next; he can even turn on me in the middle of the meal.

A few weeks back we had a few fresh strawberries left in the fridge and I thought, why not make a fresh strawberry puree and put it into homemade pancake batter. It was great, just enough strawberry flavor, light, and fluffy (those were my thoughts at least). Mason threw them on the floor after one pretend bite and after a 15 minute long battle he ended up eating a bowl of cold peas, for breakfast. For supper last night I wanted to try a Middle Eastern dish called Falafel which you put into pita pockets. It is an aromatic combination of chick peas, garlic, cumin, steamed broccoli, and olive oil all ground up into a paste and formed into little patties that I baked in the oven. We then put them into our whole wheat pitas, topped with a Greek yogurt cucumber sauce and dug in, or I did at least. Mason actually put up a good effort, eating an entire Falafel patty, but it was my husband that this time acted like the child. One tiny bite into the pita (not even breaking into the Falafel) and he tapped out. He gave me a look and I knew I would be fixing him a pizza, just my luck.

I have had a breakthrough on the Mason front; I’ve realized as long as the child can dip his food in something, anything really, he will eat it. I’ve gave him nectarines dipped in plain yogurt, bread dipped in applesauce, broccoli dipped in homemade cheese sauce, and of course the go to for all children, hot dogs dipped in ketchup. As long as he can “dip it dip it” as he likes to say, he will clean his plate. I know that I have many years of uphill battles ahead of me and if I can at least get the food under control I might have a fighting chance!