September 2010 Archives

My son has always been a bit on the shy side. Unlike some of his friends (and his mother), Kellan is not one to dive right into new social settings. He likes to check out what the other kids are doing before he becomes comfortable joining in or talking. Once during summer camp, I dropped him off in front of the classroom and then stood where he couldn't see me - my version of being a fly on the wall.

When one of the teachers asked him if he wanted to join a group building a tower, he shook his head. He loves to build things so I wondered what he was going to do. He just sat on the floor with his hands on his knees. It was hard leaving the building rather than going back and encouraging him to play with the other kids.

Now when I drop Kellan off at preschool, he tries to hide behind my legs when his teacher greets us. I feel like I am constantly cajoling him to say good morning to her and his classmates. Even on play dates, it takes a warm up period before he interacts with friends.

I am trying not to make this a bigger deal than it is. While I would like for Kellan to be more confident, I know that preschool is still too young to start labeling children, but school anxiety is a very real problem.  Experts say if your child insists on skipping school or complains of illness in order to avoid school, you should seek help right away.

Kellan does eventually break out of his shell at school and with friends. Hopefully, it will take less time as he gets older. I've been trying to schedule more one on one time with friends and doing more activities where he'll get a chance to meet new kids at places like the playground or the children's museum. It can be difficult for adults to navigate new social surroundings so I certainly should cut my own kid some slack!

Is your preschooler a social butterfly, or is he or she more likely to watch from the sidelines? How do you help your child break out of his or her shell?

One of my favorite childhood movies is Mary Poppins. I thought her magic was so amazing. Who wouldn't want an adult around who made the room clean itself with just a snap of her fingers? Too bad I can't make that happen in real life! My preschooler loves to have everything - and I mean everything - out of its box, basket, or case so he can spread it out to play. To make matters worse, my husband is an enabler by creating elaborate scenes in the living room with all of Kellan's toys!

  Kellan used to be better about cleaning up when we asked, but lately he gets genuinely upset when we tell him it's time to clean up. He yells, "I'm still playing with that!" even though he stopped playing with something hours ago. Our old clean-up games aren't working anymore. Now I just threaten to throw things away before I finally get him to pick up.

One sneaky thing I've been doing is storing away some of his toys when he's asleep.  We've always tried to keep toys from overwhelming our house, but after a birthday and a couple of visits with grandparents, there is more stuff to contend with! So I'm slowly whittling away the amount of toys we actually have in the house. I'm trying to see how far I can go without him noticing a real decrease in toys.

Something else I'm going to try is putting on special "clean up" music to make the process more fun. Kellan loves dancing so maybe cleaning with fun music playing will be entertaining for all of us. When I have big cleaning jobs, I put on my headphones and get busy with old school funk or 80's tunes. Kellan loves the Beatle's White Album (no joke) when we're in the car, so maybe I should play it during clean up time.

When my husband and I got back from our first parents-only trip to New York City last weekend, we returned to a giddy son, a relieved grandmother, and a mountain of laundry. The glow of vacation fades quickly when you have to dive right into chores, but I'm not complaining because we were happy to be home!

After doing my fourth load, I wondered what more I could do to make the laundry process more Earth-friendly. I avoid using bleach and I always buy biodegradable detergent, but I know there's plenty of room for improvement.

One thing I need to remember is to wash everything in cold water. Using hot water is a significant energy drain. Presoaking clothes and using cold water detergent should help take care of stubborn stains and odors. Another energy saver is air drying clothes. Even in a city like Portland, there are opportunities beyond summer to line dry clothes. There's also the option of doing it inside your house. If you live in a climate that allows you to get that incredibly fresh, line-dried laundry smell most of the year, I am jealous!

Another way to go green with laundry is to do less of it. Look for clothes you can wear at least twice before you need to throw it in the wash. That may be difficult for items like cotton t-shirts, but work clothes like dark colored blouses and pants can be worn more than once. I don't wash my jeans after one wear, unless they get muddy. If I get a food stain, I spot clean as soon as I can. Not washing denim too often makes your favorite jeans last longer.

Avoid buying clothes that require dry cleaning.  The solvents used for dry cleaning clothes often create hazardous by-products. Plus, you can save money in the long run by avoiding trips to the dry cleaner. I hand wash items like wool and silk, but make sure you test the fabric before you shrink or fade your favorite top.   

One interesting thing I've observed about my picky eater is that he may reject a food in one form, but he will eat it in another. For example, he doesn't like tomatoes but he will eat tomato soup. While this makes no sense to me, I'm sure to a three-year-old it's perfectly logical.

So this has made me more inclined to serve him vegetables that he's rejected in the past. Green ones barely make it past his lips, but I served tomato soup with small bits of zucchini in it and he ate it without complaint. I've also been able to convince Kellan to eat cheese by grating it instead of serving it sliced on crackers. Who knew?

I know there are plenty of recipes where you can disguise everything from cauliflower to salmon by blending them in smoothies or mixing the offending food with more preschool palate-friendly options. I've done this but for some reason, I want my son to eat vegetables without disguising them every single time. Maybe I'm being too ambitious, but a mother can dream right?

How do you sneak foods into your kids meals?

Here's a confession. Sometimes when I am reading bedtime stories to my son, I am really only thinking about one thing - dessert.  So while I should be focusing on Shel Silverstein, I'm actually thinking about that peanut butter chocolate ice cream in the freezer.

Coming from a Korean background, dessert at our house was usually fruit. I'm talking orange slices and melon wedges. We did have ice cream and my mom baked an occasional carrot cake, but unless it was someone's birthday, we didn't have real sweets until I learned to bake.  What's really kind of amusing about my effort to cut back on sweets is that I am trying to replace chocolate with - wait for it - fruit! 

When we moved to Portland from Los Angeles, my husband and I looked forward to having outside space to call our own. Having a garden or an area to read with our feet in the grass was going to feel almost as good as living somewhere that didn't feel like a shoebox. Even though I had not had a pet since high school, I dreamed of having backyard chickens. It seemed like a great hands-on way to learn about sustainable living.

I admit that I'm a city girl at heart. Raising chickens would be a serious commitment, but I was willing to thoroughly educate myself. After doing the research, I realized I wasn't quite ready for the urban chicken experience. We have some serious predators - raccoons, red-tailed hawks, and coyotes - where we live so our chicken coop would have to be secured like Fort Knox. I also didn't have the time to be a full time mother to the chicks during the important first two months they would be in my care. (I'm using "I" here because while my husband was interested, he wasn't as committed to trying this experiment as I was). Then I got pregnant and all thoughts of being a mother hen turned to my own little chick.

This doesn't mean I've given up! Having backyard chickens seems like a great opportunity to teach kids all kinds of lessons, like responsibility and animal behavior. Chickens are also a great addition to your composting efforts.  They can eat things like vegetable and fruit peels and their droppings are great for your compost bin. It's also the ultimate way to assure you know exactly where your food comes from and how it was raised.

When I was pregnant, I remember seeing a toddler running on a sidewalk with a look of pure joy on his face. I'm pretty sure his mother wasn't as joyful running after him, but the boy's expression was another reminder of why I was excited about being a parent.

Now I have my own child who loves to run. He yells, "Race me!" Then he takes off before we've agreed on a finish line. Too bad I can't get as excited about running as he does. I'll race him when I can, but I sometimes feel relieved when I can tell him I'm wearing the wrong shoes to race him. I wish I loved running. I've actually completed a marathon and I run for exercise some days, but I don't love it. Not one bit. Maybe if I'm less goal-oriented about it, running won't feel like a chore.

We had a neighborhood party on Labor Day weekend and I noticed how much fun the kids were having running around with a couple of basketballs. They weren't even trying to score baskets. They were just playing keep away with the little ones just following the older kids while screaming. They were having a blast! I need a piece of that action. I started looking into adult leagues for playground games, like kickball and dodgeball. We often see adults playing at parks around our city. I suppose the easiest thing to do is just take a ball out to the park and run around with my son. A recent British study found many parents have forgotten how to play with their children. I don't want that to happen to me! If I'm wearing the right shoes and have the right attitude, I'm sure to have as much fun as he's having.

This summer I learned how challenging it can be to pack a simple lunch. It isn't so simple. Even though Kellan went to a summer day camp just twice a week, putting together a lunch he'd actually eat was not easy! I now have a whole new respect for moms and dads who have to pack lunch five days a week.

The one guaranteed meal he will eat is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but these days, many schools and day cares are peanut-free. So I tried cream cheese and jelly sandwiches. No dice. Kellan doesn't like lunch meat and he's iffy about cheese, other than cream cheese on a bagel, so that pretty much ruled out most other types of sandwiches. So on camp mornings, I would just stuff in a random assortment of foods - like carrots, hummus, whole grain crackers, guacamole, and a fruit - in his lunch bag and hope for the best.

I've been searching for healthy school lunch ideas and going through my cookbooks for inspiration. Just in the past couple of weeks since camp ended, Kellan has been willing to try new things. We gave him a sliver of sheep milk cheese and he sniffed it before saying it was too stinky for him. After a bit of coaxing he did have a bite! Now that the weather is cooler here, I'm going to try my trick from last fall and bake muffins with shredded vegetables, like zucchini and carrots.  

Last year, when searching for preschools, we got into a "green preschool" by accident. I admit it wasn't something we sought out, but we did appreciate the emphasis on environmentally-conscious learning. So what does it mean to be green? I've found it's not precisely defined. Schools and day care centers can use the term to refer to everything from the way the facility is constructed and maintained to the curriculum or emphasis on green practices.

At my son's preschool, the kids learned about green concepts like recycling and growing food. The toys were mainly wood, non-toxic, and encouraged imaginative play. Crafts were made from recycled materials. Parents received eco-minded information, such as keeping the home chemical-free. For me, all of that was icing on the cake for a fun, friendly environment where my son could make friends and learn.