food – Page 7 – My Truant Pen

What mirror? Where?

I’m still walking to daycare when the weather is nice. It’s just about two miles. I’m working on getting my body back to a place I’m comfortable staying. After I had Grey I realized that my body wasn’t going to miraculously return to prepregnancy state. Nursing, my normal amounts of exercise and food, none of that was going to get me back to where I used to be. I was convinced that it must be hormonal or thyroidal or otherwise not because of my actions, but before I called my doctor to discuss the possibility I figured I’d track my calories to prove just how virtuous I was.*

This was, shall we say, eye opening.

So I spent several months tracking what I ate and how much I exercised (doing a lot less of the former and a lot more of the latter) and I got back to what I consider my “set weight”.

Well, Thane is almost 9 months old. In another few months I’ll be into Thanksgiving and Christmas and the cold, dark times of year. It’s a lot harder to diet/exercise when it’s freezing out and there’s no fresh fruit to soften the blow. So I’ve resumed running an intentional calorie deficit. By Thane’s first birthday I hope to be back at my set weight, and from here on out only make sure I don’t gain weight.

But man, the reason people don’t usually do this successfully is because it’s hard. When you eat fewer calories than you burn, you (shockingly) end up hungry. Your body tells you that something is wrong. You get grumpy, cranky and fragile. My worst time of day is when I’m preparing dinner — I often haven’t eaten since lunch 6 hours ago and the kids require patience and handling and there’s traffic and I’m like-as-not on some sort of deadline and several times a week I’m doing it alone. Not only that, but I’m trying hard to make sure Grey doesn’t notice I’m dieting, because I do not want him to think that it is normal or necessary to count calories on everything he puts in his mouth.

Anyway, this is less about the woe of dieting than it is about today’s walk. My quest to return to pre-pregnancy has been working. I’m wearing the jeans I wore pre-Thane. Today I have on a rather fitted shirt which shows off my, uh, nursing-supplemented assets. And I got no fewer than four friendly catcalls during my two miles. Including one “Hey, you’re gorgeous!”

I know that I’m supposed to mind catcalls and find them 1) degrading 2) insulting 3) threatening. I must admit that I’ve never managed to do so. Here on my walk I find them … welcoming and appreciative. Welcoming because the guys (usually young to middle aged Latinos) doing the catcalling don’t seem to see me as outside their community — not some stuck up gringa, but a part of their town and their warm summer days. Appreciative because they’re usually saying NICE things. Their comments feel quite friendly. They are an invitation with no hard feelings if I don’t take them up on it (which, obviously, I don’t).

And I have noticed that certain outfits are much more appreciated than others.

Now that I’ve managed to terrify my mom and horrify my husband (“Are you sure it’s SAFE to walk to daycare?”), I’ll move on. It’s very hard, after you have had a child, to find yourself in your own skin again. I used to be a blonde. Now I’m truly a brunette. I’m a brunette with silvery threads wending through my darkening hair. The dimensions of my body shift and change with the demands put upon it. Very few of my blouses, for example, can contain my abundance, even though most of my pants fit. I haven’t been able to wear a regular summer dress in two years. My body has been swollen, shared, deflated, inflated, strangely hard, shockingly soft, blurred around the boundaries. And now it is coming back to me, to be mine again. I am the sole occupant, again. I may control my body with concern only for myself, after a long period where that was not true. (Well, coming up. I’m still nursing so there are still constraints, but they are more limited than they were.)

This requires a re-understanding of how I relate to my body — how it works, what it looks like, what I see when I look at myself, what others see when they look at me. This, too, is hard work.

The only picture of me among the 141 currently on my camera

*I know that intentional weight loss and dieting can be controversial. I know plenty of people cannot lose weight for good reasons, ranging from eating disorders to hormonal imbalances. I have also learned that I do not have any of the conditions that would make losing my pregnancy weight unusually problematic.

Feeding a Thane

I’m finding it a fascinating experience to discover what is largely unchanged child-to-child, what is unique to each individual person, and just how much I’ve forgotten in three years. Food has to be one of those issues.

Does his face look different to you? I swear it's changed in the last week.

Breastfeeding I remembered thinking about. One of the things I dislike about nursing is just how much attention I find myself compelled to pay to it. I suspect this has a lot to do with me and my personality. My brother was commenting the other day just how much time I spend WORRYING about things and planning for things. It’s true — I hardly even notice because I’ve always been like that. But I notice with breastfeeding. I constantly wonder if I’m making enough milk to satisfy, how long it’s been since I last nursed, whether I’ve gone too long and am risking my supply blah blah blah. I think about it all the time. It’s exhausting. I take action on it all the time, too. I am still pumping at work twice a day, almost 6 months after my return.

Well, I’ve set myself a deadline. We’re headed out to Washington in the first week of August, at which point we’ll dump our children onto my parents and decamp. Or rather, camp. I’m planning on backpacking. I don’t see a great way to bring out enough frozen breast milk to provide for Thane while I’m there. And I don’t see a good way to preserve breastmilk while I’m backpacking the West Side of Mt. Rainier. So my plan is this: get Thane sufficiently accustomed to formula so that he can be on that while I’m gone. Bring my breast pump so I don’t totally shut off my supply, but stop worrying about it constantly. And then when I get back, I’m done pumping during the day and Thane can have formula at daycare. We’ll continue nursing when we’re in proximity for as long as it continues working. If this spikes nursing totally, so be it.

Of course, this matters waaaay less than it used to because Thane is getting so much more food from food. What I had forgotten about this stage was how unbelievably messy it is. Cheerios are all well and good, if a cross between a nutritional meal and a projectile weapon. Blueberries are beloved, but risky (nothing stains like blueberry!) But dear me, when the baby food comes out! First of all, Thane objects to not having control of all objects in his proximity. This is true of glasses, necklaces (I haven’t worn a necklace in about two months), noses, toys and spoons. So especially before he’s gotten his first bite, he’ll do a very good impression of an anti-spoon-aircraft battery. Usually he manages to at least hit away the spoon, which dislodges some food, which he promptly grabs with his hand. Then he rubs his eye.

“Ow! Mom! Someone put something in my eye! It hurts!” further evidence, if any was needed, that 8 month olds are not geniuses.

Once I sneak in that first bite (often while he’s protesting the indignity of not being allowed his own spoon), he’ll either decide he loves the food and open up (I always feel like a mommy bird popping worms in my baby’s mouth), or close his mouth tight in protest. Neither one really stops the questing hands.

The result is absolute chaos. He’s usually covered in food. His eyes are covered in food. His tray is covered in food. I’m covered in food (he has this charming habit of blowing raspberries). The floor is covered in food. The sides of the high chair are covered in food. And he’s hitting the tray with a stolen spoon, like some Victorian food protester.

Yeah, I think our babyfood days are limited. Time to start doing more finger foods.

Daydreaming of Raspberries

This was a weekend of two daydreams — although the weekend was a wonderful dream in it’s own right.

Raspberries — wherever we’ve lived my mom has planted raspberries. (Man, it sounds nostalgic when you say it like that). My parents have a huge plot of raspberries where they are — which is constant need of weeding. It’s the only thing mom ever remembers to water. Every year, there are massive amounts of raspberries to be gathered. Mom and I would make raspberry jam together — even if we could only do so in the very brief vacations I came home. I would often go out and pick the raspberries in the cool of the morning, where the dew still clings to the part of the lawn not yet touched by late-rising sun. It’s impossible to pick raspberries without eating some, and they are always bountiful in flavor and soft on the tongue. It’s also impossible to pick them properly without getting your arms scratched up and berry-stains on the knees of your jeans… with sad berry corspes caught in your toes. But that’s another story. Once I’d worked my way down the line of raspberries and back, I’d usually have more than enough for a batch of jam. The amount I’d pick in a morning costs about $20 here, probably because raspberries are hard to pick and transport.

I’d bring them inside, and we’d rinse them. Then we’d start to squish them with the back of forks in glass pie plates. This is a tricky manuever, since the goal of a raspberry is to turn you red with a permanent stain. But unlike strawberries, it’s highly satisfying to squash raspberries with a fork. They go splat very easily.

4 cups crushed raspberries
7 cups sugar
1 teaspoon margarine (to keep a skin from forming)
1 packet CERTO pectin

The sugar/raspberry combination becomes liquid almost immediately. The margarine floats on the top of the mix for a long time, until the the mixture becomes hot. You have to stir for a long time — always longer than you think. And then things all come together at once. It hits a rolling boil and you dump in the Certo and stir like crazy for 60 seconds. Then you take off the heat. A brief fast moment to skim any skin that did happen and then I would pour into the jar (still hot from the dishwasher) with a big ladle, and then transfer the funnel to the next jar. Mom would wipe the jar lid with a hot dishcloth (attempting not to burn herself), and then pull a jar lid from the boiling water with two forks (attempting not to burn herself), put the lid on the jar and screw it tight with the threaded lid-holders (attempting not to burn herself), and then turn it upside down (attempting not to burn herself).

And then you’re done. You pour any that’s left over into a bowl for dad to have with his toast. You start to clean up from the carnage of fast-moving jam splatters. You sit at the kitchen table talking about something, or maybe getting bread started. And then you hear the first one… ^pop^. Jam makes a distinctive noise when it seals, cooling enough to contract and make the lid convex instead of concave. The pop is the sound of success — of jam that will sit in the cupboard and make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and Jones camping cookies. I love the sound of jam sealing.

I would really like to make raspberry jam this summer. Raspberries cost more than gold, unfortunately, when purchased commercially. I planted raspberries, but they are still small, weak things — and probably will never thrive before I have to move. I called some u-pick places and there are very few summer raspberries — mostly they have an autumn pick here. But hopefully, come mid July, I will be able to live out this fantasy (with my husband ably standing in the place of my mother in the trying not to get burned department).