Slow Food

Homecoming

It's quarter past five on Friday afternoon. For the first time in two weeks, I've been able to cycle to and from work. Thirty degrees is my cut-off temperature. Today it soared almost all the way to 50. Noah has been with Erica all day. She's probably had no reason to open the dishwasher -- Noah's first head-over-heels, ache-in-the-bottom-of-the-stomach love crush -- but she's almost certainly taken him for his first real outdoor pleasure stroll since December. By that measure alone, today will have given him as much cause for happiness as he's had in a fortnight.

Key in the door, bike wheeled against the hallway wall, shoes off next to the bottom step.

I can hear them murmuring in the living room. If I were Noah, sitting in that impossible position with one foot beneath my belly button and the other behind my tailbone, I would know exactly what the sound of feet clomping up the stairs meant. Dinner, the hassle of another diaper change, and a bedtime routine with less than half the amount of horseplay that I want.

The day is over. It's getting cold and dark again. The fun is about to stop.

But I'm not the one with his fanny pressed against the rug. I'm the one who just hung a coat on the knob at the edge of the landing.

And even before I catch sight of the child gate, I can hear this crazy scampering toward the landing. Noah might as well have been slung from a catapult. The gait of his crawl is all sped up. He's not going quite fast enough to make him fall, but it's enough to break his rhythm with a little recurring hitch. And my god, the smile on this kid's face! There's just no way around it: whatever he's done for the eight hours before I walked through the door, the excitement of these last five seconds is some kind of ecstasy that looks like it might totally unhinge him. His dad just walked around the corner, and there's a level of glee gripping his brain that I don't think any grown person could even imagine.

What a thing to be his dad at this moment! In five, ten, fifteen years, he'll know better. I'll be something else to him. He'll learn to investigate the gap between what I say and what I do, and his energy will go to rubbing my nose in it. That's fine. I hope he does. If your child can't shame you out of hypocrisy, I doubt anyone can. But right now, with this blur of almost furious joy careering toward my pant legs, right now I'm going to savor it and try to put some pale description into words.

And thank Erica for not opening the dishwasher's drawbridge door the moment I arrived.

Uh Oh

The Insanity Diet

My parents like to tell a story about a dinner party they attended about 30 years ago, soon before or shortly after I was born. After greeting the hostess, who was reputed to be an excellent and exacting cook, my father asked if he could help in the kitchen. Yes, the woman replied. Would you slice some carrots into half-inch rounds? Sure, my dad said. Whereupon she handed him not only a knife but a straight-edge ruler.

I submit that this person would be far to lax to pass as Noah's personal chef.

It has been four days since he has permitted us to put a spoon into his mouth. He and he alone, in other words, is the Decider. And he has decided that only the most labor-intensive creations are worthy of his mostly untoothed gums.

Before he consented this afternoon to eat a little pasta with a five-hour Bolognese sauce -- milk reduction, wine reduction, home-preserved tomatoes simmered to microscopic bits -- the only meat preparation he would tolerate were bits of ground beef tiny enough to be crammed inside the pinhole apertures of his Cheerios. I doubt even Thomas Keller is anal enough to do a meal-sized portion of those.

Won't eat bananas pureed, consistent nos to bananas diced, but it turns out that he has nothing against bananas. You just have to mix them into pancake batter and fire up the griddle.

When you type "lamb pancake" into Google and click "I'm Feeling Lucky," I think Noah would approve of the instructions that appear. Trim the lamb of any sinew, chop into medium lengths, and slice very thinly. Combine the lamb, soy sauce, wine, ginger, garlic...

The Ram Emerges

People say that astrology is bunk. Perhaps. Here's a quotation from Noah's free profile on astrology.com: "Like the energy of the first rush of spring, you move into the world in a headstrong, pioneering way. You are likely to rush into things before reflecting, and may also be impatient or unwilling to sit back and allow events to mature. You have great vitality and a tremendous need to be physically active. You have a strong will, and are self-centered about pursuing it, so that you may try to dominate other people until you learn to be more subtle about getting your way."

Recently, I have been changing Noah's diaper while he stands at his bookshelf sorting out which books are to remain on the shelf and which belong on the floor. What's wrong with the changing table? Nothing that I can perceive, but Noah sees things differently (as many pioneers do). He is unwilling to lie on his back for the thirty-odd seconds it takes for the diapering event to mature. He is apt to rush off the table without reflecting that it's a long way to the floor.

Lunch today brought further demonstration of Noah's will. He consents to be spoon-fed no longer. He pursed his lips, swiped at the spoon and spit pureed lamb and apple sauce until I relented and offered rice crackers, avocado pieces and small cubes of Swiss cheese, all of which he ate with aplomb.

"If He's Hungry"

"If Noah gets hungry, there's leftover spinach and yogurt from lunch in the fridge." This was Liz yesterday. There is a point when indomitable optimism turns into wanton folly, and she was blowing past it with enough speed to rip a windsock. If he gets hungry. What a euphemism! How about, "If he can be made to eat." Or better still, "If he can be made to eat without trying to make his head explode."


Apparently the little man thinks that with enough intracranial pressure, he'll be able to teleport right out of his high chair like Hiro Nakamura.

It is not that Noah will not eat. He loves to eat. Just not what you are feeding him. At first he figured out that if he held out long enough against turkey and squash, yogurt would eventually appear. Whereupon his mouth would pop open like a baby bird's. When the yogurt stopping showing up, he discovered a more advanced style of protest. He simply opted out of food, in favor of paper. Wrapping tissue sure turned out to be the gladdest tiding of this holiday season. Merry Christmas, suckers!

But as nine out of ten pediatricians fail to warn you, gift wrap is a stepping stone drug. First your infant is eating a teddy-bear pattern, and before you know it he's plundering the recycling for straight cardboard. Then plastic.

Which makes it all the more impressive that Noah has managed to stay true to his original protest. After declining most of an apparently subpar lunch the other day, he gnawed off the corner of a subscription offer for Gourmet magazine.

Everybody's a critic.

If you think all the craziness has done a number on his hair, you should see mine.