Our Wicked Ways

Last weekend we took L & M to their first play! I had booked these tickets late last year after I had spent a wonderful weekend with my dearest friend Lisa in NY living the Manhattan life which of course included a matinee at the Gershwin. I so loved this play that I immediately wanted the rest of the fam to see it as soon as I found out it was coming back to SF. I got caught up in feeling the city vibes and culture of attending a play that really got my brain thinking on a long-gone level, things that are not really familiar in my daily mom life in the suburbs, I think I kind of misjudged the benefit the kids would get out it. Sure it tied into the Wizard of Oz and they liked the liveness of it, but they didn't really understand it and there was a lot I am glad that they didn't understand. A bit too complex on many levels. And then their was the element of my analytical engineer husband's questions "Why didn't they establish the importance of the animals' ability to speak before they started to lose it?" "Why did they make the transition from the Wizard and the schoolmaster being unquestioned to completely discredited so unrealistically quick just because Glinda suddenly said so?" Indeed, but can't I just go along with the energy of the performance without his analysis and worrying I am over-exposing the kids? We did have the pleasure of going with our great friends J & L and their 3 kids and we all had a fun time running around in the Japan town square after dinner and I love that we got to do this together. Don't get me wrong, we really liked Wicked and thought Glinda was fantastic, but the Orpheum really has nothing on Broadway and, well, we probably should have researched age-appropriateness a bit more.

Enough with the critiquing, now I need some thoughts on what you think about this:

Is it wrong? No not that fact that he is teetering on the edge of the countertop, nor that just out of the frame is a block of knives and a cooking grilled cheese. But is it wrong that he is eating a stick of butter? This isn't the easy straight forward question and answer I would give myself with the first 2 kids ("yes"). R is much smaller than L &M, who some of you remember were quite big, especially L whom for the first 4 months resembled the hungry caterpillar when "he wasn't a little caterpillar anymore" think rolly-polly, chub upon chub in place of a neck. They were big babies and had identical weights at every benchmark. I always thought they grew so fast, blowing through clothing sizes and car seat limits, and just plain uncomfortably heavy to wear in those cute slings. When R, our third and most likely last child was born, I wished that baby stages and appearance would not be as quickly fleeting...and this is a lesson in be careful what you wish for. He just is not a hungry caterpillar. Never was. I knew something wasn't the same with him as an infant when he would only ask to breastfeed every 4 hours (would have made the old textbooks proud) it was super convenient, but just not enough. At 18mos he had dropped to the 5th weight %tile with a disparity of more than 50% height to weight ratio and was given a label of FTT, which I cannot bear to define as it is just too suggestive of failure to my abilities to feed my child. Rob's response to my worries and disappointment when I told him about the label was "Isn't Kaiser taking this "Thrive" marketing a little too far?" Kind of funny. So we had labs drawn, all fine, and have contacted 2 nutritionists one who is an old high school friend who I reconnected with on FB (see good things do come out of FB) and she recommended 2 books by Ellyn Satter, Child of Mine and Feeding a Healthy Family that have been super helpful. I guess I am getting more nervous about his weight again as out Little Boy is turning 2 next week and we will be doing another weigh in. He is happy, active, a little slow with talking, but he gets it, really a fun baby and so fun and silly to see with his sibs. I have faith that he is just not a big eater and he has the appetite he does just because it is who he is, that he is in balance with what his body needs and I am not one to go down the path of force-feeding, nor evidently am I one to take away a stick of butter anymore, but I am also a worrier...