In the Midst of the Mess

Posted on May 11, 2013 by vanderbiltwife

Here is what I know so far about being a mother.

Some days you will like your child. Some days you won’t. Sometimes these instances are minutes apart.

You will wipe the spit-up off the baby’s face first, even though it’s dripping down your cleavage and will probably create some sort of cesspool because who knows when you’ll be able to change your shirt and/or take a shower.

You will cry when the baby has gas or the toddler has a fever because you can’t take it away and make it better with kisses. You’ll kiss the tears off their cheeks anyway, just to hold a little bit of them inside you again.

You’ll give them nicknames like Peanut Butter Pie and Doodlebug and Chunky Cheeks and hope they’ll forgive you someday. You’ll find yourself saying things like, “Look at those fat thighs!” and mean it as a compliment. And wonder why your own fat thighs aren’t so cute.

You’ll cry when they fall down and when they push you down. You’ll cry in frustration about how your carpets might never be clear of tiny trains and crumbs ever again. Every so often you’ll become a whirlwind, tossing toys in garbage bags and threatening to take them to the dump … or at least Goodwill. You might even follow through.

You might love your pregnancy, or you might hate every minute of all nine months. Probably a combination. But when your baby learns to really smile at you every time you tickle his chin, you’ll think maybe the pregnancy wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe you’d do it all again just to see that toothless grin.

You’ll understand your friend’s addiction to coffee or Diet Coke and develop your own drug of choice.

You’ll spend nights wondering what you did to deserve this. If God was thinking right when He gave you the ability to conceive. Whether anyone would notice if you checked into a hotel and slept for three days. That the mental institution sounds like a vacation. You’ll fall over the edge and have to keep right on running.

Nothing about giving birth makes me more incredible than any other woman. It forces you into battles you never knew you’d fight and aren’t prepared for at all. Like the epic Wearing a Sundress When It’s 35 Degrees Outside Melee. Or, David’s favorite, HOW COULD THERE NOT BE ANY CHOCOLATE MILK WHEN I WANT SOME? You’ll stay calm 98% of the time and beat yourself up relentlessly about the 2%.

Motherhood makes you tender. It rips out pieces of heart muscle and tapes them precariously to your skin. It makes you afraid, it makes you want, it makes you cry, it makes you insane.

But also, it makes everything make sense some days.

Those times when you do like your 3-year-old are really, really good. Golden sunshine days with baby-toothy-smiles, rompers and overalls, giggles, bubbles, no longer worrying over the messes and mistakes. Good nights of sleep are like magic. Seeing them grow makes you proud and strong and butterfly-stomached.

Learning the faith-lessons along with a toddler makes you grow yourself. You remember how faith is supposed to be like a child’s. And yours, some days hanging on by a string, needs a little childish playtime with Jesus. It needs some loud Jesus-Loves-Me singing in the backseat with only a semblance of a key. It needs to wonder why God made frogs green with funny tongues and why babies grow inside you from a few cells to seven and a half pounds of angelic mass.

I don’t think you have to give birth or adopt to be a mother. If you love a child to the point where you’d die for her … your heart says mother.

I know I’ve only learned a fraction of the lessons that will come as these three grow and continue to rip my heart to shreds and mend it back with jagged stitches. Together, we’ll discover what it means to be child and parent. Sons and daughter and mommy.

Someday they’ll ask me, “What was I like as a kid?” And I’ll remember those sunny playground days, big sunglasses, white sandals, and say, “You were perfect, my child.”

Happy Mother’s Day to all of you.

Title of this post shamelessly stolen from a line in Hope for the Weary Mom, which also has the gem “I am tired beyond normal.” I think that’s going to be my new response to “how are you?”

The Joys of Nursing by Bridget of Life at Le. Rheims

Posted on April 10, 2013 by vanderbiltwife

I’ll let Bridget tell you how we know each other. For now, enjoy this encouragement to nursing moms (like me!). Want to read more of my thoughts on nursing? You might like I Think This Officially Makes Me a Mommy Blogger or Sitting Still Can Be a Finer Thing.

______

When my sister was in nursing school, she had to do a standard rotation in obstetrics and its subset of pediatrics. After studying for a time, she had to take a test and one of the questions on it asked her to outline the four steps of nursing. Nursing. That was the word the teacher used, and it was the word my sister read. Of course, what the instructor meant by nursing was the act of being a nurse. What my sister, being in an obstetrical and pediatric frame of mind understood, however, was nursing as a euphemism for breastfeeding. She puzzled over the question for a few moments before finally writing down this:

Step 1: Open bra and expose breast.

Step 2: Position baby near nipple.

Step 3: Feed.

Step 4: Burp.

Seriously.

No joke.

It’s funny to think about it but, in reality, those are the very basic steps to “nursing.” However, any woman who has ever nursed a baby knows, the “steps” to nursing are far more and at the same time far fewer than these four.

To nurse a baby, one does need to perform all of those steps, and so much more. She needs to cuddle, to caress, to snuggle, to coo, to make eye contact and skin-to-skin contact. She needs to relax herself and be simultaneously alert to the needs of the baby. She also needs to drink (that giant water bottle most nursing moms carry around isn’t just for show). Most importantly, she needs to live in the moment because this time of breastfeeding does not last forever, no matter how long a mother chooses to nurse her baby. Nursing, although it can be what I like to call a giant time-suck (like Pinterest), is a fleeting time-suck, so a mother needs to know when to just rest and be with her baby and connect in a way unlike all other connections.

This brings me to the main point of this little post. A nursing mother needs time to rest if she wants to “succeed” at nursing (a terrible word for it, I know, but still accurate). I need to remind myself of this on an almost daily basis. Right now, my living room looks like this:

In all honesty, my entire apartment looks like this to some degree or another.

And that’s OK. I’ve got a three month old gift from God to care for and she takes precedence.

The apartment will always be here. There will always be another basket of laundry to fold, another sippy cup to clean, another sink to scrub. From time to time the whole place will look like little Sarajevo in the ’90s. Am I happy about this? Not really. Am I happy about the reason for this? Beyond words.

My home won’t always look like this. Even now, in the midst of the chaos that accompanies a new baby it goes for hours or even days at a stretch where it is more or less neat. Right now though, I’m going to ignore the mess and revel in the joys that nursing my baby brings to me.

By the by, that sister I spoke of? She’s an amazingly talented, caring, and more than capable RN who more than understands the steps of “nursing.”

Bridget Green is a wife and mother of six, writer, yarn addict, and lifelong lover of Hanson (which, by the by, is how she and Jessie “met”). When she isn’t filling sippy cups or (not) folding laundry, she writes about it all on her blog, Life at Le. Rheims.

From Two to Four by Beth Moore

Posted on March 25, 2013 by vanderbiltwife

I’ll be running some guest posts from my real-life friends, relatives, and some online buddies, too, while I try to adjust to having three kids now! This one is from my friend Beth Moore. Yeah, I really wanted to publicize that Beth Moore is guest posting for me, but she’s not THAT Beth Moore. Still, she’s a fun gal and mommy of FOUR little boys!

For those of you who don’t know my background, I had two boys who were born 18 months apart. My husband and I figured our family was complete with the craziness that these two brought to our life. Then a series of unfortunate events occurred and forced me to rethink the decision.

We had one chance to try for another child before we made our family of four permanent, then I found out that we were indeed pregnant right before Thanksgiving.

I went to the OB/GYN for the regular eight week exam right before Christmas, and that’s when I heard him say “I see two.” Our life changed dramatically at that very moment.

Skip ahead to the birth of the darling twin boys, F and E. From the moment they entered this world, there was a huge amount of adjustment for everyone in our family. I had often heard that when you have two children, any subsequent children are fairly easy to get used to, I did not find this to be the case. Maybe it was the challenge multiples bring, but with any life change, there is a degree of growing pains that go along with it.

One thing I learned is that I was going to have to grow extra arms, fast! With one or two children, you have an arm for each child to comfort and cuddle. I spent many hours sitting on the couch, a baby propped in the Boppy pillow on either side, and a bottle in each hand (photograph below). For a time, I was also hooked up to a breast pump simultaneously (fortunetly, a picture of this does not exsist).

Meanwhile, the toddlers were running, jumping, and fighting in front of me. My legs and feet served as my extra arms and hands. If one child was about to fall, my legs would catch him in a scissor-like fashion. If one child was hitting another, my scissor legs would grab him as he ran past me. I wish I had a picture of this, because it had to look really awkward, but I didn’t have any other extremities to take one.

I also learned that I had to discipline them from this position because they discovered that they could take advantage of when I would get set up on the couch, and see their chance to misbehave. The discipline consisted of holding them in my leg scissors until I felt they had “served their time.” I called this method, “mommy jail” and it worked pretty well, not to mention it was a good work out for my calves!

If I wasn’t tied to the couch, I would have the babies set up in bouncy seats or swings on the floor. We would be in a corner of the room so the big boys couldn’t do sneak attacks from behind. I would also hold a small pillow in my hands in order to deflect any object that might fly toward us. Don’t get me wrong, the boys loved their baby brothers, they just got so wild trying to “entertain and play” with them.

In the early days we didn’t get out much, the biggest field trip the twins got to take was to drop off and pick up their brothers at preschool a few days a week. What a sight I must have been pulling into the closest parking space I could get with my mini van. Suddenly, both side doors and the trunk open and out comes one frazzled mother, two rowdy toddlers, and two crying infants. I would run around the back and pull out my lifeline, the double stroller. The only way to keep the older ones from fighting over who got to help was to have one go in front and pull and one stand back with me and push. It was up to me to make sure there were no casualties while we made our way to the classrooms.

The thing I truly was not prepared for, and probably never will be, was the amount of work that would be involved with having a lot of young children. I’m not even talking about the childcare itself, I am talking about all the things that go into maintaining the family. The laundry, dishes, food, and supplies; there was an abundance of all of it! I went from washing all the big boy’s clothing in one load, to doing about four times that a week. The amount of bottles, sippy cups, and dishes ended up being about two loads in the dishwasher a day. We would buy the twin’s formula in bulk, and the amount of milk I would bring home from the store would have justified having a milking cow in my backyard. The baby supplies that are a necessity with one child doubled with twins, and that included swings, bouncy seats, car seats, pack ‘n’ plays, high chairs, and exersaucers. I had this idea that I would have one bouncy seat and one swing, and they would take turns, but of course, even as infants, they always wanted to do what their brother was doing, thus the additional equipment was added. I really could go on about this, but I do think that could take up a whole other post (the pictures below can help to illustrate my point.)

The best thing about going from two kids to four is the amount of love and fun they share. Now that the twins are old enough to be able to run around with their brothers, games of chase have become a favorite pastime. I will see B1 showing F his leapster game or B2 “reading” a book to E.

Even from the beginning, the older boys have showered their little brothers with love. They were a great help to me by getting me supplies, taking wet diapers to the trash can, and making silly faces to get them to smile. A favorite game of the big boys’ was to ”shoot hoops” with the babies’ wet diapers. After scoring points, they would run back and give the babies high fives (after they washed their hands of course.) In the mornings when I go to get the babies from their room, B2 insists on accompanying me and singing a “Good Morning” song to them. The twins have come to expect it, and run around with delight at the sight and sound of their beloved brother. B1 and B2 look forward to weekends and days off from school so they can play with them even more.

Four kids is four times the love, that is what is extraordinary about going from two to more!

If you enjoyed a brief glimpse into my hectic life, then please read more posts on my blog Mama Moore Four. I wish Vanderbilt Wife the best of everything with adding her third child and pray the older two will help their family transition well. I have enjoyed guest posting, thanks for the opportunity!

Hi, my name is Beth Moore, not the author. I am a military brat that found a home in Nashville, Tennessee where I reside with my husband and four small boys. I was a pediatric nurse, but went on hiatus with the birth of our twin boys. My blog, Mama Moore Four, is to capture the difficulties and rewards of raising my little men.

Libbie, Four.

Posted on November 19, 2012 by vanderbiltwife

She’s 4, and she’s big but she’s little.

She thinks she’s plenty big to brush her own teeth (including putting on globs of oh-my-so-expensive-flouride-free toothpaste), get her own snacks (spaghetti noodles on the floor), cut and paste and paint to her heart’s content. (Mess. Oh. The mess.)

She’s a little schizophrenic lately. Some mornings she wakes up cheery, cleans up her bedroom before pouncing in our bed with a huge smile and curly bedhead. She’s happy to cuddle and read.

Other days – today, for instance – cuddles and hugs dissolve into screaming fits, temper tantrums, an absolute lack of obedience, provocation of the little man, and Mommy and Daddy nearing insanity.

Oh, Madame Strong-Willed Child. I don’t think your mommy was quite prepared for this journey. I am loving the sweet days we see now and then. I love reading and kisses and honestly, the painting and play-dough messes don’t bother me that much.

But the mean-spirited taunts at David … the absolute refusal to obey … the willfulness that makes you play through rest time each and every day even though you’re tired and we both know it … they make Mommy stop and wonder and cry and pray.

Will it always be a battle? Will we ever truly figure it out? Or is this is a parade to preteendom, never to end? Because in my impregnated, exhausted, mother-to-almost-3 state, I don’t have that much fight left in me.

Three Kids

Posted on August 21, 2012 by vanderbiltwife

I’m starting to understand why people only have two kids.

With David becoming more active and able to fend for himself and Libbie slightly more careful with him, they actually play together. A lot. It’s spectacular.

While they need me to get them food, they generally don’t need me to feed them. I think David might even be done nursing; I can’t remember the last time he asked for “ga-ga” (sniff!).

It’s certainly not what I would call SIMPLE being mother to two under age 4, but it’s not nearly as hard as it was in, say, the first year of David’s life. Everyone sleeps through the night most of the time. Nobody needs bottles made. Only one of them is in diapers. Mostly they want me to read books and play Candy Land, and I’m pretty happy to oblige.

I think for most couples, the decision to have a second child isn’t that hard. We didn’t want an only child. But that push to number three … well, it takes some thinking.

My fear was starting over. Once David got somewhat self-sufficient, it was so hard to think about going back to no sleep, nursing non-stop, and carrying an infant bucket seat. Writing that out makes me feel incredibly selfish, but it’s true. Bouncy seats and jumperoos have been given away or banished to closets. Spit-up is something of the past.

Even though Mr. V and I have always, always talked about having 4 kids, I wasn’t sure I could go back to the beginning again and keep my sanity. Depression keeps me teetering on the edge for much of life. It’s a scary place. I remember the months when David was tiny and I wasn’t sure I could stop crying.

On the other hand … I believe children are blessings, I love babies, and I try to trust my fertility to God. I am not big on taking the Pill – and I haven’t since long before we conceived Libbie. I feel that it messed with my fertility in a major way and I don’t like the idea of synthetic hormones. We’ve been practicing NFP, but with my cycles being a little crazy – and I didn’t even have one until David was 16 months – things are a little wonky.

A few weeks before I found out I was pregnant, I remember driving my car and telling God I was tired of being scared. But if He wanted me to have a #3, He was going to have to make it very clear.

And oh, He did. That pink plus sign was HOT PINK. I was already 6 weeks pregnant when I found out.

So even on the days when I feel like this is the most insane thing I could ever be doing, adding another brother or sister to the mix, to the already-nutso life we lead … I know this baby is meant to be part of our family. I’m sure he or she is going to be the best surprise we’ve ever received.

A Wave, A Cask, A Bubble of Insanity

Posted on June 26, 2012 by vanderbiltwife

As I prepare to move in a few weeks and attempt to parent and be a wife on top of that, I’m going to be rerunning a few older posts and cutting back to three posts a week (likely one old, one new, one new recipe). Here’s one I wrote in September during an especially trying time.

Walmart's "Action Alley" Display Signs Feature Value and Convenience on Popular Shopping Items

I remember turning into the aisle at Wal-Mart just to recall that I had forgotten the diaper bag.

It was the first time I had ever left the house alone with my tiny baby girl. I quickly found that a carseat takes up most of the space in a shopping cart.

My heart pounded just trying to get the fragile girl into the carseat, outfitted properly, in and out of the car. Would her feet be cold? Would she catch germs at Wal-Mart? Each inch of her precious body, so newly out of mine. I trembled from fear and the new bite of November.

It’s a flash in my mind: that moment when I realized I had everything — my purse, the baby, a shopping list — except that vital brown-and-pink bag with her toilette.

I’ve never scurried through a store quite so quickly, praying that nothing would be expelled from a tiny bottom.

Nothing did, and I was safe. But it didn’t take long to ride the wave of insecurity about my capability as a parent.

_________

She screams and fights and stomps one foot outside the door when I say, “… if you come out of that room.” The child who is praised as polite and sweet as sugar is nothing like the one I face alone in our home.

I hate tantrums.

I look inside, trying to squeeze out the place in my heart that is to blame for all of this. Why oh why? What did I do to make her like this, so vehemently anti-sleep? What could we change?

And why doesn’t anyone else ever talk about their kids doing this?

I feel isolated, alone, in a bubble filled with fake cries, screaming, requests for more water more food more bunnies more blankets.

And heaven help us all if we forget to put on her socks.

I wonder if someday this will all make sense. If I’ll ever be able to stand on my own parenting feet without feeling the need to beg advice from anyone who will listen. Does it improve as they age, little casks of spirit ripening to the perfect vintage dose of confidence?

I hope so.

When Your Best Parenting Isn’t Enough … But It’s OK.

Posted on May 24, 2012 by vanderbiltwife

It’s the incredulous tone of her voice that catches me, makes me stop talking and start listening.

I’ve just admitted to my mentor, E, that the more I read about and see other 3-year-olds, the more I am convinced Libbie’s idiosyncrasies and bad behaviors are just her being 3, not my own fault.

E kind of stared at me and asked, “You didn’t really think that, did you?”

Well, yes. I often wonder if I could have done something different, something better, something more that would have made Libbie an angelic child, obedient to a fault. I feel like I’ve failed her as a mom each time she ignores an instruction or hits in response to something she doesn’t like.

Does everyone not feel like that? E seems to think the answer is no. And she is wise.

It’s then that I relate the story of The Mom Who Saved My Sanity Sunday.

source: mhaithaca

Sunday after church we went to Moe’s for lunch. If you don’t know, Moe’s is a restaurant known for burritos, where you wait in line to get to the counter and then instruct those behind the glass on how to fashion your burrito or nachos or tacos.

We probably waited 20 minutes before we even approached the counter. Behind us in line was a mother with her two kids, also an older girl and younger boy. They were around 8 and 5. While we waited, the kids flirted with eye contact and giggles. We made a little chit-chat.

By the time we reached the counter, David was done. He did not want to be held or put down. He wanted to wail. Over his cries, I gave my order. Surely he’d be happy once he was sitting down and eating.

But he wasn’t. Sunday, we were THOSE people. The ones with a baby screaming bloody murder in a restaurant, who are trying every song and dance they can think of to calm the child down to no avail. David was simply inconsolable. After five or ten minutes of dirty looks and intolerable wailing, we packed up our food and dashed to the car.

But as I was leaving, obviously ruffled and near tears, the woman who had been behind us in line looked me straight in the eye and told me, “You are doing a great job. It gets easier.”

Such simple words, but they meant the world to me. It was a pertinent reminder that my kid’s behavior does not always reflect my parenting–sometimes they are simply acting their age, or are overtired, or just in a funk.

Thank you, Lady in Moe’s. You sincerely touched my heart and made my day better. Instead of fretting over how many people’s lunches we had ruined, I took a deep breath, loaded kids in the car, and thought, “I am doing a great job. It gets easier.”

Fragrant Offerings

Posted on April 29, 2012 by vanderbiltwife

I confess I find it the easiest to count God’s gifts on quiet afternoons, when everyone is asleep but me and I can hear Him, smell Him, taste Him in my little home.

It’s Saturday, nearly 6 o’clock, and the kids and I are at my sister’s apartment in Memphis. Wine-drizzled chicken tenders seasoned with garlic powder and Italian seasoning are fragrant in the oven. Rice simmers gently on the stovetop. Libbie curls on the couch, her posture defying her insistence that she was not tired, no way.

We spent four hours at the Memphis Zoo, soaking up sunshine and sweating in the 80-degree weather while we viewed chimps and pandas and bats. David tried to talk to a lion. Libbie marveled at tigers, jumped back from a too-close monkey, and – well – whined through a few exhibits of grizzly bears and wolves.

On an afternoon like this at home, I would feel the need to right all the things in wrong places, to scrub the counter and launder the laundry. But here, I just think, quiet only interrupted by beeping microwave timers and the hum of the air conditioning.

I need gift-collecting time like this; but this is not life for me right now.

Having two toddlers means dirty dishes, crumbs on the floor, mislaid crayons, towers of tiny t-shirts and towels shaped like frogs. Having a three-year-old means near-constant corrections, being climbed upon when I’d rather be reading, tears in the bathtub, and hearing “no” more times in a day than I ever could have imagined.

I love this quote from Lysa TerKeurst in her book What Happens When Women Say Yes to God:

How selfish of me to call our home “my house.” How ungrateful I must have seemed to God. I could have a near and tidy house where things never got lost, misplaced, or broken if there were no others living there but me. But my heart never wanted just a house. My heart longs for a home full of people who I love.

I would almost certainly still manage to lose and break things if I were alone, but that’s another story. Still, Lysa makes the perfect point. My heart longed for a home full of children, and that is what I have. It’s not going to make the pages of Better Homes and Gardens anytime soon … but I will use it to its purpose: the service of my families and others. The spreading of love and hugs. The cooking of food for us and for sharing.

The gifts are simple to count in the quiet … but they are just as present in the chaos.

Gift-remembering:

Nana and Libbie dancing in tutu
Shopping with my mom without kids – a very rare treat!
David’s face and giggles at “I’m coming to get you!”
Praise from a mentor
The smell of chicken cooking in wine
An auntie painting her niece’s toenails and fingernails
Libbie’s look as the airplane lifts off at the Memphis children’s museum
David “vrooooming” a toy bulldozer
Cooking in silence
Happy squeals at seeing Daddy
Unexpected DVD that feeds my musical-love (Sarah Brightman with 5 Phantoms? Oh yes, please!)

Libbie, Three-and-a-Half.

Posted on March 29, 2012 by vanderbiltwife

Yesterday I was fairly certain I’d rather be the animal-feces cleaner at the zoo than have to keep parenting.

Every word out of Libbie’s mouth was meant to provoke me, from the moment she got up until at least after David went to bed.

So many weeks of pushing limits. So much discipline doled out: time-outs, toys and privileges taken away, even spankings. And yet she keeps pushing, shoving, her momma teetering over the edge of a complete breakdown.

It’s not the big things that are the worst (although slapping her daddy this weekend was brutal; and had it been me she’d hit, I might have gone ballistic). It’s each tiny defiance piling up, stack after stack on top of my bruised-momma-heart. It’s that she flat-out ignores what I say. It’s how she twists her brother’s hand until it hurts and then doesn’t understand why it gets her in trouble. It’s licking me on the face while I am trying to talk to her seriously.

I am worn thin and ready to try every technique I can think of to help: cutting out food coloring. Trying to create a more calming environment at home. Playing outside as much as possible. No more TV. More one-on-one time. {I do try to do all of these things, but maybe not enough.}

What I can’t give her is what she wants: my undivided attention 33 hours a day.

I fear I’ve let something go too far, but I don’t know what it is. I don’t want to spend more nights crying on the couch, feeling that I’ve failed her somehow. I want to not feel hypocritical for writing a devotional when it feels like my parenting and sometimes my sanity are hanging on by a thin thread.

I kind of want to scream. So instead I write, to the general public, my online shout of frustration.

{Why yes, it IS a good thing she’s cute. And hilarious. And loves books. It’s certainly not that we don’t have good moments … they just don’t seem to outnumber the bad right now.}

Edible Sensory Tubs for Young Toddlers

Posted on March 12, 2012 by vanderbiltwife

I was browsing Pinterest Friday morning, searching for a craft for my 3-year-old since I knew we would be stuck in the apartment most of the day. A few clicks later, I found Spice Painting at Play Create Explore. Fun! Easy! I had Libbie set up to paint with containers of cinnamon, nutmeg, allspice, and sprinkles in just a few minutes.

But I have this other kid, too. And he’s that age where I would love for him to be exploring and trying new activities (he’s a little shy of 15 months). But he definitely cannot do the same things Libbie does.

I tried putting some paint into a ziploc bag and letting him squish it around. This was his reaction.

Then a lightbulb went off in my head as I wandered to the pantry. I would love for David to be able to play with sensory tubs, but he puts EVERYTHING in his mouth. So why not create a sensory tub with objects I wouldn’t worry about him ingesting?

I started with oat bran as a base, where you might use dry rice or sand in a “normal” sensory tub. I then added small edible objects of various sizes: raisins, chocolate cheerios, a few mini m&m candies, and broken-up cracker pieces.

The first thing he did, of course, was stuff some in his mouth. That’s what I get for giving him a spoon to play with, I guess! But since it was just oat bran, no big deal. He figured out quickly that the oat bran really didn’t taste good and instead dug for the other items to eat.

After a while, I dumped it out on his high-chair tray and gave him a toy car to roll through it. He “vroooooomed!” to his heart’s content while Libbie took her time with the spice painting. A win-win situation all around!