To celebrate Mother’s Day, Content Beauty/Wellbeing has joined with Caldesi Cookery School to offer a day of cooking and pampering.  Please click here for more information.

Photo courtesy of Storme Sabine Photography

Call ‘em what you will:  buggies, pushchairs, strollers, prams, baby carriages, perambulators or carrycots.   Although we’re aware of the function they serve, some of us seem to be unaware of the imprint these means of transport will leave on our bodies and minds.

I had no idea what was in store for me when at eight months pregnant I smiled blissfully for a photo in which I stood alongside the buggy we just bought for our soon-to-arrive bundle of joy.  A few weeks prior to taking this photo, I was living in a buggy bubble, surrounded by objects referred to as Bugaboos, McLarens, and Gracos.  And once this bubble popped, I was transplanted to an accessories orb and encircled by cup holders, parasols, sun shades, footmuffs, bag clips, insect nets, and buggy boards.

Giving me added pressure when I was trying to decide on a buggy, one friend was intent on informing me that pushchairs are the ultimate accessory.  She says similar to a woman deciding to wear a Kelly bag or Kipling on her shoulder, or Louboutins or Birkenstocks on her feet, the decision to buy and push around a certain type of pram makes a statement.  After she saw the aforementioned photo, she said that my decision to purchase a red buggy meant that there was a lot of passion stirring below my surface.  I told her that it wasn’t passion but rather a very active, 3.5 lb. fetus, and that I actually chose a red buggy for safety reasons – red lights instruct us to stop.  She said I was lying.  I told her to quit with the envy and jealousy.  Her buggy is green, after all.

Two and a half years into pushing our diminutive lorry over cobblestones, through sand and gravel, up and down curbs and stairs, on public transport, in snow and cats-and-dogs rain, and around unforgiving pedestrians, I feel equipped to teach Buggy Etiquette 101, How Playing Twister Is Good Practice for Pram Usage, How to Forgive Your Fellow Sidewalk Hoggers for They Know Not What They Do, and Surviving Life Post-Buggy.

I ask my husband what he imagines when he thinks of prams and he says, “Manic women pushing their way down the street with great impatience, assuming they have the right of way in all situations, even if oncoming traffic is someone in flames running towards them, having just run out of a burning building.”  Yikes.  Is this the picture I and my fellow moms and carers project?  Or is this just a man who assumes he has the right of way or who has tried to cut lanes and jump in front of mini moving vehicles one too many times and has the scars to prove it?

Either way, I feel the need to defend my fellow baby carriage comrades.  Until one has had to operate the machinery known as pushchair, one can never understand the intricacies of the apparatus, the physical and psychological commitment, and men and women of planet Earth – the fortitude.

What used to be a quick jaunt to the local coffee joint to get my caffeine fix has now turned into my own personal Cirque du Soleil routine.  I know, I know, I should be grateful that I even have a buggy, that I have two legs and two arms and that I can afford a latté in this recession, but please hear me out.  Both fresh air and caffeine are necessities when you have little ones.  Thus, for any U- or G-rated readers, it’s like slightly injuring two birds with a teeny, tiny stone.  When leaving the coffee shop with a buggy, I have to use one hand to open the door and then quickly kick my foot to catch it in order to hold it so it frees up the hand to hold the coffee.  Meanwhile, the other hand is pushing the buggy and its 12 kilos of cargo while my 4.5 kilo bag steadily slides down my shoulder.  When I’m being kind enough to grab coffee for a fellow mom as well, having to carry one of those molded fiber coffee carriers with two cups requires use of the outer wrist, forearm or chin, or a combination of the three.  Why didn’t I purchase a coffee cup holder?  I did, and the contraption is relatively useless.  Not only does it add a few unwanted inches to the width of the buggy, but if you are using a paper coffee cup with a plastic, domed, sippy lid, your coffee will come spewing out the first bump you hit.

I told my husband that I was going to start charging spectators for the entertainment I provide during this routine.  He jokingly threw some coins at me and said, “For the time I watched you take ten minutes to put the raincover on.”  It baffles me when onlookers see me struggling and smile, waiting to see how I will manage such a feat.

In one instance on the high street pavement, a young man and I had a showdown of sorts.  I do not believe I automatically have the right of way simply because I am with pram.  But I also do not believe that if I’m carrying my ridiculously heavy bag along with three bags from the grocery store and pushing my son in the buggy, I should have to swerve in order to move out of the way of an approaching roadblock, a.k.a. a young man with nothing but chewing gum in his mouth.  If I could’ve magically disappeared from his path so as to not interrupt his strut, I would’ve gladly done it, but alas last time I spoke to Cinderella, she wasn’t too keen on lending me her fairy godmother for any proposed stretch of time.

My fellow moms have told me similar stories – the face-off in the cereal aisle at the market, the confrontation on the bus, and the war of a few words at an airport.  One mom tells of the time she was ready to put her dukes up when contending with a “swommer” who almost caused a head-on collision.  “You know, a swommer,” she says, “one who is steering while on mobile.”

In my mind, whether it is pedestrian vs. buggy or buggy vs. buggy, the following should have the right of way:

• Parents behind the wheel of a double/twin buggy
• Parents who look severely sleep-deprived and are behind the wheel of a buggy
• Parents who are pushing a child who is having a tantrum
• Parents who are simultaneously pushing a buggy and carrying several bags
• Parents pushing a buggy without a raincover in the pouring rain
• Parents who are trying to simultaneously push a buggy and hold an umbrella
• Parents who are behind the wheel of a buggy at the same time that they have lost one shoe, have a foot in plaster or are using a crutch
• Parents who have one child in a buggy and another one or two running in a different direction to that in which the buggy is being pushed

With regard to right of way’s cousin, priority on the lift, the run-up to Christmas seems to be the worst.   In one department store, a week before the jolly man with the white beard in the red suit was to arrive, I waited for nearly 25 minutes and 11 instances of doors opening only to reveal a jam-packed lift with no space for a buggy, let alone me, the required chauffeur.  As I gave the dirtiest looks I could muster during this merry season to all who appeared perfectly capable of riding the two sets of escalators on offer, I started looking around for a sign which asked lift-riders to give priority to wheelchair users, the elderly and those with prams. 

Now I know there is a constituency who believes that prams and their accompanying manoeuvrers should not be given priority and that they somehow feel that they are entitled, but ladies and gentlemen of the who-should-be given-priority-when-riding-lifts jury, please keep in mind that prams are not allowed on escalators, and the last time I tried to drag my son’s pram up five flights of concrete stairs, in addition to risking both our lives, I had to visit a physiotherapist for a couple months afterward.

After physiotherapy sessions, I perfected my buggy up the stairs method, only to have it fail when we added the buggy board.  It’s nearly impossible to roll the buggy up with such accoutrement.  But, my success on the high curb front remains.  I can now secure my son with one hand while holding on to the pram handlebar with the other in a pseudo rendition of the Heisman Trophy. 

I’ve also managed to compromise with my son in an attempt to get him in the pram.  The only way he’ll readily get into the pram is if he gets to ride what my husband dubbed “shotgun style”.   He kneels or lies on his belly, looking out his observation deck.  After scores of attempts at distraction, bribery and recruitment of other moms’ help in getting him in his buggy, this seems a suitable settlement. 

All this after I was living in fleeting buggy and parenting harmony when I read that I may have been doing the right thing for the first year of my son’s life by choosing to have him face me in his pram rather than face forward and watch the world go by.  I read the report in late 2008 which suggested front-facing strollers could deprive babies of their first lessons in life by discouraging their parents from talking to them.  This research into the psychological effects of buggies revealed that children who grow up in forward-facing buggies can be emotionally isolated.  In essence, by choosing to ride shotgun style, my son is conveying to me that he wants to be emotionally isolated.  Oh boy.

As many times as I’ve whinged about adjusting to pushing a pram around after about three decades of standing upright with nothing in front of me but the ground, I have missed it on those occasions when we decided not to use it.  For our buggy has served as a makeshift bag and suitcase, a grocery cart, and a bed.  In fact, I have grown so used to it that as I was leaving our flat on my own to go to the market as my husband and son played in his room, I started pushing the buggy out the front door with me, only to look down and see that it was sans child.

Soon enough, I will be left with the nostalgia of recognising my son’s little friends’ buggies, for when we walk into a library, class or playground, I already know who is there by perusing the pushchair parking area.  There will be an end to the era of buggy brigades, and I will be left with a different photo – a photo of me standing next to the threadbare and empty buggy, only this time with a tear in my eye.

During the adventurous and oh-so-entertaining period which shall henceforth be referred to as The Epoch of Weaning, I used to pretend the carrot and mango purée stains on my son’s bibs were Rorschach tests.  You wouldn’t believe what I saw.  Once, I spotted Mary Poppins doing a handstand on top of her umbrella.  Another time I made out a smack of jellyfish making its way up one side of the Eiffel Tower.  You see, entertaining myself was required at such a madcap stretch.  After all, at what other point in my life would I find myself squeezing my breasts into a bowl on the table so as to add the essential milk to the baby rice cereal?

Somewhere along the line, somebody (read: Annabel Karmel) convinced me that making all of my son’s food was the best way to ensure he received organic, nutrient-rich meals without any artificial ingredients, preservatives or disguised sugar.  In preparation of W-Day, I lined up the army of accoutrement on the kitchen counter: a hand blender, colourful suction bowls, heat-sensitive baby spoons, bendy ice-trays, plastic baggies and markers to label and date them.  Go Team Introducing Solids!

How exciting for my little guy; he was taking his first step on the path to pulverized pieces of pleasure, of macerated delights.  And, after taking said step, he made it known that he did not care for baby rice cereal.  That’s okay, it happens.  He didn’t care for smashed bananas.  That’s okay, it happens.  He didn’t care for puréed pears, apples or sweet potatoes.  Like I said, it happens.  Take a deep breath and remember that the first stage of weaning is all about acquainting my son with new tastes and textures, helping him learn to take food from a spoon, and familiarising him with the process of moving food from the front of his mouth to the back and then swallowing.  New day, new efforts.  He didn’t care for porridge or parsnips or yogurt.  He didn’t care for the first formula we tried, or the second, third or fourth.  Time to consult the weaning experts again.

I quickly learned I was doing one thing wrong – microwaving my breast milk before adding it to the different purées.  I’m sure I knew in the back of my head that I should not be doing this, but pair a seriously sleep-deprived mum with a crying baby in her arms, and the relatively new mother is bound to do silly things.  I also learned that I was probably introducing solids at the wrong time, either when my son was too hungry (i.e. before his usual breastfeed) or too full (after his usual breastfeed).  The recommendation was to pull my little suction cup off of the breast after he had half of his feed and then introduce him to the specials of the day.  Easier than it sounds.  There must be a support group somewhere for mothers who interrupt their little one’s feed.

No more microwaving my mammary gland rations and feed my son solids at a time that is – as Goldilocks would say – just right.  Long live good advice; I soon discovered that my little munchkin liked avocados and mangos.  This only happened with a few intermittent mental breakdowns though.  Once while looking for the ingredients for a particular purée recipe, I trekked in a torrential downpour to six different markets.  When a woman at the last market told me they didn’t have the sought after ingredient, I grabbed her, started crying and asked her to please hold me for a moment.  The post-natal hormones were still hosting parties in the home known as me.  Another time, I asked a stockist at a market if she knew which of the 150 yogurts on the shelves was the brightest-coloured.  She gave me a funny look and said, “Now why would you want to know that?”  I nearly replied, “Don’t ask any questions, just do as I say,” until I realised I wasn’t telling her to do anything; I simply had a query.

After a few days, I tried some of the previously rejected foods.  Round two for the pears and apples.  And with a friend’s suggestion to keep the food coming like one continuous stream (“that’s what babies are accustomed to up until now”), apples were now added to the catalogue of favoured crushed cuisine.  Pears still did not make the cut.

At the same time the weaning experts said I should start moving from smooth purées to adding a little more texture, we took a trip to the US to visit family.  I momentarily panicked as we were just starting to get into the groove of this weaning thing, and I was afraid that time, surroundings, and ingredient differences would mean that weaning was adjourned.  Just the opposite happened.  Perhaps because my parents were more relaxed about the whole liquids-to-solids state of affairs, or possibly because my son wanted to bypass the whole pulp provisions stage and go to the chunks, lumps and flavour stage, my little prince was introduced to and loved tortilla soup, rice and beans, salmon, asparagus, strawberries and whipped cream, and sherbet.

I laughed when one friend told me to make “yummy” sounds as I was introducing these new foods to my son.  What exactly is a “yummy” sound?  And surely my son can see how incongruous my wannabe scrummy sounds and facial expressions are.  ‘Tis true that while tasting – and sometimes even smelling – some of his baby food, I gagged. 

As he tasted and attempted to chew new foods, I would exaggerate my own chewing gestures, moving my jaw in a circular motion and smacking my lips.  My mom said I looked like a giraffe chewing.  This gave me a great idea.  When I returned home to London, I found on youtube a great video of a giraffe chewing and decided to show it to my son, saying, “Would you look at what a great chewer he is, how his lips, tongue and jaw muscles all work in conjunction.  Now that is something to strive for.”

I admit to weaning envy when my friends were able to feed their precious offspring spaghetti Bolognese and cottage pie.  Alas, we were progressing to the next stages at our own pace.  We moved to solid foods at two and eventually at three feeds.  And with all his new teeth, my little guy favoured chicken, cheese and carrots.  One fellow mum told me that she learned in her first aid class that carrots are the main food that little ones choke on and as such, I developed a paranoia.  Every time I fed my son carrots, if he stopped chewing for more than 2.5 seconds – at which time I assumed the unchewed carrot was making its way down his throat, causing him to start choking – I would make him cough up what was in his mouth.  To this day, I think he believes that that’s how carrots are eaten – chewed for a while and then spit out.  Oh dear.

Once, while at the health visitor for a routine check-up, I told her that my little guy was addicted to butter.  He wanted butter on everything or even by itself with a spoon.  She said there was no harm in him eating butter all the time, so long as it didn’t upset his stomach.  I know it upset one fellow mum’s stomach when we all got out our respective child’s lunches and began feeding the little angels.  She asked what the blob in the little blue bowl was, and I told her butter.  She asked, “He eats it by itself?”  I said, “Oh, ya, he loves the stuff.”  I witnessed this strange movement in her throat and mouth, indicating that she might just heave.

My little prince and I entered the next stage, during which he started to show his love for bread, eggs and chips (fries, as they are called on the other side of the pond).  Now that he was over a year old, he was now also able to eat peanut butter, and eat peanut butter he did.  If he had it his way, he could sit with the jar and a spoon and likely finish the entire jar.  This always made me question whether the foods we eat as pregnant women affect the likes and dislikes of our babies.  I ate peanut butter all through those nine months.  And to the dismay of obstetricians and paediatricians the world over, I also ate a lot of ice cream and chocolate – both foods my son now favours.

After witnessing my son’s eating habits, one friend said that he should definitely be taking vitamins.  She recommended vitamin drops, and upon her counsel, I added them to his fruity morsels du jour.  All went pear-shaped (no pun intended) as he started to shoot out pieces of half-chomped fruit, with projectile vitamin liquid to follow.

Another friend said she read that we should never give our babies diet drinks, tea or coffee.  I couldn’t resist.  I told her, “But in my baby nutrition book, it says that as the baby becomes increasingly used to eating solids, he or she should be learning to fit in with what the family eats.  I figure I drink coffee a few times a day, so why not give Enlai some too.”  She looked stunned.  Once again, I thought someone might call Child Protection Services on me, or at the very least, the Baby Nutrition Police.  And because her stunned look didn’t go away for at least seven minutes, I felt it necessary to invite her to the next playdate, when I planned to have the How a Sense of Humour Can Save a New Mother chitchat.

While it seemed brilliant advice at the time, the suggestion to use cookie cutters to make different-shaped foods so as to entice my little sweetie to try new grub backfired.  Ultimately, he only wanted dinosaur-shaped sandwiches, teddy bear-shaped pancakes and star-shaped papayas.  Not easy to accommodate when we’re away from home, and he refused to eat the food in its usual shape.  Using a butter knife, I tried to carve a diplodocus into a tuna sandwich, and it came out looking like a tyrannosaurus rex ate the diplodocus for lunch and then spewed out the bits he didn’t want.

Both a comical and sometimes exasperating experience, weaning endowed me with yet more patience, as well as much-needed insight into my own eating habits (since when are truffles, brioche and gingerbread lattés not food groups?).  And now that we’ve got the solids stuff down, it’s time to get the sharing, manners and tidying up bits and pieces down.  Wish me Godspeed.  Or at least some Häagen-Dazs at the end of what may be exhausting months ahead.

Happy New Year!  While I am generally of the mindset that resolutions can be masochistic, I think that when you become a parent, you automatically subscribe to a form of masochism, so why not make resolutions of the attainable variety.  I once read that if one shares his or her resolutions with others, he or she is more likely to follow through with them.  For the past two decades, I’ve resolved to learn the lyrics to Auld Lang Syne and haven’t followed through.  Here’s to trying to follow through on these resolutions:

1.  Embed in the deepest trenches of my memory banks images of my son Enlai at this age, such as the one of him running down the hall on Christmas day with nothing but a pajama top, bare bottom and a chocolate chip cookie in one hand, singing his version of The Wiggles’ “Shaky, Shaky”.

2.  Learn how to properly pronounce dinosaur names.

3.  Be fascinated when we watch The Tale of Desperaux, The Jungle Book or Winnie the Pooh for the 100^th time.

4.  Learn dance moves from Enlai.

5.  Resist the temptation to open the flaps in Enlai’s flap books while reading them to him.  Practice self control in this regard as I know he is on the road to joining the uppermost echelon of flap lifters, and I cannot get in the way of such an achievement.

6.   Learn the sounds the following animals make: armadillos, narwhals, and pygmy marmosets.   I have entertained myself long enough by making up supposed sounds.

7.  Learn the foods the following animals eat:  kudus, aye-ayes and solenodons.  It is not fair to keep answering “bananas” or “spaghetti” to the question “What do they eat?”

8.  Start my own Alison Jay, Oliver Jeffers and Joëlle Jolivet fan clubs.

9.  Allow more splashing in wellies.  There’s such a thing as drying off.

10.  Add more bubble bath when the request arises.

11.  Read more Yeats, Auden, and Komunyakaa poems to Enlai.

12.  Keep serving peas, green beans, and peaches even if they’re rejected every time.

13.  Let Enlai thumb through my Basquiat, Twombly and Bacon books when he takes them off the shelf, even if he does crease the pages.

14.  Wear Enlai’s Groucho Marx glasses more often.

15.  Write that letter to Enlai that I’ve been meaning to write to him since his first birthday, the one about what an amazing human being he is and how happy he makes me and how there is nothing like looking back into his big eyes looking at me.

What a Christmas gift!  Oomphalos was nominated for a 2009/10 Neighbourhood Leadership Award, for changing the lives of younger people.  The award, sponsored by the City of Westminster, Metropolitan Police, and NHS Westminster, recognises people who help others and take a leading role in their community. 

Leader of the Council, Colin Barrow, noted, “It’s been touching to read so many heartfelt stories about nominees who devote time and energy into getting local people together and improving their lives.”  He added, “Reading these nominations has shown me that there are whole networks of people in Westminster who are prepared to give their time for others, which fills me with confidence for the future of the city.”

Although Oomphalos was not ultimately shortlisted, to be nominated is exciting.  My most sincere admiration and respect to those on the shortlist, all of whom are trying to make a positive impact on children’s lives.

‘Twas the week before Christmas, when all through Asia House
No creative movement class’s jungle animals were stirring, not even a mouse.
Little ones’ paintings were set out to dry with care,
As were dreamcatchers, chimes, and other art class ware.
Children sang a couple of Jojo’s songs before being tucked into their beds,
While visions of Miss Ayumi’s fairies danced in their heads.
And papa watching BBC News as I did some cleaning,
We were settling down for a quiet evening,
When outside there arose a bit of a clatter,
I arose to see what was the matter.
Away to the window I went to follow the hum,
Only to find Mr. Percussion, Ben, with some of his drums.
When also to my wondering eyes should appear,
But Soléne, the French instructor, with her usual good cheer.
As I drew in my hand, and was turning around,
Through the front door Santa Claus came with a bound.
He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his toe,
And on his shoulders were little patches of snow.
With a wink of his eye and in a voice rather firm,
Santa said, “I’m really looking forward to Oomphalos classes next term.”
To my surprise, he said he noticed a few new classes,
Like Nurturing Danceways and Tiny Dancers.
He said Mrs. Claus was interested in Touchy, Feely, Messy! and he in I ♥ Art,
And then said he’d love to chat more but really must dart,
He had stockings to fill and presents to put under trees,
Oh that Santa is quite the busy bee.
And I then heard him exclaim, as he drove out of sight,
“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good night.”

My son was almost named Balzac.  My husband and I discussed several names and constructed our shortlist as a lot of parents do, and Balzac somehow made the cut.  It wasn’t necessarily that my husband cherished Monsieur Honoré de Balzac’s writing but rather liked the sound of his surname.  Ultimately I couldn’t live with my son being nicknamed “balls” or “ball sack”.  My husband thought it would be character-building; I thought it would cost us a lot in therapy sessions.

Names are funny things.  While one psychologist says we have strong perceptions about first names and associate them with success, luck and attractiveness, thus producing self-fulfilling prophecies such as a teacher giving higher marks to little ones with attractive names, another psychologist argues that the consequences of a particular name for self-image are not devastating and that a child’s name is unlikely to be a significant factor in his or her development.  So what side of the fence are the children named Please Cope, Lotta Beers or Nice Deal on?  Do I hear accusations that I’m making these names up?

Read the rest of this entry »

There it was right before me: a two-foot long, about a quarter-inch wide, impenetrable dribble from a babe’s mouth.  I was completely mesmerised.  As the babe moved, the elastic dribble followed.  It never broke.  At one point, another little one entered the dribble zone, only to be ricocheted backwards when his arm touched the impervious, springy saliva.

I recognised it, the look of wanting to gum something to mere mash in order to ease the pain of a surfacing entity made of pulp, dentin and enamel, most commonly referred to as the tooth.  My son had this look, and I’ve seen it countless times on the faces of other little ones. 

In one of my son’s music classes, come instrument time, the teething tots were more interested in gnawing on the maracas, tambourines and drumsticks than in singing about an incy wincy spider or a twinkling little star.  I witnessed intricate webs of drool as one baby would have a go at the drumstick, completely saturate it and then pass it on to his pal next to him to have a nibble, who would then pass it to the little princess across from him.  By the time the fifth munchkin had a chance to chomp on it, not only were babies getting caught in the web, but the stick seemed to be sheltered in its own slobber cocoon.It’s a serious matter for parents and carers, this teething stuff, consisting of shrieks of the heart-stopping variety during the night, moodiness and clinginess throughout the day (or weeks or months), rashes, and an increase in laundry due to soaked bibs, shirts and blankets and spilled pink and purple medicines.

Read the rest of this entry »

A friend told me last week that she thought the rite of passage must be having your little one have a temper tantrum while walking down Oxford Street and having everyone stare at you in disdain.

Another friend said that the rite of passage is the inaugural supermarket tantrum.  Did you see The Exorcist, she asks me.  She goes on to describe a scene where her little cherub starts throwing apples, oranges and lemons at passers-by while screaming at the top of her lungs.  Said cherub then runs away to what my friend describes as “a section of glass things” and gives her a look that says if her mum comes anywhere near her, she’ll pick up a piece of glass and throw it.  She then runs to another aisle, throws herself on the floor and starts flailing her arms as if she’s doing some sort of 360-degree snow angels interpretive dance.  My friend said it wasn’t the cherub’s head that was spinning around in the manner of one Linda Blair, but rather her own.

Read the rest of this entry »

Say it ain’t so.  Or, maybe, say it is so.  I read in the paper today that a third of parents have never sung nursery rhymes to their children.  Apparently, because parents are choosing to sing pop songs to their little ones rather than traditional rhymes which they deem boring and dated, said rhymes are in danger of dying out.

As with all things evolutionary, only the strong will survive.  Most of the nursery rhymes still sung today are only sung because of their patterns and rhythms – their “catchiness”, if you will – not their content.  I can’t imagine that half the parents and carers singing Baa, Baa, Black Sheep to their little ones are aiming to teach them about taxation, the real meaning behind the ditty.  I sure as heck am not trying to teach my two-year-old about losing his virginity when I recite Jack and Jill.  It seems that going up the hill to fetch a pail of water is a euphemism for having sex.

Read the rest of this entry »