Decoding Kids

Nurture Shock

New Thinking About Children

by Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman

As a first-grade teacher, my mom often tells me about articles and books she runs across dealing with child development. Now that I am a parent myself, some of that information is sinking in and hitting home more. Over the course of a few weeks, she relayed parts of Nurture Shock to me and I kept thinking, "I've got to read that." When I got my hands on it, I sent her a text saying, "This book is blowing my mind."

Nurture Shock addresses ten different topics dealing with the development of children and upends conventional thinking on how, and especially when, children develop. Subjects such as discussing race, testing for school gifted programs, and teenage lying are examined in meticulous detail, referencing studies and quoting experts at every turn.

The most intriguing chapter for me was about language development in infants. As Bert continues to babble and make new sounds, I can't help but wonder what he's trying to say. Nurture Shock delves into the science of why some babies and toddlers have such large vocabularies and others lag behind. I'll give you a hint: it's not Baby Einstein DVDs. It's instinctual to talk to your baby, holding up what often feels like a one-sided conversation, but the science shows that talking to and even more importantly, responding to, your baby can make all the difference in how he or she processes language early on.

Nurture Shock deals with ten specific areas of study, but the overall lesson is that as adults, we assume that children, from infants to teenagers, are processing and decoding the world around them the same way we do. But they are not, and there is science to prove it. The brain develops so differently over the course of childhood and adolescence and as parents, we have to recognize that and learn to work within the constructs of our children's understanding. I have a feeling that by the time I figure out how to do that, Bert will have moved out of the house. But at least this book gives me a fighting chance.

Not Your Mom's Stuffed Peppers

Well, if you are Bert, then these are your mom's stuffed peppers. I'm going to be bold here and say this is my own recipe. Someone else out there might be doing it, but I haven't seen it yet, ergo, it's my recipe. But I'm sharing it with you, because I like you.

We typically have some pretty prolific pepper plants in the garden and as we harvest them, we just cut the tops off and empty out the seeds and freeze a bunch of them whole to use for stuffed peppers. But we needed a twist on the standard stuffed pepper. What to do, what to do? Hmm...how about Mexican stuffed peppers?

Mexican Stuffed Peppers

6 bell peppers, tops cut off and seeds and membranes removed (I don't thaw mine because they would get mushy; just stuff them frozen)
1 box yellow rice, cooked according to package instructions
1 pound ground beef
1 packet taco seasoning
1 egg
Salsa (about 1 jar)

Cook the rice according to the instructions on the box.

Mix half the cooked rice, ground beef, taco seasoning, and egg in medium bowl.

Fill peppers with meat mixture and place in baking dish. Pour salsa over stuffed peppers. (I used Keith's sort-of salsa. A jar of store salsa should work fine or maybe you could try taco sauce.)

Bake at 350 degrees for about 1 1/2 hours. Use a meat thermometer to be sure they are cooked all the way through (internal temperature should be 165 degrees, so says Keith, our resident food safety monitor). Serve with remaining yellow rice and cornbread.

Inevitably, I get these in the oven later than I anticipated and we end up eating dinner at about 6:30 because I forget how long they take to cook all the way through. Maybe they taste so good because by the time they are ready, we're really hungry.

Six Months In

Today marks six months since this amazing little man entered our lives.

How can six months seem to have gone by so quickly, when they held some of the longest days and nights we have ever known? Those first couple days, even weeks, made us look at each other and say, "What were we thinking?" Sleepless nights, cluster feedings, and projectile pooping across brand-new carpeting made me sob. Milk coming out nostrils made me panic and call the lactation specialist to ask if that was normal. (It is.) And record-breaking July temperatures made us hole up in the bedroom, our only room with air conditioning, leaving only for food and the bathroom. Somewhere in those first few weeks, we started to gain our footing and feel like we could handle this parenting thing. Because it was definitely too late to give him back. Not that we really wanted to.

We found that he loved his swing and it bought us time to make dinner, or take a shower, or take a nap. His feedings started stretching out a little and he started to like to lay on his play mat and I didn't feel like he needed me every single second of the day. I ventured out to the library for story time when he was just two weeks old and breathed a little easier just knowing I could leave the house with him. And it helped to see moms with toddlers and realize he wouldn't be a teeny tiny baby forever.

And then around the six week mark, swaddling worked. And we all started sleeping. The whole night. Mary was onto something when she wrapped Jesus in those swaddling clothes. That woman wanted her sleep, even if he was the Christ child. Oh, and we started to see smiles. Real smiles, not just hey-you're-going-to-love-this-diaper smiles.

Keith weathered one evening a week on his own so I could get out of the house to go to yoga. So I could lay on my mat and pretend to meditate and really just think about my baby, who screamed from the second I closed the door until the moment I walked back through nearly two hours later. I learned to grocery shop with a baby strapped to my chest. I started to settle into my new role as a stay-at-home mom and we made the transition to being a one-income household. We started to find a routine for walks and naps and mealtimes and we started to feel more like a family instead of a couple of caretakers scurrying around a miniature tyrant. Our house started to feel like a home instead of just baby central.

Now he's on solid foods and loving them. And we're scraping poop into the toilet and rinsing diapers like pros. He's trying really, really hard to crawl. He has two teeth! He loves songs and toys that make noise and when he laughs, our hearts warm up.

We've learned to let him cry it out for naps and going to bed. Boy, that was tough but now he usually only whimpers for a couple minutes and then rolls over and falls asleep. Unless he's teething. Then he might get up at 2 a.m. and cry until 4 a.m. no matter what we do. He goes to bed sometime between 7 and 8 every night, and it makes a world of difference to have our evenings back. To sit quietly on the couch together. To not flip a coin to see who has to miss "The Middle" this week to rock him to sleep. Yeah, teaching him to go to sleep on his own was worth it.

Those first couple weeks, I had this idea in my head that it would be the better part of a year until he changed significantly. That he would still be as needy as he was in the beginning, that the nights wouldn't get better, that he would always be so fussy. I am continually surprised by how much he changes day to day, week to week. Sometimes I fail to notice it, until somebody visits and picks him up and I think, "He looks really big!" To see him bat at a toy for the first time, learn to roll over, recognize and reach for his toys, get excited to see Keith come through the door each day after work, all of it delights and amazes me. They aren't all good days. I guess I could say it another way: some days, every diaper is a poop-y diaper. But we are really excited to watch him discover and learn, and to discover and learn right along with him.

You should know we never felt like we were doing this alone. Everybody loves a baby, and we are incredibly fortunate to have so many family, friends, and neighbors who love our baby. From baby gear and bibs and blankets, to casseroles, coffee and encouragement, we've been surrounded and supported by a pretty amazing group of people. We're so thankful to have all of you in our lives, and touched that you want to be a part of our baby's life. We're excited about what the next days, months, and years will bring, and look forward to sharing all of those moments with you.

Weekly Photo Outtakes

For every weekly photo you see, I take about ten shots. Here's a few of this week's, plus some other cute baby pictures. Because who can't use a few cute baby pictures after a long week?

First, Bert was wearing his geezer socks...

And then I took them off and a meltdown ensued...meltdown 12 of 26 today...

He figured out how to pull books off the shelf...

Taking a picture for one of Keith's work projects...

And just being cute in general...

Hardcover Hat-trick

Deal Breaker

By Harlan Coben

There are two genres of fiction I don't pick up much: sci-fi/fantasy and murder-mystery. So a couple months ago when my book club read Gone for Good by Harlan Coben, I was skeptical about how much I would enjoy it. Much to my surprise, I was along for the ride and got a kick out of the witty dialogue. I thought I would be turning my grandfather, an avid reader, onto someone new when I told him about Coben. Should have known better; he already knew all about him and has many of his books and lent me a couple of them. After Gone for Good, I read Tell No One, and most recently, Deal Breaker.

The first two were "stand alone" novels, if you will. Deal Breaker is the first of Coben's books centered around Myron Bolitar, a sports agent who seems to run into mystery and trouble at every turn. But he's not just a sports agent; he is a former FBI investigator with a law degree. That and a best friend with some lethal martial arts skills seem to keep him one step ahead of all the seedy characters he encounters while trying to sign his professional athlete clients to lucrative contracts and rekindle the romance with his lost love. Who also happens to be the sister of the missing (maybe dead? maybe not?) girl Deal Breaker's story revolves around. 

All three books were similar in that I was asking the same questions: Is she dead or isn't she? How does this guy know all these low-lifes and manage to escape death at every turn? How do these people with full-time jobs have time to dig around in old murder cases and come up with things the police don't? Somehow, though, they weren't completely predictable. There was one last turn in each of them that kept me guessing until the end. Maybe the endings weren't entirely believable, but is that really why anybody picks up a murder-mystery? We want to be shaking our heads in disbelief. I may have rolled my eyes a few times as the story lines got a further and further fetched (far-er and far-er fetched?) but what really kept me reading is that Coben is funny. Like laugh-out-loud-and-worry-I-woke-up-the-baby funny. Even in the darkest moments of danger, his characters are keeping up an inner dialogue (and sometimes a dialogue with their tormentors) full of witty and sometimes scathing observations. Think Seinfeld with a gun to his head. So while three murder-mysteries in as many months might be my limit, Harlan Coben kept it fun and interesting.

The Whole Enchilada

It's January and I am in the midst of accomplishing a garden-goal. Gardening in January? Not quite. The goal is to actually use up everything we stashed away in our freezer instead of emptying out year-old produce as new stuff is ready to harvest. One of our most prolific plantings is always spinach. We eat as much as we can fresh, give loads away, and still have plenty in the freezer. No surprise then that I am always looking for a recipe to use it up. And it has to be a good one because I am not a big fan of cooked spinach. Enter Creamy Spinach Enchiladas. I'll preface by saying Keith loved these and I give them about a 6 or 7 out of 10. Keith loves vegetables; me, not so much. So a 6 or 7 is pretty good.

Creamy Spinach Enchiladas
from Real Simple, January 2012 (look, a recipe that didn't sit in my box for a year before trying it!)

1 10-ounce package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry
1 cup frozen corn, thawed
6 ounces Cheddar, grated (1 1/2 cups)
2 4.5-ounce cans chopped green chilies
1 cup heavy cream
salt and pepper
8 6-inch corn tortillas, warmed

Heat oven to 400 degrees. In a medium bowl, mix together the spinach, corn, 1 cup of the Cheddar, and 1 can of the chilies.

In a small bowl, stir together the cream, remaining can of chilies, 3/4 teaspoon salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pepper.

Dividing evenly, roll up the spinach mixture in the tortillas (about 1/3 cup per tortilla).

Place seam-side down in a shallow baking dish. (I greased my dish first.)

Top with the cream sauce and remaining 1/2 cup of Cheddar.

Cover with foil and bake until bubbling, 15 to 20 minutes. Uncover and bake until golden, 10 to 15 minutes more.

Oddly enough, our grocery store was out of heavy cream when I went, so I grabbed the light cream and it seems to have worked just fine. Next time around I might add more cheese to disguise the spinach. Or maybe throw it in the food processor with some beans or something so the spinach flavor isn't so strong. Either way, this is a good recipe for us to use up some of our spinach and corn.

Frosty the Glassware

Do you remember how I wanted to frost my front door with spray? And Keith said no? Did you think I wouldn't get my frost-in-a-can fix some other way? Chalk it up to another dose of the Nate Berkus show.

This project is totally ripped from one of Nate's holiday episodes. (Yes, we are on a first name basis, even if he doesn't know it yet.) It's really simple and can be done in the space of a baby's afternoon nap. Even a cat-napping baby like mine. Here's what you are going to need:

• Clear glassware – vases, candle holders, anything you like. I found mine at the dollar store.
• Window frost spray – I used Rust-oleum Frosted Glass. You should be able to find it at any hardware or home improvement store.
• Rubber bands – If you are crazy like me, you have created a giant rubber band ball from the ones that come on the newspaper every day. Please tell me there is someone else out there who does this.
• A well-ventilated area – I used the garage on a mild and sunny afternoon.

First, you are going to want to wash and dry your glassware. If you have to pull a price sticker off, be sure to get all that residue off. I used Goof Off on mine.

When the glass is good and dry, wrap the rubber bands around the glass in whatever arrangement you like, using however many look good to you. Be careful to keep them pretty flat and not overlap them too much. The flatter the bands lay, the crisper your finished lines will look. I say this from experience.

Take your glass to your well-ventilated area, turn it upside down on some newspaper, and spray the outside of it. My brand of spray said to do several coats a few minutes apart but that might vary from brand to brand so be sure to read your can.

Sorry, no good action shot but I figured I didn't want to frost my camera lens.

Once the frosted glass is dry (it only takes about 15 minutes) you can pull the rubber bands off. Then you get some chic, custom glassware. And if you are really classy like me, you put a battery-operated tea light in it.

In my defense, I made these for a gift so I didn't want to light a real candle in it and get wax everywhere. Mainly because I didn't want to have to clean it. You know me.

The whole project cost less than $10 and I have lots of frost spray left. Hmm...what can I spray before Keith gets home?