Sweet Potato Poo

The sweet potato experiment was a success, if you define "success" as "a mess was made and some small portion of sweet potato made its way into each child's mouth." Which is, of course, how I define "success."

I peeled one large-ish, organically farmed, garnet yam and cut it into wedges that were about an inch at their widest, a quarter-inch to a half-inch thick, and four to six inches long. Said wedges were boiled in plain water for about seven and a half minutes (until soft) and then removed with a slotted spoon and placed on a plate to cool to room temperature. A little while later, Julian and his parents and I sat down to our bagels and cream cheese (and stuff, always stuff), and Rafi and Rita joined us at the table in their high chairs, with a couple of sweet potato wedges on each tray. There was a bit of assistance involved to get the sweet potato into their hands (the trays are a wee bit high for my short children to reach up and over them), but we didn't place any into their mouths. (At least...I didn't. Julian may have snuck something in.)

Rafi's method: Hold wedge gently at one end. Bring hand near mouth. If opposite end of wedge does not flop over and fall into lap, place it into mouth and bite off a chuck with gums. Mush it just the barest amount, and attempt to swallow. Gag, cough, scare Grandma, and spit out chunk. Repeat until this whole high chair thing gets boring, and then insist on being transfered to Mommy's lap, where one may rub the sweet potato chunks into a placemat.

Rita's method: Grab wedge, mush through fingers. Suck thumb. Discover that thumb tastes interesting. Suck other fingers. Discover that they also taste interesting. Mush more sweet potato through fingers and suck thumb again. Alternately, grab wedge with two hands, bring wedge to mouth, and lick it. Experiment once with biting off a good-sized chunk. Puree said chunk with gums and spit it out slowly, but not quite slowly enough for Mommy to get a good picture.

And did they swallow anything? The proof is in the poo, and the answer is yes! A mere six hours after our adventure, I found some bright orange bits of undigested sweet potato in Rafi's dirty diaper. I excitedly called Julian over to investigate, and he acted appropriately pleased. Rita did not grace us with a dirty diaper at all Sunday afternoon, but this morning there was some sweet potato in her diaper as well. They swallowed! They swallowed!

This morning, after their first nap, the experiment was repeated, but with only one wedge of sweet potato each. Nothing was dropped onto the floor (maybe they just haven't figured out that game yet), and while I doubt much was actually eaten, they seemed to have figured out that they should at least be attempting that. Nifty.

Next on the list is parsnip, I think, mainly because I have some in my fridge.

Oh dear, I just wrote an entire post about boiled potatoes and poo. I promise, I'll get back to political rants one day.

Breaking Up is Hard to Do

The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that infants be breastfed exclusively for the first six months of life, and that they continue to receive breastmilk through the end of the first year and thereafter "as long as mutually desired by mother and child." The World Health Organization encourages breastfeeding to continue (in conjunction with complementary foods after six months) until the child is two years old.

Rafi and Rita* are six months old today.

As I nursed each of them earlier this morning, I noted with bittersweet amazement that our period of exclusive breastfeeding is ending. We've long made it past the initial hurdles, and now we've reached that first golden goal: half a year of successful nursing with no supplemental nutrition. Aside from a three doses (each) of oral rotavirus vaccine, a few weeks of messy (and probably unnecessary) vitamin supplementation, some (probably necessary) gripe water for Rita, one (very necessary) helping of prune juice for Rafi, and a few experimental sips of plain water over the past week, these kids have had nothing but The Best Stuff On Earth. By the end of the day, we will have to amend that to "nothing but The Best Stuff On Earth and some boiled sweet potato."

(Let me just state, for the record, that infants can and do thrive on formula. I'm not knocking parents who choose to give their babies formula, exclusively or as a complement to breastmilk. I'm certainly not knocking women who want to nurse their babies and, for one reason or another, cannot. Exclusive breastfeeding for six months, followed - we hope - by extended nursing and child-directed weaning, is the path that we have chosen for our family, because it is right for us. End disclaimer.)

We are planning to start down the path of baby-led weaning, skipping purees and "baby foods" altogether and starting directly with simple table foods. Spoons are out; bibs are in. I'd love to elaborate on this, and I will in the future I'm sure. But right now the children are up from their first nap...Julian is changing and dressing them, there are boiled wedges of sweet potato waiting on the table alongside the grown-ups' bagels and cream cheese, and I'm off to nurse my children for one last time before they find something else they can swallow.

* Names changed to protect the young from Google Monsters.

Eleh haDevarim...

I was born in New York.

I ate, slept, pooped, moved from New Jersey to Michigan, and toilet trained somewhere along the way. We were the only Jews in our town. I was checked for horns. I taught people about Chanukah. I grew up some. We got a dog.

We moved to Long Island. My sister was born. My mother got cancer. My paternal grandfather died. My mother died. I flew to Israel for the funeral, even though my father told me not to. We sat shiva at my maternal grandparents' home. I finished high school and went to the prom without a date (but did not lack for dance partners).

I went to college. I joined a sorority and started dating this very nice guy in early February, but I had already committed to being some other guy's date for a fraternity dance on Valentine's Day. I dumped the very nice guy on our one-month anniversary. He ended up marrying my roommate from the sorority. I was a bridesmaid in their wedding. In the meantime, I met another very nice guy. I married that one. My maternal grandmother got cancer, and no family from Israel came to the wedding. Before that, though, the dog ran away and I started law school.

I covered my hair when we got married, but only sometimes. The (second) very nice guy and I lived in different states for a while after we were married. Then we decided that this was very silly, and I moved. My maternal grandparents died within four months of each other. I tried to fly to Israel to see my grandmother before she died; instead I was there for the funeral. I didn't fly to Israel for my grandfather's funeral; instead I finished writing a final exam. I attended another law school, started a blog, took the Massachusetts bar exam, and got a job. I started covering my hair all the time - almost.

We bought a new, bigger, apartment. My paternal grandmother died the next day. Fresh out of grandparents, I took a day off work to sleep in the middle of my new living room floor and field international phone calls. My sister got another dog. My father got cancer.

I bought some fake hair to cover my real hair, but never really wore it (except for that wedding where I was a bridesmaid). My father got a little better, then he got a lot sicker. I got a new car. I got pregnant. With twins. I stopped looking for a new job. My father died. I didn't fly to Israel for the funeral. I sat shiva in four places, including an airport.

I grew a little older and a lot wiser in areas where I would have preferred to stay young and naive. I had carrot cake on my twenty-seventh birthday, blew out candles lit in binary, watched an aging Dick Clark fumble his way through midnight, and said goodbye to my last year of non-motherhood. I pushed out a couple of kids.

We made a brit milah and a zeved habat on the same day. We named our daughter for my mother and my mother's mother. We named our son for my grandfathers. We made a pidyon haben about three weeks later. I've made gallons of milk. They've made plenty of dirty diapers.

The (second) very nice guy's paternal grandmother died. He went to New York for the funeral. The (second) very nice guy and I, for the first time, hosted Pesach seders in our own home. Our daughter, not wanting to sleep, joined us for the second seder. Our son slept through both. From this we learn that it was because of the righteous women that Israel was brought out of Egypt.

I wandered in the wilderness, reading blogs and wikis and message boards in the early morning hours, a child draped over my shoulder or held to my breast. Our children grew, a little. Nearly half a year passed in the space of about five minutes, which may explain how the world was (or was not) created in six days. I found my way, lost it, found another. There is no certain way, just faith. I lost my faith, found it, lost it, looked again. It's out there somewhere, or in here somewhere.

Let's go looking together.

one nation, indivisible

For those who haven't been reading the news, Supreme Court decided yesterday that Newdon did not have standing in his Pledge of Allegiance case, thereby neatly skirting the constitutional issue that held my interest (and the interest of many others, I would assume) for at least the past several months. I can't be the only one who noticed the irony of them deciding this case on Flag Day. Anyway, only three Justices, Rehnquist, O'Connor, and Thomas, wrote opinions--under different analyses--on the merits, all stating that the "under God" addition 50 years ago was constitutional. For those of you who need me to back up a step further: some guy in California brought a case claiming the Pledge of Allegiance was unconstitutional (under the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment) with the inclusion of the phrase "under God." He brought the case on behalf of his school-aged daughter, but there was some question of standing because he and the mother are divorced, and the mother is the custodial parent.

Well, at least we've cleared up a tiny little area of family law. Apparently, noncustodial parents can't bitch to the judicial system about their children being made to say the Pledge in school.

But let's set aside for a moment the Supreme Court's actual decision (or lack thereof) on the Pledge of Allegiance case yesterday. I don't see why I can't have my own little argument right here. Sometimes I feel like I'm the only (monotheistic) religious person who is actually offended by the inclusion of "under God," rather than just understanding of why some other people might be. I never gave much thought to it in school when I was growing up--and that is the problem. Invocation of a deity--whether you believe in that particular deity or not--is disrespectful when said without reverence or even mere consideration of your words.

Of course I am also deeply troubled by the devisiveness of requiring schoolchildren to say the Pledge with an "opt-out." I remember one girl in my class in elementary school who sat out the Pledge every day; even after someone explaiined to me that it was because of her religion (Jehovah's Witness), I thought it was W-E-I-R-D...because that's how may kids think. (Of course, she also didn't bring in cupcakes on her birthday, which I thought was M-E-A-N. On the other hand, I'm sure people thought many odd things about me for never eating hot dogs and hamburgers in the cafetaria or on school trips.)

And beyond the JW, who sit out the Pledge because they find it to be an inappropriate form of prayer (giving allegiance to the nation), there's also the many atheists in this country who do not believe in God. Oh, and also those funny people who belong to those odd little polytheistic, pagan, or animistic religions that have only been around on this planet for about twice as long as Christianity. But they, of course, are insignificant. (Need I actually invoke the sarcasm tag?)

Someone else pointed out, even if you are a monotheist who's cool with the God thing, the arrogance of thinking that God particularly favors our country. Heh.

Finally, the "historical" argument frustrates me because the original Pledge did not have "under God" in it. (It was added during the Communists-Are-Evil era as a way of scaring off those atheist pinko bastards.) Yes, a generation and a half (or so) of us grew up saying the Pledge this way, and it would sound funny to our ears if we relearned it. So what? A while ago, when this case was argued before the Court, William Safire wrote a NYTimes column complaining about the very same thing--in the other direction. Having learned the original Pledge growing up, he thought the phrase "under God" disrupted the flow of the thing.

What will I do when I have children of my own? Well, first of all, let's keep in mind that I only get about 50% of the decision-making power when it comes to raising the kids. If it were up to me, I'd like to tell them to recite the Pledge along with their classmates, omitting the phrase "under God." I would teach them that this was the original form of the Pledge, and explain the many reasons why the addition of that phrase was troublesome to many people and rather unnecessary althogether. Of course, I'll be doing this while sending them to a religious school (or after? Do they even say the Pledge at Orthodox day schools, or do they go straight froom Shacharit to Social Studies?), so that will look pleasantly hypocritical. Oh well. So I'm a hypocrite. I can live with that.

the numbers game

Tangental to another conversation, my friend N asserted that while a candidate could win the presidency with less than 50% of the popular vote, s/he would still need "close to half" in order to get the requisite 270 electoral votes. I set out to prove her wrong. For those of you who are not familiar with my country's electoral system (and since most of my readers are U.S. citizens, I hope that's not too many of you), here's the quick explanation: Each of the fifty states are assigned a number of electoral votes equal to the number of the state's U.S. Senators (always two per state) plus the number of the state's U.S. Representatives (apportioned by population, minimum one per state, total 435). The District of Columbia, which has no representation in Congress (a rant for another day) receives 3 electoral votes as well, bringing the total number of votes in the Electoral College to 538. A candidate needs 270 electoral votes in order to win the presidential election. Each state's electoral votes are granted as a block to the winner of that state's popular vote.

That doesn't sound too bad, until you consider that electoral votes in some states (generally speaking, the least populous) are worth more than those in others.

How so? Well, for starters, two of the electoral votes in each state are granted regardless of that state's population, meaning that in Vermont (1 Representative) these votes triple the state's electoral voting power, whereas in California (53 representatives) they add less than 4% more voting power to the state. Furthermore, since every state must have at least one U.S. Representative, and of course no state can send half a Representative to Washington (pity, that), in some states (such as Rhode Island) there are a mere half-million people for each Representative, whereas in other states (like Delaware or Montana) there are closer to 800,000 or more. It all boils down to an electoral vote in Wyoming weighing more than four times as much (in terms of population behind the vote) as one in California.

Don't believe me? I did the math and it's all in this nifty little spreadsheet.

"Ah, but wait--" you say, "you used total population! Obviously not all these people are registered to vote!" OK, then. You give me the number of registered voters in each state, and I'll use those. In the meantime, I'll settle for assuming that the proportional amount of registered voters to total population in each state is roughly the same.

Anyway, the second sheet of that Excel file is set up so you can play some electoral math games. It is currently sorted so the states with the highest weight electoral votes (fewest voters behind each vote) are at the top, and the lowest-weight states are at the bottom. In the scenario I have set up in the saved file, Party A has garnered 271 electoral votes (more than the required 270) with less than 22% of the popular vote! Of course, I finagled this by having Party A win by one or two votes in the 39 most heavily-weighed states, and having Party B sweep the other 12. I agree that this scenario is highly unlikely (given the nature of elections in general and the groupings of states' politcal leanings in particular), but it does show just how misrepresentative our electoral system really is. I suspect (though I haven't played this out yet) that in an election with three candidates, with states that give their electoral votes to the candidate who garners a plurality of votes in that state (rather than a majority), the popular vote percentage necessary to win would be close to 15%.

Feel free to play with that set-up and come up with more realistic projections that still have one party winning with far less than 50% of the popular vote. You should enter only the votes for Party A (column E); everything else will calculate itself out.

vino revisited

In the past two weeks we have purchased ten bottles of Chateau de Paraza on sale at The Butcherie. I figure that if we ever get sick of drinking it, I can use the rest of our stock for cooking only.

Also, we (OK, Julian) fixed the oven. Turns out it was just some broken wire, not the entire bottom heating element. One trip to Home Depot and a few minutes of fiddling later, and the oven was back in working order....just in time for us to go away for next Shabbat (and with a fridge full of leftovers, too).

Just thought you'd like to know.