Welfareloser's Blog

a few random milestones for the week:

all of a sudden, it seems, the twits can read. they still kind of suck at spelling words themselves, but if they see a word written down, they can read it. and they can actually spell a lot of simple words correctly. this is not news to IAlsoHaveADream, who periodically logs on to find his IM box filled with messages like “r2d2 c3po 111111111111m!” thanks to me leaving the laptop unattended on the kitchen table. at one point, DramaQueen was annoyed enough that IAlsoHaveADream wasn’t typing back that he went for the phone and tried to call him. unfortunately for DramaQueen, IAlsoHaveADream’s phone number is not a string of 50 1′s.

speaking of phone numbers… i finally did it. it was time. i let EvilGremlin in on the whole “phone number” thing. he’s known our phone number for three whole days, and i don’t regret it yet… so far, so good.

i can play my first irish tune, swallowtail jig – memorized, and at performance speed to keep up with the real musicians at the pub – on the banjo. it requires fingering way up the neck, and isn’t based on standard roll patterns, making it “hard,” as far as i’m concerned, anyway. and it only took me a month. or two. i’m awesome!

monkeybeef is officially drinking exclusively out of a cup. and walking. technically. he can, he just prefers not to. we’ve gone from 1 or 2 halting steps when he’s upright with nothing to hang onto, to 3-5 pretty decently stable steps. the only time he actually WANTS to walk, though, is if he has a bean bag chair to flop face-first onto at the end of it. because that’s both funny, and safe. walking still scares him. sort of. he actually loves RUNNING – off the top of the two-step stairs in the dining area, to plummet to a beanbag chair one of his brothers has set up at the bottom of the stairs. too pussy to walk, but skydiving is apparently no problem. whatever!

evilgremlin lost his 8th tooth. monkeybeef grew his 9th through 12 teeth – molars. his bite means BIDNESS now.

monkeybeef finally figured out yesterday, thanks to a squadron of cheerios race cars and speedracer movie tie-in cars from this week’s grocery-cartload of cereal boxes, that toy cars are fun. his look of confused wonderment as the twits pushed the new cars across the kitchen floor for him suddenly gave way to a droolly, open-mouthed grin as the epiphany struck… he “gets it.” he pushed cars back and forth with his brothers, and laughed his ass off when one flipped or spun out. when his daddy came home, he dragged him over to the kitchen to show him his new trick. as PRM was pointing out that this proved the boy was perfectly intelligent, the boy picked up a car in each hand and banged himself in the head with them. it reminded me of a song… PRM smacked me on the ass for singing it. but come ON. as further proof, i offer you monkeybeef’s other new trick: making himself dizzy.

baby genius … shakes the IQ points … out of his ears.

and this morning, i cleaned out the memories of our phones by emailing all the crappy pictures to myself. they are random as hell…

squirrel hunting:

shooting skeet with texasroadkill, loudmouthsoup and accidentprone:

and then it gets really random:

the last lonely worm in the worm-fridge in the bait-n-tackle section amused me for some reason.

as did evilgremlin’s handiwork:

accidentprone asked PRM to “make me a cocktail, bitch.” that’s a beer. in a mason jar. with a pickle.

do i really have to explain these?

and one last random photo… i catered another resident study session, this time with ethiopian food. i figure the easiest way to do it, rather than force them to reheat stuff in the tiny microwave in the residents’ lounge, was to take the pots directly off the stove and drive them to the hospital. it takes 10 minutes, and the stuff is still hot. it worked fine with the empanadas last time, but this time, a pot of lentils was on high heat until i ran it out to the van. apparently, that was hot enough to melt the upholstery in the back of my van. it was STUCK. PRM actually had to cut it out of the van with scissors.

welfareloser (9:57:55 PM): wait, are you actually still awake?
welfareloser (9:58:00 PM): like, not being lame?
welfareloser (9:58:29 PM): dude, you are totally awake and checking yourr email now at 10 pm, after getting laid. am i right?
welfareloser (9:58:37 PM): YOU’RE AWESOME!
welfareloser (9:58:55 PM): wait for it…
welfareloser (9:59:07 PM): wait for it…
welfareloser (9:59:54 PM): heh. you aren’t typing back… meaning that you aren’t actually awake, and hence, not “not lame.” irony!
welfareloser (10:00:07 PM): irony loves me

okay… this post is, like, my magnum opus, or something. i started it just over a month ago, and have been working on it steadily. because i care about food. also? i love ridiculing martha fucking stewart. stupid ho. so enjoy!

i rarely follow recipes. even when i do, i almost always make so many substitutions and tweaks that my end product bears little resemblance to what the recipe intended. however, for the last several months, i’ve been going through a backlog of several years’ worth of a bunch of different cooking magazines, clipping the recipes that look promising, and making entire menus of recipe-driven dishes, just for shits and grins. (also? i vacuum in high heels and a pearl necklace.) here are the cooking magazines, not only in order from best to worst, but also divided into three categories: “awesome,” “worth a look,” and “some old bullshit.” mostly because i wanted an excuse to use the word “bullshit” repeatedly in this post. clever, no?

AWESOME:

MAXIM – hands down, my favorite cooking magazine. “but that’s not a cooking magazine,” you’re thinking. well, mostly not. but it gave me two of my favorite recipes of all time: chocolate-dipped potato chips and deep-fried bacon. (the deep-fried bacon is actually part of a 6-part series entitled “bacon porn.” this month’s contribution to the series: bacon bowls. for salads, of course!) shut up. you know it’s an awesome idea. also? boobies. lots of them. and fart jokes!

BON APPETIT – the complaint most people have is that the recipes involve too much work or too many odd ingredients. now, a few of the recipes are pretty labor-instensive. but a lot of them aren’t. and they’re really good about only calling for oddball ingredients when absolutely necessary. every issue has a good mix of easy and hard, desserts, side dishes and main courses, and traditional and avant garde. and most importantly – aside from it tasting good, obviously – is that almost every recipe is something i just wouldn’t have thought of on my own. more on that later.

just in the last couple of weeks, for example, recipes that i have made from bon appetit include: caramel-walnut upside-down banana cake (and oh my GOD. best non-chocolate containing dessert i’ve had in forever. and by dessert, i mean i ate half the damn cake instead of dinner. which is why i’m now laying in bed with the laptop and PRM is taking care of me), butternut squash gratin with goat cheese, sage and hazelnuts (replace “1 cup heavy whipping cream” with “some skim milk and some buttermilk and some cream cheese to approximate the right consistency” to keep my husband’s arteries from jumping out of his body to bitch-slap me), cornmeal biscuits with cheddar and chipotle, cabbage and corn slaw with orange and cilantro dressing, and plantain picadillo pie with cheese.

also, this magazine has been the source of some of my favorite desserts – stuff that i make over and over. chocolate bread pudding with bourbon-custard sauce (start with a loaf of cinnamon bread. melt six candy bars. i’ve made this several times since last summer, and have had to give the recipe to everyone in a 3-block radius), apple galette (i’ve made it with apples, with peaches, and i’m damn well making it with cherries as soon as our trees start producing), la bete noir (“the black beast,” a flourless chocolate cake that is the finest vehicle for getting coldstone creamery’s cake batter ice cream in your mouth as i can imagine. okay, maybe you’re imagining using shakira’s nipple to get it to your mouth, but that’s just because you have a penis, not because my imagination is limited.)

okay, remember how i said they only make it labor-intensive or call for oddball ingredients if it’s really, really worth it? i have this recipe i’m saving for when my fellow peanut-butter freak IAlsoHaveADream comes to visit: i just special-ordered some cocoa butter and cocoa nibs from amazon. they are necessary for the 4-part recipe “peanut butter shortbread with peanut butter ice cream and peanut crunch.” it will take me all day to make. and it will be worth it. the end product goes something like this: “spoon 1/4 cup of the milk chocolate creme anglaise into the center of each of 8 plates. place shortbread cookie in center of each plate, then top with peanut crunch round. stack two scoops of peanut butter ice cream on each, garnish with honey-roasted peanuts, and serve.”

yeah. i need to go have a private moment, too.

SOUTHERN LIVING – t’ain’t low fat, but damn is it good. because sometimes, dinner just needs to be a barbecued pork pot pie with a cheese grits crust. (when my baby grows up to be obese, he can tell his therapist about that one. he ate about half the pan.) and they always have some awesome things to do with meat. like bourbon-maple smoked turkey. or like the caribbean rice and peas with slow-roasted pork i made last week. and the desserts don’t ever pull any punches. chocolate-pecan-bourbon pie. peanut butter banana pudding. southern living’s desserts are satan. and satan loves you very, very much.

SAVEUR – this started out lower on this list. i initially considered placing it in the “some old bullshit” list, but eh, if nothing else, the photography is really gorgeous. it’s as much a travel magazine as it is a cooking magazine, and their photos of both the exotic locales and the exotic food are impeccably artistic. the recipes, at first glance, seemed mostly lame. i understand that people in thailand eat dishes constructed entirely around fish eyeballs. that doesn’t mean i want that shit in my house, though, and i think these fuckers know that. but they present recipes for stuff like that, using “the wierdest shit we could find” as ersatz “authenticity.”

now, annoying as that is, they totally make up for it with a lot of authentic recipes that are really freakin good. like the french recipe for “thick crepes with apples.” oh my GOD. crepe batter that’s allowed to rise with yeast for several hours, then cooked into fat, cinnamon-laden cakes, topped with thick slices of apples that have been sauteed in butter, molasses and apple cider into an intensely fruity reduction…. damn, was it good. it’s not a breakfast dish (unless you happen to not mind getting up at 3 am to start cooking breakfast for a bunch of ungrateful buttmunches) but sunday brunch? oh hells yes.

also, it’s the ONLY magazine (or cookbook, for that matter!) that i can say gave me utterly authentic-tasting results for a variety of previously elusive ethnic cuisines. for example, i’ve attempted to make ethiopian food several times, and while it’s always been good, it’s never been quite RIGHT. then i followed the recipes in last months saveur, and holy crap, it tasted like i had stolen the foul-tempered ethiopian grandma from the kitchen at our favorite local ethiopian restaurant and put her ass to work in my kitchen for 12 cents a day. they listed all the right ingredients, AND explained all the necessary techniques. for example, the recipes for the spice mix and spiced butter (the basis of virtually every ethiopian dish) that i got from a couple of other cookbooks (“soul and spice,” and “a taste of eritrea”) that claimed to be authentic… yeah. fuck those poseurs. saveur’s recipe? dead-on. the poseurs were lacking the spices kalonji and methi. also, the round, crepe-like bread that is served with ethiopian meals… other recipes just weren’t the same as the sour, dark brown, spongy breads i’ve gotten at restaurants. saveur fixed that: start with a sourdough starter, use tef flour instead of wheat flour, let it sit and get REALLY sour for several hours, and then, instead of using a standard crepe technique, you cook it in a pan for one minute, then cover it so it steams for another minute… perfect. i can now throw away those other two worthless cookbooks.

i’ve gotten the same awesome results from saveur for indian food (ground lamb and peas in spiced yogurt)… middle eastern food (chicken with saffron, almonds and chickpeas)… eastern european food (saveur’s recipe for goulash was probably the 10th one i’ve tried, and it was the first one that tasted like it actually came from eastern europe.) i’ve been so impressed that i’m going to go ahead and attempt their russian spread (bread stuffed with rice and fish… don’t tell PRM. he’ll eat it if you KEEP YOUR MOUTH SHUT.)

oh, and finally… strangely enough, it was the source of the best candy recipe of all time, period. it was called something innocuous, like “coconut candy bars,” but the name didn’t do it justice. they are a quintessential clusterfuck of all-american bad-for-you goodness: sweetened condensed milk, coconut flakes, peanut butter, chocolate chips, a “graham cracker crust” (translation: several sticks of butter, a bunch of sugar, and some graham crackers). i totally improved on it by using molasses and honey in the crust instead of sugar, and some batches got a layer of gooey nut mess (some bourbon pecan pralines that i failed to get to set properly.) so… whiskey, graham crackers, peanut butter, chocolate, coconut. really, if you could incorporate football and playboy bunny boobies, you could just name this dessert it “THE AMERICAN” and call it a day. i gave several variants of this stuff to at least 20 different people, and every one of them said it was oh… my… god. newfiemama and radhippie’s little girl, who weighs all of about 12 pounds, quietly ate her weight in these candy bars in one sitting.

COOKING LIGHT – sounds lame, but when you get sick of looking at recipes that call for several sticks of butter, pints of whipping cream, etc, this magazine is full of stuff that is a good balance of “tastes good” and “won’t put you in an early and extra-wide grave.”

WORTH A LOOK:

WILLIAMS SONOMA CATALOG – there are always several recipes in every catalog, smashed into the margins amid the $2000 espresso makers and $600 toasters. and every recipe calls for ingredients that they sell at ridiculous mark-ups. but their proprietary ingredients are easy enough to figure out… when their recipe calls for a $24 jar of their “pumpkin pecan filling” … well, duh. $3 can of pumpkin, $3 bag of pecans, some sugar, some spices. and you really don’t NEED their $80 “filled pancakes pan” to make the “maple walnut filled pancakes,” so long as you don’t mind your pancakes being shaped a bit like the ass end of cupcakes.

i worked for williams-sonoma for a few months over the holidays back in the day, and in addition to holding the record for selling $600 toasters (who knew i was that full of shit? okay, you probably did. but i didn’t, until i pulled that off!), i also learned how to make several awesome dishes for the “holiday cooking demonstrations and tastings” that are some of our family favorites. like the one i call “tuber mess” … chop up a bunch of carrots, sweet potatoes, potatoes, and parsnips. lightly coat with olive oil and herbs de provence, and bake. my kind of recipe… proportions are fuzzy. also, hybrid pecan-pumpkin pie. genius, i tell you.

GOURMET – gourmet is basically a shitty version of saveur. i honestly don’t know why gourmet exists, given that i think it actually comes from the same publisher as saveur. it’s like the publishers sent a bunch of votech dropouts to the same locations as the college-educated gourmands that work for saveur. and the dropouts took pictures of the same things, except with shitty cameras, while they were tweaking on meth. then, at the end of their trip, when the expense account had been bled dry, and their articles and recipes were due, they remembered 3 of the 10+ ingredients for the recipes, scribbled them on a napkin at the last minute and handed them in to their bosses to avoid getting fired. and while mostly forgettable, occasionally, they’re not bad. this magazine almost made it into the “some old bullshit” category, except that this month, they had a recipe for homemade fruit roll-ups. come on… you know that’s cool as hell. especially when you can make it any shape you want. like, say, “novelty underwear.” yeah. now you’re with me.

MARTHA STEWART EVERYDAY FOOD – oh, lord, did i ever want to put this in the “some old bullshit” category. desperately. i fucking hate martha stewart. she’s obsessed with arugula. seriously. every issue. i challenge you to find an issue that doesn’t want you to buy some goddamned arugula and pretend it’s something more awesome that yet another variety of fucking LETTUCE. she throws some arugula on a sloppy joe, a slice of spam, a goddamned apple, and pretends she’s invented some prize-winning haute cuisine.

every fucking issue that i’ve gotten (and i’ve been getting it since new years) has some shit in some peanut sauce. seriously. sometimes she calls it “satay.” sometimes she calls it “some shit in peanut sauce.” but … come on. peanut-soy-rice vinegar-sesame oil-coconut. on shrimp. or pork. or beef. or chicken. with noodles. or rice. or cabbage. we get it already. it was avant-garde 15 years ago. get over it. oh, and while you’re at it? katie couric called from 1993. she wants her helmet-hair back. stupid ho.

the photography is shit. pure, utter shit. i’ve never been so annoyed at pictures of food. how the fuck do you manage to make a plate of cupcakes look bleah? I DON’T KNOW. cupcakes are awesome, right? everybody loves cupcakes. fucking martha stewart? she can make cupcakes look like shit. i’m not kidding. everything about the magazine is ugly. look at the goddamned logo if you don’t believe me:

the articles are fucking terrible. last month’s features included: “reuseable cloth grocery bags.” this was awesomely informative news… in 1991. oh, and who could live without the handy chart on “how long do condiments keep?” because i totally might not have thrown out that bottle of ketchup on its expiration date. you know… the one printed on the bottle.

i wish i was making this up.

martha stewart’s other favorite thing to do, besides masturbate with arugula, take shitty pictures, and tell you shit you already knew, is to present the umpteenth recipe for some shit your great-grandma knew how to make with her eyes closed. (and i don’t mean some old recipe that time hath forgotten… i mean some shit that your grandma, your mom, and probably you could also make without thinking real hard about it.) like “chocolate brownies.” or “chicken and biscuits.” and i don’t mean she presents an old idea with an interesting new twist. i mean she pretty much copies some shit straight out of the joy of cooking. period. oh, and takes a shitty picture of the end product. i’m all for “simple,” but fucking christ, woman, if you’re going to steal an idea, at least put some effort into it – give it an interesting twist. something. anything!!! because, motherfuckballs, i already know that apples and onions go well with cabbage. seriously. stick to stealing investment money, lady, because you suck even worse at stealing recipes.

on those rare occasions where she presents a recipe that i’m actually interested in making, i almost invariably wind up changing it so much that my end product is completely different from hers. like her “chicken panini and green pea soup” dinner. the green pea soup was seriously nothing more than peas and salt and chicken stock… ew. but i threw in some smoked chicken bits… a few fresh herbs… some ground pepper… i have my doubts about her green pea soup, but mine totally rocked. the panini were pretty blech too… “cheddar scallion panini.” so… grilled cheese sandwiches with onion on it. brilliant. stupid ho. i used smoked gouda and feta, a bunch of sauteed spinach with a little onion and garlic, used my homemade sourdough, and threw in some grilled chicken breast, too. so… my menu bore little resemblance to the martha stewart menu that inspired it. but at least i’m giving her credit. unlike a certain joy of cooking bandit. stupid ho.

now. all of this is quite a list of complaints. but when it comes down to it… she has recipes like wrapping a chicken breast in prosciutto, broiling it, then serving it with a lemon wedge to squooze on it. and dammit… that was a good idea. also, the “fish tacos with salsa verde and radish salad.” her salsa verde was definitely some old bullshit (an entire bunch of cilantro in a blender. talk about an unbalanced flavor profile) but change that to a few sprigs of cilantro to go with the slices of scallion, radish, jalapeno, and lime juice, on coriander-roasted tilapia in a tortilla… that was really good. about once a month, she totally fucking redeems the other 131 pages of her shitty, shitty magzine with a single awesome recipe, so i begrudgingly allow her shitty, shitty magazine to continue to show up at my house.

seriously, though? anyone who declares martha stewart’s everyday food their favorite cooking magazine? you have to wonder about head injuries.

magazines that did not make the list because they suck donkey balls, are completely worthless, without a single redeeming quality save, perhaps, the humor value…
SOME OLD BULLSHIT:

KRAFT FOOD AND FAMILY: okay. do i REALLY need an illustrated notecard to show me that i can stir shit like peas and hotdogs into macaroni and cheese? seriously, these fuckwad food engineers at kraft get paid like $80,000-$120,000 a year (trust me, i seriously considered majoring in food engineering for a while), do tons of “market research” and “focus group testing,” and the best they can do to try to entice me to buy more of their shit is endless “no bake cheesecake” variations (yes. graham crackers and cream cheese are good with raspberries. or strawberries. or chocolate and caramel. I FUCKING GET IT ALREADY!) and “mayonnaise and noodles and some other shit, possibly vegetable matter, baked with cheese.”

CUISINE AT HOME: the whole concept here is “real people” send in their favorite recipes. reading it, you realize that “real people” – even those so proud of their cooking prowess that they will share their recipes with the rest of the nation – suck at cooking. the recipes are either “standard” or “different, yet nasty.” the pictures of the proud chefs have a certain deranged entertainment value, but beyond that, the magazine is definitely some old bullshit. (okay, i’ll admit… i clipped and glued to a notecard a recipe for baked sweet potatoes with maple and jalapeno sour cream from this magazine. and i loved it. but PRM hated it, so i defer to his generally better-than-mine judgement, and consign this magazine to the “some old bullshit” list until further notice.)

BODY + SOUL okay, as i was looking for a link to this piece of shit magazine of tasteless granola and grilled chicken breast recipes, i noticed… that it’s a fucking MARTHA STEWART PUBLICATION. why am i not surprised? i guess i was fooled by the thin veneer of articles on “how to tell your doctor he’s full of shit and eschew evidence-based medicine in favor of herbal pills” and “top ten reasons not to immunize your child against deadly childhood diseases.”

anyway. i know there are 8 million other cooking magazines out there, but these are the ones i’ve gotten for free or as gifts in the last couple of years, so that’s all you get out of me. now i’m gonna go choose my menu for the forthcoming casa de loser cinco de mayo eat-a-thon. because the homies gots to have fresh tortillas to go with the margaritas!

i’ve decided to start a new personal tradition: “Eggnog in July.” Because it is sad that my canned borden eggnog supply runs out in march, and waiting for the next snowfall for eggnog is just so goddamned unnecessary. it’s kind of like the whole “Christmas in July” concept, minus the effort and spirit of giving. in fact, i’m not even saying it’s a party. i’m just saying: i’m going to make a fuckload of homemade eggnog sometime in mid-july. and i will personally be drinking at least a shitload of said fuckload. y’all are welcome to come drink it with me. if that somehow turns into a party, that’s just some circumstances beyond my control and stuff.

and, ironically? speaking of waiting for the next snowfall, apparently, that’s going to be next monday. yay, iowa!

So while my parents were babysitting today, SpazMonkey ws studying the calendar, hesitated, then came flying to the family room:

SM: DRAMAQUEEN, WE’RE NOT FIVE YET!
DQ: yes we are.
SM: NO WE’RE NOT!
DQ: uh huh.
SM: NO, DQ, THAT’S NOT RIGHT!
Oma: of course you are five. your birthday was the 16th and today is the 20th. go look at the calendar and I will show you.

then my mom noticed there were no x’s from the 14th – 20th… and she got it. she told him the days just didn’t get crossed off the calendar and gave him a pencil.

SM: A PENCIL’S NOT SO GOOD. I NEED A SHARPIE.
oma: a pencil is fine.
SM: DQ, WE GOTTA MAKE THE X SO WE CAN GROW UP!

have i mentioned that monkeybeef isn’t the sharpest crayon in the loser box?

so, after 3 supremely difficult children, we finally got an easy baby. you put him in bed, he sleeps. you put him in his high chair, he eats. you tickle him, he laughs. (if you have no kids, and are under the impression that that’s how all babies are… that sound you hear? that’s the collective laughter of the 95% of parents who have at least one child who doesn’t act like that.) he’s easy because he’s easy-going. and he’s easy-going because he’s STOOPID.

the other three boys, even though we have beaten good manners into them, are still difficult. they are difficult because they have opinions. about everything. even though they will do what they’re told (often even without whining!), it’s still a lot of work to answer all the hows and whys, anticipate and prevent implementation of every bright idea they get into their hard little kegheads, listen to their made-up stories, run around outside, help them piece together costumes for this or that character, make gamepieces for the boardgames they invent (and thank GOD that 12-sided dice actually exist, and we own at least a dozen… and when they found out that we also had 4, 8 and 12 sided dice, oh my GOD did that particular game get out of hand fast,) help them build the 5% or so of the toys they invent that aren’t impossible due to the constraints of time, money, or the basic laws of physics (do you know how relieved i was last time EG came to me with a diagram for a toy he wanted to build… and it was a pokemon-in-the-box? was he ever surprised when i not only said yes we could build it, and yes we could afford it, but also that we could get it done by the end of the weekend!)

the older kids all had identifiable interests and talents and opinions by monkeybeef’s current age. EG was already a champion debater who adored yellow schoolbuses (my friend evilredhead does a dead-on impression of a 15-month-old EG yapping “WOOK! wha dat? wha dat, mom? BUTTS! it da BUTTS!”) and blue’s clues. the twits had identifiable artistic and musical inclinations, and could be bribed out of even the holiest of tantrum rages by the mere mention of thomas the train. oh, LORD could they throw tantrums, all three of them – sometimes because we wouldn’t let them do something dangerous, but just as often because some toy or another just wouldn’t bend timespace to do something the kid in question was utterly convinced it ought to do.

then there’s monkeybeef. 15 months old, and devoid of opinions. he’s never yet tried to make a toy do something it can’t. in fact, all he really demands of his toys is that they follow the law of gravity, since his favorite thing to do with a toy is throw it and watch it land. pretty age-appropriate, i know (now, if that’s still his principal form of entertainment at, say, age 3, it’s time to worry,) but the boy isn’t even into CARS. he’ll sit and watch you push a car. if you hand it to him, he’ll throw it. that’s about it. no pushing cars along a track or down a ramp. no watching the wheels turn. no lining up his entire collection of wooden trains or matchbox cars just to admire them. no “vroom vroom” noises. he prefers balls, possibly because they’re perfect for throwing, and – bonus! – sometimes they bounce, which is like getting extra throws for the price of one.

when he wakes up from a nap, or in the mornings, you have to go in and check on him, because he’ll sit quietly in his crib until you come get him. somehow, either the thought of making noise to attract attention has never occured to him, or he’s just as happy staring at the walls in his bedroom as he is doing anything else. im not sayin… i’m just sayin. doesn’t exactly seem like a sign of great intelligence.

here’s the extent of his talking:
muh-muh-mum = mom
huh-duh! = hi, dad.
wussub = whassup?
wah-oo = uh-oh
na-na-na = no.
eeeeeeeee! = oh, come ON! fuck this!
mm’beh-mm’bwih? = lady, will you please feed me?
(or not. all i know is that he says exactly that, with exactly the same intonation, a LOT. he might think it means something, but then again, he might just like the sound of it.)

see any glaring holes in that list? no word for ball. or milk/bottle/cup. or dog. he doesn’t seem to get it when we point ot something and say its name repeatedly. i think last week was the first time he actually recognized that he was being called by name (though, to be fair, we do tend to address him by one of his top three nicknames – monkeybeef, feezypoof, and feesterstash, as often as we do by his given name). the boy is not, by any measure, ahead of the curve. on anything. except head circumference. but since phrenology fell out of favor, i think he missed his one and only chance to be indentified as a baby genius.

now, before you go and get all indignant and self-righteous and decide that i must be a terrible mother for calling my kid stoopid, i have a few things to say. fuck you, for one. also, it’s not that important to be smart. i know it’s all the rage these days, and every freaked-out parent claims their child is of above-average intelligence one way or another. and most of them are wrong. some people are smart. and if smart people exist, so do dumb people. and how many smart people do you know that have lives fucked up beyond repair? okay, then. smart is useful, and smart is fun, but smart is way overrated. 20 years ago, it was okay to brag about your kid being a great athlete, really popular, really active. now, smart is all that matters.

since i don’t care what “they” think, i’m perfectly comfortable saying that he’s stoopid. he’s sweet, he’s adorable, and oh good lord he is STOOPID. and stoopid babies are easier to raise. other than the times he bonks his head on something, cries, and then has to be stopped from carefully bonking his head in exactly the same spot again, and again (just to make sure it really does hurt, i guess), i don’t have to spend much time arguing with him about what he should or should not do. he pushes buttons on the tv. i hand him a ball. game, set, match. he’s that easy. he just chills. the dude abides.

now, check back with me in a few weeks, and i may have something different to say. the twits were always high-strung, but it really took off about the time they started walking at 11 months. and i seem to remember calling EG “mr. fat and happy” until he started walking, just before his first birthday. as of yesterday, MB had progressed to lots of freestanding stand up/sit down, with the occasional 1 or even 2 wobbly steps before sitting down. also – and perhaps not coincidentally – he threw his first real toddler-style tantrum the other day – i had to go into the garage, and i shut the door before he could follow me. and he spent the next several minutes sitting with his back to the door, rhythmically banging the back of his head and screeching.

so. hints of opinions. also, i finally saw the first hint of creativity. maybe he’ll turn out to be a massive pain in the butt like the other three, after all, and the transformation just somehow magically coincides with the onset of walking. so this little burst of creativity: it still involved “balls” and “throwing,” but…

one of monkeybeef’s favorite toys is this 2-foot tall plastic tower. it has a spiral track around the outside of it. you put a ball on top, it rolls down and around to the bottom. so he was playing with it the other day, and while i was folding laundry, i heard this from the next room:

DQ: look what monkeybeef’s doing!
SM: OH MY GODSH, LOOK WHAT HE DID!
DQ: good job, monkeybeef!

this was followed by earsplitting cackling. i poked my head around the corner to see the twits pointing and laughing and patting MB on the back. MB was standing at his ball tower, a big orange box of reese’s peanut butter puffs held in both hands over his head. upside down. the one i had just opened five minutes ago. he had dumped the entire pound-and-half mega-box of cereal balls onto his ball tower, and watched them go down the spiral. at his brothers’ approval, his face lit up, he started squealing and cackling, and then he was so excited he stomped his feet, sort of running in place in a little victory dance, just barely managing to stay upright.

when they turned and saw me coming, the twits pointed out that MB had made the mess all by himself, and were already offering to clean it up. MB saw me coming, grinned… and then got this funny little set to his chin that i’ve seen a couple of times before, like when he was learning to climb stairs. the look on his face isn’t a “here comes my tantrum, bitch!” look: head slightly lowered, eyes narrowed a bit, chin jutted out. it’s a facial expression that i think may become very familiar. it’s not angry, or defiant – sometimes it’s even coupled with a smile! – it’s just definitely… determined. anyway, he started grabbing fistfuls of cereal balls and dumping them back into the top of the tower as fast as he could, because he could see that the fun was about to end.

he may have my eyes and ears, the trademarked loser family keghead, his daddy’s crazy laugh and loud snore, his brother’s sweet smile, but that determination is all his. may he use it well. and if not well, at least creatively and memorably.

1) eat pop-rocks-infused chocolate with kids.

2) eat packets of pop rocks with kids.

3) explain how this kid who was on tv when i was a kid died of an explodey head while drinking soda with pop rocks.

4) offer them soda and more pop rocks.

and if you think i won’t be feeding the baby pop rocks, you’d be wrong.

so, the twits turned 5 today. we kicked off the day with… them sleeping in. monkeybeef was actually the first one up, so he got the daily box of reese’s peanut butter puffs all to himself… for a few minutes.

presents included some pirate and spiderman megabloks, and spongebob and star wars legos. i swear we put everything together correctly. however, a week later, spaceman spongebob has teamed up with sandman to stage a mutiny on the flying dutchman. it actually meshes quite well, given that there’s a whole water/boats/pirates/davy jones/flying dutchman crossover thing between spongebob and pirates of the carribean, and the sandy cheeks spaceship fits into the whole star wars spaceship thing. spiderman is just learning how to swim.

so after a few hours of removing twist ties, we got down to bidness:

other presents included new lightsabers (because who has enough of those? nobody!), puzzle books, a 3-letter-word-spelling game (which quickly got the rules changed to allow for words like “jedi,”) some totally sweet pokemon hats and gloves (the hats are OFFICIAL POKEMON LEAGUE HATS. just ask EG!) and this build-your-own “saxophone” thing – seussian fun at its finest! with three mouthpieces, three horn pieces, and about 50 twists and turns and intersections, the three older boys have managed to make everything from a 5-foot-long sax to a three-man sax.

they’ve been playing it every day. and yes, they can play all of their favorite songs on it, including bad boys and
brass monkey.

and while we’re doing movies, here’s a few more: jedi moves 1, jedi moves 2, and “baby so excited by the excitement that he can’t hold his shit together any more.”

then there was cake. star wars cake. with fire!

dinner was an ethiopian feast, followed by ice cream cones. for the special occasion, they got to have as many maraschino cherries as they wanted. dramaqueen managed to balance four on top of his, making me think he might kind of rock at jenga.

after dinner, the three younger boys crashed…

(…sort of….)

while EG and i finished up our game of “pokemon master trainer.”

(i might eventually correct his throwing the horns… then again, i might not!)

it’s a really elaborate strategy game, and actually ranks pretty high on my list of games – close to lord of the rings risk. it’s also a very involved game – miraculously, that game survived an entire day on the kitchen table, through all the food-slinging and present-opening and move-busting, without a single piece getting jostled out of place. and then EG beat my ass at it. so then i sent his ass to bed. HA! ultimately, i won.

so. monkeybeef is clinging desperately to his bottle, completely flaunting the carved-in-stone parenting rule #749:

ALL BABIES MUST MOVE FROM BOTTLES OF INFANT FORMULA TO CUPS OF WHOLE MILK ON THEIR FIRST BIRTHDAY.

doing so even a day early can cause malnutrition, gastric bleeding, stunted growth, seizures, sudden limb atrophy and abscission, or death. doing so even a day late will cause him to grow up to be a serial killer. a retarded one.

believe me, i understand all the facts in this matter:
—if you let a kid wander around sucking on a bottle for years and years, as he gets bigger and sucks harder, this will deform his dentition.
—if, at some point, your kid is completely unable to pick up a cup and drink from it, there may well be a genuine developmental delay that should be investigated, identified and treated.
—babies are born unable to digest cow’s milk properly, and it does not offer a baby-appropriate nutritional profile; hence, when given too early, it causes pain, malnutrition, and bleeding in the gastrointestinal tract.
—at some point, as they mature, babies become able to digest cow’s milk properly, at which point they can drink it and extract all the nutrients from it without it causing any damage.
—there is some shit called baby-bottle tooth decay, wherein the inside surfaces of all a baby’s teeth rot out near the gumline. this is supposedly caused by baby bottles themselves. more on that in a moment.

now, couple these very simple facts with the american affinity for reducing things to catchy 10-second soundbytes, and hilarity ensues. that list of facts above has been simplified by the american academy of pediatrics to the rule that the sequence of events in every american baby’s life absolutely must, without exception, be:

formula in a bottle —> 1st birthday —> whole milk in a cup

i’ve taken a lot of kids to a lot of pediatricians, and with one exception, they have all pushed THE RULE with an astounding single-mindedness. the mental gymnastics it takes to support this rule with such religious fervor in the face of obvious evidence that its lack of nuance leaves something to be desired still amuse the hell out of me.

it’s not like your kid’s dentition is going to instantly morph into a champion-corncob-eating-through-a-picket-fence formation, or from pearly-white to blackened-and-rotten-as-dick-cheney’s-soul, the first time he slurps on a bottle on the day after his first birthday. duh. but you wouldn’t know that from parenting magazines, how-to-raise-a-baby books, or asking a pediatrician.

also, what about the fact that women are “encouraged” – by the same organization who came up with the bottle-to-cup rule – to breastfeed for “at least 1 year.” what this means is that they really want you to breastfeed PAST the first birthday. and formula is a substitute for breastmilk. so, breastmilk past the first birthday is damn near mandatory, and formula past the first birthday is pure babykilling evil. makes perfect sense, right?

finally, babies are clumsy, and it’s a LOT OF GODDAMNED WORK to get them to hold their own cups. but by god, the rule is: introduce a cup at 6 months, and give them nothing but cups by 12 months. now, i know plenty of parents who do pull it off. but they spend HOURS every day carefully teaching their tiny, stupid, weak, clumsy babies how to hold a cup at the right angle for long enough to get all the liquid out of it.

more power to you if that’s how you want to spend your time, but the older a kid is, the faster he’s going to learn a new skill. with the twits – me having long since decided that the rules were crap and the best course of action was to make up my own rules and lie to my pediatrician to avoid the stern lectures – i introduced cups at 12 months, and phased out bottles at 18 months, which was when THEY seemed ready for it. and oh, my god, it was so easy. no hovering over a high chair to put a cup back in clumsy, easily tired-out baby fingers, no crying, frustrated babies who were too hungry to concentrate on their cup lessons.

but with evilgremlin, i followed the rules: i introduced cups at 6 months, worked my ass off to teach him how to use them, and by god, on his first birthday, he got cups of whole milk. and within an hour of each cup, he was constipated and bleeding rectally. it took all of two cups before i switched him back to formula. the ass problems immediately disappeared. also, even though he basically got the idea and pulled it off, the kid was clumsy and had a horrible time holding his own cup. as far as i could tell, “introducing” a cup to a 6 month old consisted of him staring at it, drooling and chewing on it if you held it up to his mouth, him patiently letting you wrap his fingers around the handles, and as soon as you let go, him dropping it and staring at it in confusion. with a lot of intense coaching, EG finally got the idea that he was supposed to hold it, and that he had to tip the bottom up to get the liquid out of the cup and into his mouth. but even after 6 months of working on it, it was still a painfully slow and laborious way to get food into his tummy. also, it was messy. after packing away his bottles on his first birthday, i noticed that he consumed less than half the recommended amount of milk (err, formula) per day. after two weeks of this, i let him have bottles, too, in addition to the cups. problem solved.

until i took the boy to his 15-month checkup. his pediatrician was horrified when i told her that he was still getting bottles of formula.

me: but milk makes his butt bleed. that’s bad, right?
dr: it’s not the milk. he’s just constipated.
me: okay. but he’s only constipated after he gets milk. it’s never happened any other time, and it always happens exactly one to two hours after he gets milk. it’s the milk.
dr: well, when was the last time you tried it?
me: at 12 months.
dr: well, why haven’t you tried it again?
me: uhhh… so his butt doesn’t bleed again?
dr: just try it again!!!!

so, i got a long lecture about what a shitty job i was doing. i took him home, feeling like an asshole, and gave him a cup of milk. and an hour later held him as he screamed and his ass bled. and then i gave him a bottle of formula. the punchline: he was on cups of whole milk at 18 months; no bleeding, no coaching, no decrease in the amount consumed… and no damage done by the extra 6 months with his bottles. i wonder what that condescending bitch would think about the fact that, at 18 months, he hated the taste of cow’s milk so much that he refused to drink it. at all. for two solid weeks. my mom finally talked me into putting a little strawberry quik in it. problem solved. THAT’S RIGHT, BITCH, I GAVE MY BABY EXTRA SUGAR! and at age 8, an age when 95% percent of the kids i know drink very little milk at all, he still happily drinks his 3 glasses a day. and i know sugar causes obesity, low iq, tv-watching, bed-wetting and fire-starting, but despite the extra pounds of sugar he has consumed over these last 7 years from the mountains of strawberry quik, he’s not only skinny, HIS IQ IS NOW PROBABLY HIGHER THAN YOURS, DR. HOLIER-THAN-THOU! SO DEZE NUTZ!

and i’m not exactly way out on a limb here… check out the parent comments at babycenter.com on “when should i transition my formula-fed baby from a bottle to a cup?” every single freakin comment on there from real parents express some form of disagreement with THE RULE, for very good reasons. but apparently, no amount of evidence to the contrary is going to affect THE RULE, because THE RULE is simple and easy to remember, and dammit, it’s already printed on millions of copies of the “caring for your baby at one year” handouts in pediatricians’ offices around the country.

the saddest disconnect between the official party line and reality is on the subject of “baby bottle tooth decay.” what gets taught in dental and medical schools across the country is that baby bottle tooth decay is CAUSED BY BOTTLES. period. (and for once, i’m not being flippant here: my husband and 75% of my friends have completed medical school. i’ve been to dental school, where i wrote a paper on baby bottle tooth decay that referenced several textbooks and journals of pediatric dentistry.) the babycenter.com topic that i linked above addresses baby bottle tooth decay with this:

What’s so horrible about toddlers drinking from bottles? If you’ve ever seen a
picture of a child with bottle tooth decay, a.k.a. “bottle rot,” you’ll toss out
every single one of your baby’s bottles faster than you can say root canal!

A child’s teeth are susceptible to decay if he habitually nurses a drink with
sugar in it — formula, milk, or juice. Every time he takes a drink, natural
bacteria in his mouth feed on these sugars and attack the teeth for 20 minutes.
If he’s taking sips from a bottle every few minutes for an hour, his teeth are
exposed to the sugars for at least 80 minutes. Over time, that causes tooth
decay. Children are less likely to nurse drinks for long periods of time if
they’re offered in sippy cups.

sounds great – especially the fear-mongering mental imagery in the first paragraph! – but it’s complete bullshit. all of it. for one, as the parent comments – and my own experience – show, kids may well sit and take occasional slurps from a sippy cup, but they simply do NOT sit and suck on bottles over the course of hours. babies, especially older babies, tend to pound the contents as fast as they can, burp like a fratboy after a kegstand, and then haul ass back to the important business of emptying shelves and knocking over lamps that was interrupted by hunger. i mean, i’m sure there are kids out there who will take “sips from a bottle every few minutes for an hour.” i’m just saying i’ve never met one, and that the specific pattern of massive decay that constitutes “baby bottle tooth decay” is pretty rare. as you may have noticed from the parent comments, tons of babies are secretly allowed to suck their food from bottles well into their toddler years with no baby-bottle tooth decay to show for it. in all the hundreds of kids i’ve known or heard of, i’ve known exactly two kids with baby bottle tooth decay, and both were put to bed, every night, for years, with a bottle full of formula or milk, AND were in the habit of leaving the bottle in their mouths all night long (instead of letting it drop out of their mouths as they fell asleep, or chucking it over the railings of their cribs to the floor when it was empty, like 99% of the millions of kids who have been allowed to take bottles to bed do.) now, when i wrote my paper in dental school, one journal article that i read identified this particular pattern of behavior as the likely only culprit of baby bottle tooth decay. this information gets glossed over in textbooks, though, and is completely absent by the time the topic trickles down to publications intended for parents.

so, to summarize: letting a bottle drip formula into a baby’s mouth all night long is the worst thing you can do to his teeth. putting him to bed with a bottle, even if he takes it out of mis mouth, isn’t the best idea, because he’s not getting his teeth brushed after his last meal of the night. kids definitely shouldn’t get cows milk much before their 1st birthday, and they certainly don’t gain any nutritional advantage from formula over cows’ milk by age two. a kid who just can’t pull of drinking from a cup by himself despite coaching may have a developmental delay. and finally, dentition can be deformed by sucking behaviors, be it bottles or thumbs, if allowed to continue for several years, and may result in the need for orthodontic treatment. this is information that every parent should have easy access to – yet i’ve had to cobble it together over the course of years from various sources, because the “official” parenting resources don’t think you can handle the truth.

unfortunately, the stance of the american academy of pediatrics is taken directly from the george w. bush memorial abstinence-only playbook, and all those supposedly helpful parenting magazines and websites and books are playing along. with an eye to not arming the lowest common denominator with too much dangerous informaton, they’ve distilled it to a simple rule that they refuse to elaborate. (and, as you can see, it’s doing about as much to reduce bottle use in toddlers as withholding condoms is doing to reduce teen sex.)

so here’s the conversation i had with mokeybeef’s current pediatrician at his 1-year check-up (i’ve moved out of the “just lie and say you followed the rules to avoid the stern lecture” phase, and am currently in a “fuck it, i’m not following your rules and you can’t make me feel bad about it” phase.)

dr: and is he on whole milk yet?
me: nope. follow-up formula, for babies 9-24 months old.
dr: okay… you should really switch him to whole milk.
me: yeah. when i switched my oldest to whole milk at 12 months, he had massive rectal bleeding, so now i switch all my kids at 18 months.
dr: oh… kay… well, i don’t think monkeybeef will have that problem.
me: probably not. but the formula isn’t hurting him, right?
dr: well… milk is cheaper.

this woman is a wonderful doctor, with an md and a phd, and obviously very smart, but she just really, really wanted me to follow THE RULE, because… it’s THE RULE. but she was totally cool about my decision, and let it drop after that last plea to my pocketbook.

so. monkeybeef has had the cups introduced. after violent visceral reactions to the two types of sippy cups his brothers have used, i found one that he’s at least willing to entertain the idea of putting in his mouth. and last week, he finally had the epiphany that he had to tip the cup up to get the shit in his mouth. all this with no effort on my part, and no frustration on his!

but he’s not really sold yet. so as the 15-month mark approaches, i decided to step things up from “bottles upon waking up and before naptime and bedtime, and cups with with meals” to “no bottle this morning. cup. deal with it.” he wanted it. if i held it, he’d take a sip, but then he was like, lady, HUH-UH. after two slurps, he’d turn his head, spit his second slurp on the floor, and make a retching noise. so i put the cup down next to him and walked away. he batted it across the floor a bit, and when he started whining, i went over, held it to his mouth… and we went through the same thing. we did this at least half a dozen times, until it was time to go pick the twits up from preschool. i put him in his carseat with a still-full cup of milk. as we drove, i heard a noise that sounded suspiciously like a hungry baby draining a sippy cup. at the next stoplight, i twisted around to get a look at him. there were only a couple of ounces left in the 10-oz cup because he was, in fact, holding the cup like a expert, and drinking happily from it.

until he noticed me watching him, at which point he smiled sweetly (letting his mouthful of milk dribble onto his sweatshirt), chucked the cup away (the kid’s got enough of an arm that it smacked into the back window of the van, splattered like a moneyshot all over the glass, and then disappeared to roll around behind the backseat) and started making god-awful retching noises, complete with wheezing breaths in and coughing, all the while maintaining his little shit-eating grin and looking at me defiantly like, “lady, it’s on!”

oh, it’s on, allright, you little turd. it’s on like donkey kong. you don’t even KNOW. we’ll see how much you like your fucking cups when all your bottles are filled with liver and onion smoothies, bitch. one day of that, and i’ll have you with the program.

see? little effort on my part, big results.

so, i believe i’ve mentioned that monkeybeef, now approaching 15 months, isn’t walking, or even trying to walk. he can crawl so fast, so efficiently, with the skill of a nascar driver, that he actually does the tokyo drift around corners on tile floors. if i could capture video of it, i swear it would be a youtube phenomenon. but walking gets a big, fat “fuck that.” if you stand behind him and allow him to hold both of your hands, he’ll happily walk around, and you can feel how steady and competent he is at it, but if you let go of even one of his hands, he instantly stops, scrunches up his face at you, and hoots in annoyance.

now, today there was a “jam session” at the twits’ preschool with a local musician, kevin “b.f.” burt. prm and i took monkeybeef to it. (and, on a side note, it was freakin awesome. the guy played acoustic blues guitar, and he did completely freakin sweet blues versions of a bunch of traditional kids’ songs. i bought his kids’ cd – and his grown-up cd, too – so that i can study them and learn his ways. seriously, if you have any interest in blues guitar, you have GOT to follow the link and listen to his music. also? dramaqueen’s dead-on funky-bluesy ABC song is every bit as awesome as his and spazmonkey’s version of brass monkey.) anyway, it was a lot of fun, and i was walking monkeybeef around and around the room. he periodically had to stop to do the truffle shuffle for a particularly awesome blues riff, and then he’d pound his feet around some more, stop to stomp and wiggle and screech (aka, “dance”) some more, etc. one of the other parents noted that he looked ready to walk on his own, so i showed her what he thought of that… while he was standing still, i suddenly yanked both of my hands away from his. he continued to stand there, perfectly steady. looked around. bent his knees. stood back up. grunted. shook his head… dropped to his knees and went crawling off.

then, we took a few more loops around the room. suddenly, a little girl, probably about 18 months old, in pigtails and pink ruffles with a pacifier and a blankie, came toddling up to him. without a moment’s hesitation, the boy let go of both my hands and took a step toward her. just like that, without any apparent thought going into the decision, he went from “oh hellnaw” to “let’s get this show on the road, already!” the effort failed miserably; you could see from the second he moved his foot that this was going to end with ass on floor. he grunted, picked himself up, and tried AGAIN, eyebrows knitted in concentration and chin jutted out in determination, hands outstretched for the silky blankie the girl was holding out to him, like a pink copy of his own beloved green blankie. he fell instantly again… but it has begun.

later, i took monkeybeef with me to evilgremlin’s second football practice (i will tell you all about the joys of midget team sports soon because it’s a comedy gold mine.) and this time, instead of spending the entire hour trying to get out on the field. he was trying everything he could to get on his feet and WALK. i’ve never seen a baby actually PRACTICE walking before – every other kid i’ve seen has just sort of tried taking steps whenever he happened to be upright, no big deal. this kid? he tried getting on his feet and hands, ass up in the air, and then, grunting, pulling himself upright. i fear his abs, because the little turd actually pulled it off. i think it exhausted him, though, because he only did that twice. then he sat there, pissed and thinking for a moment. got on his hands and feet again, ass up, and this time PUSHED with his hands, which took him straight back to his ass on the ground (and really pissed him off.)

he tried pulling up on my jeans and letting go to take a step. he tried pulling up on my jeans, pushing off and turning away to give himself some forward motion as he tried to take a step (i probably don’t need to tell you how badly THAT one ended.) while walking around holding my hands, he tried suddenly beating my hands away while he was already in motion. it was pretty obvious that he was CONVINCED that one should have worked… by how pissed he was when it didn’t.

there were a couple of other parents sitting around, completely entertained by his efforts. they had never seen a baby put such planning and effort and thinking into walking – the boy basically set up a structured practice session for himself. it’s especially funny since he’s been so adamantly anti-walking for so long, and then turned on a dime. so… we’ll see how long it takes him to get this walking thing going.

on a side note, the other parents i was talking to: a guy who had five boys – two sents of twins and a singleton – and a woman who had triplet girls and twin boys. i have never felt so outclassed in my life.