There goes another thing I swore I’d never do before having kids…

In those care-free days (at least that’s how I remember them now), I self-righteously poo-poo’ed the trend of using subterfuge to get kids to eat their vegetables. The idea, popularized in Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld (wife of Jerry), is to puree vegetables and add them to foods kids will eat, resulting in recipes like meatloaf (with carrots) and quesadillas (with butternut squash). Kids should learn to love vegetables, I thought, not be tricked into eating them! Oh, and I also thought my kids would never watch television and only play with wooden toys.

And, actually, we never had to resort to these tactics with our older son, Jack. While he has always had a tolerate-hate relationship with vegetables, Jack has always loved fruit. So, we figured the bananas, grapes, strawberries, and apples he ate on a daily basis, along with the cucumbers, carrots, and broccoli he managed to choke down on occasion was nutritionally sufficient. For the most part, Jack liked healthy food—tofu was among his favorites until recently, when, out of the blue, he decided he didn’t like it (I’m convinced one of the kids at his school told him it was supposed to be gross). And now that he’s able to completely communicate and use logic (call it “the age of reason”), even when he doesn’t want to eat healthy food, we can use incentive and/or punishment to encourage him.

But Benny, now 20 months old, has been a different story. Although he is much more compliant than his brother in so many ways, Benny refuses to eat pretty much any fruits or vegetables. For a long time, our pediatricians told us, he was getting most of the nutrition he needed from milk. But when we started to phase out the bottle, we were at a loss. No matter how hungry he was, Benny would simply refuse to eat anything “healthy.” He seemed to have a sixth sense for the stuff. He’ll eat endless chicken, turkey, meatballs, etc., and, of course, bread, cereal, and pasta, but if he accidentally put a zuchinni bit or broccoli floret that had been mixed in with his pasta in his mouth, he would immediately spit it out, as if it had set off some invisible sensor. Yogurt mixed with fruit and occasionally applesauce were the only reliable sources of fruits or vegetables.

We’ve tried not letting him have other foods unless he eats vegetables, but after maybe an hour of whining/screaming, we would usually relent and give him some turkey breast or cheerios. I suppose we could have been tougher and put him to bed hungry, but then we would likely all suffer.

Inspiration came a few weeks ago when we brought some beautiful zuchinni home from the farmer’s market. I looked up a recipe for zuchinni bread—which included two large zuchinnis in a small loaf, along with, of course, lots of butter and sugar—and made it. Benny couldn’t get enough. While it lasted, we gave him zuchinni bread instead of cheerios for breakfast, and instead of turkey for lunch. A few days later, my wife cut some broccoli into tiny pieces and mixed it with ground turkey to make meatballs. Benny devoured them! There were a few moments when he seemed to pause with something in his mouth—we were sure he was onto us—but he just kept putting the green stuff away.

We haven’t yet experimented with purees—and we haven’t bought the book yet—but we’re sold on the idea, at least as a stopgap measure. We intend to keep serving salad and grilled vegetables for dinner every night, and putting them on Benny’s plate, but until he’s convinced of how delicious they are, he’ll be getting what he needs. In his mashed potatoes.

Anybody have other ideas?

I’ve been meaning to write about great local blogs and other resources for parents, and at the top of my list was a great new blog called Cool Progeny, a frequently updated site with interviews, reviews, advice, and a great little calendar of local kid-friendly events. Well, the folks at Cool Progeny knew just what to do to motivate me to finally write the post: They interviewed me for their series, “Parents in the Know.” It was a really fun interview, since it was all about me, and let me reflect a bit on the boys and our family. Check it out. Thanks Cool Progeny!

There are a million other web resources for local parents, so I just highlighted a few others that I really enjoy and find myself going back to often:

* Kid Baltimore – I am endlessly amazed at the energy and creativity of Joyce Hasselberth, an illustrator, mom, and editor of Kid Baltimore, who comes up with incredible projects for her kids, from making crackers from scratch to designing stepping stones for the garden.

* Baltimore’s Child – Both the print magazine and website are endlessly useful resources for local parents, a clearinghouse of information on everything from summer camps and music lessons to pediatricians and dentists. For years, before I had kids, I used to breeze by the magazine at the entrance to the grocery store, wondering “does anybody read that?” Now, I anxiously await every issue when it’s sent home from my boys’ school.

* Scary Mommy – one of the best parenting blogs in the country (and one of the most popular—about 30,000 hits a month!) And Scary Mommy, aka Jill, recently moved to Mt. Washington, so her thoughtful, hysterical thoughts about raising three young kids have a distinctly Baltimore feel.

* Parent’s Connect – This is a national website run by Nickelodeon with tons of info for parents (and they gave me an award!) but I confess I rarely look at any of that. I treasure it for the weekly calendar of family events in Baltimore that is the most comprehensive in town. As someone who is mildly obsessed with festivals, fairs, hikes, screenings, and exhibits, I rely on this to plan our weekends.

If you have any locally oriented family or kid sites that you treasure, mention them in the comments. And if you haven’t already, become a fan of Learning to Crawl on Facebook!

“It rained at Woodstock, and it might rain at KidStock too,” one of the event’s announcers said from the stage just before headliners Milkshake took the stage yesterday afternoon.

But the fleeting showers didn’t dampen the spirits of the dancing toddlers at Garrett Heights Elementary-Middle School in Hamilton-Lauraville yesterday, nor those of Milkshake frontwoman Lisa Mathews or the band, who gamely played their high energy hits for about an hour.

Besides Milkshake, we got a chance to see guitarist Tracey Eldridge with violinist John Glik, and the Little Maestros Band from Bethesda. We were in a drum circle tent, playing West African djembes and dunduns when the heavy rain hit. We just pounded our drums a little harder and waited it out. Our forebears at Woodstock would have been proud.

On a different note, there is now a Learning to Crawl fan page on Facebook. Click here to join. Thanks!

Faithful readers of this blog know there are few things my family likes more than summer festivals and Milkshake—the best kids band on the planet.

This weekend, our two favorite things come together at KidStock, a kids music festival in the Hamilton-Lauraville section of northeast Baltimore. And, as a post on the website says, “it’s all free, except for the food!”

Besides Grammy-nominated Milkshake, there is Emmy-nominated Kinderman—a local legend who played at my cousin’s 5th birthday party 25 years ago—Joe’s Backpack Puppets, Little Maestros Band, and others, along with local food, arts activities, and lots more. Festival Nirvana…

See you there!

Having kids has, without doubt, given me the greatest joy of my life.

It has also often left me tired, angry, snappy and annoyed. Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation or the endless rounds of The Why-ing Game, but I find that little things that I might otherwise let roll off my back really get to me these days. A couple of examples…

1. Calling Toddlers Boyfriend/Girlfriend. Okay, I can see that on some level, at some time, this might have been considered cute and/or clever, but in my experience, it has long since passed over into gross and wildly inappropriate. It is also fairly endemic. At my boys’ pre-school, teachers often say to boy students “Are you my boyfriend?” or “How’s my boyfriend?” Worse, they often feign being hurt/dumped when the toddlers say “No.” Worse still, some say crap like “Are you flirting with me? Ooh boy, you really like to flirt!” And inevitably, if a kid smiles at them, they’ll say something like, “Oh, he’s going to break girls hearts some day.” Or, if it’s a girl, “You better lock her up from the boys.” What the hell is that? They’re three years old! They’re not flirting, they’re stacking blocks and frequently stopping to pick their noses! For all you know, they’ll be gay! They might be breaking little boys hearts some day. Point being, we won’t know for at least 10 years or so, so quit it!

And God help the confused children if they figure out the meaning or implication of words like boyfriend or flirt. I’ve never been anything like a prude, but connoting grown-up relationships or anything remotely sexualized to toddlers is pretty messed up. To get a sense of how wrong this is, imagine if a male pre-school teacher constantly called a little girl in his class his girlfriend and talked about how she was always flirting with him. He’d probably be locked up. In my mind, there is a direct link between this kind of thinking/behavior and six-year-old girls wearing sweatpants that say “JUICY” across the butt. It’s just wrong.

2. “Eating” Children. Okay, this one is pretty endemic too and I’m afraid I have some close friends and family who are guilty. The phrase “I could just eat you up” always sounded to me like a reasonable expression of cute-ness, far enough removed from any notion of actually eating children to raise an eyebrow. But somehow, for some reason, some well-meaning well-wishers having taken the concept into more literal territory. They say things like, “I could just take a bite out of those thighs,” or “I just want to sprinkle some salt all over her and gobble her up for dinner with a nice salad.” It’s almost like there’s a contest to be more literally disgusting in an effort to be the most metaphorically cute. But you know what? It’s just gross.

I anticipate that this could be a running series, so please let me know what kid-related stuff drives you crazy…

Last week, Jack’s school celebrated the Jewish holiday of Purim. The kids all dress up like its Halloween and Jack, at his own request, went as a dog (which was supremely convenient since he was a dog for Halloween, as seen here with his brother, and we still had the costume). After school, we were talking about his day and Jack said his classmates said “nasty” things to him. I asked what kinds of things and he screwed up his face in mock evil and blurted out “Go away!” and “I don’t like you!”

My heart sank. The thought of my little boy having his feelings hurt undoubtedly crushed me more than it crushed him. Of course, it’s hard to tell exactly what is real and what is imagined at this age, but based on the specificity of Jack’s story and the fact that he was clearly rattled, I assumed there was something to it. When I spoke to Jack’s teacher the next morning, she confirmed that when Jack went to play with the other boys—who were all dressed like superheroes—they were mean to him and wouldn’t play with him because he wasn’t dressed like them. She also mentioned—and this is the heartbreaker—that some girls were playing house and Jack wanted to be their dog, but they wouldn’t let him.

I’ve occasionally thought about how I would deal with it when Jack faced rejection, humiliation, exclusion—all the tough emotions that come with growing up—but I thought I had until at least elementary school! Who knew that three-year-olds could face that?

We talked to Jack about how to handle situations like that. To walk away and find someone else to play with if someone doesn’t want to play, to tell the teacher is someone says something really mean or hurts you, but really, he’s going to have to find his own way through moments like those. We all did—I just don’t know if we had to so early in our lives. Maybe we did. Do you remember?

In any case, as I’ve talked to the teacher, it seems that the “nasty comments” were an isolated incident. She says that Jack generally gets along with everybody in the class, but that he does show a tendency to want to hang out with the adults—teachers, administrators, etc.—and that she often has to tell him to go play with friends.

We’re planning to have more of his classmates over for weekend playdates in an effort to help build relationships, but beyond that , is there anything we could or should do? I’m generally of the mind that children learn by facing difficult situations and learning to cope with them and, unless something serious seems to be happening, I think we’re going to mostly stay out of the way.

Has anybody else experience stuff like with toddlers?

Alright, I’ll post about something besides Milkshake soon (egg cream?), but I wanted to share this photo of our favorite local kids’ band at the Grammy’s (and take special note of bassist Cord Neal’s Edgar Allen Poe t-shirt, representing our patron literary giant).

While they lost out to Ziggy Marley (see previous entry), the band says they had a great time. “Milkshake is happy to be back in Baltimore, but, geez, what a fun weekend,” they said in a message poated on their Facebook page.

Check out more photos of the band at the Life magazine

In many ways, it was a disappointing night at the Grammys for Baltimore. The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s “Berstein: Mass” lost in the Best Classical Album category (although producer Steven Epstein won for Producer of the Year – Classical), and “Great Day,” the album by revered local children’s band Milkshake lost in the Best Musical Album for Children category.

On the upside, Milkshake lost to Ziggy Marley’s “Family Time,” and if you’re going to lose, it’s nice to lose to the son of one of the best musicians of all time. Ironically, in my last post, I talked about how much our 3-year-old Jack has loved Bob Marley’s music from his earliest days and we really liked “Set Your Piggies Free,” a song about the joys of being barefoot that Ziggy sang on Sesame Street recently, with cameos by Cameron Diaz, Brendan Frasier, Patricia Arquette, and Ricky Gervais. (On a related note, you can also see a hysterical backstage interview with Gervais and Elmo here, where they break out into the song.)

In an even bigger upside, I was happily shocked to discover that Milkshake will actually be giving a concert at my boys’ pre-school, Oheb Shalom’s Learning Ladder, next week! I’ll let you know if the Grammy buzz has gone to their heads…

As you may have heard, local kid’s music maestros Milkshake have been nominated for a Grammy in the Best Children’s Music category.

I had never heard of Milkshake before we moved to Baltimore last fall, but I have become an all-out fanboy ever since. My son Jack, 3, and I have seen them play at the Lyric Opera House, the B&O Railroad Museum, and the Party in the Park. The shows are high-energy fun, full of sing-alongs, audience participation, and hundreds of free beach balls to bat around! And the nominated album, Great Day, is a burst of sunny pop and relatable songs about messy rooms, school, and playdates.

As you may remember, music is pretty important in our family. I’ve found that great kids’ music is basically just great music. In fact, when Jack was born, I avoided “kids music” entirely and, instead, exposed him to the Beatles, Bob Marley, and James Brown. And I maintain that most “kids music” is oversimplified and boring. But the best of the genre is just great music, like Milkshake, with kid-friendly themes and some sing-along elements. We still play plenty of “adult” music at home and in the car—Jack’s favorites are still the Beatles and Bob Marley, plus, now he likes the Strokes, Queen (which he calls “King”), and the soundtrack from Grease (dude could watch “Grease Lightning” on YouTube all day). But we’ve also found some “kid music” that we love. A couple suggestions:

Really, any of the kids music from Putamayo, a world music label, is fantastic, but our favorite is Animal Playground, which features a Trinidadian version of “No More Monkeys,” a beautiful Honduran song about birds, and South Africa’s Ladysmith Black Mambazo’s “Mbube,” or “Lion.”

Before I started exploring the kids’ music genre, I found that Jack Johnson’s music, with its mellow vibe and Johnson’s mellifluous vocals, naturally appealled to Jack. “Better Together” became our family’s unofficial anthem (it was already a special song for Brenda and me—the first dance at our wedding reception). Then, we discovered that Johnson actually released a kids music CD, the soundtrack to the Curious George movie. Sold!

When Brenda, Jack, and I still lived in New York, I heartily resisted the music of Dan Zanes. He’s kind of the “Ur” kid’s music guy there and young New York families of a certain strain (yupsters?) adored him the way pre-teens adore the people in those Twilight movies. But, over time, my thoughts on kids music softened and when I saw Dan Zanes do a charming performance of “Jump Up” on Sesame Street—our own kid-entertainment obsession—all was forgiven (though that carefully disheveled hair and hipster suit still rub me the wrong way).

Please pass along any recommendations. I’d love to make this a regular feature of the blog…

My wife and I went to see “The Importance of Being Earnest” at Centerstage last Thursday. We stressed all week searching for a babysitter, then rushed like crazy to get to the theater on time. Brenda fell asleep at the beginning of the second act, and, by the 10 pm bows, I was struggling to stay awake too. We gave up on our pipe dreams of going out for a drink after the show and headed home.

And still, we had a great time. The show, which I’d never seen or read, was enormously entertaining. The principle actors were fantastic, and it was great to see our friends at the show. But, above all that, it was just nice to be out, dressed up, among adults. I don’t think Brenda and I have been to the theater (without puppets) since our son Jack was born over three years ago.

Hard as it may seem for us to remember, Brenda and I were once considerable patrons of the arts. She’s a published poet who was always going to readings and performances before we moved from New York last year. We have a lot of artist and photographer friends and would often go to their shows and gallery openings. We both love theater, music and film—there was a time when I had usually seen most of the movies playing at the Angelika, New York’s most prominent arthouse theater, a la the Charles. Now, I’ve rarely even heard of the movies there. Since having kids, we rarely have the time to explore as we once did. And as much as I love our children and the joy they’ve brought us, I occasionally miss the cultural exploration that was once such a big part of my life.

Most recently, I thought about this after a couple of Monday morning “how-was-your-weekend” conversations. First, I talked to my sister, who is unmarried, kid-less, and lives in Chicago. She talked about trying a great new restaurant, going gallery-hopping, and seeing a great show. I had a similar conversation with Max Weiss, Baltimore’s managing editor. She had been to D.C. to play cello with her sister, went to her favorite brunch spot there (Cafe Deluxe), and saw the Angelika-worthy Coco Before Chanel. My weekend was just as packed, but every activity seemed to involve face-painting.

Of course, most of the time, when I reflect on my life and where I am now, I’m struck by how lucky I am. I have found the love of my life in Brenda. And we have created two incredible little boys, who cause me to shake my head in awe almost every day—something I almost never did pre-kids, even with all that stimulating art.

And the more I think back on my culture-infused former life, the more I realize that I’ve idealized it quite a bit. Yes, I certainly did have a lot more cultural experiences, but I was also bored and lonely a lot of the time, wondering if I’d find true love and purpose in my life (too many arthouse films, perhaps.) Truth be told, once I met and fell in love with my wife, my culture quotient dropped precipitously, even before we had kids. All we wanted to do was hang with each other, talk, cook dinner and watch movies on DVD (we used to wear Netflix out, exchanging movies several times a week. Now, the same Netflix Wire DVD has been sitting on top of our TV for almost a year. I curse myself for not quitting Netflix every time I see it.) True, we don’t watch movies like we used to, but we still try to find time to hang out. And when we do, there’s no place I’d rather be.

It’s funny, in the middle of writing this post, I came across a recent New York Times blog item on a very similar topic, the inevitable comparisons we make with our peers and the consideration of paths not taken. As I began to read it, I worried that it would depress me, making me again think about the things that I miss about pre-family life. But, happily, I found it affirming. Despite all the drawbacks, I truly wouldn’t trade my current life for anything (though the writer’s observation that every parent reflexively says that—perhaps out of fear of their life’s inherent inflexibility—is funny and true).

And I dream of a time when Brenda and I will again take more full advantage of the cultural world that surrounds us. I mean, these people go to college at some point, right?