This Is Not Delicious

** IMPORTANT NOTE FROM THE BLOGGER: This post is actually about how a certain class of cookie embodies the futile, broken dreams of Western civilization, but I take a really long time to get to the point. Sorry about that. In my defense, brevity might be the soul of wit but a didactic ramble is often its elaborate coffin, so, you know, have some respect. Also, writing about my doubleplus cute daughter is the only way I can smuggle in pictures that people actually want to look at and when you write blog posts this long it really is important to have pictures.** 

We've crossed a sad milestone here on Gumpen Village Street. It used to be that the child distinguished between things that were delicious and things that were disgusting. Now she recognizes that a lot of stuff is just...kind of okay. And I'm sad about it, because it is the beginning of the end of innocence.  

Waffles are delicious...for now.

There was a time when all food was good. Then she started rejecting stuff on the grounds that it was "yucky", "disgusting," or "spicy" -- more recently, "sour" or "nasty". These judgments are delivered with a look of horror, a grasping of the tongue and sometimes tears and even spitting. 

But at least it was cute. Like the rosemary incident. One dinner a couple months ago Noodle was tucking into a fresh bowl of pasta with tomato sauce, which she loves, when she froze. Mid-bite. 

Dammit, I thought. I knew it. 

"This is a stick," the Noodle said to me with distate, holding up a single, tiny rosemary leaf. 

"It's rosemary," I said. "It's an herb." 

Noodles with sticks. This photo is a poor recreation of the offending dish.

She peered into her bowl. "No, this is a stick." She went in like a monkey looking for fleas. "Look! Other stick."

She held each leaf up demonstratively before smearing it onto the table. "Stick," she said. "Stick. Stick." You stupid, stick-hiding fiend, she thought to herself. It was a long dinner. 

But in the weeks since she turned two, there is a third, sadder category of food: Stuff she'll eat but without pleasure. 

Rice crackers, for example. Our go-to playground snack. One recent day she looked up at me, rice dust on her lips, and noted: "This...this is not really delicious, Mommy." And then with a hint of sorrow she polished off the rest. 

Or last week. She was eating my soup and seemed to be enjoying it, so I went fishing for compliments. "Mmm, is it yummy?" I asked. "No," she said with a shrug, "It's not really yummy." And kept eating. 

In fact, the only things that she finds delicious are, I'm afraid, things that everyone finds delicious, like ice cream and candy and cheese. (And plain black bread, for some reason, but I'm sure that'll end soon too.) 

And I guess this makes me sad because it means the way is prepared for her to experience disappointment. The let down. The long slow process of becoming jaded. Heck, one day soon she's going to realize that sorting rocks and riding the bus to the supermarket actually constitute a fairly shitty Saturday, and then what will I do?  

On the other hand, it's an achievement that she can distinguish between things that are delicious and things that we eat because they keep us regular. It means she has a sense of personal taste. Maybe she'll be less likely to buy in to stupid fads. 

Which brings me to the actual reason I started this blog post. Ready? 

MACAROONS ARE NOT DELICIOUS.* 

I mean, HELLLOOOOOOO. They are not delicious, and they do not even keep us regular. 

Destined to break your heart. Actually I never made this recipe, so I shouldn't judge, but I will.
No macaroons are actually delicious.

Ya. Macaroons. That is what this post is really about. Macaroons are the insipid, overplayed arm candy of the confection world. And if one more shitty schlock shop starts selling these by the checkout counter, I might scream. Is there no escape? Every airport. Every bourgie supermarket. Every bakery. 

Sure, they're pretty to look at. Their smooth, bland form allows for fun with color and indeed many are beautiful. It's obvious why the people have been Instagramming them ever since Instagram was invented. But #yum? Please. 

Et tu, McDonalds? REALLY? 

Macaroons are disappointment itself. To bite into a macaroon is to feel your hopes dashed and, worse, to feel like a sucker for having hoped your stupid hopes in the first place. How could you have believed that something so beautiful would actually taste good? 

A bit Orwellian, really.

Remember that scene in American Beauty (reach way back, guys) where Kevin Spacey's character finally gets the girl of his burning imagination and then it turns out she's just a clueless child onto whom the man has been projecting his remarkably lame fantasies? They didn't even need to make that whole movie. Alan Ball could have just passed around a box of macaroons and waited until everyone took a bite and been like, "That? That feeling you just had? That's what our movie is about". 

Macaroons are not disgusting (actually, I had a foie gras-stuffed one this summer that was SUPER disgusting, but that was an exception). They are just...nothing. They are okay. But you should only eat food that is just okay if it contains vitamins or supports your ability to poop. 

You should definitely not be paying (way) upwards of fifteen euros for six cookies that are just sort of okay. Bizarre liver-based varieties notwithstanding, your average macaroon is made out of egg whites and food coloring. Sure, the gorgeous cardboard boxes are fit to be used as the display sarcophagi of tiny dead pharaohs, but still. Have we lost our damn minds? The Emperor is naked, y'all, and has been for years. 

Laduree has boxes fit to bury tiny Care Bear kings. Still not that delicious though.

Enough already. Let's go back to eating rice crackers and cupcakes. I mean real cupcakes. The kind that don't have a three-inch butter-boner on their heads...and on that note, I'm going to stop because I feel another food rant coming on. 

Oh man. This blog post is such a macaroon. 

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*Betcha didn't see that one coming, eh? Keeping it fresh. 

Sea Changes

Winter is coming. But before that, we have to get through the Fall. And it is madness, I tell you. We have thrown ourselves overboard into unknown seas. 

I'm back to work at a wonderful new job with great new people. And I have to say, compared with a full day alone with the bebe, working seems easier. It's always nice to do new things, and at the moment I'm sort of revelling in the fact that I get paid to put on nice clothes and interact with adults all day long in an environment full of endless free coffee. And when I snack on an apple at work, it's all mine. There is no child hanging on my leg, gesticulating at my fruit and chanting: "Appie! Appie? Appie! Appie?" I can use the restroom and shut the door. You know. The little things. 

Anyone need any crayon on their wall? Anyone?

However. This also means I need to cherish all the hugs and kisses I can get from my mini mouse when we are together. Because while there are many joys relating to the new job, kissing my baby's squishy cheeks is not one. And I love kissing my baby's cheeks. 

But of course, she's not a baby anymore. She is a full-fledged toddler. You can tell because of how she toddles, mincing about like a tiny drunken tyrannosaurus. She follows me around the apartment (on two feet!), playing peek-a-boo around the edge of the furniture, unloading our drawers, crayoning on the mirror, blowing kisses across the room. She tries to put on her own clothes (so far no luck, but we're bullish), insists on feeding herself, and seems to understand basically everything we say. Well, stuff that matters for her, anyway. For example, any mention of fruit precipitates gleeful chirping. Any mention of b-e-d-t-i-m-e results in distinctive fleeing behaviours. At the moment, she flees with all the speed and grace of a chubby flightless parrot. It's adorable. 

Noodle at the playground. Now that she's a toddler, she can do playgrounds! (Well, sort of.) This photo is from my mom's visit. Consider it a preview. 

And despite my secret desire for her to stay one year old forever, she is off to kindergarten. She is currently in the painful phase referred to as The Transition. This is where a parent takes her, stays for a while, and then leaves for ever longer periods. Alex is taking care of this process at the moment. He has a theory--not unreasonable--that our little mommy's girl will be more likely to accept her new environment if someone besides said mommy drops her off every day. It has been five days, and results have reportedly been mixed. Apparently her new teacher does a lot of carrying her around. Since I pretty much have chronic back pain from lugging the chunk around, Ms. Teacher has all my sympathies. 

As does the Noodle. Her new teachers are lovely, as are the other kids in the Frog Group, but of course switching from long, quiet, one-on-one mornings in our living room to the mayhem of the classroom would be a bit of a challenge for anyone. 

Because, you know, children are lunatics. On the morning I went there was a three year-old girl parading around with a naked doll on a plastic plate. She asked no one in particular if they would like a slice of her baby, and then pretended to serve everyone a piece. She was using an inch-long doll knife to pretend to cut into the baby's forehead. 
"Hmm," said the teacher, gently. "What are you doing, Betty?*

"This is a baby-cake," explained the girl. "A cake-baby."  

"Ah," said the teacher. "A cake that looks like a baby." 

The little girl looked up with her big, brown eyes and shrugged. "Ja. Okay." 

Cake-limb, anyone? 

I see cake limbs

This is not to suggest that my own Noodle* is some kind of placid angel. She spent a good deal of time last week trying to force feed another kid her age with a plastic drinking cup. 

"I don't think Lily* wants anything to drink," said the teacher. 

Lily's lower lip quivered as she tried to escape. 

"No no no," said the Noodle, shaking her head. "Baba dis daba." And shoved the cup in Lily's face again. 

You know what their classroom is like? A reef. The three and four year-olds are like sharks. As the biggest and strongest, they can nip down and take what they like (well, as long as their teacher overlords don't see). 

The two year-olds, though, are the piscine residents of our coral paradise. Some of these fish spend the day tearing around in manic circles, while others gently float, opening and closing their mouths every once in a while. They eat the lower forms of life and poop sand. Both the fish and the sharks swim in schools and demonstrate social, even very loving and altruistic behaviour, but are ultimately alone in their little egos, hunting for Things To Do. 

Now the one year olds, however, while technically mobile, are much more like a bunch of anemone. Perhaps jellyfish. They don't really get around. They can spend minutes alone, fiddling with their teeth or a single counting bean or a corner of the carpeting. But should the stormy ocean currents blow them into one another, beware! The first probing swipes of each other's faces are followed swiftly by alarmed poking and then outright violence and defensive secretions, like tears and spit. 

Look how much our dearest pookie pants has changed!

But there are plenty of tempting treats for a young wiener in the Frog Group. First of all, there are endless toys, and endless children to observe, which is the Noodle's favourite hobby. Secondly, there are bananas like basically every day. Third, her classroom features a kiddy pool full of chestnuts, which, you know, is pretty sweet. And as far as assuaging my own deep-seated concerns, I notice that the group includes plenty of tiny noodles who seem happy and comfortable with their caretakers. So I'm sure it'll just be a matter of days until she's happy to go. At which point, I'll probably want to cry. 

Well, that's enough feelings for one sitting. I also need to post photos from our trip to the zoo and my mom's visit this past weekend, but those will have to wait until next time. 

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*Names have been changed to protect the dangerously young. 

A Reason for Tadpoles

People keep telling me that kids just get more and more difficult as they get older. 

Sure, the story goes, newborns are hard. But after this initial hurdle, your average four-month old is an immobile blob of placid joy. It's all downhill from there, they say. First you have to start cooking for them, then they start crawling around and destroying your home (fact), then they start walking and drawing on the walls and running into traffic, and then, once they start talking, they just don't stop. The questions ("But why?") start coming, and then the opinions ("NO"). And the questions become harder and the opinions more and more obnoxious until they finally move out, at which point the child, now an adult, becomes merely expensive and disappointing. 

Bundle of Joy.

Obviously, none of this applies to me. MY kid is going to be angelic, friendly, successful and emotionally stable even through her teenage years. Just like her mother was (HAHAHHahhahahaha...HA!) 

Ruh-roh.

But there is one thing about her impending childhood that I'm really looking forward to, and that is Doing Experiments. 

It was my favorite, favorite thing as a kid. Kitchen science (volcano, anyone?). Investigating bugs under a magnifying glass, and perhaps accidentally frying a limb off in the process, thus Learning an Important Lesson both about the relationship between heat and light and also the fact that with great power comes great responsibility. Making oobleck (by the way, when I lived in Malaysia we had nothing like the oobleck they're doing there these days).  Playing with prisms and colored lights. Toying with magnets. Hunting for treasure with a crappy metal detector. You know. The good stuff. 

Project!

So far the Noodle is, of course, not yet interested in any of nature's unexpected delights, since she's still coming to grips with the banal. Gravity, for a start, is something she battles daily now that she is learning to stand (my money's still on gravity, generally). And then there is everything else we take for granted by the time we're five years old. 

I point out an unusual-looking dog; she is closely inspecting a tiny piece of floor crud. We got stuck in a massive rainstorm with my friend James and she couldn't stop staring at the rain where it hit the ground and bounced back up. I showed her a little inchworm in the park; she tried to eat it. 

But anyway, her interests aside, I now have a great excuse for indulging MY interests and therefore we have now got TADPOLES. Yay!

These were "rescued" from near certain survival in the rain-cover over our friend Gustav's mother's swimming pool. We had gone over to help (okay, watch) them pump out said water and fill up the pool for the summer, but the pump was broken, so instead we spent the afternoon grilling ribs and watching zillions of tadpoles slither around in the muck. 

My little frog puppies.

And now about 20 of them are slithering around in a container in our living room, to my endless joy. I've been feeding them tiny pieces of boiled-to-death green beans and cucumber, and they appear to be doing well. My dear husband is utterly disinterested, as are the cats, who appear not to have noticed that there is a container of swimming treats by the windowsill. The Noodle is only interested in splashing the water, so she is no longer invited to assist in their upkeep.

If they make it to young adulthood (after they grow legs but before they get jumpy) they shall be released into the pond of a local park. I saw some heron-looking birds there yesterday, so I'm certain they won't be bored. Wish us luck! 

Booting Out Baby

In the oceanic dusk of four a.m., a voice rings out. It rolls across the hills and valleys of our bed, ever more insistent, like the refrain of a lonely humpback whale. 

"Awawawaoooooooooooooh," she sings. "AwaaaawaahahahaOOOoooWAHHHHHhhhooo."

Fast asleep, leg still in hand, by 9 a.m.

"Please, no," says a different, hoarse voice. It might be mine. "Please. Just ten more minutes." 

And so it has come to pass that we are throwing our daughter out. It's time for her to have her own room. A room far, far away where we can supervise her via a creepy spy cam and--crucially--turn off the volume in the event of a non-emergency. 

The good news is that we have two bedrooms. The bad news is that since we were co-sleeping anyway, our so-called "nursery" has never been anything more than a disgusting hoarder's paradise. It's where we hang our laundry. It's where we keep tools and our tent. It's also where we keep stuff that we're just not that into. Like, you know, stuff we just use but that we don't like to talk about with other people. Towels that are clean but discolored. My orange shopping trolley. Swiffers. Stuff with a good personality.

No one show my mother this photo.  

About a month ago we realized it was time to take action. It was time for a clean break. So obviously, instead of doing that, we took out what will soon be the babe's crib and painted it white, and then re-inserted it among the jumble. 

Pro Crastinating. 

Then it was really time to start sorting through the nonsense, so the next weekend we went out to the hardware store for supplies, came home and constructed little pinewood feet with which to elevate the crib and the pull-out sofa. 

Then we really were going to clean that room up, but first we needed to put the little feet under the furniture so we could stow our suitcases, but this was a chicken-and-egg dilemma that would involve real commitment, so we just ignored it completely for another week.

Dude, it's hard to break up with some stuff. But eventually, we did. Okay, actually we just hid it better, but that's basically the same thing. 

And voila! We now have a plain and empty bedroom. So what if all the furniture hovers two-and-a-half feet over the floor, as if a baby giant is about to move in. It's stuff-free and we're ready for the fun part: decorating!

Floating furniture. And yes, that's our laundry.
Look, it has to go somewhere.

Journey to the Land of Queso and Endless Clean Towels

Hooray, we're in Dallas! In the spirit of what-else-is-maternity-leave-for, I have come to stay with my parents for an indulgent five weeks (!!) of free baby care and endless clean towels. Sadly, Nava and I had to leave daddy behind because he has to work. Sad face. He'll join us for Christmas though! 

At DFW airport. Nava adorable as ever,
Mama Noms looking like someone smacked her
with one of those supersize packages of wine gums.

The baby is too young to make real trouble, but I was still apprehensive about the flight. And by apprehensive I mean I was terrified. 

The main reason was that I was certain we would crash. I am always certain that my plane is going to crash and certain of my certainty because I am clairvoyant. I'm only clairvoyant right before I fly, of course. I discover this talent anew every time, and it never fails to bum me out that a soothsayer like me is about to be extinguished.This time I was extra bummed because Nava was going to come crashing down with me and it was going to be all my fault. 

As usual, I considered changing flights, but again, as usual, I didn't. I've seen Final Destination. I'm not stupid. 

Secondly, if we survived take-off, I was concerned that the baby would scream and carry on to the point that our fellow passengers might just open the hatch and throw us into the Gulf Stream. For that reason, I spent several hours (no, seriously) curating the selection of toys and books that I'd take with me.  I also got a bunch of these ingratiating little goody-bags ready for the passengers in our immediate vicinity. My friend Florence saw these on Facebook somewhere and told me about it, and I'm never one to miss an opportunity to suck up to strangers.

For our wretched seat mates. Except our flight companions this time just weren't wretched enough.

Except once we boarded the flight, I didn't use them. Here's why: My dad, who bought my ticket with miles, got us a business class seat on the way to Dallas. As a faithful member of the economy class, taking an overnight flight in a seat that reclines completely was a revelation. I imagine this is how swine herders in the late Middle Ages felt when they finally hobbled out of their plague-infested hamlets and into the big city and saw, for the first time, the Gothic cathedral whose stony spire pierced the heavens and which had been constructed off their breaking, dead-by-30 backs: A combination of divine inspiration and thorough revulsion. Revulsion not because cathedrals are revolting, but because the existence of cathedrals reminds you that there is no need for your hovel to be so unnecessarily shit. 

The seat next to us was empty and the row behind us was empty. So we were ten feet from the nearest passengers, all of whom were well-dressed and good looking and started drinking gratis gin & tonics before we even took off. They were all really nice. Why wouldn't they be? 

That's when I decided these people didn't need my candy. First of all, they had an ice cream sundae bar. Secondly, they could get their own free ear plugs. Lastly, they were fortified by their own inherent superiority. Not sense of superiority. Actual superiority. Most of all, I was too busy making Nava giggle by putting our magic seat into silly configurations. Nava behaved like an angel. Who wouldn't, if they lived in a cathedral? 

So yeah. I didn't hand out the candy. When we fly back to Vienna it will be in cattle class, where everyone drinks tomato juice just to feel like they're having a special time. I'm saving my little care packages for the poor fuckers who have to cosy up next to us then. 

People who need ear plugs and candy. 

Now I'm off to try and take a nap. You know what is no good? Babies with jet lag who are unhappy to be in a strange new house. Also I drank my weight in queso last night and am feeling about like you'd expect. Blurgh. 

Hope you're having a happy hump day!