Joyful Vegan Family

Vegan Goodness:

Today we ate:

• Breakfast: Smoothies and pancakes for all!  We only had one pancake each though – we used up leftover pancake batter from Wednesday’s “breakfast for dinner” event.
• Lunch: Three-layer hummus and pita chips from Trader Joe’s (where we were out shopping when we realized it was lunch time!
• A special treat: vegan ice cream at Fomu!  LP got to share mom’s cone (salted caramel and cookies and cream) and dad’s dish (all dark and stormy), but he definitely preferred dad’s
• A post-nap snack of the rest of the sugar snap peas dipped in our vegan ranch.
• Dinner: BLT’s with tofu bacon and avocado and salad.  LP has his BLT “deconstructed” with a little dish of tomatoes, a little dish of avocado, some bread with butter and a couple slices of tofu bacon.  Yum Yum!

Money Matters:
During the month of June we have a bigger budget than we will in July.  This is partially because I am still working, and there are costs that come with that (transportation, classroom materials, meeting co-workers for weekly Friday breakfast, etc.)  So, rather than be completely limited by our “Year of Family” budget, we are simply trying to be more aware of our spending this month, and trying to cut down on “extras.”

Today we spent the following:

• $52.60 at Trader Joe’s, where we stocked up on smoothie fruit, tofu, potatoes and some other basics.
• $23.25 at Foodmaster where we got some dried beans, liquid smoke and boxes of instant cream of wheat – something I could not get enough of after I gave birth to LP.  Instant cream of wheat – my own personal baby preparation!
• $10.95 for ice cream at Fomu

Mom Musings:

LP’s communication abilities have grown by leaps and bounds in the last few months.  He is adding new words to his vocabulary every day, and he loves to learn the names for things and try and use them.  He still isn’t pronouncing well enough to be clearly understood by everyone, but he is pretty good at combining his words with gestures that allows people to figure out what he means.  I’m always proud when he uses body language in combination with talking since I think that comes from my Italian genes!

The G-man and I are pretty well immersed in LP’s talk, so we understand way more of what he says than other people, which makes perfect sense.  Often we will understand what LP wants very clearly, but the interaction we have with him will still devolve into tears, whining and frustration, all things that I thought came more withlearning to talk rather than being able to talk.  Why do these interactions go in this direction?  The answer, quite simply, is that LP often asks for things that he can’t have.

Shocking, right?

Seriously though, LP’s new-found language abilities are developing in tandem with his desire to control his world.  He wants to eat pancake batter from the bowl, he wants us to turn the hall light off, and he wants dad to come play in the back room, and he wants it all now.  And, now he is able to communicate all of this!  I can understand why saying he wants something, and then not getting it, is pretty devastating for him.  For a long time, he could only express simple desires, and we were so focused on encouraging his communication development that we basically gave him anything he was able to ask for with words.  Well, times are changing.  He can ask for more, and we are less worried about his speech development.  So LP is learning one of life’s tough lessons: You can’t always get what you want (a song I often sing to him when he gets cranky.  I don’t think he cares, but it makes me feel better).

One way we (the G-man and I) are trying to deal with this is make sure that LP knows that we understand him.  Rather than just saying “no” or “no, you can’t have that” we will tell him “I know you want to push all the bright buttons on the printer” or “I know you really want to eat more ice cream” and then we explain why he can’t do the thing he wants to do.  This doesn’t always work, but sometimes it does, and I think it is at least a better tactic than all of us just getting mad at each other (because we do have those moments too!).  I know that LP isn’t a fully rational human being yet, and he may not always understand why he can’t have or do things he wants, but I do think he has the same basic needs we all to: to be heard, listened to and understood.

And it doesn’t hurt him to learn this lesson too – complete with mom’s bad singing.