Joyful Vegan Family

Vegan Goodness:

Today we ate:

• Breakfast: Blueberry smoothies for Mom and LP followed by delicious NYC bagels from LP’s aunt!
• Lunch: Leftover spring rolls, leftover pasta and some more bagels.
• Dinner: Mom and Dad went out – just the two of them!!  We enjoyed a hearty dinner at Veggie Galaxy, with the G-man having the cutlet of the week and Mom having a black bean burger followed by a brownie sundae.  Yum!

Money Matters:
Today we spent the following:

• $3.00 on parking
• $60.00 on our date-night dinner

Mom Musings:

This Halloween I received a surprise, and a great reminder about what an awesome community I live in.  This was the first Halloween that LP went trick-or-treating.  He got all dressed up in his costume (he was a chef), and he, I and baby IP went out to the houses on our street.  House after house LP walked up, said “trick-or-treat” (after a bit of prodding from Mom), got his candy, said “Thank you” and we moved on.  At a few houses people were really generous, and after LP took a piece of candy they said “Have a couple!”  He was so excited to get two things instead of one, and he always told me “Mama, got a couple!!”  The whole way home he shook his loot around in his pot (he used a cooking pot as a treat bag since he was a chef) and had a HUGE grin.

Then we got home.  I looked into his pot and saw Snickers, M&Ms, Butterfingers . . .  all the “good” candy from when I was a kid.  No “Smarties” on our block (I used to hate those!)  But there was no way I was letting LP eat any of that.  It was one of our first forays into the question of LP’s veganism.  He is a vegan kid now, of course.  At some point I will explain to him what it means to be vegan and why we are vegan, but it’s early right now for all of that to really sink in.  At some point he will make the choice for himself one way or the other, but I’m not going to let him eat a Snicker bar right now, both because I’m not sure he totally understands the implications and because he hasn’t had dairy and I don’t want to deal with the after effects of that.  Luckily, he gravitated right to the Frankenstein lollypop and I just scooped up the other stuff and put it away.

But here is the cool thing.  The Frankenstein pop wasn’t the only thing LP could eat.  One neighbor made sure to tell me that they had mini bags of pretzels, and gave that to LP.  Another neighbor had specifically picked out some all-natural lollypops that she set aside for LP when he came by for trick-or-treat.  A third neighbor had some glow-in-the-dark bracelets that she gave to LP.  With each of these treats I was extremely touched.  These parents had gone out of their way for LP, and for our family.  None of these families are vegan, but the accept, and even embrace, that part of our life enough to make sure that LP was included in the festivities.  When I took away the candy bars from LP’s bucket, it wasn’t empty.  It still had plenty of treats and LP had an amazingly great time going from house to house and proudly announcing his presence with a loud “trick-or-treat” once he got the idea.  He enjoyed Halloween immensely without ever eating a mini-candy bar.  This made me feel so grateful for where we live.  This made me remember why we are vegan – for us it is so much about compassion and caring for all creatures.  This made me remember that being vegan isn’t a deficit at all.  LP didn’t “miss out” on anything Halloween related.  He enjoyed the best parts of the holiday – the socializing, the dress-up and the giving out of treats as he was always ready at the door with our bowl of Twizzlers.  Being vegan is such a nice reminder about the things that actually make the childhood memories.