We were scheduled for a genetic counseling session and arrived to meet a counselor that looked exactly like Jessie Eisenberg. I don’t know Jessie Eisenberg personally, but this counselor had all the mannerisms of Jessie’s character, Columbus from Zombieland.

If that wasn’t disconcerting enough, once we got into the conversation about this genetic scrambling Toby and I both had the same question but I was too afraid to ask; If we do have this, does this mean we’ve passed on some horrible hidden illness to our son? Is he going to hit puberty and sprout a face out of his left arm?

Thankfully, my husband asked. When the genetic counselor assured us that (since Robbie is obviously healthy) the worst we could have done was pass on the same problem (making it harder for him to have kids) I promptly burst into tears of relief.

If we have this disorder, the treatment is to either get a sperm donor or do in vitro fertilization to check for chromosome abnormalities and then put the good eggs back.  We’re not especially interested in either of these options, but you might as well have fun with it.

As we were about to get on the elevator to leave, I said to Toby “If we have this disorder, I’m totally going to play an April Fool’s joke on your dad.”

“What?”

“I’m going to try to keep a strait face while we tell your dad we need a little help and could he please contribute.”

“Have I ever told you you’re really sick?” he asked, and the full elevator started chuckling.

But the more I thought about it, the more I couldn’t stop laughing. I waited until the doors opened and we were a few feet away from the crowd and burst out with “your son could be your own brother!”

Robbie: Mom, if we have another child, I’ll share my pajamas with him.

Me: That’s really nice of you.

Robbie: And I’ll share my pancake. Even if there’s just one. She can share.

Me: How about if I just make you both one?

Robbie: Good idea!

Me: What if we get a baby that’s not from mom’s tummy? What if we adopt one – I mean bring one home that becomes your brother or sister.

Robbie: That would be cool.

Me: What if the baby didn’t really look like the rest of us? What about a black baby?

Robbie: That would be awesome!

We met the specialist Friday. Although the appointment had only been scheduled for a week, it felt like it had been years coming.

As it turns out, the specialist my doctor referred me to wasn’t covered under our insurance, so we were instead referred to the head of the maternal-fetal medicine department at the U of U medical center. I’ll have to remember to stop cursing my insurance company… so often.

Because of who I was seeing, I was expecting to be interviewed by a bored intern with a clipboard.  Instead, Toby and I spent about forty-five minutes sitting around a small table, discussing our reproductive history with the specialist himself. We’ll call him “Dr. Risky”, a moniker I am borrowing from Heather.

At no point did he check his watch, take a call, leave the room or let anyone interrupt. He repeatedly invited questions and answered them all.

In the seven years that we’ve been trying to have children we’ve sat around having a non-exam discussion with a doctor precisely once; at the initial consult the first time I was pregnant. It lasted about ten minutes, half of which was spent discussing the baseball camp my doctor had gone to. At the follow-up visit after my miscarriage, the only thing I can recall my doctor saying is “It looks like everything came out ok.” which was either a terrible choice of words or an unforgivably bad joke.

I am sure future visits with Dr. Risky will be much shorter. He’s further away than my original OB. I imagine he’ll be hard to get an appointment with at times.

I also think it’s all worth it, just to see someone who is really listening.

We try to eat healthy foods. We grocery shop, we garden, we buy veggies, we cook – or at least try to cook dinner every night. But, between two working parents, a child in preschool and our attempts to get to the gym three or four times a week, we sometimes find it easier to psuedo-cook so Robbie can eat at a decent hour.

Psuedo cooking is what I call it when we warm something up that’s essentially a highly processed food product: chicken nuggets in the shape of dinosaurs, mac & cheese, or the ever-popular PBJ. I’m not proud of it, but it has seemed “necessary” on particularly busy nights.

Since last June when Toby and I started trying to eat and live healthier, the overall standard has improved, but not enough. We’ve cut HFCS from our groceries but it’s still finding it’s way in via preschool, family, holidays and neighbors. We cook more…but we’ve been guilty of making him separate meals just so he’ll eat without a fight.

Today I found a blog written by a teacher. In it, she catalogs what’s for lunch at her school every day. She eats it and reports her thoughts on it’s nutritional content and flavor. What I saw horrified me.

This is nothing like the school lunch I grew up with. It wasn’t perfect then, but now…. it’s largely made up of Icees, Sunchips, Chocolate Milk, Burgers, Pizza, and other garbage we fight to keep out of our house.

Most creepy of all, everything is sealed in tiny containers just like frozen dinners at the grocery store, which is telling. These meals are not being cooked in school kitchens at all. It’s being made in factories and shipped frozen, then reheated.

Sound familiar? That’s how fast food is made. That’s how airplane food is made. Yet we’re feeding it to our kids twice a day for twelve years and telling them McDonalds should be a rare treat.

After reading this, I thought to myself…if Robbie were in first grade with a brown bag and all his friends were eating school lunch, would he be content or jealous? I didn’t have to debate with myself for long. I know he’d want the junk.

He’ll be in first grade in just two years and his favorite foods right now are hamburgers and nuggets. He won’t eat lettuce, period.

I’ve got some ’splainin to do.

How have you involved your kids in food preparation? Meal planning? How have you taught them about good nutrition without demonizing certain foods? How do you get a four year old boy to even try lettuce?

Here is the school lunch blog. It’s not appetizing.
Here is a video you have to watch if you have kids. It’s 20 minutes long, but very compelling.

Robbie has always been a good talker with an excellent vocabulary. He talks circles around half the kids his age and keeps up well in a preschool class a year ahead of his age.  He also tells my in-laws lots of stories about Toby and I (They are all lies. Lies, I say!) that never fail to amuse them but which they’ll never explain.

Since turning four his use of language has take a more…colorful turn. I don’t really mean swearing, though we have had to drum a few words from his ever-expanding vocabulary. By colorful, I guess I mean more imaginative, more colloquial and more sprinkled with slang.

For example, three days ago he was having a great time prentending with some friends to be a boat captain in an unfinished room of our basement. When I noticed they were beating on the walls with crescent wrenches, I pulled him aside and said “Hey babe, I think it’s time to stop playing in there.”

He, in turn, went back into the room and announced to his three friends “Sorry guys, it looks like we’re gonna have to shut down for a while.”

I was amused and amazed that he’s reached a level of linguistic maturity that he can take a message and translate it into a part of their play so effortlessly.

When he watches TV, he hears phrases and immediately “tries them on” in a half whisper. Spiderman swings through the streets and says “I’m the Incredible Spider Man!” and Robbie repeats him in a low voice. This pantomiming continues through the next few hours or days until he’s mastered the nuances and context of the phrase and then it becomes a part of his everyday conversation.

We had to start policing his television more carefully when he learned “Little Freaks” and “Loser”.

One day, while helping him put his shoes on he laid back on the floor and said “You take a dash of dad, a pinch of mom and …..Mmmm, that’s good Billy!”

I blinked. It took me a minute to place the line – it was from a Simpson’s episode we’d seen weeks before. Weeks and weeks ago and only one time.

When I considered all the other, far worse things Homer and Bart have said in twenty seasons I suddenly realized where all of his recent sarcasm was coming from; the nightly episode of Simpsons he and Toby watch together. Toby can’t stand Sponge Bob or Curious George so we TiVo Simpsons episodes as a middle ground solution to the “what to watch while dinner is being made” problem.

Time to revamp the TiVo settings.

D’oh.