Fighting the Good Fight for Family Biking

November 19, 2014 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 4 Comments

Early November is a challenging time to bike. In my region, it tends to be cold, windy and wet. So I really wasn’t looking forward to our last Kidical Mass ride of the season, a joint ride with our sister group in nearby Gaithersburg.I was tempted to cancel our half, considering the low temperatures. However, the city had promoted it in both their monthly newsletter and their Facebook page, so I felt obliged to show up in case anyone from Rockville trekked over. Despite a few literal wrong turns, I’m glad I went. My ride to the meeting place and lunch with fellow family biking advocates highlighted a number of our shared challenges.

Our meeting place was about eight miles from my house, so it was too far to bring Sprout in the trailer. As the car trunk doesn’t fit both the bike and trailer, I rode there towing the trailer while Chris drove himself and Sprout. Unfortunately, I got rather lost on the way. While my intended route wasn’t ideal, my detour truly illustrated the infrastructure barriers families face in using cycling for transportation. I cycled over paths and curb cuts that were so bumpy and narrow they’d be uncomfortable or even unsafe for a kid in a trailer. Multi-use trails paralleling major, high-speed roads ended abruptly, forcing me onto the sidewalk. Even those were piecemeal. One sidewalk was split by a single piece of property with a fence, rendering the entire sidewalk on that side of the road useless. Crossing signals at intersections were too short, infrequent or non-existant. Intersections at major roads lacked islands to stand on as you crossed multiple lanes of traffic. I was very glad I didn’t bring Sprout – I would have been quite nervous about his safety.

In contrast, my destination – one of the first planned “smart growth” communities in the country – it was lovely. The residential roads had street parking, but were relatively quiet. A whole network of trails connected different parts of the development.

Moving from one area to the other, it was obvious that while there are islands of high bikability, they’re separated from each other and riding between them is problematic. I’m fortunate to live in one of those islands, especially one that’s well-connected. But the further you go out in the suburbs and away from the semi-urban core, it becomes increasingly more difficult. While it’s nice that people can ride around their neighborhoods, achieving even a “car-light” society where people can rely on biking, walking, and transit for their transportation needs requires a much more comprehensive, connected system than we have now.

When I finally arrived after my misadventure, the ride ended up being me, Sprout, and the Kidical Mass Gaithersburg organizers. We went ahead anyway, believing seeing families out and about on their bikes in such brisk weather sent an important message to the community. Afterwards, we went to the Farmer’s Market and a cafe, where we discussed the particular issues we face with family biking.

One problem we kept coming back to was a lack of understanding of family biking from pretty much everyone, non-cyclists and cyclists alike.

On the non-cyclists’ side, there’s the eternal cry of “But it’s not safe!” The Gaithersburg folks told me that their elementary school won’t allow students to bike there, even though the school is inside a neighborhood designed to be walkable and bikable. If that’s a rule in a “smart growth” community, the rest of us are doomed. Perhaps most frustratingly, the school appears completely uninterested in changing that status quote. The cry of “unsafe!” shuts down the conversation instead of opening it up to the question, “What can we do to make it safer?” Besides just benefitting students, answering that question could help everyone – the school is next to a large park that’s a prime biking location.

Within the cycling community, one fundamental disagreement we have is with “vehicular cyclists.” This group believes bicyclists are the safest and best off when they act and are treated like cars by always taking the lane. While there are plenty of quiet, residential streets where that’s a fine approach, holding it as a philosophy on which to base infrastructure policy decisions is fundamentally incompatible with family biking. Parents who bike with their kids are already nervous enough, when both the American Pediatric Association and Consumer Reports emphatically state use a bike seat or trailer anywhere there might possibly be cars. So to expect parents to take the lane in streets with speed limits above 25 mph or that have stop-and-go traffic is unrealistic. Sticking to the slowest of streets may work for recreational rides, but there’s no way to ride for transportation without a busy road blocking your way, especially in the suburbs. Then of course, there’s the issue of what to do once kids get older. For kids to be able to ride to school or stores on their own bikes, we have to have places they can ride safely as well. If we want parents and children to ride for transportation, we have to provide infrastructure they are comfortable with, such as protected bike lanes and good, well-maintained multi-use paths. Neither on-road cycling or protected infrastructure are the be all end all of biking – rather, having both as viable options is important if we want to make family biking a reality.

Lastly, there’s a bit of a culture gap between the majority of biking advocates in D.C. proper and the suburban family biking crowd (all two of us). People who lead large group rides that attract young professionals don’t have a lot of advice for marketing to families or reaching out to schools. Folks who are used to dealing with biking infrastructure in the city aren’t as familiar with the suburbs’ opportunities (lots of space for protected bike lanes and multi-use paths!) and challenges (everything else). While these aren’t anyone’s fault, they’re another set of communication issues to work on.

Lately, I’ve been telling people that family biking is the “next big thing” for biking in America. But it can be lonely working on something just starting to get off of the ground. It was good to connect with my fellow Kidical Mass leaders to share frustrations and compare notes.

The Myth of the Real Adult

November 12, 2014July 16, 2017 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 4 Comments

The Myth of the Real Adult. Who is this real adult my mind keeps claiming I'm not anyway? (Picture: Woman talking to two kids at a kitchen table, dressed in a 1950s fashion)

When I look at our gross kitchen floor with bits of food that have been there for several days, I feel like I’ve failed as an adult.
When I put Sprout to bed at 8:45 PM for the third night in a row, I feel like I’ve failed as an adult.
When I look at the baskets of unfolded laundry, I feel like I’ve failed as an adult.
When I think about all of the friends I haven’t emailed in months, years, I feel like I’ve failed as an adult.
When I look at all of the unchecked items on my to-do list, I feel like I’ve failed as an adult.
When the lawn is way too long and the garden is an overgrown mess, I feel like I’ve failed as an adult.
When the dishes aren’t washed at 11:30 at night, I feel like I’ve failed as an adult.
When I only remember my mom’s birthday because of Facebook, I feel like I’ve failed as an adult.

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A Halloweening We Will Go

November 7, 2014 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

Halloween is a holiday that is a hell of a lot more fun with kids. I love Halloween, but as an adult, I’ve found it oddly dissatisfying. As a teenager, I imagined celebrating Halloween as an adult would be mysterious and attractively dark, like a Victorian masquerade ball. But instead, I found out that people’s costumes are less interesting, parties are less well-attended, and it’s just another excuse to drink. While I suspect adulthood in general would be disappointing to my teenage self, I did rekindle my love of the holiday this year through a series of activities with Sprout. With a kid, you once again have an excuse to participate in all of the Halloween activities you remember nostalgically.

Our Halloween started early, with the Silver Spring Zombie Walk followed by a whole week of activities. My newly retired mom came down for the week to celebrate with us, bringing Sprout’s costume with her. She sewed all of my beautiful, original Halloween costumes, so of course we wanted her to make Sprout’s as well. (Unfortunately, her craftiness did not pass on to me.) We ended up picking a dinosaur, as he refuses to wear hats and it was the one toddler costume that didn’t need head-gear to be recognizable. Although I wasn’t impressed with the photo on the pattern envelope, my mom turned the costume into something spectacular. She found scaly, shiny green fabric that gave him a lizard-like feel. She added spikes up the back even though the pattern didn’t have them. She raised up the tail so it didn’t drag on the floor, increasing its aesthetic attractiveness and scientific accuracy. (Although I don’t think any dinosaur with spikes walked upright.) It ended up coming out better than the most expensive store-bought costumes, and of course, it was made with love.

Fortunately, Sprout really liked it. He didn’t fuss while we were putting it on, except for the head piece. (We have exactly two photos with the hat, both with me trying to shove it on and him in the process of pulling it off.) At first, he had a lot of difficulty sitting down because the tail got in the way. But once he figured that out, he seemed to enjoy the costume quite a bit while it was on.

That was a particularly good thing because we put it on him as often as possible. Early in the week, he wore it to a Halloween party at one of our town’s community centers. Despite the variety of activities, he spent most of his time sticking googly-eyed stickers on a pumpkin. But he was far from the only one enamored by the stickers and the fact that he didn’t try to eat them is definitely something for the win category. Later that week, they attended an party at the local kiddie gym that teaches his movement class. There, he cemented his tendency to be a bit of a thrill seeker by going down the baby roller-coaster multiple times all by himself.

Of course, Halloween evening was the pinnacle of the activities. I worked from home that day, so I was able to enjoy the whole evening with my family. We started the night with the annual neighborhood Halloween parade. The fact that my town and its neighborhoods put on numerous events is one of my favorite things about where I live. The parade had close to 75 parents and children, with a full spectrum of adorableness. Among the kids, there was a lightening bolt, a police officer (with his dad as a prisoner!), the dragon from How to Train Your Dragon, a train, a truck with working headlights, a bunch of princesses, Pooh Bear and Piglet, and many others. I wasn’t the only parent in costume either – quite a few adults got in on the action, with funny hats and full costumes. There was even a friendly dog in a purple and green tutu, which slobbered all over Sprout’s face when he got too close. We dawdled along, with the pace being slow enough that Sprout could walk on his own in parts. When he started going too slow and backed up the group, I would scoop him up and hustle to catch up to the rest of the group.

After the parade, we did an abbreviated trick-or-treating route. He was too little to know what was going on, but he also likes trying new things. Also, we knew our immediate neighbors would love to see him in his costume. At first, he was confused as to why he was standing in front of a closed door and would turn around towards us. When someone finally opened the door and greeted him, he got really excited. By the last house, he had the routine down pat, except for the words, of course. Our neighbors were so charmed that they gave him handfuls of candy.

For his hard work, we allowed him to eat a single piece of candy. As most candy is either too small (choking hazard), too chewy (ditto) or has peanuts (haven’t introduced yet), it was surprisingly hard to choose one. We finally picked an Almond Joy and plucked out the almond to avoid the aforementioned and ever-present choking hazard. He loved it, gobbling the whole thing right up. I’m not looking forward to the day he realizes what happened to the rest of his candy.

The one single disappointing thing about Halloween was that we didn’t carve a jack-o-lantern. We left our hard-earned, beautiful pumpkin outside since we picked it a couple of weeks ago. In the meantime, we had a number of warm and rainy days. By the time we went to carve it, it was so mushy that it wasn’t structurally sound. As it was the night before Halloween, we just used Sprout’s pumpkin with way too many eyes instead.

Parenting offers you the chance to see the world through your kids eyes, but this Halloween, I also remembered what it was like to see it through the eyes of myself as a kid.

Celebrate Election Day!

November 3, 2014 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

Even though tomorrow isn’t a official holiday in the U.S., it’s totally worth celebrating. It’s Election Day!

It’s very easy to get cynical about politics – I live in the D.C. area, after all – but it’s still worth it to participate, especially if you’re a parent. Decisions made on a national level about clean energy, climate change, health care, poverty, and agriculture can affect the country and world for generations to come. Elected leaders at the state and local level influence how our cities and suburbs grow, how we move around them (including how safe it is for children to walk and bike), what industries thrive, and how clean the air and water is. Even the smallest, most local elections can affect your daily life. For example, school boards have a huge influence over the curriculum and structure of our schools.

In addition to the direct impact of voting, it sets a great example for your kids. I have fond memories of standing in the voting booth with my parents and pulling the big, old-fashioned red metal lever that registered the votes. I’m sure that seeing my parents participate in the democratic process seeded much of my community involvement today. Voting with your kids shows them that you’re invested in the future of your community and they should be too.

Now, if you are a regular reader, you can probably guess my politics. Despite that, I won’t tell you to vote the Democratic Party line. For one, some Democrats are terrible leaders (I’m looking at you, Andrew Cuomo). Secondly, most of their politics are way too conservative for my taste, even it’s often the best our system has to offer. But most importantly, I would never recommend that because no one should ever unthinkingly vote the party line. If you haven’t already (I admit, I haven’t), do some research into the candidates before stepping into the booth. Every community has different needs – make sure our system can serve yours appropriately.

So go out there and vote tomorrow! If you don’t know where your local polling station is, you can look it up on Google. And when you finish, wear your “I voted” sticker with pride.

What Kind of Monster is Your Kid?

November 1, 2014October 27, 2017 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

What Kind of Monster Is Your Kid? (Pictures of vampire, fairy and Bigfoot)

Wrapping up my son in a blue hooded towel with three eyes as I pull him out of the bathtub, I exclaim, “Who’s the cutest little monster?” Looking in the mirror, I want to keep him that adorable size forever. Seven hours later at 3 AM, I hear the shriek of the banshee and shudder. Then he’s a monster of a completely different type.

While our children are often the cute Muppet monsters, on their worst days, they can wander into old-fashioned horror movie territory.

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Just Shambling Along: Bringing a Kid to the Silver Spring Zombie Walk

October 29, 2014 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

As toddlers often have a loose grasp on the mechanics of walking, they sometimes lurch or shamble. So we thought it was appropriate to bring Sprout on his first Zombie Walk this past weekend.

A Zombie Walk is pretty much what it says – loads of people dress as zombies and then shamble along a route. Moaning, saying “Braasinnns,”and/or gently teasing bystanders is highly encouraged. A town near us has been hosting a Zombie Walk for the past several years and they’re immense fun. Like the Renaissance Faire, they’re an opportunity to dress up and become something radically different for a little while. As someone who gets Very Concerned about Big Issues (and sometimes stupid little ones), the idea of playing something totally brainless has a certain appeal. Unlike most zombie movies, Zombie Walks (or at least the Silver Spring one) aren’t meant to be scary at all. Instead, they wholeheartedly embrace the camp aspect of zombies, recognizing that often the zombies in movies are more interesting and sometimes more sympathetic than the protagonists.

Before heading out, we zombified ourselves. In the past, I’ve actually gone as a specific type of character – I was an activist zombie one year, decked out in as many buttons as I could find and holding a placard saying Occupy Graveyard. This year, I wanted do a family theme. While there are some very clever (and gross) costumes people have created with baby carriers, our inward facing Ergo-Baby doesn’t quite have the same Evil Fetus costume potential. Plus, Sprout’s too big for it now. Instead, I wanted to do an idealized 1950s zombie family. I put on my purple button-down retro-style dress for myself, so I had my part down. While they weren’t exactly period-appropriate, we dressed Sprout in his skeleton pajamas so he could fall asleep in the car on the way home. Unfortunately, Chris didn’t want to fuss with a suit. He did put on a button-down shirt, but it wasn’t quite the effect I was going for.

For the makeup, we used gray water-based make-up on Sprout. The application process wasn’t all that different from putting sunscreen on him, which he’s used to, even if he doesn’t like it. Chris and I both used oil-based makeup to provide more color, and I dripped fake blood around my mouth. (I used corn syrup and red food coloring, which is less drippy, cheaper, and easier to wash out than the store-bought stuff.) Unfortunately, our makeup ended up barely visible in the poorly-lit street. Afterwards, Chris commented, “Our faces just look dirty.” I guess we needed more green and less gray.

Arriving at the starting point, we found a broad array of interpretations of the theme. A zombie family with everyone dressed in wedding gear celebrated the mom and dad’s real-life anniversary. The dad was holding a sign saying “To have and to hold in life and undeath.” Zombie 1 and Zombie 2 were the undead versions of Thing 1 and Thing 2, holding the decapitated head of the Cat in the Hat. The prince’s kiss seemed to wake up Zombie Snow White, despite the fact that she was actually dead. Zombie Sharknados got props for a clever costume idea in general, but points off for it clearly just being their Halloween costume with zombie makeup. Zombie Elvis was decked out in sequins, strumming a guitar, and singing versions of the classics tweaked appropriately for the audience. There were even a few folks facing the invading hoard with panache – Shaun from his eponymous movie was there, as was a church lady of the Dana Carvey sort with a Repent Zombies! placard.

We didn’t quite match up, but our one saving grace was having the darn cutest zombie on the walk. While there were a number of other kids there, and even a few around the same age, none of them were quite as prominent. We hauled Sprout up on Chris’s shoulders so he could see everything and be seen. As we walked, bystanders gave numerous, “Look at the baby zombie!” and “He’s so cute!” We even had a number of people take photos. While I’m not fond of strangers taking photos of my child, it’s inevitable if you participate in an event like this.

For his part, Sprout seemed to enjoy it. Most of the time, he had his “I’m taking it all in” expression on his face. I think he especially liked being up on Chris’s shoulders and seeing everything. The only problem was that he kept sticking his finger in Chris’s ear! We joked that he was trying to dig for tasty daddy brains.

I had a couple people I told about the walk ask if Sprout was scared; I can definitely say he wasn’t. While he gets startled easily, he isn’t old enough to understand why this would be scary. I think he just interpreted this as “another weird thing mom and dad are doing,” along with all of the other weird things we do. Heck, it’s not that much weirder than Disney, which has a giant mechanical bear singing about murder on one of their classic rides. As he gets older, I suspect we’ll take a couple years off between when he’s old enough to understand the concept of zombies but too young to appreciate their camp aspect.

To sum it up, my kid has been to some weird events. But with parents like his, weirdness is inevitable.

An Autumn Extravaganza: Halloween at Butler’s Orchard

October 24, 2014 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

Photo: Child walking through a tunnel framed by a jack-o-lantern. Text: "An Autumn Extravaganza: Halloween at Butler's Orchard."

Autumn is my favorite season, with the changing leaves, the cooler weather, the fall harvest, and Halloween. Oh, Halloween – a celebration of imagination and as much candy as you can mooch off the neighbors. A perfect chance to be someone else for a night and engage with the not-so-scary monsters of the world before you have to face the ones in the real world. So of course, I’ve looked forward to celebrating Hallowern with Sprout. And you can’t have a good Halloween without a high quality pumpkin. So off we went to the local orchard to pick a pumpkin and attend their fall children’s festival.

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With a Book, You Can Go Anywhere and Be Anything!

October 21, 2014 / Shannon Brescher Shea / Leave a comment

Sprout loves books. He doesn’t read yet, but loves looking at books and spending time with them.

In fact, he can occupy himself for 10 minutes or so – a long time for a 16 month old – pulling books from his shelf and flipping through them one-by-one. He’ll stop at certain pages and focus on them, like a patron in an art gallery trying to figure out the meaning of a work. When he reaches the end, he’ll often flip back to those favorite pages, just to check if he missed something. Other pages he’ll speed past; some he skips altogether. It’s very clear he has strong opinions about what he finds interesting or not, something that runs in the family.

Unfortunately, this method of “reading” doesn’t translate well to pre-bed storytime. Often, he won’t let me hold the book or turn the pages because he wants to be in control. But I can’t read the text of the story with his chaotic jumping between pages. So we end up in an odd dance, where I try to read as fast as possible or very slowly, either skipping entire pages or repeating them multiple times, depending on his whim at the moment. In a books with rhyme schemes, I often stumble over the words because the rhythm is all off. He even flips books upside down, making it completely impossible to follow! Sometimes, I lose my patience, take the book from him, and turn the pages at my pace. Of course, he loses interest and pulls a different book off the shelf instead. His attitude seems to be: “Mommy, you can read the book you want to read, I’ll read the book I want to read.” That’s not exactly the point of storytime. So I’ve learned to adjust my reading style to suit someone whose enjoyment is entirely driven by the visuals and the cadence of my voice. Even if the story doesn’t make a lot of sense, I at least tell it enthusiastically.

In addition to bedtime, of all places, books play a major role on the changing table. He’s associating reading with pooping before he can even use the toilet! But giving him a book is the one consistent thing I can do to keep him from flipping over while I change his diaper. (Making funny noises stopped working a while ago.) To add to the benefit, his expression in the charging table is hilarious. He’s super serious, as if he’s a trader in a corner office reading the Wall St. Journal instead of a toddler with a dirty diaper flipping through a board book.

Sprout’s favorite books at the moment are an odd assortment of classics and modern stories. Most of them are not ones I bought – our families (especially my mom) have been very generous in building his library. All of his favorites are board books because we still don’t trust him with hardcover picture books yet. He’s mostly stopped munching on them (he was an actual bibliovore before), but he’s still fairly rough with the pages. We have a couple of books with inside covers that are torn because he was convinced that there was one more page to turn.

The Very Busy Spider: Eric Carle is one of the most artistic children’s illustrators ever, so this book is a pleasure to read, even for the fifth time in one night. While this one isn’t as famous as The Very Hungry Caterpillar, it’s actually more visually stunning, with each of the animals having it’s own unique combination of color and pattern. The actual texture of the spider’s web, which Sprout will show me by taking my hand and rubbing it on the page, makes visceral something we can’t even touch in real life without destroying. The repetitive structure – an animal asks if the spider wants to do something, she doesn’t respond because she’s too busy – means they you can skip pages without losing meaning, which is important with our aforementioned reading style. And it shows that spiders are beautiful, not scary! He loves The Very Lonely Firefly as well.

Let’s Sign, Baby: This one is kind of ironic because Sprout doesn’t know and probably won’t learn baby sign. Part of it is because Chris and I never really got around to learning it – teaching yourself another language is challenging enough, much less while you have a baby. Part of it is because even when we do remember to sign, Sprout isn’t looking at us, which rather defeats the point. This book has good explanations of the different signs, but I can’t tear his eyes away from the page to demonstrate them. I think he just likes the cartoons of the kids and babies.

Harry the Dirty Dog: This is one that I probably would never have bought myself, but it was my father-in-law’s favorite story when he was little, so Chris’s family bought it. The illustrations are adorable, even if the family is so 1950s suburban stereotypical. However, I don’t know how to feel about a book that says if you get too dirty, your family won’t recognize you. As Sprout gets older, we’ll stick with emphazing how good Harry is at problem solving.

The Big Red Barn: A far less well-known book by the same author as Goodnight Moon. This book about farm animals is cute, but the rhythm and rhyming structure grates on my nerves, even when it’s read correctly. It obviously has a structure, but whenever I read it, it just sounds “off.” Plus, it has the multiple ending problem a la Lord of the Rings – it should end three pages before it does. Needless to say, it’s no Goodnight Moon.

Bedtime for Chickies: This is an absurdly adorable book. It’s about three chicks that find all sorts of reasons not to go to bed, exasperating their pig, cow and sheep caretakers. The ending of the chicks only falling asleep once they are in their caretakers’ embrace hits a little too close to home, but the illustrations and the chickies’ dialogue is overwhelmingly cute.

Baby Faces: This book, which is just a series of photos of babies with captions describing their state of being (happy / sad, clean / dirty, etc) was a favorite when he was really little and has come back around again. When he was tiny, I think he just liked looking at the photos of other babies. Now, I think he’s realizing that the different expressions relate to different emotional states and finds those distinctions interesting.

What are or were your kids’ favorite board or baby books?

Food is our common ground – James Beard.

October 15, 2014 / Shannon Brescher Shea / 1 Comment

As a parent, I’m very aware of the messages my behavior sends to Sprout, intentionally or not. With Sprout getting more observant every day, I’ve become particularly conscientious about our eating habits, as I know how and what we eat will shape his eating habits for life.

This has become particularly important now that he thinks everything the “big people” eat is fair game. As I understand it must feel unfair to see your family members eating something you can’t, I try not to eat anything in front of him he can’t have. (Except my tea – they’ll have to take that from my cold, dead hands.) This became exceptionally obvious at my company’s annual picnic. One second, there was a chocolate-chip cookie on my plate, the next it was in my son’s mouth with a big bite out of it. Not what I had planned.

This awareness came to a head last week, with a spiritual element added to the practical one. Leading up to Food Day, my church is focusing on eating as a spiritual practice. As with most spiritual practices, the first step is increasing awareness of your current habits. As such, my pastor challenged everyone to keep a food journal – a list of the food consumed as well as the circumstances in which we ate it. Personally, I also wrote down whether the food was processed, local and/or organic.

While I normally try to be aware of my eating, it was amazing how many decisions the food journal influenced. I chose to have an apple instead of crackers. I didn’t drink the fake cappachino that’s 90% sugar water and 10% preservatives. I had a little thrill when I wrote down “locally made whole wheat toast with locally made jam,” even though it wasn’t exactly healthy. It didn’t stop me from having three desserts at the picnic (including the stolen cookie), but I did have a greater appreciation for sharing that lunch with my husband, son and co-workers.

While I’m no longer writing everything down, I’m still thinking the best way to model good eating habits for Sprout. I think the best way to do this is keep him as involved as possible in growing, choosing, and cooking his food.

Before this weekend, I hadn’t been able to get him involved in gardening, as he was always too destructive. But with the fall season winding down, I’ve started pulling out my plants in preparation for winter. As I’m usually telling him not to hurt plants, he looked very confused. He tried to help at first, but just picked off a few spare leaves. He also didn’t know what to do when the plants were too thick for him to walk through without tripping. Once I had cleared a space for him, he was much more content, sitting there and whacking at the soil with a spade. In the end, he was a dirty, happy kid, with soil everywhere from his hair to the soles of his sneakers.

While he can’t identify different vegetables yet, we’ve been bringing him to the Farmers’ Market since he was a newborn. The vendors are so used to seeing us that the one girl recognizes Sprout and asks about him. As he grows older, we’ll teach him about the different fruits and vegetables and why they’re available some times of the year and not others. Unfortunately, we’ll never be able to buy his beloved bananas (the only food he has a word for yet) there.

Obviously, we’re going to teach him how to cook. Sprout already shows great interest when anyone cooks, whining if you don’t keep him informed of what you’re doing. Chris will often pick him up to show him what’s in the pan and explain the steps he’s taking.

While it’ll be quite a while before he can touch the knives, we did get him involved in food preparation for the first time a few weeks ago. We made these date-almond-chocolate energy bites, but swapped out the wheat germ for shredded coconut. After we blended most of the ingredients in the food processor and formed balls, we let him roll the balls in the coconut. Or more accurately, throw coconut on/at/over them. He seemed to have a good time and the bites turned out to be surprisingly tasty.

Eating good food that has been thoughtfully, sustainably grown and prepared with people I love is one of my great joys in life. I hope it’s one of his too.