Mamakaze! Attacking Life at Full Throttle

We suspect that every mama, at some point, wishes she had three arms. Hey, there are times in our day-to-day life that require the multitasking abilities of, say, an octopus. Alas, science has not yet advanced to the point where we can have multiple arms grafted onto our bodies, so we soldier on!

One of those times when we’d like an extra arm or three is when we are feeding Totakaze outside our home. We need one hand for the jar of food, one for the spoon and one for the wet wipe we have on the ready in the inevitable event that our wee one decides to spew chicken and sweet potatoes down her chin. Luckily, in this instance, we don’t have to wait for advances in transplant technology, because Leaps and Bounds makes a handy-dandy jar holder and spatula spoon.

This brand-new jar holder securely cradles baby’s food while suctioning to a table or tray, leaving both hands free to feed and wipe the wee one. The soft spatula spoon scrapes the jar’s every nook and cranny to minimize food wasting. Genius! Our only question is why on earth were these essential baby-feeding tools not invented before? Say, when Totakaze was in her raspberrying phase. Inconvenient timing aside, this may be Mamakaze’s favorite invention yet. (That is, until someone invents actual extra arms. We’d be all over that.)

When you’re a busy mama like Mamakaze, it’s hard to find time to take a real break. Once the wee ones are in their beds, there are still toilets to be scrubbed and dishes to be washed.

We bought ourself some aromatherapy bath and shower goodies, but we can’t remember our last bath and our cherished steaming-hot showers now last, on average, a good five minutes. If only Mamakaze got to soak our body for as long as we soak our hands in scummy, lemon-scented dishwater! (Sigh!)

While we can’t change the fact that dishes pile up in our house faster than we can wash them, we can change what we wash them with. Mamakaze prefers to wash dishes with something that smells delicious and relaxing, rather than like something we’d clean the bathroom with. (After all, that’s next on our list!)

Whether it’s the grocery-store brand’s new apple scent or a luxurious aromatherapy detergent such as The Good Home Co.®’s lavender dish soap, we find dishwashing just a little less odious when we use something with a fresh, pleasant aroma. It’s not quite the relaxing bubble bath we’d rather be taking, but it certainly smells wonderful, and it does involve soaking in steaming-hot water.

Now, if only they made aromatherapy toilet-bowl cleaner, Mamakaze would be a blissful mama indeed!

To our deep and undying shame, Mamakaze has been known to eat off dirty dishes. It’s not our fault, mind you. We will open the dishwasher, observe what appears to be a load of pristine dishes, pull out a plate and cup, eat our lunch and then be told by Papakaze that the dishwasher was “dirty.” Very well-rinsed, mind you, but dirty nonetheless.

It wasn’t always like this. In our carefree days, Papakaze and I had time to ask each other before pulling out suspicious silverware and digging in. But with two kids and one on the way, it’s hard to find a momoent to grab a meal for ourselves, and sometimes we must confess that we play the guessing game.

How silly we felt when we discovered this could all have been avoided with a simple spin of a dial! Our good friends, who would never eat off dishes they didn’t know for a fact to be absolutely sanitary, have an attractive, professional-looking gadget on their dishwasher that says “dirty” on one side and “clean” on the other. When someone loads or unloads the dishwasher, a mere spin of the dial lets everyone know the sanitation status of their tablewear. Genius, we tell you!

Mamakaze, vowing to never eat off not-quite-clean plates again, managed to track this wonderful invention down at Organize.com, and we must say that even if one could put a price on peace of mind, $5.99 wouldn’t be a bad one!

Forma® Suction Dishwasher Spinner - Stainless Steel by InterDesign®

Like most mamas, Mamakaze doesn’t get much of a break when the kids are around. Which essentially means we don’t get a break, ever. When we were a young, carefree career girl, we might have wound down after a hard day with a few girlfriends, a chick flick and a pitcher of pina coladas. But that, dear readers, require that one has a few hours of spare time, friends without kids, and most importantly, no fetus sharing one’s bloodstream.

We found it difficult at first to take what we considered a break, but after awhile we discovered that those 10 minutes during which our preschooler is not asking us to pretend we’re the mama tiger and she’s the baby tiger are a break. The five minutes in which our newborn is dozing in a bouncy seat absolutely qualify as a break. The 30 seconds in which our toddler is coloring on paper and not on hardwood? Even that, my friends, is a break.

And what better way to celebrate our two-minute break than with a warm, aromatic mug of tea? At first, we felt embarrassed that we were taking tea breaks, because this is something our mother would do. Then we realized that we were probably the very reason Grammakaze began drinking tea in the first place.

Since our tiny breaks are incredibly precious and far between, we have culled the inferior teas from our cabinets and now insist upon only smooth, high-quality hot beverages. We steep our tea in our favorite pretty teacup, pausing to deeply inhale the fragrance. In short, we enjoy our cup wayyy too much.

Our tea of choice right now is Stash Red & White Tea. It’s full of antioxidants and we love its fine, sweet flavor. We also adore their various green teas, which are smoother than your run-of-the-mill green, and Stash’s wide variety of quality herbal teas.

Once we’ve had our little rendezvous with the teacup and some quality flavor, no matter what Totakaze has done to the hardwood in the meantime, we are calm, cool and ready to face the world again.

Wherein Totakaze’s efforts to make it rain Cheerios are foiled
Wednesday, June 21, 2006

One of our wee one’s great delights is snacking on a popular brand of toasted oat cereal. Her other is flinging said toasted oat cereal hither and yon. Since Totakaze clearly cannot be trusted with food, our solution for a long time was to put cereal in round 4 oz. GladWare containers and dole it out in tiny portions. However, as Totakaze wolfs her food like, well, a wolf, you can imagine, dear reader, how time-consuming this became.

Our solution is the ingenious SnackTrap, which allows her to retrieve her beloved toasted-oat rings on her own, but which doesn’t allow her to shake the container about and make it rain cereal like her very own indoor snowglobe. Likewise for Project Galileo, another pastime in which Totakaze repeatedly drops food-containing objects from her high chair, presumably to see whether a sippy cup filled with milk drops more quickly than a baby bowl filled with beans. Her only conclusion thus far is that the beans do not stay in the bowl. This pleases her greatly, and so she repeats the experiments with various containers and foods. But not so with the SnackTrap.

The SnackTrap’s unique slitted lid allows our tot to see her cereal and reach in for a handful, but should she shake, drop or (heaven help us!) throw the SnackTrap, her toasted O’s are safely contained by the lid.

Now, at long last, we can give our little one snacks on the go without fear of sudden showers.

We don’t know what other people do, but in Mamakaze’s house, the cereal has always been stored in the upper cabinets. When those are occupied, the freakishly tall Papakaze has been known to stow breakfast foods in the space between the cabinetry and the ceiling, incurring much hand-wringing on the part of all those in our family who are shorter than 6′4″ (basically, everyone but darling Daddy).

Of course, it’s not an ideal solution to store a cereal box directly on the counter, since most cereal boxes do not blend well with our tasteful decor. And while we briefly mulled emptying the cereal into pourable plastic containers, Papakaze insisted they would not be airtight, thereby allowing the food to become stale and creepy-crawlies to wiggle their way in.

But the thing is that the cereal is going to become stale at some point anyway, if no one is tall enough to eat it. So we came up with a solution that pleases everyone.

With our cereal locked away in an attractive, airtight aluminum Indispensable countertop dispenser, Papakaze is assured that his raisins will remain juicy and bug-free, and Mamakaze and the wee ones rest assured that we will not have to drag the stepladder upstairs if we want a bite of breakfast.

Better still, this indispensable tool doles out the cereal in small, measured portions, which means Kidakaze can feed herself with minimal chance of disaster. If only there were a dispenser for the milk!

Wherein we discover an alternative to letting Totakaze eat off the table
Saturday, June 17, 2006

Through no merit of our own, we have been gifted with the rare 1-year-old who can be taken to adult dining establishments an hour past her bedtime with nary a screech or a table-pounding. Genteel though she may be, however, Totakaze does have one wee shortcoming when dining out — she has not mastered the fine art of eating off a proper plate without, at some point, throwing it. Nor have her parents mastered the art of placing food directly on a strange table without cringing.

For a long time, we used sanitizing wipes, but it was getting expensive and the containers seemed to constantly be running out. That is why we were so delighted when we saw a friend’s Tiny Diner portable placemat. Not only did the cute hippo shape delight our toddler (admittedly an easy mark!), but we were delighted with the ingenious food-catching compartment that dangles right over Totakaze’s critical lap area. Suction cups keep the mat from sliding about on the table, unless one is particularly brave and brings a toddler to a restaurant with white linen tablecloths. If that is the case, we aren’t sure what to recommend, since even we — with our perfectly-behaved tot — are not quite that intrepid!

Mamakaze got our Tiny Diner Portable Placemat online at Amazon.com.