FOOL ME TWICE: 2 KIDS UNDER 3 (Part II)

Here is the second installment of the lessons I've learned as a mother of 2 kids under the age of 3. (Here you can find Part I.)  My chidren, MiniBee and MicroBee are now 4 and (almost) 18 months, which means I'm still in the trenches, but breathing some, too. I hope some of these thoughts are going to help parents about to embark on the double-parenting adventure, although I know very well that everything you are reading here you will forget within minutes of your second birthing experience. Good luck!

NAPS

You are surely wondering how on earth you will be able to have two children nap at the same time or at different times of the day. I have no solution for you, I'm afraid. Having two children following two different napping routines is olympically challenging. A classic two-hour routine right after birth saw me nursing MicroBee to sleep while listening to MiniBee trashing the living room downstairs, then drag an overexcited MiniBee to his room and read him stories for 45 minutes so that I could finally leave the room only to hear MicroBee waking up from is nap. I would then pick MicroBee up and be greeted downstairs by MiniBee announcing he would not nap that day. So my advice is, do whatever you can. It will be over someday, somehow.

DUMBING DOWN FOR ALL

When you had your first child, you spent all of your energies crafting the perfect amount of quality mental stimulation to be balanced with strict routines and a plenty of nurturing affection. Your first child is a genius with massive potential in practically all areas. As soon as the second comes along, all comes to a halt. I'm sorry to tell you this, but now that you're a family of four, your youngest will drag you all to his/her own level, nullifying all of your previous efforts. You are exhausted, and all you can muster is going through the motions of the simplest activity that will make the youngest happy. In my case, it's banging toy cars together. (You will always choose to cater to the one who screams the most and is closest to your ears.)

POTTY MOUTH

When your oldest child turns four, s/he will enter the horrifying stage of potty mouth, during which s/he is going to repeat swearing you say at home together with mystifying coinages s/he will pick up from other children (welcome to "fart sauce"). At the same time, your youngest will be the impressionable toddler dealing with his or her first words. You will then enjoy having a toddler whose only words are "mom", "dad", "shit", and "stupid". I can tell you there are not a lot of good sentences coming out from this.

THE IRONY OF "THE GOOD OLD DAYS"

You will think back at those days when you were only dealing with your first and wonder what the fuck you were complaining about. When you have a second, the idea of having to deal with one tantrum, one meal, one potty-training disaster will sound like being transported into your early 20s on a solo vacation to a Caribbean paradise. Of course, this doesn't mean you start judging parents with only one child. You are just gaining some very much needed perspective. Sometimes you'll even go as far as thinking that, if you had three children, then the two you have would look like a stroll in the park. But that's usually when I slap myself really hard on the face.


Read Fool Me Twice, 2 Kids Under 3 (Part I).

FOOL ME TWICE: 2 KIDS UNDER 3 (Part I)

My oldest (MiniBee) turned 4 recently, and my youngest (MicroBee) is two months shy of 18 months, which means that at some point I did have 2 kids under 3 to take care of. It might be the biggest cliché ever, but time did fly since MicroBee was born, and today I look at this tall, brooding preschooler and this dancing, dumpster-diving toddler and I can't believe they are my sons. So I decided to stop and think about what a crazy roller-coaster the past two years have been, and which lessons I've learned that can be passed to future parents of 2 under 3. Here is Part I!

SECOND PREGNANCY

Everybody knows that nobody cares about your second pregnancy, but you'll be surprised by how little you will care yourself. Personally, I could never remember how many weeks I was, I'd ask strangers at the supermarket whether smoked salmon was safe for me, and I started talking to the baby inside me only when they told me he was fucking breech (don't worry, I kept it somewhat civilized).

BOOKS

Being the compulsive parenting-book reader that I am, I was surprised by the lack of well-established manuals for parents with young children. How I am supposed to raise these kids without expert advice?!? The reason is very simple: No parent of a toddler has the time to read such manuals (and I suspect no parent has the time to write them, as well). And even the freaks like myself who sacrifice what little sleep they have to read parenting books usually know at this point that these books are a hoax and that everybody is just winging it 99% of the time.

OUTNUMBERED

Believe me, as much as my wonderful MicroBee is a beautiful smily angel from planet Happy, not a day passes that I don't ask my husband what we were smoking when we decided to have a second child. You might have two children on paper, but it will feel like you have half a dozen. In any case, you're outnumbered, even when your partner is around. The only way around this is to be perfectly organized, frantically stacked with supplies, and always ready to deliver the best possible response for every demand from your children. I guess what I'm saying is, good luck.

MOTHER'S ARMS

Children under three still like to be held and carried places, so it was no surprise to me that the arrival of a baby would only intensify this need. Your children will both need to be held, often at the same time, so there will be times where you're going to have to do that. Hopefully this will happen after your birthing stitches have been removed. It does make for some great photos of course. Smile, always, so at least one day you can pretend that it was not excruciatingly painful.

MOM BRAIN

If you think you had mom brain the first time, think again. Actually, you can't. Your head is now occupied by two massive yearly planners filled with information to be dealt with at all times. No personal reflection will ever be possible again, and memories from your youth will come in blurry flashes only during the deepest of sleep. (And a side note to this. The term "mom brain" is used to imply that mothers become stupider with the arrival of children, and nothing angers me more than hearing this. Mothers do not become stupid; they are simply flooded with a myriad of information of both mundane and critical importance. And even with the occasional slip-up they do a pretty damn good job with it regardless of the minutes that they sleep per day.)


Read Fool Me Twice: 2 Kids Under 3 (Part II).

MATCHA CHOCOLATE CAKE

My oldest son, MiniBee, turned four (!) a couple of weeks ago, an event that was celebrated with friends and with a deluge of Venice Carnival sweets and a two-batch Pandecocco coconut cake. A couple of days later, we also had a smaller family celebration that required yet another birthday cake. As any parent knows, children are only slightly more traditionalistic than the most conservative old-Europe grandparent, so there was no way MiniBee could hear the words "happy birthday" without blowing on proper candles on a proper cake. I needed a recipe, and I remembered one for Chocolate Matcha Bundt Cake from Bakerella (of the infamous cake pops) that had been sitting patiently on my Evernote for at least three years. I love matcha and I enjoyed it in many versions on my 2009 food pilgrimage to Japan, and I especially love how it couples lusciously with chocolate. It all started when a friend gave me an assortment of fancy chocolates that contained a matcha-chocolate combination that was one of the highlights of my life as an eater.

Now, someone could argue that matcha is a risky choice for a preschooler's birthday cake, and I can definitely tell you that when MiniBee heard his birthday cake was made with TEA, he was not at all pleased. But, in rebuttal to any concerns and objections I have two points to make:

1. Children will eat any cake that's placed in front of them, especially when decorated with birthday candles.

2. It doesn't matter whose birthday is it: If I'm baking or buying a cake, I need to like it first.

The second point is actually a corollary of my favorite parenting rule:

Substitute "wear" with "eat" and "oxygen mask" with "damn cake" and you'll see what I mean.

But back to matcha. For the cake, I used some unsweetened matcha powder I bought at HMart. And since the party was attended only by five people, I decided against the Bundt format and made a simple layer cake instead, halving the ingredients and making a couple of variations (more egg, less sugar, and my trusted addition of plain yogurt to guarantee a moist texture). I also suspect the matcha-chocolate combination works best in a slimmer cake. What can I say? I think it's classier this way. And as someone who wears German slippers all year round and whose every food contains 15% dog hair, let me tell you: I KNOW CLASS.

The final matcha chocolate cake was delicious, sweet and grassy and elegant (disclaimer: see my standards above), and perfect to be enjoyed with or without children.

Oh, if you wonder about MiniBee: He had two slices and was happy as a clam. And so was I.

MATCHA CHOCOLATE CAKE

Ingredients

Chocolate Mixture
3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/4 cup baking cocoa powder
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Matcha Mixture
3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 tbsp unsweetened matcha
3/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt

Wet Ingredients
1 C sugar
1 stick unsalted butter at room temperature
2 eggs
3/4 C milk
1/2 C yogurt
1/2 tsp vanilla

Directions

• Preheat oven to 325 degrees.
• Grease and flour a 9'' springform pan. You can also line it with parchment paper if you prefer.
• In a small bowl, whisk together the ingredients for the chocolate mixture.
• In another small bowl, whisk together the ingredients for the matcha mixture.
• In yet another bowl, cream the butter and sugar with an electric mixer, then add the rest of the wet ingredients.
• Divide the wet ingredients evenly between the two flour mixtures, stirring until combined.
• Pour the two mixtures into the pan. Bakerella suggests doing this in tablespoons to maintain the two colors vibrant. I poured half mixture at a time and then swirled them with my finger.
• Bake for 45–50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.
• Let rest of 10 minutes and dust with cocoa powder and powdered sugar.

PUMPKIN RAVIOLI (MADE WITH CHESTNUT FLOUR)

  

Here I am with a recipe that has been wiggling in my brain for months: pumpkin ravioli made with chestnut flour. I LOVE chestnut flour. I bought it for the first time a few years ago from The Italian Store, and I've used a few times to make linguine and crepes with great success. Chestnut flour has a mellow, sweet, nutty flavor that is subtle and unexpected. It produces a pasta dough that is tougher than the usual dough for egg pasta, but it also cooks very well and maintains a good bite, so it's worth every extra pound of pressure you need to apply to your rolling pin and pasta maker.

The pumpkin/chestnut idea became suddenly urgent when last month, on a whim, I bought a peanut pumpkin that a DeadChef follower and cooking expert later defined as "the MOST delicious pumpkin ever for pies and everything else". This is the kind of comment that gets me really excited, of course. Unfortunately, days passed and I couldn't get to my ravioli thanks (really, THANK YOU) to a string of unforeseen, disheartening sh*t, including Microbee (the youngest) getting sick and throwing the entire family into a weeklong nightmare of tears, snot, insomnia, and recrimination. When I finally judged myself ready for my peanut pumpkin, I realized with great horror that it had rotted from the inside and was completely inedible. To make things worse, my farmer's market was not selling them anymore. Which brings me to my new motto:

I had to give up on the best pumpkin in the world, but I wasn't giving up on my ravioli vision.

So I immediately drove back to my farmer's market and purchased another pumpkin. This time, I chose a Long Island Cheese Pumpkin, because if I couldn't have the best, then I wanted another with a similarly evocative name. The Cheese Pumpkin didn't disappoint—well, it did disappoint in not tasting like actual cheese, but I knew the name was due to its shape—it is a more velvety and sweet version of a butternut squash, and decidedly more delicious. 

While the pumpkin was roasting in the oven, I worked on the chestnut-flour pasta dough, and then rolled it out, stretched it, filled it, and cut it despite the slightly unnerving attentions of my very defiant and mechanically-obsessed Minibee (the oldest).

The pasta cutter in the last pic belonged to my maternal grandma. It's my amulet.

I'm happy to report, the final ravioli were a total delight, sweet and creamy and absolutely perfect for fall. We served them topped with melted butter, grated Parmigiano, and a little black pepper, and added some leftover cheese pumpkin cubes aside. It took a whole afternoon with the constant sabotaging by my kids, but when there's a pot of buttery ravioli at the end of the parenting tunnel, nothing can stop me.

PUMPKIN RAVIOLI 

(MADE WITH CHESTNUT FLOUR)

for the filling:
2C roasted pumpkin (with EVOO and kosher salt)
1/2C grated Parmigiano Reggiano
freshly ground black pepper

for the pasta:
1C chestnut flour
1C unbleached all-purpose flour
a pinch of salt
1 tbsp EVOO
2 eggs
1 egg white (for sealing the ravioli)

finish:
2 tbsp unsalted butter
1/4C grated Parmigiano
freshly ground black pepper

MAKE THE FILLING

• Peel and cut your pumpkin in small pieces. Drizzle with oil, sprinkle with salt and roast in a 375F oven until fork tender. Let cool.
• Mash the pumpkin with a potato masher if you like to keep some of the original texture (and heartiness), otherwise, puree until smooth in a food processor. 
• Stir in the Parmigiano and the pepper.

MAKE THE PASTA DOUGH

• Mix the two flours in a bowl and stir in the salt and EVOO.
• Add the two eggs and mix first with a fork and then, when the dough starts to come together, with your hands, until you obtain a compact, elastic dough that is not sticky. If the dough is still dry and crumbly, sprinkle with water until you reach the desired consistency.
• Cover and let rest of 30 minutes.

MAKE THE RAVIOLI

• Roll out the dough with a rolling pin or with a pasta machine until very thin. If you never used a pasta machine before but want to start now, check out these instructions.
• My ravioli were 3X3'', because I wanted to have a little filling in the center and some room for the pasta itself to breathe (you get to enjoy the chestnut flavor more). If you want the same, cut the pasta in 3'' wide strips and place a heaping teaspoon of filling every 3''.
• Brush with egg white (mixed with a couple tablespoons of water) along the edges and in between the filling heaps.
• Place another strip of pasta on top and cut the edges of each piece with a pasta cutter.
• Place the finished ravioli on a floured kitchen towel and sprinkle with flour.

COOK&SERVE

• Melt butter in a nonstick pan.
• Cook the ravioli in gently boiling water for 2–3 minutes. Be delicate: they are.
• Serve the ravioli, about 5 per portion, topped with melted butter, black pepper, and Parmigiano.

WISDOM

WISDOM