Lunar New Year

Each year at school the boys have a Chinese New Year assembly. They get very excited about this event, because they get to watch some fancy dancing and acquire fortune cookies and little red bags of chocolate coins (most likely made in New Jersey). At our house we also celebrate the Lunar New Year, but with a slightly different purpose (and less dancing. No Billy Idol in this case.). We use the New Year as an opportunity to modify annoying behavior.

For instance, we declared 2006 as the Year of the Pot. (Not the Michael Phelps kind of pot -- come on!). At that point, our enormous almost-four-year-olds were refusing to go to the toilet, and I was in that "Will my kids be in diapers in college?" stage of worry. And, if I'm truthful, I was getting kind of embarrassed about taking them out in public. What was I supposed to do -- heave my four foot, 55 pound preschoolers up on a changing table? So the Year of the Pot involved a lot of rather hefty bribes and a little bit of lying to make the kids think they came up with the idea. The result: everyone in this family will be wearing underpants at college.

But, of course, those of you who are parents know that many endeavors are more complicated than they first seem. For our kids, the 2006 project required an extra step. As a result, 2007 became the Year of the Wipe. I will not elaborate on this process here but will offer the confession that the results of the 2007 activities continue to be less impressive than they should be.

2008 was the Year of the Pronoun. I'm pretty sure I've talked about our pronoun issues before, but I will offer a recap. Blue and Green look alike. They have the same interests, and they stick to each other like glue. This has always been confusing to people. And then, when they were little, they had the added quirk of ignoring the basic rules of grammar. When talking about themselves, they would use the second person. If Blue was hungry, he would say, "You are hungry!" If Green was upset, he would say, "You are not happy!" Needless to say, this was a problem for anyone who did not know the code.

Before the Year of the Pronoun, we tried a number of pronoun incentive plans, most notably the Pronoun Sticker Chart. For every correct pronoun, a kid could get a sticker. This worked for something like two minutes. I remember standing in the kitchen with a big book of stickers from Target, armed with patience and a chirpy attitude. "Who can give me an 'I' sentence?" I asked. "I can!" Blue shouted, and was rewarded with a sticker. "Me, too!" said Green. "I want another one," Blue said, laughing. "Me, too!" said Green. Stickers were flying onto the chart. Woo! What fun! Then Green turned to me with a frown and said, "You're done."

One day, for reasons unclear, the boys switched from using the second person to the third person. So if Green said, "Green hates vegetables," he was talking about himself. It seemed like a step in the right direction, but yet -- still a confusing mess. The Year of the Pronoun promised to be a busy one. Oh yes -- I was going to send those kids to college with clean underwear AND the ability to communicate with others.

And you know what -- it worked! The boys started using "I" and "me" correctly and with ease. Though if I'm honest, I'll admit that I probably had nothing to do with it.

That brings me to 2009. Green does indeed hate vegetables, and Blue will happily hate anything that Green hates. And what began as a toddlery distaste for variety is now just poor nutrition. And, you know, I'm unemployed and have lots of time to worry about ending up on a TLC reality show called BAD MOTHERS AND THE KIDS THAT THEY MESSED UP.

Last weekend, my parents took us to a nearby Chinese restaurant. The boys ordered their usual dish of (beige) noodles with (beige) tofu and (white) rice with NO VEGETABLES. Each time we go to this restaurant we have to somehow translate, "Please do not put onions or basil or any sort of green fleck that might be confused with a vegetable on the noodles, or an epic hissy fit will ensue." And it occurred to me at that moment, 2009 is going to be the Year of the Vegetable.

Yesterday I began the hard work of selling vegetables as tasty treats. I pulled out the cookbook my Great Aunt Martha gave me as a wedding gift, the kind of cookbook that has a whole section on cooking vegetables with marshmallows. And I found this carrot recipe that managed to take the vegetable OUT of the carrot (Boil the crap out of it, coat it in brown sugar and butter). I presented this dish to the boys with the following preface: "Boys! Try this yummy piece of orange candy covered in fat!"

As it turns out, you can put lipstick on a carrot, but it's still a carrot.

Don't worry -- I'm not afraid. 2009 has just begun. It's the year of HOPE! and CHANGE! Right? With any luck, we can transform these kids' beige palates, one marshmallowy bite at a time. YES WE CAN!!!