Mark of Fridays: Hair raising!

No, we did not drop a hair dryer in the bathtub. That's just his Albert Einstein look.

BASEBALL DRAFT

Mark of Fridays: Ahoy Matey

Ahoy there, land lovers! There be storm waters ahead so let us set sail for Diaper Island!

That be an island made of diapers.

Actually, ye may not want to sail there after all. Arrrrgh.

Mark of Fridays: Your snooze, your rules

Sometimes you just can't stay awake another minute.

Mark of Fridays: Struggles in Foodville

Lynne and Matt like to eat. They eat for survival. They eat because food is tasty. They come from long lines of eaters, some of whom (most notably on the Seago side) are world-renowned for the volume of food they can cook and eat in one sitting.

So it never occurred to them that Mark might not want to eat. Or that Mark - no matter how hard they tried to sneak food into his mouth when he wasn't looking - might cry and spit and gag and simply refuse to swallow.

The problems started last June, when the pediatrician told us to stop buying baby food. She said Mark could now eat whatever we were eating, just mashed up a little. The problem was that he simply refused to eat anything that didn't come out of a jar. He wouldn't eat table food that had been mashed or even pureed. He wouldn't eat - let alone touch - a Cheerio. He wouldn't put cut-up fruit in his mouth.

When we went back to the pediatrician in September, she advised us to buy a food processor, then puree our foods into liquid form. If Mark would accept that, she advised, we could then gradually make the food chunkier until he'd willingly ingest it. But he would not accept it. Not in any degree of chunkiness. We tried other foods we thought had an acceptable texture: yogurt, cottage cheese, mashed potatoes. We dropped chunks of solid food into his Gerber jars. Nothing worked.

We grew frustrated and a little desperate. In December, the pediatrician referred us to a speech therapist for an evaluation of Mark's palate and throat. She watched Mark eat (or rather, not eat) and freak out when he was presented with new foods. She concluded that Mark was a little bit behind other kids his age in the way he was (or more accurately, was not) able to move food around in his mouth. He also gagged too easily, because he didn't have much experience eating or working with solid food. Most fundamentally, though, he was afraid of food, probably as a result of having pyloric stenosis and doing lots of upchucking as an infant. All of this sounded very bad, but we were assured that the problems were fixable.

So Mark started to work with Miss Kelly the Speech Therapist in January. They pretty much play in food. They feed all of Mark's animals. They stack up food like blocks. They carry it around the room. They give it kisses. In a food therapy session, Mark's parents would think many times: are we really paying for this?

But then Mark started having discoveries. He tried banana. Then he learned to hold onto the banana - peel and all - and take big bites out of it. He ate pieces of an apple. Then we had the Great Cantaloupe Breakthrough. He was introduced to cantaloupe for the first time in the morning, had it on the tray at lunch, and by dinner he was eating it. Matt cried a little. In the days that followed, Mark willingly tried nectarine, Nilla Wafers, yogurt, and a chocolate chip cookie. The gap between when Mark sees a new food and when he's willing to put it in his mouth are narrowing. He's starting to be a true Food Explorer. Lynne and Matt couldn't be prouder.

We still have a long way to go, but it looks like Mark is becoming less afraid of his food. We think maybe part of the solution is that we let him be in control of the new foods now: he gets to hold them and decide when to put them in his mouth. We no longer try to sneak anything in there. And there's no question that the food therapy, where he has learned to play with food in a non-threatening way, has been a game-changer.

If things continue the way they're going, by summer Mark will surely be ready for a True Eater's big challenge: Grandpa Barry's Specialty Three Meat Summer Barbecue. Hooray!

Matt's Top Three and Half Movies List

So this is the place where Matt generally presents his top 10 movies of the year. Readers of this well-respected and tragically overlooked feature have come to treasure his off-beat, gritty selections.
Alas, then a kid was born. And he is not allowed (able?) to watch movies that don't have muppets in them.
So, for the first time in a long time, Matt will not have a Top Ten Movies list. Matt's not entirely sure he even saw 10 movies last year. Of the 10 Best Picture nominees, Matt saw just five (Inception, The Kids Are All Right, The Social Network, Toy Story 3 and The King's Speech) and just one of the documentaries, which is where Matt usually finds his favorites. Honestly, Matt didn't see many movies beyond that. So, it's not really fair to give a top 10 list with so many left unseen.
Instead, how about just a list of good movies and some comments.

UPDATE: Matt totally forgot about Easy A, which would have surely made even a full Top 10 list. The movie was clever, funny and had a superstar lead performance from Emma Stone.

Toy Story 3. Matt had an unfair bias against this movie for being a sequel's sequel. How could a Part 3 be any good? Even the Godfather III was ridiculous. But this was the best movie Matt saw this year. Funny, smart and moving.

Exit From The Gift Shop. No movie made Matt think more. This was a documentary about graffiti artists where the documentarian became an artist himself. Allegedly. There's plenty of speculation about how much, if any, of this movie was real. Exit challenged the ideas of what art is and what it should be. Plus, one of the few movies that mocked its own audience. Odd, wonderful film.

The Kids Are All Right. Was all right. Great acting by Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore. Not really a great movie. Couldn't figure out what Moore and Annette Benning's characters saw in each other.

The King's Speech. Beautiful acting from all the leads. Firth and Rush were amazing. An engaging story that Matt knew very little about. That being said...how many more movies do we really need about The Royals? It's very hard for Matt to buy that these unelected, uber-rich people have so many hardships. Still, worth seeing, for sure.

Inception. Brilliant. We have to reach a point where Christopher Nolan arrives at the end of our consciousness, right? How can someone think so much, and write so magnificently, about thinking? The fact that anyone could follow this movie at all is a tribute the director, editors and writers. This was impossibly complex movie that made perfect sense.

The Social Network. Great acting, great editing, great script. But....but...ugh. This is another of Matt's little hang ups. This is a movie about real people and it uses their real names. But screenwriter Aaron Sorkin essentially bragged that he didn't care whether he got the facts right. Now, of course, any non-documentary movie based on real people is bound to have invented scenes and dialog. (Not everything in King's Speech happened just that way.) But Sorkin wanted the cache of having a Facebook movie, having a Mark Zuckerberg movie, but he'd rather not be too bothered with the truth. As a reporter, Matt has a hard time getting over this.

OK, that's about it. All the best movies are TV shows now, anyhow! (Only sort of kidding.)

On the upside: Christian Bale's Oscar win means that Matt was in a scene with an Academy Award winner. Well, really, an Oscar winner was in a scene with Matt. Sure, the scene got cut. But, still.

Tweet me!

Did you know that those of you who are on Twitter can follow Matt at MattHBeacon? Didjaknowthat?
Of course, it's a work account so it's lots of links to murder trials and roaming chicken stories. But if that's your kind of thing, then follow away!