Tag: nycmoms

The First Step on the Road to Vegetarianism

The waitress had just set down my food, the vegetarian combination, and my husband’s Doro Wat when she looked at my daughter and told her, “I’ll be right back with your lamb.”  My child’s eyes grew large and filled with tears.
“I told you I don’t eat anything cute!”

It’s true.  My daughter does not consume the flesh of any creature that might appear as a plush friend in an Easter basket.

My husband had been so happy to find something on the menu mild enough for our daughter, so that we could come as a family to this neighborhood Ethiopian restaurant where she does not like the way the vegetables are prepared.

The first time my daughter tasted the meat off her father’s plate, he didn’t tell her what  it was. I wasn’t paying attention, I assumed it was beef.  The Husband told me later that it was lamb and he hadn’t told her because he wanted to be able to go back to that restaurant as a family.  I suppose I should have told him, that this would be perceived as betrayal.  But, I thought he knew.  How many episodes of The Simpson’s have my husband and daughter watched together.

How often does Lisa’s vegetarianism come up?  Why didn’t my husband see this coming?  

My own road to becoming a vegetarian began in elementary school the first time I refused to eat anything I had seen dead.  
It was not long after we had moved to Montana and my father shot Bambi and hung the corpse in the garage to cure before he and my mother butchered the meat like some kind of pioneers, or Sweeney Todd, or Hannibal Lecter.

Some kid argued with me, “You eat cows don’t you?”

“Not anymore!” was my answer as a 7th grader and I still haven’t.

When the waitress returned with the lamb stew, she took one look at my daughter, turned right around, and returned the Ye Beg Alicha back to the kitchen.  When we got our check it had been crossed off the bill.

I don’t know how this incident will to shake out for us as far as the timing of my daughter becoming a vegetarian.  But, I’m pretty sure we won’t be going back to that particular restaurant any time soon.

This is an original NYC Moms Blog post.

Tiana the White Princess

While watching the new Disney animated movie, The Princess and the Frog at the Ziegfeld Theatre, and then photographing my daughter next to various Disney Princesses, all of whom were at the Roseland Ballroom afterwards, as part of The Princess and the Frog Ultimate Disney Experience, it occurred to me that the “finally a Black Disney Princess” princess might become known to the preschool set as “The White Princess”.  I hope it happens in our “finally a Black President” Obama in the White House America.

Princess Tiana does spend much of the movie as a frog, which might entice some more little boys into theaters.  However, she has 3 -count them three- iconic ball gowns in addition to a pretty great 1920’s fantasy sequence beaded number.  I know one dress is kind of blue and the finale dress has some green layers, but the dresses are white. White like a wedding dress, white like a debutante dress, white like she is the white princess because her dress is white.

Maybe she’ll become known as the green princess or the frog princess, or the cooking princess, or the princess with the strapless dress with a blue sash, but the dress she wore at the Ultimate Disney Experience was white.  A Southern Belle Princess, she’s a gift to the city of New Orleans.  Also the music and story seem structured for an easy transition to the stage and I expect that soon I’ll see banner on a bus announcing the stars of Disney’s The Princess and the Frog on Broadway.

My daughter became intimate with the Disney Princesses in preschool.  It was a social phenomenon.  All the girls in her pre-K class loved princesses and each had her favorite.  My kid chose Belle from Beauty and the Beast, because her favorite color was yellow. It was a simple transition from her favorite Wiggle, Greg, who was also yellow. Aurora, Sleeping Beauty, was her next favorite princess and Cinderella came in third. They are available often as a trio, the pink princess, the yellow princess and the blue princess.  If one member of the trio on the pencil case, or whatever licensed item was in question, was Snow White, my child was not interested.

Pink. Yellow. Blue. White. Green.

Say Yes to the dress.

Being a princess is about the ball gown and Princess Tiana has plenty to choose from.  She will not become one of the wallflowers like Pocahontas or Mulan.  Worthy role models both, but what girl can have fun in the constricting folk costumes they wear. Jasmine wears pants, so she can turn cartwheels if she feels like it and Ariel, The Little Mermaid, can swim.  I fail to see the appeal of Sleeping Beauty.  She seems boring.  When my daughter’s friends pretended to be her, they lay down and closed their eyes. But, she does have long blonde hair and a dress that is the favorite color of a large percentage of the little girl demographic.

Princess Tiana, the only Disney animated princess to debut during my daughter’s childhood, is destined to become a dress-up favorite.  Her ball gown is big, the kind you can run in, the kind you can spin around in until you fall on the floor in and then get up without assistance.  That’s something to be desired in formal attire.  It’s practical and beautiful, like the American princess who wears it.

Kathie lives with her Handsome Prince and her Little Princess in Brooklyn.  

This is an original NYC Moms Blog.