We’re looking for our first Little Citizen of the Month! Upload a photo of your little one dressed in Tea on our new Facebook Page. Each month we will select a little citizen to win a $200 gift certificate to spend here at Tea!
To win you must be on the Tea Stay in Touch list. Also, please include in your caption what you love about Tea or why your little one is a little citizen of the world.
I grew up in Missouri. My husband grew up in Russia, and this is where his extended family remained. Now we live together in the Bay Area with our kids. In 2008, we packed up our 3 and a half and nearly 2 year old children and made the trek (24 hours door to door with two toddlers is officially a trek) to Saint Petersburg. Though the trip was not without its challenges, it was wonderful to experience Russia with the kids.
Since day one, Dmitri, my husband, has always spoken with the children in Russian. They have a Russian nanny and many local Russian friends. So, the kids both speak in Russian as well as they do in English. It was such a pleasure to watch them naturally and easily interact with their extended family in Russian. They played games, laughed at their grandfather’s jokes, and chatted endlessly with their slightly older Russian cousin (age 8).
We enjoyed long strolls with the whole extended family in the beautiful parks in St. Petersburg surrounded by canals. We went to the zoo. We played in the neighborhood playgrounds. We ate yummy treats. Max discovered a pretty serious passion for Russian apple juice boxes (not really unlike juice boxes in the U.S., but in plentiful supply and at his reaching distance in his grandparents’ pantry), and both ate a considerable amount of Babuschka’s (grandmother, in Russian) borscht soup. It was a toddler paradise. The jet lag was a little crazy. Visiting almost the exact opposite point on the globe pretty much flips night and day. The kids got a little turned around. They’d be up one moment playing enthusiastically with their cousin, and then moments later crash into deep sleep. I was beyond exhausted, but I have to smile as I recall the trip. This is what it means to be a little citizen of the world – to be equally at home on either side of the globe at the tender age of 2.
Back in the days when there was just my husband and I, we took turns with “cooking” dinner and by “cooking” dinner I mean walking to the kitchen drawer where we keep the take-out menus. “I’m cooking tonight. Do you want Thai food?”
Nothing like a baby to make you behave in oh so many ways. Luckily for baby Olivia, our granola-Berkeley friends sent over an amazing book called Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron. Initially I flipped through it and it looked too complicated and utterly impossible to follow so I put it aside. Somewhere along the line I picked it up again for a quick reference. Our pediatrician told us that she was not getting enough iron so I referenced “the book” and found good food sources. I then found useful information after more useful information. This book is like having an elder at your fingertips. It is chock full of knowledge which ranges from how much should your baby eat, what should a 5 month old eat, a crash course in nutrition, play ideas, homemade silly putty and toddler (and grown-up) recipes…to name a few. Tonight I pulled out “the book” because I couldn’t remember how long to microwave corn on the cob while in the husk. Viola. 3 minutes and turn halfway through. Today, Yaron’s food index is the most valuable part of the book for me at this point in my 5 year olds life.
In the end, I never bought baby food from the store. I followed Yaron’s suggestions to puree, pour into ice cube trays and freeze. It was easy, it felt good and I saved money.
Go to your happy place. That is what I keep telling myself. In the middle of February, freezing cold, school out at least one day a week, and my regular babysitter out of town, I resort often to “going to my happy place.” I’m not unique in this escape mechanism. I’m sure we all are doing it right about now.
What is unique about “going to my happy place” is that it is literally in the middle of nowhere. The Pantanal. Where? Didn’t you take geography in Middle School? It’s a tropical wetland in the southwest of Brazil. Never heard of it? Well join the club. I don’t even know if Brazilians really know about it either. And that is what makes it so wonderful.
It’s not easy to get there, thank goodness, or everyone would go. But when you finally arrive after a mere 3 flights (one only seating 5 people), you feel like you have arrived to heaven…or fantasy island at least. Flying in through the clouds, no physical structures can be seen for miles, just flat, beautiful landscape dissected by snaking dark rivers. Our destination was an immense ranch (fazenda) that was still slightly functioning as a ranch, but honestly functioning as wilderness adventure destination for Brazilians and foreigners alike.
So when I go to my “happy place” I go to the ranch that took me daily to fish in the rivers, to seek out jaguars, walk among the capybara, and hike past groups of coatamundi. I remember wistfully the silence as we canoed through crocodile alley practically running into the hundreds of crocodiles that were swimming and bathing around us. I also salivate at the thought of drinking fresh passion fruit caiparinhas at the end of the day, and being forced to go to bed at 10pm after a few rounds of hearts when all the electricity was turned off.
Ok, ok…I try to forget about the plumbing at the ranch…that’s not such a happy place, but I’m willing to overlook it. In the middle of winter, desperately waiting for the arrival of spring, I think I’m willing to overlook just about anything to have a few minutes of peace, sunshine, nature, and happiness.
My 2 year old daughter, Lizzie, is just starting to become interested in what she wears every day. It was so much fun to put her into the Izumi Dress, from the new Tea East Meets Brazil collection, and watch her animated reaction to the beautiful graphic on the front. I spent a few minutes with her telling her the story of the Japanese Fan Festival, and told her about the “pretty girl” on her dress. She loves to point to the girl on her dress! I love that the dress is soft, comfortable and easy to wash!
Check out this video over at BNET! Meet some of the Tea team and learn about how we use technology to reach you and your little citizens of the world.
I love her attitude and perspective, and BTW, I loved her choice of designer for her Inauguration Day outfit – citron wool lace dress & coat by Isabelle Toledo. I’m so exited to watch how she evolves the role of the first lady and the perception of the White House.
So I was elated to read this today on style.com:
Just as Hillary Clinton took Chelsea along to Europe and Africa when she was off from school, Mrs. Obama anticipates traveling with her own daughters during school breaks. “I’ve been grateful that my girls have been able to see parts of the country that I’m just seeing at the age of 44,” she says. “It’s not only seeing Paris, London, and Rome. It’s also the remote places…exposing them to what we hope all kids will have: a feeling that they are citizens of the world.”
- Michelle Obama in Vogue, as reported by Andre Leon Talley
She so eloquently expresses what we want for every child wearing Tea. It’s so powerful to witness the creation of global awareness in the next generation.
The rest of the article: http://www.style.com/vogue/feature/2009_March_Michelle_Obama/?mbid=sn
My husband Jeff always swore that our kids would grow up exposed to many different types of cuisine. He was particularly sensitive to this because he has always felt somewhat cheated as a result growing up on bland boring English food. My Mother-in-law dislikes any type of seasoning including garlic. It wasn’t until he was in his twenties that he tried different types of food and hasn’t looked back since (he’s somewhat of a foodie). Since we eat various types of ethnic food regularly there was no question that our daughter Zoe would as well.
As a first birthday gift Zoe received a wooden toy sushi set. It’s an adorable toy. At this time she was just starting to eat finger foods such as peas and o-shaped cereal and wasn’t quite ready for anything quite as large as a piece of sushi. But she quickly became somewhat obsessed with the sushi toy. She’d point to it and say “sushi, sushi” asking us to take it down from the shelf. She loved to try to pick up the sushi pieces with one Velcro chopstick tip attaching itself to the Velcro on the sushi piece. She loved taking apart the sushi pieces and reattaching them to a different piece of rice. She also loved pretending that she was eating it by putting a piece to her mouth and smacking her lips.
A few months later, pregnant with Zoe’s sibling-to-be, I went through a bought of first trimester sickness. The only thing I could eat for a couple of weeks was veggie sushi rolls and I craved them constantly. We made almost daily trips to the café area of Whole Foods for veggie sushi rolls. Many nights the three of us went out to our local Japanese restaurant for “sushi” which again meant avocado rolls for me and Zoe and “real” sushi for Jeff.
Over the course of these two weeks Zoe became obsessed not only with her sushi toy but also with the food itself. Now that I am over that phase we still eat sushi pretty often –partially because Zoe requests it. When I ask her if she wants to eat lunch she asks “sushi?” When she’s playing with her toys and sets the toy people around the little toy table and chairs and I ask “Zoe what are they having for dinner?” the answer is always “sushi.” Since the American Academy of Pediatrics suggests waiting until at least age four to introduce raw fish, for now the only thing in her sushi rolls is avocado or cucumber. However, I hear that in Japan both pregnant women and young children eat raw fish as long as it’s not tuna or other high-mercury types –so maybe we’ll both be eating a spicy scallop roll earlier than I had thought.
We’ve had such a cold and icy winter in Central Pennsylvania; we jumped at the chance to take a weekend trip to Washington DC to relieve our cabin fever. On Sunday, the temperatures shot up to the 50s and we were within walking distance to the zoo. As we walked leisurely up Connecticut Avenue, joggers ran by with short sleeves and some even had shorts on. I almost expected cherry blossoms to burst out from the trees because it was that kind of day…bright, clear, and shining.
Without a stroller or a backpack, I was forced to walk at Jude’s pace. And even though cars whizzed by and almost everyone we passed was on their Bluetooth walking furiously or running past us, it made me appreciate the pace of a 3 year old. We noticed special rocks. We smelled the delicious foods from other cultures…Thai, Italian, Mexican, Mediterranean. We listened to noises that were unfamiliar to our non-urban ears..honking cars, sirens, helicopters, a street performer greeting passengers exiting the metro with the soothing sounds of classical guitar. Every now and then, Jude would stop and do some sort of yoga move spreading his legs as far apart as he could just to be silly, and we would say, “stretch” together. Mostly, we held hands, strolled along and appreciated each other’s company as the world sped past us.
We arrived at what turned out to be our only destination for the day, The National Zoo. The National Zoo features animals from around the world, and it is a great way to expose children to all the different biomes and unique habitats that exist if world travel isn’t in your budget. Jude asked, “What’s that sound mommy?” Throughout, you could hear the harsh sound of animal caretakers scrapping ice off the animals’ outdoor enclosures. Even though the weather was so nice, many animals were still inside, but we found pleasure in searching for the animals in various exhibits designed to mimic natural habitats from around the world whether they were inside or out. I realized that in order to see if Jude could see what I was pointing out to him, I’d have to squat down to his level. I decided that it was fun to look at the exhibits from his level made a mental note to do that more often in our everyday life. I let Jude chose our path and pace through the zoo. Oddly we spent the most time watching the 2-toed Sloth, who was actually quite active, and never made it to see the lions.
At the end of the afternoon, we sat on a cold granite bench in the metro station watching the red numbers go from 5 to 4 to 3 to 2 to 1. We watched other trains come and go and Jude remarked “Those trains have coaches.” When our train came, we climbed aboard and took our seats. I looked around at the passengers. One older lady with a guitar case was reading the Upper Room. A young African American man wearing a uniform of a security guard nodded off. Two well dressed Asian men conversed in a language that no one around them understood. I looked over at Jude. He had a big smile on his face. He was content to be riding on the train.
I remembered what that was like as a kid….to be happy doing just what you are doing. I was glad that I didn’t try to stick to my original plan for the day which included a trip to Chinatown and the National Building Museum. I was thinking of my normal pace when I thought we could do all that. Although, it was a shame that we didn’t get to see the Chinese Dragon in the Chinese New Year parade, I was content knowing we had enjoyed the day at a pace that allowed us to be fully present, aware, and admiring of the diversity of all the life around us.
