Thursday, March 14, 2013

My Favorite Food These Days

All I've done since I had Henry was eat my words.  Pretty much all of my (not well-founded) opinions on parenting, children, and general living have gone out the window, and my main concern is Henry's well-being and our own survival.  Some of the more ignorant stuff I thought and said before I had Henry:

1. My child will never play with plastic toys.
FACT: Nearly all of Henry's toys are plastic. And make annoying noises. But so long as he's entertained and not screaming in my face while I try to accomplish maybe one of the 200 things on my list, I'm a happy camper. I did buy him some "green" wooden toys, but he's just simply not interested in them. They aren't nearly as amusing to throw (at me, or the wall, or the cat) as the plastic ones, and strangely enough, the wooden ones don't make as annoying (and therefore satisfying) noise when banged together as the plastic ones. 

2. I will only feed my baby homemade baby food.
FACT: In the words of fellow Oklahoman Sweetie Brown, Ain't Nobody Got Time for That! I'm too busy trying to keep my kid alive to have time to steam, puree, divvy out, and freeze organic fruits and vegetables.  And the one time I did do all of that, Henry had the audacity to gag and puke up the carrots I made for him, not once, but twice! Forget it. It was Gerber Naturals for him.  I may try the homemade stuff again with my next one, but I'm not going to beat myself up over it.

3.  There is no reason why I can't exercise at least 5 days a week.
FACT: Seriously? What the hell was I even thinking saying this? I work 55-60 hours per week. By the time I work and spend with Henry every second of his waking hours that I'm not working (a whopping two hours each day), throw together some semblance of a dinner, do laundry (but rarely put it away), it's time to get my requisite 6-7 hours of sleep. I'm lucky if I get in 3 days of exercise a week - 5 days would be an absolute dream. I've been kind of beating myself up about this lately, especially since I bought a treadmill that I don't use nearly as much as I should. But running across this article sort of brought the whole lack of exercise thing into perspective. I'm going to keep aiming for more, but I should honestly be VERY happy with the 3 days I do squeeze in.

4. I will only listen to enriching children's music while transporting Henry.
FACT: While I do try to have fun sing-a-longs to H's Wiggleworms CD, some days (like today) I need a good dose of Girl Talk to get my day going.  I just tell myself that he can't understand the words, and that the fun beat is good for him and will help him develop his sense of rhythm.

The list could go on and on. The important thing to remember, I'm learning, is that it's important to be easy on yourself and take each day as it comes. I measure my success as a parent as whether we all three survived the day relatively unscathed.  If the answer is yes, I do a small victory dance before collapsing in front of the tv.

This precious face makes it all worthwhile!


2 comments:

Celena said...

Megan, I love this post. Thank you for perfectly summing up what all the rest of us moms are thinking. I might work out 1x a week, my kids survive on chicken nuggets and fruit (snacks), they request Taylor Swift in the car and they watch too much TV and iPads. But they are smart, funny, sweet and HAPPY boys so I think I'm doing ok. And so are you!

Celena said...

Oh, and check out Spaghetti Eddie! The boys love his songs and they are totally tolerable for us adults.