easier/harder

Posted on August 11, 2012 by mommyinthemidwest

Do you ever feel like you’re wishing away the age that your child is at because it’s harder than what you anticipate the next stage will be? I guess I wouldn’t say I’m wishing it away, but I find myself thinking “it sure will be better when…” Fill in the blank with anything the boys will be able to do 6 months or 6 years from now. There is always something easier and harder than the way it used to be…there is always something easier and harder about the way it will one day be.

When the baby is a newborn, you’re thinking it will be nice when they can sleep through the night, tell you what you want, and doesn’t need to be held all the time. Later you remember how snuggly they used to be, how they used to nap 6 times a day, and how they didn’t ever say “mommy, I don’t like you anymore.”

When they are 6 months old you wish they could walk or crawl so you don’t have to carry them every second of every day anymore. Once they start that, you’ll remember what it was like to sit them in one spot on the floor and leave the room, knowing they would still be there when you got back. You know, as opposed to licking electrical outlets or something (mine have safety plugs, I’m just saying!).

Then they turn 2 and they start throwing tantrums like you’ve never seen. The kind non-parents didn’t know existed. Then you think, man, it will be nice when he’s 5 and can be reasoned with at times like this. You think it was a lot easier when we didn’t have to try to talk him into peeing in the potty every day. Or bribe him to eat. Or bribe him to do just about anything because he’s so dang independent that he wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it, or else (see first sentence of this paragraph).

Needless to say, I am only 2 years and 5 months into this parenting thing. I can only imagine how I’ll be sitting around one of these days, feeling pretty sad about my boys driving away from home on Friday night to go to a high school basketball game or pick up their dates. I’ll remember how they wanted me when they were sick and how they reached for me to pick them up out of their cribs. I’ll think about the joy on their little faces when they were only 1 & 2 years old and they had just discovered something so simple and new. Every time I find myself idealizing how wonderful the future will be, I bring myself back to the right now because these little kids of mine? They are pretty much perfect and the most fun that they’ve ever been. Will there come a day that I don’t feel that way anymore? Hope not.

~C~

Dinnertime: what’s right or wrong?

Posted on August 8, 2012 by mommyinthemidwest

This has been on my mind for some time. We go through periods of time where the boys eat great and I don’t have to worry about it at all. Other times, I struggle with what to do.

Eating habits. What do you do? Do you try to coax your kids (toddlers) to eat what’s on their plate? I have mixed feelings about this. I have a habit of cleaning my plate just because the food is there and it shouldn’t go to waste. Not necessarily because I am so hungry that I need to eat everything in sight. I don’t know what my child’s stomach feels like so is it fair for me to push him to clean his plate if he’s not that hungry? Doesn’t that just set him up for the same bad habits I’ve fallen into, which have caused me to gain and struggle to maintain a healthy weight?

Sometimes we have a dessert that I am excited for him to taste. If he doesn’t eat his vegetables, should I withhold that treat? Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t. I don’t want to set him up for resenting vegetables. If he is forced to eat them, won’t he soon start (if he already hasn’t) to rebel against them? I don’t want to set my kid up for failure. There are so many things to worry about as a parent that I never even dreamed of before.

Here’s a scenario that happens all too often at our house. I’ll fix dinner and Theo will refuse to eat or barely pick at his food. No dessert. We don’t force or high-pressure him to eat. Bedtime rolls around and conveniently, he’s suddenly hungry. Ryan says he shouldn’t get another chance to eat dinner because then he’s running us around like short order cooks. Valid point, but I can’t let him go to bed with his stomach growling. What if he really is hungry? At that point it’s been 7-8 hrs since his last meal and he really might need something. Normally, if I have saved his plate, he will eat it. Sometimes he asks for yogurt. I don’t ever allow crackers or cookies in that situation. The doctor actually suggested yogurt or cheese as a bedtime snack when he skips meals. I’m just torn.

Both Theo and Dexter are thin, hovering around the 20th percentile. It isn’t like a bedtime snack is going to push them over the line to obesity. But should I be teaching them a lesson by sticking to a hard and fast rule about when they are allowed to eat? I’ve read a million different things and theories.

What’s yours?

~C~

ready for change?

Posted on August 7, 2012 by mommyinthemidwest

Well, well, well. A few things have changed since I last wrote. Like, oh, you know, we got a new house and I got a new job.

What the what!

Yep, we closed on our house (seen here and here) a couple of weeks ago. Some issues came up (I’ll talk more about later, maybe) so we weren’t able to start in on our remodeling right away. Sunday we said to heck with it and decided to move forward.

And I wasn’t looking for a job. I worked in child welfare for 6 years and had no immediate plans of going anywhere else. But another social work job in the mental health field found it’s way to me and I couldn’t pass it up. No more night shift! I’m going back to living like normal people instead of vampires. Somebody say woot! I start in a couple of weeks. My new employer was kind enough to allow me some time to work on our house.

I have been so preoccupied and busy that I haven’t had much time to write. Not a lot has changed with the boys, other than growing taller and smarter and older every day. Theo sounds too old, saying things that he hears grown-ups say, like “last week I was at the store and I saw something and then I went to the car and probably saw everything everywhere…” and on and on and on. I just love listening to his stories about nothing at all. Dex is starting to try more and more words when prompted but I don’t feel like he says them independently as much as Theo did at about 15 months. Hard to remember these things!

SO… back to the HOUSE. I’m excited about the changes we’ve made so far with Ryan’s dad’s help. We’ve got lots of bright ideas and it seems like everything is top priority. Who knows when we’ll ever get it all done. Here are a couple of before/after photos so far.

Front door: