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Donna's Diary Entries Diary Navigation: Choose A Diary Entry -------------------- Latest Entry: 5/19/07 -------------------- 4/21/07 3/11/07 2/9/07 1/9/07, Entry 2 12/22/06 12/11/06 11/28/06 11/20/06 11/15/06 11/10/06 11/1/06 10/24/06 10/17/06 10/11/06 10/3/06 9/25/06 9/17/06 9/11/06 9/6/06 8/27/06 8/20/06 8/13/06 8/6/06 7/30/06 7/23/06 7/16/06 7/9/06 7/4/06 6/25/06 6/19/06 6/11/06 6/4/06 -------------------- Donna's Introduction

07/09/06 - Summer camp, first tricycle, and more about me

July 9, 2006

Justin started summer camp on Wednesday.  It is at his school, but for July and August they do different activities than during the school year and add on an extra fee.  Every week they do a craft one day and have ice cream or Italian ices another day, and pizza on Fridays.  Then the other days are special activities.  For example, Wednesday everyone wore red, white, and blue to school and there was a magic show, and Thursday they made magnetic picture frames using foam stars.  They also go swimming during the summer and have lots of outdoor play, so we bring extra things like a bathing suit, water shoes, towel, sun block, and a water bottle.  We get a camp shirt each year in a different color, but they haven't come in yet this year.

We had planned on getting him a red tricycle we saw in Walmart for his birthday.  But Daddy decided to get it for him now, so he would have the summer to use it.  He can pedal it really well, and now he wants to go outside every evening after his bath to ride it.  He says he is a big boy riding his bike, and he seems to be so proud of himself that he can pedal.  I got a cute picture of him on the new bike in his pajamas, which I'll include below.

When I first started writing, I was hoping to have something interesting to write about each week.  Looking back at my entries, I realize that my life is actually quite busy.  Not that I didn't already know I am busy, but I felt like I should be able to do more.  Right now, besides what I write about here and working and taking care of Justin, I try to keep up with basic things in the house, like making beds, changing sheets and towels, cleaning the bathroom, dishes, laundry, some vacuuming, and paying bills.  But I also think about the things that I am not doing.  I don't really clean my house regularly (dust, clean the refrigerator, wash curtains, dust, etc.) and I hate to admit it, but I don't cook very much either.  I had given myself permission to do less around the house when Justin was born, and I never really got back into my old routines of cleaning and cooking.  Since last year, I have tried several times, but I guess I end up trying to do too much and burn myself out.  There just doesn't seem to be enough time in the day.  Sometimes I get mad at myself because I am sure there are other women in the world who work and have children and still manage to cook and clean, and I can't seem to do these things with only one child.

Today I had this strange moment in Target.  I was in the baby section, which I still go to sometimes to buy pull-ups and training pants, and yes I do just like to look in the aisles too.  In the baby food aisle, I was looking at all the food and I started to get sad, thinking that it does not seem that long ago that Justin was eating his first spoonful of cereal and tasting fruits and vegetables for the first time.  I don't know why this suddenly came over me today when I have looked at baby food lots of times before.  I looked at Justin in the shopping cart playing with my keys and realized he had not even had the Gerber Graduates toddler meals in about a year.  He had gotten tired of them, and I was trying to cook, so I started giving him more table food and eventually stopped buying the meals.  From the beginning, I have always tried to make sure whatever he ate was healthy, and lately I have been becoming more lenient than I like on the junk food.  He still doesn't eat candy or drink soda, but pretty much anything else is fair game, and I don't think he's eaten a vegetable in a few weeks.  What happened??  Nutrition was my passion, at least for him, I could care less what I ate.  So I noticed there were some different meals than they had last year, and he is still a toddler, and I ended up buying a couple of meals and some veggie crackers and dried fruit.  My experiment has worked so far; he ate one of the meals for lunch and finished most of it, and ate some crackers and fruit for a snack.  Now that I know he will eat it, I'll buy more next week.

I know that although the main reason I did this was to get him to eat healthier in spite of my lack of cooking time, part of the reason was also to keep him a baby/toddler just a little longer.  It's corny I know, but some of my best ideas can come from corny reasoning.  Even sillier, I felt so good about it that I was smiling all the way home in the car and telling Justin how nostalgic Mommy got in the baby food aisle.

Donna and Justin

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