 | Diary Navigation:
|
November 19, 2004
How many times I have written about being surprised at the variety of ways motherhood has impacted me? Who knows, but here’s another. I am surprised at how physically demanding parenting can be. Pregnancy is an unbelievably physical process. It was beyond physically demanding to bring Ava into this world. When she was new the physical demands of healing from labor and delivery coupled with sleep depravation left me bone weary. So many things… Nursing, lifting in and out of a car seat, pushing a stroller, carrying a child, carrying a wiggly toddler, chasing after a busy toddler, playing, bathing… they all have a physical component. I have never been so tired as I have been since Ava was born. I’m not sure I’ve had a decent night’s sleep since before I became a mother! I was listening to a local radio station this week and they had a call in segment with a pediatrician. I would estimate half the calls were about sleep issues for babies/toddlers. The pediatrician said (paraphrase) that sleep for a baby is about parents as much as it’s about the child. She said when we sleep we heal, we rejuvenate and it is very important as parents that we get that much needed rest. Now just tell me how to do it!
This weekend we spent a good portion of Sunday re-arranging rooms in our living area. I am feeling a huge burst of nesting lately. I think its because I know winter is imminent, which brings a lot more indoor time. It is easy to feel cooped up inside when it is cold and snowy. I did a ton of sorting through things – books, CDs and other random junk throwing away and donating stuff we don’t need or don’t use. I feel like I just barely scratched the surface though. Our house is a fairly typical newly constructed suburban house. We have a living room, family room, small bathroom, mud room and eat in kitchen on the main level. Our living room is much nicer than our family room – more space, nicer furniture and a fireplace. We’ve kept that room television-free for the three plus years we’ve lived in this house. But our family room is smaller and not as functional. This weekend we moved our television into the living room and re-arranged the furniture. It is soooo nice. I was reluctant to have the television in the same room as the fireplace – I am no designer, but I think it is difficult to have a room with two focal points. The television doesn’t look great in there, but it is awesome to lay on the nice, comfortable furniture in front of the fire, cozy up and watch television. I wish we had done this at the outset. We did some additional rearranging in the family room apart from moving the television out and I think it opens up that main level of the house quite a bit. I am very pleased. Ava was fairly hilarious while we were sorting through things and moving things around. She was very helpful (not so much) with sorting CDs very gently placing CDs I wanted to keep in the box of those I intended to donate. She would also pick up baskets, a little sculpture, a light end table and move them around the living room. Ava is a surprisingly strong little girl! But she is such a mimic – not just with language but with activity.
I am also very, very weak on the television. I know I wrote in my last entry about our intention to give up digital cable. We still might, but I’m having a very hard time parting with digital cable and going to basic. For all my talk about not wanting to invest the money in television, which I generally feel is not good for us, I just felt so sad at the idea of giving it up. John and I agreed to sit with the decision for a little while. He thinks it’s hilarious that I am wrestling with this so much. The thing is going to the most basic cable will save us $40-45 per month. I think I get $1.50 per days worth of enjoyment out of digital cable and want to see if we can save that money elsewhere. Why this is a riot to my dear, wonderful husband is beyond me, but he loves me and I love him! I mean, hey, I am giving up the cleaning lady, I gave up the home phone, we’ve clamped down tight on groceries and wine… I need some luxury in my life!
This weekend we didn’t do much outside the house stuff and that was actually fine with me. It is interesting to me that sometimes those weekends can leave me a little stir crazy and other times they leave me feeling refreshed and rested. John cooked tasty dinner for us on both Saturday and Sunday. Saturday he made chicken pot stickers and Schezuan-style green beans that were coated in ginger, garlic and red pepper flakes. True to form Ava ate those beans with abandon, proving to me for the 100th time that we just need to keep putting food in front of her because you just never know what she’ll like and what she won’t. Sunday my folks came over for dinner and John made this unbelievably good butternut squash lasagna. He found it on FoodNetwork.com – Everyday Italian. This is something I would have been unlikely to tackle as it included many, many steps, but the end result was simply out of this world. Ava loved that too.
Saturday night we watched our first Netflix movie – “Supersize Me.” What a disturbing film! But it was very, very good. Morgan Spurlock (the documentarian) has a clear bias against McDonalds – and one that is fairly well founded in my estimation. But he also did a nice job of showing that McDonalds is a strong metaphor for what is wrong with our attitude toward food in general. I will freely admit that I probably eat McDonalds once a month or so. I love their Egg McMuffins, I love their fries... For the film Morgan Spurlock ate McDonalds 3 meals a day for 30 days. He gained 25 lbs and his liver was responding like he was on an alcohol induced bender as well as a whole host of other complications. It was very, very interesting. Interestingly my biggest take away was the segment of the documentary that talks about what is going on in schools. That gave me great pause. For the most part schools are serving kids high calorie, high fat, highly processed, not terribly well prepared meals and snacks. Things like chips and Little Debbie snacks are freely available. A few have limited or banned soft drink machines in schools, but continue to sell other sugary beverages. I don’t get this. Kids in school are a captive audience – I believe we should be feeding them healthy options with treats being occasional thing, not a staple. It clearly boils down to economics and that is frightening and sickening all at once. I am as big a fan of junk food as the next person, but I am alarmed by the abundance of processed foods that are so cheap and readily available. I wonder what the long term health consequences for us and our children will be?
I worry quite a bit about what Ava eats, probably too much so. For the most part Ava is a great eater. She is streaky like the next toddler, but we’ve adopted a few guiding principles for feeding her in our house. Unless there’s a really good reason not to – she eats what we eat. This includes spicy food, highly flavored food, unusual food… And like nearly everyone I know sometimes we get home from work and the only things in the house are PB& J or Macaroni and cheese or something. But for some reason it seems to be a big deal to Ava that she is eating the same meal as everyone else. The few times we’ve made her something different she reaches for our plates and ignores ‘her’ food. Another ‘rule’ is that we keep offering her food even if she refused it last time we tried. Maybe this time she’ll like it?! Who knows! I also refuse to make feeding her a battle. We put food in front of her, if for some reason she doesn’t eat then that’s fine. But I’m not going to fight with her about it. I try not to make a big deal out of it. She loves Triscuits and nearly any other bread-y item, she eats fruit really well, vegetables less well and is hit or miss on meat and eggs. Aaaahh all the things we worry about!
I read somewhere that the single biggest predictor of a girl’s body image is how her mother treats her own body, health and exercise. I really take that to heart and think about it a lot – even with Ava at this young age. She is such a mimic why wouldn’t she mimic me on dumb ‘do I look fat in this?’ kinds of behavior? She certainly mimics what we eat. I hope to set an example for my girl of moderation, of good physical activity.
The downside of Ava’s increased ability to communicate is it makes it easier for her to point out parenting mistakes. So pass on over the Bad Mommie award yet again. Sunday afternoon I was in the kitchen slicing up some cheese on our little roll away island. Our kitchen didn’t come with an island, so we purchased a little cart with a wood top – its on wheels, we store pans there and use it for most of our food prep. Ava had hurled herself at my legs and was saying ‘up’ ‘up’ so I grabbed her by the hands and pulled her up – you guessed it – right into the underside of the roll away island. She hit her head with a horrible crash and we both promptly burst into tears. I don’t want to speculate on how hard I hit her head because the sound continues to replay itself on a nearly continual loop through my head, but she rallied quickly. Frankly I think she was more undone by my over the top reaction than anything. Or at least I’d like to think. Now everytime she gets near the island she says “Momma, boomer, owie” and pats the top of her head just like we do when reading “8 Silly Monkeys.” Quite the impression I want to leave on my precious daughter. When she fell on the driveway and skinned her knees late this summer she ‘talked’ about her owies long after the marks had faded. Do we even want to know how long their memories last at this age?
This week we got the news that Meghan was accepted to 1 of the 4 colleges she’s applied to. She’s still waiting on an answer to the other 3 – if I were speculating I’d guess that she’s likely to get into 2 of the other 3 for sure, probably all 3. She was accepted at warp speed to the University of Iowa – getting that ‘thick packet’ six short days after submitting her application. Her grades are good, her ACT decent, activities good… This stirs up a lot. I can’t imagine that Meghan is going to leave in less than a year. I know I’ve only been in her life for five years, but it has gone by at warp speed. John says it feels like 15 minutes ago that she was Ava’s age. It makes me recall that time in my life – man it was hard making that transition. High school was fine, not a great picnic, but not a great drama either. I was ready to leave home, but it was just a very, very confusing time. I am thrilled for her for the leap she’s getting ready to take and have little doubt it will be a scary, thrilling time. I hope ‘the boyfriend’ doesn’t weigh too much in her decision making because he surely won’t last. I can’t figure out for the life of me how we’re going to pay for this. I mean, sh*t, we’re trying to figure out how to pay our damn cable bill! OK, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration… It looks like we might be paying off school loans for the rest of our natural lives. Lane is only 2 years behind Meghan! But help me Rhonda the last thing anyone wants is another long entry about money!
Ava has developed a baby-obsession for the song “The Wheels on the Bus.” I have the Rafi CD in my car and every time she gets settled in her seat she does the sign for ‘more’ and says “More Bus.” At first it was cute. But it has now evolved into having “The Wheels on the Bus” in a continuous loop and crying, crying, crying if I dare listen to NPR or Sarah McLachlan. It is a half hour drive from our house to daycare. 17 is the number of times “Wheels on the Bus” plays in continuous loop on that drive. Promise me she’ll grow out of this? Promise me she’ll at least add other songs? Last night on the way home I just let the Rafi CD play and let her fuss and say “More Bus” over and over. I felt like a horrible person, but my mental health is at stake. I finally just turned it off altogether and that seemed to help marginally.
We cancelled our anniversary trip this weekend, but my MIL is still coming for a long weekend. We intend to prevail on her to stay with Ava Saturday evening so we can go to dinner at one of our favorite eateries (a local-hole-in-the-wall-but-completely-awesome Vietnamese restaurant) and maybe movie to mark our anniversary. Our actual anniversary is Thanksgiving day, so it will be very nice to celebrate with a tasty family meal. Tonight (Friday) Meghan’s boyfriend is coming over for dinner. John is under strict orders not to make anything ‘too weird’ which apparently for ‘the boyfriend’ is anything ethic at all including Italian, which, I’m sorry hardly qualifies in my opinion – hasn’t spaghetti become thoroughly ingrained in our culture? John wanted to make these delicious turkey burgers with mango salsa and Meghan begged for ‘regular’ hamburgers. I have to say, again, she can do better than this boy! A couple of fun things coming up including a surprise birthday party for a friend Tuesday and a dinner party the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I am looking forward to the extended holiday weekend next week. That’s about all the news from here – not too much that’s interesting, but as always…
Thanks for reading—
Kate
 |  |
|
want to keep a diary on iParenting?
Authoring a diary on the iParenting network allows you to chronicle your family's story, preserving it for years to come. It's also a great way to get the most out of the iParenting community. Click here to start...
|
The iParenting Media Awards program helps parents find the best products for their families. 
