parental struggles

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Six for Saturday: Panicky and Exclamation Pointy

Wow! It has been… a week. Nothing bad! Just – so much driving, so many commitments. I have once again been A Terrible Blogger Slash Blog Friend, and all I have to offer you today are some bullets.

Cookie Swap Extension: THANK YOU to everyone who has sent in photos and links for the cookie swap! I am so excited! I wish we could all be traveling to a central location to share the scrumptious cookies in person! If you want to participate in the cookie swap but missed the original deadline, well, you are in good company as I also missed the deadline. I am hoping that I will get to make SOME COOKIES today or tomorrow, but it’s not looking great. I am looking down the barrel of at least two hours in the car both today and tomorrow and while that doesn’t seem like a whole lot when a day is twenty-four hours long, I find it Very Difficult to get anything meaningful done in and around so much driving. If I get an extension, so do you. I will aim to have the cookie swap post up on Monday evening or Christmas Eve at the latest. And, in part because I feel guilty about how flaky I have become, I have a little cookie-related giveaway planned for those who are interested. 

Christmas Cactus: Ever since I read Nicole’s post about Noelle, her Christmas cactus, I have been enchanted by the idea of owning one myself. When lo, what to my wondering eyes should appear in the floral section of my grocery store, but a Christmas cactus in full bloom! I bought it, brought it home, put it in the one spot in my house that gets semi-direct sunlight, and gazed adoringly at it every time I passed through the kitchen. It seems to be actively rejecting my love and hospitality, though. The blooms have begun to crumple and this morning I found that one of the teeny pink buds had fallen onto the table. What am I doing wrong?! Perhaps it is simply horrified by the state of the kitchen table. 

Housekeeping Standards, or Lack Thereof: My Christmas cactus is not the only one who is appalled. Not only is my kitchen table full of Random Crap, it is also covered in crumbs. But that’s not the half of it. My normally mediocre housekeeping activities have apparently taken as big a hit as my blogging this week. When all you do in your home is eat and sleep and follow the child around urging her to hurry! we are late!, the crumbs tend to pile up. I have an enormous kitchen island in my kitchen, and normally it is PRISTINE. That is my preferred state. I do not like to pile things on the island; we have other counters for piles. I like the island to be a clean and welcoming expanse of granite awaiting the preparation of delicious and nutritious meals and/or cookies. NOT THIS WEEK. Mail has piled up on the counter, I have a row of holiday cards waiting for me to hang them on the wall, there’s some leftover cedar fronds from the cedar garland I bought to go above the mantle, crumbs everywhere. Let’s not even contemplate the state of the floor. How we are not overrun by mice and/or ants is a miracle. I cannot wait for my family to be done eating in the kitchen so I can restore order by way of cleaning fluid, Swedish dishcloths, and my zooper.

Favorite Flower: I may have gone a little overboard in terms of holiday flora this year. I bought a poinsettia. But then. I went to my mother’s house, where she had the most enormous, beautiful poinsettia I have ever seen. She got it at Costco, she said. So I braved Costco the week before Christmas to get my own giant poinsettia. For $15.99. It’s hard to see in the photo, but this thing is at least three feet tall. I am sure it will die any moment now. 

Last Minute Stocking Stuffers: As per usual, I have been panic-buying last minute stocking stuffers like it’s my job. You may remember I said I was going to buy a cooling towel for my husband? Well, then I didn’t get one because I was hemming and hawing about whether he would really use it, and then I couldn’t find him any other interesting stocking stuffers, so I returned to get the cooling towel and it was sold out so I ended up getting him this three-pack. So if he doesn’t end up using it, now it will be three times as wasteful! This is the power of procrastination, folks. It is supposed to arrive Monday, which is cutting it quite close. I also panic-ordered my dad this magnetic pickup light tool, which looks useful but may be something I already bought him for a previous gift occasion? Not sure. And while I was ordering things, I added this book to the cart because I felt guilty Carla only has one book under the tree. And then, because my husband mentioned that he may not have any stocking stuffers for me, I ordered myself a nice little stocking stuffer. Why yes, I do have a problem.

How Are We Doing This?! I am mainly howling into the parenting void, but honestly: how is anyone doing anything? It has taken me SEVEN HOURS to complete this blog post.  (I did take a pause to clean the kitchen and floors and take a shower.) This is my life lately. Yes, yes, there is Extra Holiday Stuff, but also this is just… how things seem to be? Everything takes seven times as long as it should. Interruptions abound. (Today’s interruption was having to take a 45-minute detour to the shoe store to buy snow boots for my child whose perfectly good snow boots are suddenly too small.) Minor but essential activities (cleaning the counters, doing my thrice-daily zoop, cutting my toenails, showering) are being shelved in favor of… something??? (Being in the car, probably.) Of course I am not getting enough sleep – my sleep is plagued with weird-ass nightmares that linger days after – and I’m tired all the time which I recognize is not helping. (But what is this stage of life if not Tired All the Time?) I am clenching my teeth. Somehow I am ten minutes late to everything. I am in the car all the time. Listen, I get that moving to this new house with the new, much longer commute was a big change to my routine. But it has been more than a year now, and I should be getting used to it, and GETTING IT TOGETHER. But I am not! Nothing is together! I only have the one child and the one husband! All the things are good! I have no real stress to speak of! AND YET. I continue flailing around, spluttering and splashing and dog paddling my way from tiny sinking island to tiny sinking island and NOTHING IS BEING ACCOMPLISHED. How are YOU doing this???? What am I doing wrong???? And how do I fix it?!?!?!?!

Okay. I am going to finally post this and go dry my hair and then pack my child for a night at her grandparents and try to get into a Staycation With My Hubby frame of mind instead of my current state of AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

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Grocery Shopping with the Kiddo

I really, sincerely appreciated everyone’s thoughtful comments in response to my latest Food Fret. My big takeaway was that I should shut up about food, model the type of eating habits I want Carla to emulate, and try not to worry too much. This is usually the approach I take, and I think it is probably the smartest. That doesn’t mean it isn’t HARD, though. Food and eating are SO FRAUGHT. 

One of the Big Tips you hear repeatedly when you are looking for information about helping your child eat more/better is to take them shopping with you. This is a practice I have been employing for years – and if Carla expresses an interest in trying a food, I am happy to procure it for her. 

(There was the time when she wanted to try a clam, though, and I did end up drawing the line there. For one thing, I have no idea how to cook a clam so that it is remotely edible. For another, I personally do not find clams in any form to be edible. But the clincher was when, through gentle questioning, it turned out that Carla had confused “clam” with “oyster” and her real interest in getting a clam was to see if it had a pearl inside it. I am not researching “how to cook a clam” just so my child can see that it does not produce pearls.)

(I love her, she is so darling.) 

Yesterday, I dragged Carla with me to the grocery store. It was after camp, so she was hungry, and she was very interested in buying food. I said yes to everything she asked for (except ice cream because we are already eating ice cream approximately eight million times a week and we do not need another pint of ice cream in our freezer) and I have washed all the fruit and made sure that everything is on a Carla Eye Level shelf for easy access, and now will anxiously wait to see how much of this bounty she eats. 

I thought you might want to see what she chose. She bagged all of her own groceries, which made it pretty easy to photograph. 

I did not organize the items in a way that makes it easy to see what is what, but I trust you can figure it out. 

  1. Extra Sharp Cheddar Cheese: We already had an unopened block of cheese in the fridge, but in my opinion you can never have too much cheese. And cheese has protein and calcium so I am Pro Cheese.
  2. Demi Baguette: Carla ate half of this baguette in the car and the other half for dinner. 
  3. Chobani Flip Cookie Dough Yogurt: Do these have more sugar than I would prefer? Yes. But they are still yogurt, so I let her eat as many as she wants.
  4. Watermelon: I hate watermelon, and I hate preparing a watermelon, and then having pounds of watermelon on hand, so I am happy to pay a convenience fee to buy the super expensive pre-sliced stuff so I don’t have to deal with it. The thing is, I don’t think Carla really likes watermelon either? I think she kind of likes the idea of watermelon. We’ll see if she eats this. 
  5. Fully Cooked Bacon: She ate four slices of this for breakfast this morning, alongside a yogurt. I am choosing to see it as PROTEIN.
  6. Black Seedless Table Grapes: These grapes are teeny tiny, and Carla has – for unknown reasons – been looking for them for AGES. So when we saw them at the store, she immediately requested a carton. When we got home, she said she wanted to eat them the way the Romans did, and then requested that I feed them to her. No thank you, dear. 
  7. Crepes: We had a brief conversation about what she might put IN the crepes, and she said fruit (so I also bought some strawberries, not pictured), so I said why not. This seems like something we may end up not eating, just because they seem kind of labor intensive.
  8. Golden Berries: She grabbed these on a whim, and so far I’m the only one of us who has tried them. They have the texture of a grape tomato but a pleasantly sweet-sour flavor.
  9. Raw Slivered Almonds: This was another impulse buy. As far as impulse buys go, I feel okay about it.
  10. Wax Beans: These are Carla’s favorite kind of string beans. I think they are a decent source of fiber and I am happy with any vegetable she wants to eat.
  11. Ham: Usually the only ham Carla will eat is inside a Lunchable, and I have declined to buy Lunchables anymore except on very rare occasions. But Carla went up to the deli counter herself and asked for the ham and then she ate some for dinner last night. 
  12. Protein+ Spaghetti Noodles: This is Carla’s favorite noodle. She will eat a bowl of spaghetti with some meatballs on the side.
  13. Wholly Guacamole: While Carla eats way more chips than she does guacamole, I am happy to encourage her to eat guacamole. It’s got to be a gateway to avocados, right? (This was on sale, buy one get one free, which is a STEAL for these little packs.)
  14. Cookie: This was another impulse buy. It was at the checkout station and looked delicious, so why not. Carla took a bite, discovered it contained walnuts, and declined to eat any more of it. What a disappointment! 

There were a few things I forgot to photograph!

  • Frozen Meatballs: These were on sale, so I bought two packages. I do not eat ball-shaped foods, but I have no problem with other people doing so. 
  • Parmesan: Apparently Carla will put the powdered parmesan cheese on her pasta at school, so we bought some so she can do so at home. (Typically, she eats pasta with nothing on it. No olive oil, no butter. She won’t even let me salt the water.)
  • Artichoke: The other night, we got takeout for dinner and my meal included a roasted artichoke. Carla TRIED THE ARTICHOKE, pronounced it “not bad” and then requested an artichoke at the grocery store. The jury is out on whether she will eat any of it, but I am hopeful! 
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Five for Friday

It IS Friday, right? I am at the point in summer where I have sort of lost track of the days. I have certainly lost track of the ability to write a cohesive blog post on one topic, that’s for sure. (Did I ever really possess that ability????) So let’s do some bullet points. 

1. Sleep Regression: I have become a baby, internet, mixing up my days and my nights. I have trouble sleeping at night, so I end up napping during the day. Which makes me not sleepy at bedtime, so I stay up later than I intend to. Then I am tired the next day, so I take a nap. Lather, rinse, repeat. I am not a fan, and also I’m not really sure how to correct this??? When I try to not nap, I end up nearly falling asleep while driving, so I don’t think that’s the answer. Probably the answer is some combination of better habits and seek professional help, but I don’t feel like doing those things so I’m whining about it instead.

2. Velcro Baby: Speaking of babies, my actual baby (who is a long-limbed pre-teen) stayed home from camp this week to fight a cold. It’s one of those awful coughs, and the doctor basically said there’s nothing they can do about it at this point. Hopefully it goes away soon, I hate hearing my poor kiddo hack away in the middle of the night. It’s been a while since she’s had a sick day, and she was Velcroed to me the entire time, which I think is as good a demonstration as any that she is sick. We watched MANY movies. Having her draped all over me was both lovely – I mean, how much longer is she going to deign to sit on my lap? – and tiresome. She is heavy, now, and has many more elbows and knees than seems possible, and they are all sharp. I kept telling myself to enjoy it; I would have my body and my time back soon enough, and being able to snuggle with her is precious and limited. And yet I just wanted some personal space for the love. I am so used to her being so independent, it’s a little startling how little patience I have for dependency. It reminds me of the toddler years, and how HARD it was, to have someone touching me at all times, to have someone needing me at every second. Big kids bring along their own challenges, but mine at least has not been as physically demanding as she was a few years ago. If you are in the toddler stage, you have my sincere empathy. By the way, having an 11-year-old cough in your face is just as charming as having a three-year-old cough in your face. Some things never change. 

3. Mosquito Prevention: My legs are covered in mosquito bites right now. COVERED. I have a hideous bite on the back of my arm, too – red and angry. It’s unattractive and itchy. I haven’t had bug bites like these since the beginning of the summer. You know why? Because my husband bought this mosquito repellent device and we turn it on anytime we are outside. IT IS MAGIC. We’ve had it outside with us basically all summer, including during our two recent dinner parties and I came away with nary a bite! But then we went to our neighbors’ house for an impromptu BBQ and ended up hanging outside for about 20 minutes, and I got chewed to bits. Maybe I need to buy the neighbors their own mosquito device??? Or start carrying mine with me? 

4. Automotive Technology: Earlier this week, I found myself looking up automotive technology programs at local colleges. Is this the second career I need? Is this a(n over)reaction to too many recalls on my car? Is this a cry for help? I like cars, but I’ve never really been interested in learning how they work. My father would be delighted to help me, I’m sure. (He tried to teach me how to change my own oil back in the late 90s and… I resisted.) But I often find myself wishing I had more automotive knowledge. Mainly when the mechanic is telling me I NEED a part that costs $800. Maybe it would be kind of cool to reinvent myself as an auto mechanic. This is not going to happen, but it’s fun to think about. 

5. Shame Spiral: I am on one (1) group chat, and honestly I don’t know if a group text is the same thing as a group chat, and those two points should really Tell You Something. Anyway, I responded to a message with something that I meant to be silly and fun, and no one responded, and I have been analyzing it backwards and forwards since yesterday afternoon and feeling worse and worse and more and more sure that my (probably former) friends are not only going to cut me out of the group chat, but out of their lives completely. It wasn’t even that BAD, I don’t think; at most it was a) not funny or b) mildly insulting of someone’s relative’s food choice. But nonetheless: SHAME SPIRAL. Also, I am well aware that maybe they didn’t respond simply because it wasn’t response-worthy, or because they went out to dinner or had to deal with a sick child or sat down to watch a movie or or or. I may be a narcissist, but I am aware of it. Anyway, despite all my coping thoughts of narcissism and “people who are your friends will forgive you the occasional dumb comment,” I continue to spiral. I am the most awkward person on the planet and do not deserve friends. Probably at least some of this has to do with me submitting a short story to my critique group and being sure they are texting each other behind my back about the best way to break it to me that the story is not really a story and also sucks balls. But also I haven’t had A Friend Group since college and we didn’t text back then anyway and I don’t know how to be a person or what I’m doing trying. Fretting about how they are texting each other about how to respond to my stupid attempt at humor is what I AM doing. 

There. That’s my Friday morning for you, Internet! What’s up with you?