parenting hack

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Weigh In Wednesday: Take One, Leave One

I find myself in need of advice on little silly things that are nonetheless driving me crazy. In exchange, I thought I’d share a few little tips that have been helping me out lately. 

If you have any hot tips to share, please do so; if you are in need of any advice, ask away. I will chime in if I have something to offer, and I hope your fellow readers will do so as well. 

Tiny Tips That Are Making Life Better

  • Low-Effort Houseplant Watering: I love houseplants – looking at them, owning them, watching for new growth or flowers. And I am also terrible about keeping on top of their watering needs. After several died or nearly died, I finally broke down and bought a pack of plastic watering bulbs so that I could put one in every single plant I own. It’s not foolproof – they do need to be refilled every week or so, depending on the plant. But it is making my plants SO MUCH HAPPIER and my days are no longer punctuated by random stabs of guilt when I realize it’s been several weeks since I last watered my plants.
  • Morning Time (and Madness) Saver: Mornings have always been tough in my household. They continue to be tough, especially since we have added Primping to our daily routine. And also, school starts earlier this year than it ever has before so we need to be out the door fifteen minutes sooner than we did last year. One thing that has made getting out the door slightly better is to keep a hairbrush, hair ties, and a small makeup kit in my car. That way, Carla can do her hair and makeup while I am driving her to school. Secondary tip: One common frustration around here is that no one can ever find a hairbrush when she needs it. I bought a bunch of small hairbrushes so that Carla can keep one in her backpack, one in her sports bag, and one in her locker.

  • Easy Sheet Pan Meal Clean Up: I love sheet pan dinners, and I love using a barrier between the food and my cookie sheets so I don’t have to deep clean the cookie sheets every night. (They don’t fit in the dishwasher.) I own reusable silicone sheets, and use them for certain things, but they are too difficult to clean for me to use them every time I make a sheet pan meal. For the longest time, I’ve been using aluminum foil. But I am continually frustrated by food sticking to the damn foil. I tried parchment paper, but found it super annoying because it’s so insubstantial it doesn’t stay in place and it’s difficult to crease. I’d seen tips before for putting a little sprinkle of water or cooking spray on the cookie sheet to hold the parchment in place, but it doesn’t always work and/or it requires me to wash the cookie sheet, which I was trying to avoid by using parchment in the first place. Then I saw someone on Instagram crumple up the sheet of parchment paper before smoothing it out onto the cookie sheet. GAME CHANGER. 
  • Connection Points When Talking Is Hard: The credit for this genius idea belongs with my friend G. She told me that she and her daughter have a special notebook in which they write each other secret notes. “Secret” in that no one else can read their exchanges. I have tried this technique with Carla, who can be quite reticent about sharing her feelings and talking about her worries. It works so well. She is willing to share all sorts of things in writing that she refuses to discuss out loud. Because of this silly little journal we pass back and forth, I feel much more connected to her and what’s going on in her inner world. It’s not even something we write in regularly. Sometimes we’ll go back and forth for a few days, sometimes the journal will sit untouched for months. But so far it’s been the perfect bridge when I sense she’s something is troubling her but she’s reluctant, for whatever reason, to share it, or just when we haven’t had a chance to chat in a while. Oh look – there’s a whole line of journals specific to this purpose. We just use one of the many old journals I have lying around.
  • Instant Mood Improver: Get a cat. Please note: mood improvement requires close proximity to cat and may disappear once cat is out of sight, which could be quite often, depending on the cat. 

Please Advise: Here’s Where You Tell Me What To Do

  • Do you have any tips for making it simpler to put laundry away? Especially if those tips apply to getting other people in your household to put laundry away? Our current “system” involves me doing laundry, folding or sorting Carla’s clothing, and then asking Carla to put it away. Which results in Carla using my bedroom as a dressing room, because that’s where I fold the laundry. I have started putting the clean/folded laundry in a basket and putting that basket in my bedroom on the landing outside Carla’s room in Carla’s room, but still – the basket remains there, full of clean clothing, growing less folded by the day, until I Make A Fuss. And honestly, the Making A Fuss only results in the laundry ending up on the floor, which makes me incandescent. I have not opened the door to Carla’s closet lately, and do not want to, lest my head implode like a firecracker. I am willing to do Drastic Things. Should I get rid of 75% of her clothing? (I did ask her to go through her wardrobe this summer and remove everything she doesn’t or won’t wear.) Should I buy her another dresser?  The child has AMPLE storage, seriously, so much storage, but what we are doing is clearly not working for her and she doesn’t have any ideas (besides I like having all my clothing in a laundry basket / on my floor) for how to make the situation more user friendly for herself. The only thing I am unwilling to do is put her laundry away myself. She’s twelve. She can put her own laundry away. Oh, okay – there is another thing I am unwilling to do: ignore the mess. I have tried that tack and it is not workable for me or for our family. 
  • What are your favorite low-effort houseplants? Especially if they require low light? As I mentioned above, I LOVE plants and would love more. But a) our house has very little direct light and b) the cat will seriously eat any plant, or at least give it a little taste test, so any plants I buy need to be non-toxic. I have moved all the currently toxic plants I own to out-of-cat-reach spaces, but they aren’t necessarily low-light plants and they aren’t doing very well. For instance, the Christmas cactus and the kalanchoe I owned pre-cat have been relocated to the top of my bookshelves, and they are no longer dying of thirst but they are clearly not loving their lighting conditions. I have also purchased a few plants that require “bright, indirect light,” and even those seem a little light-starved. I think I need plants that thrive in less light. But not no light. All the plants have access to natural light. Just not bright light.

  • How do you keep your fingernails tidy? Okay, confession time: I am a nail picker. I will pick at my nails and the skin around my nails, sometimes until my fingers bleed. I think I developed this gruesome habit as an alternative to nail biting (although I still do that at times, too, ugh ugh ugh), and I am ready to stop. But… I don’t know HOW. It’s a nervous habit, for sure, and I don’t think you can help me get over my social anxiety. But part of the reason it’s such an addictive habit is that my cuticles (is that the right term for the skin on the sides of my nails???) are often dry or peeling or otherwise pick-able. Right now, my pinky finger is all painful and inflamed because of this habit and I Don’t Like It. My questions for you are: a) If you or someone you know has gotten over this gross habit, HOW? And/or b) Is there something I should be doing to enhance my overall nail skin / fingernail / cuticle health? I do tend towards dry skin, and use Working Hands cream like it’s my job. But I get overwhelmed by the abundance of cuticle oils and creams and have no idea which ones WORK. Or if buying a “cuticle remover kit” would do anything at all to help me.

I do not want to end this post on weird giant photos of my fingernails, so here’s where I turn things over to you. What hot tips do you have to share today? Or, at least, the little things that are making your day-to-day easier/better/more enjoyable? And in which areas are you in need of advice?

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Dinners This Week

Last week was a call week, which are just… awful. This one was particularly rough – really hard on my husband, who already finds call extra stressful, and hard on my kid, who still finds it strange and unsettling that her father is suddenly unavailable for a week. And, although it is the least hard on me, it is harder on me than normal because it is seven days of solo parenting and taking care of all of the day-to-day stuff my husband usually shares with me. On top of call week, today was a school holiday. So I just experienced three active, full, wonderful days with my daughter, and one of those days included a dental appointment (mine) and all three days required an hour-plus of driving, twice on the freeway which I loathe. I also made a phone call I have been putting off (please clap) and had to leave a message (argh). There is somehow copious amounts of dirty laundry in To Wash piles on my floor AND copious amounts of clean laundry on the guest bed waiting for me to fold it. (Don’t hold your breath.) (I did manage to wash everyone’s sheets and make the beds.) None of this sounds particularly trying, or worse than normal, but I am exhausted and ready to get back to our non-call week routine. 

Because it was a call week, we did a lot of on-the-fly meal decision making, and I did last-minute trips to the store to pick up pre-made foods a couple of times. We ordered pizza last night. We only made a few of the things on my meal plan last week. That’s fine. That’s how it goes. 

As I type this, Carla is watching TV (which I don’t usually allow on school nights) and eating a snack dinner. Snack dinner is one of my biggest parenting “hacks” (if you can call it a hack instead of “being lazy” which clearly I am choosing to do) because it allows me to put together a quick and easy no-cook meal in minutes, with things I have lying around. Pepperoni or ham, cheddar cheese or Babybel cheese, fruit, tomatoes, broccoli, sugar snap peas, mini bagels and cream cheese, capers, olives, guacamole, crackers or chips or toast. It’s not a long list, but we usually have most of those things lying around. Snack dinners also allow me to give Carla “just a taste” of things that she might not otherwise consider edible. For instance, we bought a watermelon radish at the store today because Carla was curious about it. Curiosity means opportunity to extend Carla’s list of acceptable foods, so I bought one. It can go in the salad I am making this week. 

Yes, that is a My Little Pony plate. Carla now prefers the regular china, but I still try to give her the cute kids’ plates when I can get away with it. I have asked her, and she is not ready for me to dispose of the cute kids’ plates. She just doesn’t want to use them all the time.

I also added mini cucumbers to her plate. She LOVES pickles (although we are no longer going through them a jar per week), so why does she not love cucumbers? This baffles me, even though I LOVE pickles and do not like cucumbers; I do, at least, keep forcing myself to buy and eat cucumbers because it makes no sense. They are THE SAME THING. Also in cucumber bafflement, why is it that you can either buy an enormous English cucumber that will feed you for a week, if you eat the cucumber every night of that week, or feed you for a meal or two and then slowly disintegrate into mush in your crisper… OR you can buy a package of teeny cucumbers that will definitely get soft and squishy before you can eat all of them… but you can buy a single “one-serving” zucchini, which looks identical to a cucumber but is not, no problem? WHY. I demand choose-your-portion cucumbers! I demand it!

As long as we are being devil-may-care with the rules, I am having a glass of wine, which has nothing whatsoever to do with my cucumber demands. Holidays/days when the kids are off of school still count as the weekend, right? Right. I am drinking Kirkland brand Prosecco rose from Costco and I love it. It is bubbly AND pink. Doubly fun. I have been avoiding going to Costco, even though we are rapidly running out of the things we buy exclusively there (kitchen garbage bags, dishwasher detergent, microwave bacon yes I know, butter), but perhaps I can use the promise of MORE Prosecco rose as a carrot to get me to go. I am annoyed that rose doesn’t have the appropriate accent but not annoyed enough to fix it.

Oh. Right. Dinners.

Dinners for the Week of February 21-27

  • Chicken Romano with Parmesan Roasted Broccoli: I am just OFF chicken. Urgh. I think I am off ground beef, too, which is unfortunate. Thank goodness there are so many fish in the sea, and on the grocery store counter! If I start being squicked out by fish… maybe I become a vegetarian? I like beans well enough, although they don’t particularly care for me. 
  • Asian Salad: Once again, I will be eating salmon. I bought my husband a pre-marinated teriyaki chicken breast. We will add mandarin oranges, sugar snap peas, red bell pepper, scallions, and the aforementioned watermelon radish.
  • Carnitas Tacos: This sounds yummy. (So far, pork and I are still friends.) And I could totally use a crockpot meal this week.
  • Shrimp with Zucchini Noodles: I have a hankering for shrimp scampi, but the last time I made it, it was a disaster. So this is NOT shrimp scampi. It is “garlic butter shrimp with zucchini noodles.” (Or, as I first typed it, shrim with noddles, and then I corrected that to shimp with nooooodles. I am tired.)
  • Takeout: This is the week of my birthday, so I am planning to order Mexican takeout and stuff myself with enchiladas and cake. (P.S. Colleen and I share the same birthday! If you are up to it, head on over to her blog and give her some birthday love.) 

The verdict on the watermelon radish is that it is TOO SPICY. (She ate the smallest possible sliver and spat it out. Sigh.) And I STILL don’t want to go to Costco.