Hold That Baby

For the last year, rather than blog about my food and parenting adventures, I've been practicing being in the moment.  I've had moments where I did this SO well.  And then I had those moments when I decided that rocking the baby while reading the Kindle was totally what I needed.  Then, I'd hate myself for reading while nursing my baby, rather than gazing at her sweet face.  Ah, parenting, you cruel mistress, haunting me with the fact that my babies will NOT. STOP. GROWING. UP.


Us mamas and daddies do not get a pause or rewind button, we are ever in the moment, cooing, laughing, cuddling, loving, getting barfed on, getting nagged for second breakfast/lunch/dinner/MORE SNACKS (you would seriously think that I do not feed these children.)etc.   So, because of this beautiful thing called parenting, this thing that I would not trade for one moment, I am wracked with excruciating guilt for the times when I am not totally present, like when I am exhausted from subsidized single parenting for 5 weeks or months straight, and just need a moment.  I hate myself for those moments.  Truly.


That said, I do my best.  I adore my family.  And I am grateful that the advice of a dear friend stuck with me for the past year- "Hold that baby.  You will not get the time back."  Sweet Charlotte will never get to say that she was not held, loved on, cuddled, or given attention.  She has gotten it in spades.


In some ways, I've mellowed a lot about food over the last year.  In others, I've become an obsessive maniac.  For instance, we now have boxed organic mac n cheese in the house, and organic hot dogs, just in case I'm just too tired to do anything other than boil water.  One child me would have been way disappointed in me, but I've learned that sometimes, stuff happens.  Big kids have activities, and at the end of the day, they'd rather have that extra 40 minutes with you to cuddle them and read stories.


Now the flipside of the coin, the obsessive maniac gives poor Kyle a look that could melt ice when he accidentally bought REGULAR milk for the baby the other day.  The poor guy had to go back to Costco to get the REAL milk.  Yes, I realized after he got home that I probably needed an intervention.  BUT IT'S MY BABY PEOPLE.  I just can't.


The point is, I'm striving to find balance in a very extreme world.  It seems like all around us, we're being told that we have to be able to spend a million hours a week crafting/cooking/sewing/cleaning, and frankly, I just don't know how!  Yes, I am admittedly a perfectionist, but there has to be a line.  Do we want our kids to walk into a work function as adults, and bring their own snacks?  Because, where I come from, that's disrespectful and rude. 


We need to teach our children about healthy habits, healthy portions, and to eat healthy, REAL, food, but we also need to teach them balance.  They need to learn how to eat reasonably well at a function full of unhealthy food, and that the world isn't going to end if they go to Five Guys now and then.  The key is now and then.


Your question now probably is, what the heck does this have to do with a food blog?  Everything.  Family is everything.  Family meals, family eating habits.  Your children are watching you.  They see how you eat, what you don't eat, what you sneak, what you throw away.  They see how you do or don't spend time on dinner.  This isn't a judgment, it's just a fundamental truth.  So what I'm trying to do, what I was trying to do for the first few years of this blog, is making it EASIER.  I didn't know what I didn't know about feeding more than 3 people for more than a holiday.  And honey, sometimes it's hard! 


So here we go.  Back in action.  Healthy, family friendly meals that don't make you nuts.  And if you need to head on over to your local burger joint, because you JUST CAN'T TODAY, I hear ya.  Do what ya need to do.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Yesterday was Valentine's Day, and I'm finding myself feeling a touch of nostalgia...

My earliest memories of Valentine's Day are of my Dad.  My hero. My first favorite guy.  I remember, year after year, him showing up with a yellow rose, or some yellow roses, just for me, and I loved it.





One particular year, right as I was towing that line of when a little girl is becoming a young lady, I was having, well, let's just call a spade a spade- one of the first of (sadly) many angsty moments in my life.  For you adults out there, you KNOW what I mean.  And for those of you that are in the thick of it, you're probably too busy having deep conversations about how you aren't angsty...or maybe you're the most angsty?  Who knows anymore?





That said, I was heartbroken, maybe not for the first time, but probably the fourth or fifth time (yikes again..we have girls, so not looking forward to that!), and my sweet Daddy came in with flowers just for me.  It made my day.  I don't think he really ever knew how much that small gesture meant to me, but at that moment, when I felt awful about everything and everyone for reasons that I simply can't remember, but felt were VERY important at that time in my life.  It meant the world to me.





Maybe this sounds silly to you, but everyday, I wake up, and I think about the things that I can do to make my girls happy.  What will they remember? What can I do to make holidays and moments special and memorable for them?





Laela is at that magical age where things are sparkly and fabulous.  Where creativity and time mean everything.  So when my sweet girl told me that she wanted "teeny tiny cupcakes in a beautiful heart with candies allllll around them" for her school Valentine's Day party, I had to oblige.  I know that these moments count so much, even though to us grownups they can seem pretty inconsequential.  It's pretty amazing though when you see the look on a child's face when you created something magical just for them.