i swore i’d never…

Lately, Maya has become incredibly disinterested in food. She generally would rather do anything except eat. Then, when she does decide she wants to eat, she won’t eat what I put in front of her. She’s so fussy and I so badly want her to eat that I’ll try a LOT of different things before I find something she’ll go for. I have heard the old adage “kids will eat when they’re hungry” and I tried not to worry and just let it go when she wasn’t into eating. But then, she started getting the shakes. You see, my hubby and I both get pretty hypoglycemic when we’re hungry, and I tend to get super shaky when I haven’t had enough food. Maya seems to have inherited this same need to eat. The problem is that no matter how shaky and obviously hungry she is, she often won’t eat. Naturally, this freaks me out!

As a teacher, I have seen so many parenting faux pas, you know the things you SWEAR you’ll never do when you have your own kids. But now, I’m finding this whole parenting thing to be pretty humbling, because in my attempts to get my child to eat breakfast yesterday morning, I ended up sitting her in front of  YouTube watching Toopy and Binoo while she had rice crackers and milk for breakfast because those were the only things I could get her to consume before we had to run off to daycare! Needless to say, this is totally against almost everything I believe about good parenting.

So, I’m opening it up to all the other parents out there… what do you do as a mom or dad that you swore you’d never do?

plugged in

There’s this totally luddite part of me that wants to run away and live in the woods in an “off the grid” kind of hermit style (you know, like Thoreau or something). But then there are days like today when I can only properly function when everyone’s plugged in to something. You see, today I’m helping out my neighbour again with the fact that the daycare (where we both send our kids) is closed due to illness. This means I am looking after her two beautiful children (ages 4 and 5) for the whole day. They are fabulous kids. We spent the morning going for a walk in the forest and then making some arts and crafts projects with the stuff we found on our walk. Later, we played outside in the back yard and the kids ran around a bit. It was a busy time and gave me a glimpse into the life of my sister who has three kids who are each 18 months apart–she’s kind of my hero after today. Even with really great kids, it’s a lot to manage and meet the needs of all of them. Kids are demanding. I’m a teacher, I should know this, but I am also in a different role at home when one of the kids is my own and the other two are friends. Not to mention the fighting that goes on between the kids because they each want to follow their own will!

So now it’s nap time for my little one and the other two kids, although too old for a nap, are each in a different TV room in my house watching cartoons, while I’m enjoying the peace and getting my internet fix. It’s times like these that I thank my lucky stars for technology and the fact that it gives us all some down time when we need it most. Is that so terrible?

best invention

So, Maya’s been all crazed for watching TV when we’re at home. Her latest mantra: “I want Dora! I want Dora! I wanna watch the TV!”. In an effort to find other ways to play inside on a cloudy day a good friend of mine sent me her homemade play dough recipe… I can’t thank her enough! Who invented play dough anyway? Whoever it was, she was brilliant! (Recipe provided below.)

Recipe:

1 Cup white flour
1/2 Cup salt
1 tbsp Cream of Tartar
2 tbsp oil
1 Cup water
food colouring

Mix in a saucepan over medium heat until mixture sticks together (looks like mashed potatoes). Cool on waxed paper. Store in a sealed continer or Ziplock bag.