Tag: parenting

Excuse me?

by Allie P., posted in Life as I know it
Pinterest fail truck cake
One of the many reasons I am not followed on Pinterest

It was my 6yo’s birthday weekend extravaganza. We threw him a party with his friends, 14 kids in total, followed by a slumber party with one of his cousins, a bonfire the next evening, and a visit by his grandparents on Sunday. By the time the various parties ended, I was exhausted. I wanted nothing more than to sit back with a glass of wine or three. If I chose not to write the following Monday, I think many would agree that I had a pretty good reason to take a day off.

“If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.” – Jim Rohn

Instead, I am writing. On my About page, I have stated that I post on Mondays and Thursdays. I’ve made a promise. I could try to pretend that no one has read those words, but my stat reports show otherwise. Would the world come crashing down if I broke this little promise? Hardly, but I’d have to live with the knowledge that I had allowed myself to slip. What would I do the next time life gets in my way? What if one missed day becomes two, or a missed week becomes a missed month. Suddenly I am out of the game before I ever had a chance to get started.

“The price of discipline is always less than the pain of regret.” – Nido Qubein

I received confirmation this week that my request to terminate my agreement with my former publishing channel has been processed. That’s it. I am officially on my own. Now is not the time to give into excuses. No, now is the time to buckle down and find a way to push forward.

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” – Thomas Jefferson

Besides, it could always be worse. The NaNoWriMo challenge is underway. Participating writers, try to write a novel consisting of a minimum of 50k words in 30 days. I’m in no way shape or form participating. While participants are toiling away in their creative sanctuaries, hoping that a loved one might occasionally check their vital signs and/or throw them a cookie, I’ve been fortunate enough to party with my favorite people and gorge on pizza and cake.

“There’s always something to be thankful for. If you can’t pay your bills, you can be thankful you’re not one of your creditors.” – Author unknown

It dawned on me as I thought of those struggling writers that I don’t need to make excuses. I’ve not promised anything I can’t deliver. I’ve promised to post on Mondays and Thursdays, but I never promised a specific word count goal. I may still slip one day, but that day is not today. I may have lost some sleep this weekend, but I have yet to lose my determination to succeed.

 

How to create a dinner of champions

by Allie P., posted in General Tips and Tricks, Life as I know it, Life Hacks

I may have actually stumbled upon the secret to get my toddler to willingly eat more than mac n’ cheese and applesauce at dinner time!

My eldest son spoiled me rotten. As a baby he loved sweet peas, and as a kindergartener one of his favorite meals is chicken nuggets with a strawberries and a side salad. Yes. A side salad. And not just lettuce smeared with ranch dressing. No, he prefers a drizzle of balsamic glaze. I was therefore fully unprepared for the challenge that is my youngest son at meal times.

So sayeth the toddler

Greens need not touch his plate. In fact, go ahead and extend that to most other food groups. If the food on his plate wasn’t a complex carb – well he just wasn’t interested. We tried plane sounds. We tried rewards and other bribery such as promising deserts. He sealed his lips tighter than Fort Knox. We tried trickery. He returned the favor by hiding it all in his cheeks and spitting it out later. We told him that if he didn’t eat his dinner he would be sent to time out or even to bed. He chose time out. And I don’t just mean by continuing with attitude. I mean my toddler actually said, in clear English, with a smile on his face, “I wan time out.”

My toddler is now two and a half, which means I only have to live with the terrible twos for another few months. [Then I get the joy of the trying threes! Yippee!!!] As a result, you may believe that he will naturally become more willing to try new things as maturing. Perhaps. But perhaps he requires more incentive to change his behavior. Perhaps we all do.

Vision without execution is hallucinationI recently read a post suggesting that everyone should find themselves an accountability partner. I loved the idea and brought it up with my hubby. He and I are both idea people, and idea people tend to make terrible executors if left to their own devices. Not because they don’t want to execute on their original idea, just because there is always a nicer, shinier, new idea just waiting to be developed. I asked him if he’d be willing to start setting a personal goal each week which we’d discuss over Sunday dinner. He agreed to try.

Sunday rolled around and we started discussing what we wanted to accomplish this week. Our kindergartener caught on and wanted to come up with his own goal for the week. Excellent! We agreed that we would all take on one small bite sized goal for the week. If we were all successful at the end of the week as a family, we’d award ourselves with a single star. If we could all earn twenty stars then we’d go on a vacation. Kiddo was sold. He loves winning, no matter what the rules of the game are. Then he asked what his brother’s goal should be. We thought about and agreed that he had to try his food every night this week.

Sunday dinner went smoothly. Monday’s too. Then Tuesday night, toddler stubbornness was back in full effect. I sighed and said, well I guess we aren’t getting a star this week as I tried to figure out my next strategy. Suddenly Kiddo was by his brother’s side cheering his brother along. My toddler may enjoy tests of will against me, but adores his brother above all things and wants to be just like him. His mouth opened and in went the food. The star was saved for another day and there was much rejoicing.

Execution is made easiest when you allow your team to take ownership of the method, and the best incentives are the ones the team comes up with themselves. All the leader is supposed to do is provide a clear vision of where they want to go and then get out of the way while his or her team does what they do best in order to get there. It would seem this is just as true in the house as it is the office.

It has only been a few days, but I am optimistic that my family will be healthier and stronger, or at least better fed, as a result of this experiment. With a little determination and a lot of accountability, the seats around out dinner table on Sundays will soon be filled with champions.

Children in the corn

by Allie P., posted in Life as I know it

Last week I was somehow talked into helping to chaperon my kindergartener’s class trip to a nearby farm. We were asked to drive separately to the farm so that all the children could ride together on a bus and there just wasn’t enough room for the adults. As the bus arrived, their teachers handed each of us an agenda and our assigned charges. Then without much preamble the bus doors re-opened and a flood of five and six year-olds came charging towards us, each dressed in a matching shirt for easier identification.

Luckily there were enough volunteers so that no adult was outnumbered by more than two. I was assigned to watch my son as well as another boy. I knelt down beside the other boy and looked him straight in the eye. I told him we were going to be buddies for they day. I made sure he would be able to recognize my face as I memorized his. I was determined that the boy’s parents would not have any reason to complain about my care. Satisfied that he understood, the three of us went hand in hand into the farm. We took a hayride together, had lunch, climbed on hay bales, and fed goats. Then the children found the corn maze.


http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/121144397

True to our agreement, my charge remained by my side. But then I looked around and realized that my son was gone, lost somewhere in the rows of corn. I had just assumed he would stay near me, but I had underestimated the call of the maze. I saw a flash of a blue shirt and a blonde head run by. We immediately chased after the child only to discover that it was a little girl and not my son. We went back the way we came shouting my son’s name. He magically appeared a minute or two later, skipping along the path, completely unaware that he had just freaked his mom out.

I would hope that when it is the parents of the other little boy’s turn to chaperon they take their responsibility just as seriously as I did. However it does goes to show you that when you focus all your attention on what other people think, what matters most to other people, you risk losing sight of what matters most to you.

 

Take a step back to better leap forward

by Allie P., posted in Life as I know it
America's Worst Driver
Open auditions every rainy day!

Yesterday we were hit with heavy rains during the evening commute. Around here, rain like that somehow seems to always cause the driving public along my commute to forget basic driving rules. Thanks to the traffic, I was running several minutes late when I pulled into my first stop and collected kiddo number one. By the time I arrived at the toddler’s day care I was even later.

We had barely entered the toddler’s room when kiddo announced that he was hungry. Loudly. I must not have acknowledged his pronouncement to his satisfaction, as he repeated this breaking news story. Not to be outdone, his brother added his voice to the mix. Time was officially not on my side.

Somehow I was able to calm the boys. I was likely even more anxious to get home than the boys were. The hunger beast which had replaced kiddo number one was only going to be put off for so long. As we made our way to the car, I couldn’t help but notice that a truck had parked beside my car while we had been inside, and that it was taking up more than its fair share of the roadway.

As I started to back out of my spot, I noticed that there was no clearance between me and the truck. I was trapped in my parking space. The rain was still coming down in buckets. The driver was nowhere to be seen. My boys were still hungry. I suppose I could have taken my chances with the boys. I could have turned the car off, hoping the truck’s driver would soon re-emerge. A person parking that badly surely couldn’t be planning to stay long. I could have stormed back inside demanding that its owner drop whatever he or she was doing to move the truck now, but that would have meant dragging the boys along with me too. Shudder.

Instead I shifted my gears and drove forward. I adjusted my steering wheel, and backed up again. I repeated these steps two or three more times. Finally, I managed to create enough of a gap between our vehicles to continue out of the parking spot without losing my side mirror. Freed we made our way home where the hubby met us with dinner preparations already in progress.

Goals are achieved by taking baby steps. However the path you take to get there is rarely straight and clear. Sometimes those baby steps have to be taken in the opposite direction. While it may feel like a set back, these steps are occasionally necessary to ensure we have enough space to make a course correction. Those small set backs, while frustrating, and time-consuming, might be all that prevents a larger, more serious delay such as a collision with a ill-parked truck.

Sometimes a step back is the only way to leap forward.

http://www.gettyimages.com/detail/143177040

No thanks required

by Allie P., posted in Life as I know it

2013-3-28-MarineCorpsMarathon

The weather is finally beginning to transition from the scalding heat of summer into more comfortable temperatures, and at my house that means that running season has once again begun. The hubby’s more casual runs have taken on a more desperate urgency as he trains to participate once again in the Marine Corp Marathon.

He’s run a few marathons before, but last year was his first time attending this particular event. The boys and I traveled with him to our nation’s capital to offer our support with plans to cheer him on along with thousands of other spectators.

The bombing in Boston had understandably made everyone a wee bit nervous and it was going to be nearly impossible to get anywhere near the course except by foot. Knowing that I was going to be in charge of wrangling both of our boys by myself all the way from the hotel to the finish line I had borrowed a double stroller. It unfortunately had a semi-broken wheel, a fact that I didn’t immediately recognize until we were already in DC. I chose to make do with what we had. My hubby wasn’t going to be the only one getting a workout that weekend.

The day before the big race, we had gone to check in with the officials and pick up the hubby’s race number. Security was in force and there were several lines you had to stand in. We actually stood in one line for close to ten minutes only to realize that it was a line to buy race related merchandise and had nothing what so ever to do with picking up the official bib and tracker.

We had managed to pick up most everything, but there was one more line required on the other side of the street. The boys by this point were starting to go a little stir crazy. I told the hubby to go ahead, that we’d catch up. Without the unwieldy stroller, he would make better time. He did, disappearing into the crowd.

I began making my way out, only to realize that the exit I had gone through took me out on top of a large staircase with no handicap accessible ramp. Going back in the way I came wasn’t an option, security check points wouldn’t allow it. I inched our way towards the first stair, stopping the stroller at the edge. I circled around to the front to ask my elder son to get up and walk down the steps so that I would be free to carry his brother. He decided this was a good time to be uncooperative.

I heard a voice over my shoulder ask if I needed help. I muttered an automatic negative response. I would be okay, I told myself, and returned my attention to my eldest son, who continued to show no signs of behaving. I must not have been very convincing. Suddenly hands appeared from every direction lifting the stroller and my sons up. Within a blink we were down at the bottom. I glanced around. Based on the number of hands, there had to have been at least four people, but they were gone before the words, thank you, had even left my mouth. I never even truly saw their faces.

I thought to myself, what just happened!?!

Then it hit me. I was surrounded by Marines.

Marine Corp Memorial Iwo Jima with Washington ...
Marine Corp Memorial Iwo Jima and finish line of the MCM distance (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have been very fortunate to never once been in a position to see Marines in action first hand. At least not when it mattered. So perhaps I might be excused for being surprised. However I realized then that I should not have expected anything else. These were people trained to overcome resistance, execute their mission with maximum speed and efficiency, and leave no one behind. Even more amazingly they were expected to do all of these things each day without thanks.

I will admit that my ego needs feeding. I crave acknowledgement of good work. I will perform a little victory dance after a job well done. I think to myself I’ve earned my praise, I deserve it, when the majority of my work consists of taping some keys at a computer. To be reminded that there are people who risk far more, requiring far less is extremely humbling.

I may not always agree with the when and how they are deployed, but I am grateful everyday that there are people like that out there. If one of my random helpers from last year’s race stumbles upon this post and remembers the lady with the double stroller on top of the stairs trying to do too much on her own, please accept my most sincere thanks even if you didn’t think it was required. You are inspiring.