Getting Better

As you can see, I’m determined to complete my post series on this subject having used song titles for each one. Surely this is one of the things for which Anna will make fun of me in the coming years! Don’t worry, there are only two to go after this one.

Next in our ideal parental skill set is having a healthy lifestyle, such as good nutrition and exercise habits, which your kids will want to emulate.

I suspect (hope) that everyone will agree that it’s important to take good care of our bodies and to teach our kids to do the same. The trick is finding time for those things we need to do, like walking and preparing healthy meals, in our fast-paced world.

I don’t have a lot to say about exercise. Like so many others, I need more of it. My kid is far more active and energetic than I am. She loves being outside and, as I’ve mentioned in prior posts, is very agile and strong for her age. I definitely envision sports in her future. She enjoys physical activity and I’m hoping this will motivate me to return to better shape because it’s something we can do together.

Anna on the Move, April 2010

It’s not lack of desire that stops me; it’s lack of time and energy. I know, I know, that’s still an excuse. I’m working on it. But I am happy with Anna’s level of activity. She knows exercise is important.

Food is a little more complicated.

I am not the gifted cook that Heidi is. Our problem: the truly good cook in our family usually works too late to cook dinner, often leaving that responsibility to me, her less motivated and less talented counterpart. Between lacking enthusiasm for cooking, having to do it by myself while monitoring a hyper toddler and hyper dog, and having a tight budget while food prices keep rising … well, suffice it to say that mealtime is a tad stressful. So our meals tend to be boring because I look for the easiest possible options.

Consequently, we have a regular rotation of easy things like spaghetti and barbecue chicken, interspersed with the occasional frozen pizza and frozen chicken pot pie. I can cook other healthy things too – fajitas, stir fry, Indian chicken with rice, etc. –that Anna will eat, so at least there’s that variety. I also make some things she won’t eat, like black bean burritos, that hopefully we can try again in the future.

Anna tries Cheerios, September 2009

I felt like a slacker mom the other day on the day care playground when Anna asked me if we were having chicken pot pie, which she loves, for dinner “again” (we weren’t). Hopefully the other moms didn’t pick up on my chagrinned expression. Maybe they think that I’m the kind of mom who spends hours preparing delicious pot pie with hand-cut veggies and homemade crust like my mom (who is a fabulous cook) did.

I just couldn’t handle that, and I didn’t inherit my mom’s cooking talent, but nobody has to know, right?

I do give myself brownie points (ha ha) for making sure there is always some type of vegetable and some fruit with our meals. Anna especially loves broccoli, corn and carrots and enjoys lots of different kinds of fruit. I think she does pretty well in the nutrition department, but I still wish I had the time and the drive to create more interesting, healthy meals. Maybe someday.

Which brings me to the other food-related health issue that occurred to me…. that some parents advocate completely barring kids from having fast food, sugar, desserts, soda, etc. In an ideal world, yes, we wouldn’t feed our kids this stuff. However, at the risk of having my brownie points revoked, I don’t think our world is ideal and I think even those things, in moderation, are okay.

Anna the Bumblebee, Halloween 2009

Do I want Anna to have sugary stuff right before bed? That’s a resounding NO. Do I want her to have a lot of sweets each day? Absolutely not. Do we go to McDonald’s for a Happy Meal every time she asks? Of course we don’t.

But I also think there isn’t much point in absolutely preventing it either. Like so many things, if we act like treats are a big taboo, it will only make our kids more likely to go off the deep end with them when they start having them in the future at school or at friends’ houses. I want Anna to learn that it’s okay to have treats if we do it in moderation.

So, I am relying on Cookie Monster’s songs to help me convey the point that cookies (and other desserts and treats) are “sometimes foods” – they aren’t very healthy, so we don’t have them all the time, but they are okay now and then. We are also working hard on properly brushing our teeth, thanks to Grover’s song (“Brush your teeth every day, that’s the clean and healthy way…), to counteract some of the damage sweets can do. And I’m going to work harder with Heidi on menu planning.

Given the craziness of our daily routine, I’m doing the best that I can. And as the Beatles said, it’s getting better all the time.