Smiling Mom

So last night I had one of those Terri­ble Horri­ble No Good Very Bad parent/child exchan­ges. BC and I just couldn’t seem to work things out. It was an emo­tio­nally grue­ling exchange which left us both sob­bing and exhaus­ted. It made me doubt my skills as a mom. Did I do the right thing? Should I have hand­led it dif­fe­rently? I’m not sure. But did I do the best I could? Yes.

Thank­fully when BC woke up this mor­ning, he came run­ning out of his room, smile on face, straight into my arms. Thank good­ness chil­dren are so very resilient.

Hope­fully BC’s get­ting close to the end of this new defiance phase and all can go back to nor­mal in our house.

I wrote about our exchange over at SVMB today.

Today was a mise­ra­ble day.  My kids have that horri­ble cough that is going around accom­pa­nied by a fever at night and loose stools.

Ya, not fun.

eClaire got it bad yes­ter­day with a tem­pe­ra­ture reaching 103 degrees.  BC’s had the tem­pe­ra­ture the day before eClaire’s.  So he’s bet­ter except for a nasty snotty nose and one hell of a cough.

Today star­ted bet­ter than yes­ter­day pro­ved to be.  eClaire was a bit more her­self.  She actually had a bit of food at break­fast!!  Yeay for food.  Appa­rently it does a body good… if only I could rea­son with a two year old… sigh.

But the day got pro­gres­si­vely worse.  Both Hubby and I have been strug­gling with upset sto­maches and mine came to a head this after­noon. And poor Hubby began his new work week tonight.  Did you catch that?

Tonight.

That’s right folks, my hus­band job has tur­ned him noc­tur­nal four out of every seven days.

Good times.

So when he woke up from his late after­noon nap, he was met with a hys­te­ri­cal wife, laying on the couch, a messy house, two kids who wan­ted atten­tion, and mere hours until he was expec­ted at work.

I went to bed, eClaire had horri­ble, horri­ble loose stools and requi­red baths.  And through all of this, BC was extre­mely help­ful.  Thank God for small gifts!

It’s now the middle of the night and bet­ween Hubby and me, we’ve clea­ned up no less than 6 dis­gus­ting dia­pers, one throw up, and a messy house.

My kids were fed break­fast at 7:00, snack around 10:00, a sand­wich at 4:00 (oops, momma for­got lunch!) and no din­ner.  Ya, for­got that one too.

BC got a, “Sorry honey I for­got to feed you,” yogurt at 8:45 tonight.

Paren­ting at it’s best.

So now I’m off to sleep in eClaire and BC’s room, BC is slee­ping in my room because he has no sign of flu symp­toms yet… and Hubby will crawl into our bed as the sun rises, to sleep the day away and attempt to reco­ver himself.

Paren­ting.…sigh.

Just over a year ago right after my daugh­ter tur­ned one, I made a deci­sion to begin fee­ding my family healthier.  I’ve always for­ced low fat foods on my dear Hubby and chil­dren, but deci­ded to step it up.

Regu­lar sour cream??  They’ve never heard of such a thing! Whole fat Mayon­naise?  Naa, we go with fat free! If it’s made non­fat, I buy it.  (Except for cream cheese.  Fat free cream cheese is just dis­gus­ting. So I get the 1/3 fat.  A girl’s gotta have her limits!)

Any­ways, Last year I’d become pretty tired of sta­ring at the fridge and trying to figure out what I could make for din­ner, sighing, and pulling out a pac­ket of Mac & Cheese or those cute fro­zen dino­saur chic­ken nug­gets from CostCo.  I was so. over. it.

Since I was just exi­ting my ugly years.…you know which ones I’m tal­king about, preg­nancy, birth, nur­sing OMG did I even brush my teeth today??!! years, saying Bye Bye Boo­bie and gai­ning my sanity and self back.  I deci­ded that I need to take con­trol of my family’s din­ner­time chaos.

So I began meal plan­ning.  Insert choir music and ange­lic voi­ces here. Oh how life has chan­ged.  Once a week I sit down, browse allrecipes.com figure out what meals I’ll be making for the week and write my gro­cery list accor­dingly.  I don’t buy pre-packeged din­ners ever any­more.  And I rarely fret about what’s for dinner.

You know the grea­test thing?  I save buc­ket of money.  BUCKETS I tell you!!  I don’t buy bags of chips, crac­kers, or any other snacky foods anymore–with one excep­tion, Nutri­Grain Bars (Which I keep in the van for those hun­ger emergencies!)

For snacks my kids often get fruit, string cheese, or low fat yogurt.  I don’t buy high sugar snacks or anything that claims it’s fruit fla­vo­red.  They get two snacks, one at 10 a.m. and one after nap.

That’s it.

In addi­tion this Christ­mas my brother han­ded over his ama­zing jui­cer which I use almost every mor­ning.  I make a full mix­ture of some or all the follo­wing ingredients:

apple, carrot, cucum­ber, celery, orange, broccoli

And my family drinks it.  eClaire, BC and Hubby ALL drink it.  Hehe, I’m totally get­ting my kids to DRINK their veg­gies. More impres­sive, I’ve somehow mana­ged to hood­wink Hubby into drin­king his!!  he he.

Lately Hubby and I’ve been taking it up a level.  Buying orga­nic.  Not everything, but lots of stuff.  We got to our local farmer’s mar­ket most Sun­days to stock up on our weekly veg­gies, jam, and honey.  We always choose orga­nic when offe­red a choice.  And recently I’ve all but chan­ged my hou­sehold clea­ners over to all natu­ral products.

And I feel good.

Sure we still go on an occa­sio­nal fast food run.  But I try to keep it to In & Out, and NOT McD’s.

And best of all I feel like by teaching my kids healthy eating habits now, I’m hope­fully com­ba­ting a whole slew of health pro­blems down the road, most impor­tantly, childhood obesity.

And that my friends, is recently what I’m most proud of doing right for my family.

****I just loo­ked over to my right and rea­li­zed that I have a CostCo sized bag of pea­nut M&M’s open and partly eaten…  I’m SOOO not per­fect.  Excuse me while go do some emo­tio­nal eating as I pon­der this…

I am a public school teacher and I work in one of stron­gest aca­de­mic dis­tricts in the Bay Area. The school I teach at rou­ti­nely ranks in the top five in Cali­for­nia. It’s that good!

My school is also a ‘choice’ school, mea­ning that it is stu­dents come from all over the school dis­trict. You have to choose to send your kids there. The­re­fore school admis­sion is based on a lot­tery. When a child’s num­ber is called a parent almost always pulls their child out of their current pri­vate or public school to enter ours.

I know what great teaching is all about. I’ve seen both sides, the good school envi­ron­ment and the bad.

This is the best.

So why am I fret­ting about school?

Sim­ple. I don’t live in the school dis­trict in which I teach.

Teachers can’t afford to buy a house there.

I have two chil­dren. My oldest will enter kin­der­gar­ten a year from Sep­tem­ber and he can­not go to the my school.

Kinda stinks, doesn’t it?

Often one of the bene­fits that many school dis­tricts offer their teachers is auto­ma­tic admis­sion for their chil­dren. On top of it being very con­ve­nient for us, it also ensu­res the dis­trict that we teachers stay put for the dura­tion of our children’s schoo­ling careers. Teacher reten­tion is quite a pro­blem in Sili­con Valley. It’s a win win.

But since my school is a choice school, my own chil­dren don’t even have an option of attending.

So I fret.

I’ve seen great. I teach at great. I want great for my kids.

The school dis­trict in which I live is alright. It’s neither great nor bad. My kids will pro­bably do fine while atten­ding school in this dis­trict. But then I think, Is alright good enough for my children?

No.

My hus­band and I have dis­cus­sed pri­vate edu­ca­tion, moving, public schools, pri­vate schools again.… But truth be told, two public ser­vants living in Sili­con Valley simply can­not afford a mort­gage and one pri­vate school tui­tion, let alone two tui­tions as my daugh­ter enters school.

So we’re stuck. Pri­vate school costs too much, while public school just might not be great enough.

When it comes down to it, I’m just as con­fu­sed as the next mom trying to do her best by her kids.

Any sug­ges­tions?

Ori­gi­nally pos­ted at Sili­con Valley Moms Blog