Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Best Mom Tip #60: Don't look back

I made the mistake of turing around once when my daughter said, "Mommy, look at this," and now that's the only phrase I hear. In the car. At the park. While trying to make dinner.

Yesterday it was while I was on the floor of her brother's room trying to lower the crib mattress by myself and holding the mattresss part up by my feet.

Often my reply is "I'm driving the car and I cannot turn around right now." This has very little effect on a 4-year-old. I am inevitably doing something like carrying a pot of boiling water or unloading knives from the dishwasher when she suddenly discovers the BEST TWIRLY SKIRT EVER that I simply MUST LOOK AT RIGHT NOW!

She is wonderful and cute--but she drives me nuts.

Thursday, April 9, 2009

Best Mom Tip #59: Get healthy

Yeah, I know.  You don't need to feel guilty about something else and you certainly don't need it from me.  But I feel a LOT better since I've been working out again. 

My latest pregnancy left me with quite a few aches and pains and I had to start completely over with my excercise routines.  Instead of running, I started lifting weights with the help of a coach at the YMCA and it has made a huge difference.  For the first month I used no-impact machines for cardio workouts.  

I'm now able to jog on occassion without feeling like my knees might collapse under me at any point.  My back doesn't jiggle when I go over bumps anymore.  I can wear a good deal of my old clothes.  And I'm not nearly as tired as I was--although that might be becuase both of my children usually sleep through the night at this point.  

I'm not ready to go to the beach and feel as carefree as I did at 20, but that may never be the case.  And there are new wrinkles on places like my stomach that I notice now that some of the fat is gone.   But still, I'd rather be wrinkly and fit than have taut skin simply becuase it's being stretched from the inside out.  

Go for a walk.  Without your children.  It really does make you feel better. 


Monday, April 6, 2009

Best Mom Tip #58: Cross something off someone else's list

I have been feeling quite annoyed with my everyday life lately. It is pretty mundane and nothing is ever really "finished." The laundry will be dirty again tomorrow. We will continue to use plates and glasses--unless we go with paper plates, but that would just make me feel guilty about killing the earth.

I got a dress altered last week, but that required me to undress in a room lit with fluorescent lights so that task didn't really make me feel accomplished, either. I went to the eye doctor and spent $85 for drops because I got something in my eye. Necessary, but not exactly a feeling of success to have that done.

But I also did something off of my husband's list. We have an 11-year-old truck that my husband loves. It has helped a LOT of people move (you know who you are) and has gone camping many times (before our kids were born we actually camped in places that required 4-wheel-drive on occasion.)

Unfortunately, this wonderful truck doesn't fit our entire family at once and that has made it a bit obsolete for our current lives. Over the years, the paint on the hood of the truck wore off while the rest of the paint job remained and this one thing had been preventing my hubby from selling it. (That, and his sadness over the loss of his truck, I'm sure.)

It was hard for him to take it to be painted during the workday so I took it upon myself. I got my mom to watch the kids (they won't fit in the truck, you know) and I took it to get it painted. Then I drove my husband to work for a couple of days and he hitched rides home from friends until we got the truck back.

Now the truck is for sale and it looks like we're in our last week or so of truck ownership. It is the most success I have felt in weeks. I got a big thing off of our list that has made my guy feel better.

It isn't exactly the feeling I had when I solved a major problem at work and felt the satisfaction of a job well done, but it mattered to someone else. And the truck won't need repainting again tomorrow, so it beats out "fed and bathed the kids" on the satisfying task scale.