Tag: toddlers

Snack less

On By JillIn Health eating, I need a glass of wine, Mommy Confessions, Mommy Musings, Sugar and Snack Less, Uncategorized4 Comments

Gather the horses, sharpen the swords, get all your man power together to guard the castle door.  Hold it strong and steady— I am starting to wage a war against the SUGAR MONSTERS and other offenders like the SALT SNATCHERS.

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I am a chocolate donut monster!

This mom is sugared out, chocolate out, and frosted out…the circuits in her brain are firing as fast as firecrackers… “marshmallows, oreos, sprinkles, cookies, treats…”

Its been bad, Ari has been talking in her sleep saying “I want chocolate,” and waking up saying M&M’s.  Gia wants a donut practically every time we leave the house, my closet is jam packed with junk, and my car is so crunchy with crackers, the bugs have been salivating at the idea of getting in!

Ok, that was gross. But seriously, I don’t know how it’s gotten to this.  I used to be the healthiest person.  I was a Health Science major in college, I taught spinning classes, and I used to annoy the hell out of friends and family by talking about food and nutrition.

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Sweets, sweets, sweets!

I think it started when I began going to play dates and I saw all of this junk food in people’s houses.  I remember this one mom who fed her daughter a chocolate frosted donut for breakfast.  Other moms had closets full of cookies and sugar cereals…their kids seemed fine, and I slowly slipped away from my strict dietary rules (I just had one child at the time as well). Month by month, I slacked more and more and found it easier to just say “yes” rather than deal with the howling.

Get out the violins…oh sorry story, poor Jill, swept under the sea of sugar and never battled the waves of whipped cream! So here we are, my kids are 4 and 2 and I need to fix this.  Snacky nanny 911 to the rescue!

One other embarrassing secret I need to admit.  I am struggling with the snacks as well…oh wait, that’s no secret! I write about this all of the time…I think I have eaten the past…um, really embarrassed about this, like twenty…thousand bags of goldfish and of course Cheez its.  I always buy them for the kids and end up on the couch with my wine, munching away!  I am such a cliché! Doesn’t every health and fitness magazine say, don’t eat on the couch, in the dark, mindlessly watching TV or when you’re tired and stressed.

Ok, so it’s me and the girls starting fresh, and trying to get better at eating better, like less snacks, more meals…I will be brainstorming ideas to get us on the path less traveled by Mr. Goldfish, Mrs. Donut, and Ms. Cookie. Stay tuned for my weekly report of snack less, smile more…and please no judgment people, I am a work in progress. Not striving for perfection here, like last week when I endured the MOST HELLISH trip to the pediatrician’s office with my little one who screamed and thrashed like a scene from my bloody Valentine…we got a donut after and I had a BIG GLASS(s) of wine.

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Sprinkles, sprinkles, sprinkles!

Going on a bear hunt cake

On By JillIn Uncategorized1 Comment
teddycake
We’re not afaid of these bears!

Playdate tomorrow.  What should I make? No chocolate chips in the house since last week I naively deemed them as unfit for our family…not chocolate chips per se, but sweets in general, calling Erin (my weekly playdate friend), last Friday, and telling her that last week’s cookies were the VERY LAST ONES EVER. And here we are an entire week later and boy has my tune changed.  I think God must flip a coin at night and heads, Jill is completely neurotic, frantically stopping off at all of her usual haunts, 7-11, CVS, gas station convenience stores (last Thursday, I was in one of these such stores purchasing some “last sweets ever.” You know what I bought – something very random, for me that is – a whoopee pie- do you even know what that is?

I had one once in my life and I actually stole it from a wedding reception- not a wedding I was invited to, just one that was taking place at the restaurant/banquet hall I was having dinner at.  We were leaving our dining area and I was very tipsy, and spotted this giant stack of them, they beckoned me to come and get one… or two…They were individually packaged with the couple’s name and date of ceremony and some stupid loved dovey quote- (I am clearly not a romantic, can you tell?)

The usual culprits are an everything bagel with olive cream cheese ( that combination is the absolute best thing on earth- the only problem is that I have a wheat intolerance and a bagel is like flour x 100 and my stomach looks like I am five months pregnant after I eat one….but they are just so so good) or my favorite ice cream sunday- cookie dough icecream, marshmallow sauce, and peanut butter cups…pure peanuty, heavenly pleasure, need I say more? Not to mention blondies, Cheez its, cookies with frosting, and anything with ranch dressing- oh calgon- take me away to a smorgasbord of all my favorite foods…and make it all calorie free.

Needless to say, I marched into the convenience store with Arianna who decided to take every lollypop off the stand, you know those big lollypops, with names like banana cream pie, that are displayed at almost every checkout counter, and looked and looked for my “last sweet ever” and decided on a Whoopie Pie…to be honest, it was the biggest baked item on the rack- I figured Ari and I could share it… I only bought one thing because I was going home to bake chocolate chip cookies and oatmeal cookies for a playdate- you know, the last playdate ever with sweets….( I know what you’re thinking, this lady is completely screwed up!)

Like I said, I think that God flipped the coin to heads that day and it was out of her mind Jill.  On the days that I gratefully get a tails, I am much calmer and rational. I stay out of money sucking, junk food serving stores, and … I’m not really sure what I do, let’s see what G has to say, “G, what does mommy do when she is calm, not shopping, or being crazy?”

“You read,” says Gia.

Interesting, because when do I really have time to read? If I do get the rare moment to put my feet up and fire up the IPad, it’s like I am a magnetic force pulling the girls towards me, with their eyes wide like zombies chanting, “Mom, let me see; Mom, let me play; Mom, play music; and the latest and far most horrifying is Mom, let me have the IPad”

This last request is that G wants to record me.  She has been sneaking around, recording videos of me, without me knowing….can we say embarrassing? I didn’t even know that she knew how to do this and I dropped her off at my brother’s for an hour while I took A to gymnastics and she played these videos of me, awful shots of me with hair up, roots showing, no makeup, side profile (which I hate- my chin is way shorter than my nose and it’s just not pretty!) Not to mention that I was looking completely perplexed and frazzled in these videos.  But then again, that’s the norm around here.

Today, however, I am no longer a culprit of the coin toss, I feel as if I have made major strides in the last week, first I wrote

Let it Go https://thegirlyreports.wordpress.com/2014/03/01/let-it-go/ and the other day I wrote a post about not making life so hard and having more fun and that’s what we are trying to do moving forward.

Damn, I get off subject so easily.  Today I decided to do a Going on a Bear Hunt theme.  For some reason, visions of teddy grahms were dancing in my head so voilà- we got out the Ipad, fired up the song and reenacted the words on a scene we made at the table.  I’m sure you have all heard of “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” before.  There are many versions of this song out there and this is the one we like.  The singers’ voices crack us up!

https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/101-kids-party-hits/id318874318

Song number 46

We acted out the motions of Going on the Bear Hunt with this scene we created.

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The extent of my artistic ability

That would be grass that G’s fingers are pretending to walk through.

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What’s hiding underneath the cave?
gia scared
Ahhhhh, it’s a bear!

Then I made a cake, from scratch, and you know what – I’m too tired to post the recipe- I made the icing too, without powdered sugar – you want to make it too- find it yourself, but I’ll show you the cake again!

teddycake

Frustrated Stay at Home Mom

On By JillIn Uncategorized2 Comments

Just yesterday I was thinking to myself, you know what, being a stay at home mom is easy- I mean, truly, I don’t have any deadlines, I don’t have a boss breathing down my back, I don’t have annoying coworkers to deal with, I don’t have to commute, I don’t have the stress of having to bring home the bacon…

But after a day like today, I am in shock that I even had those thoughts…

The morning started out with a broken glass, shattered on the kitchen table and all over the tile- glass and liquid everywhere.  I frantically tried to sweep it up, clearly disturbed, and Gia says to me, “But Mommy, your taking too long and I’m huuuungry!”

I looked at her with anger saying “Do you not see what I am doing? Cleaning up the glass that you broke so you don’t step on the slivers that will have us running to the hospital where you will have to get a needle so big….”

“Mom, you left the glass there so it’s your fault,” she retorted.

This statement so eloquently spoken by my daughter was the beginning of my day.  We have a contractor here doing work and my daughter is petrified of any noise that he makes, whether it be banging on the walls , a drill sound, or just his mere presence causes her to scream and cry and run for Mommy- sounds cute doesn’t it but not while you are trying to get two girls dressed and fed and out the door and forget about brushing teeth!

After music class which was still very early in this long day – a 9:30 am class, I temporarily lost my keys- its freezing cold here in New Jersey, I have the two year old in my arms, and I can’t find my car keys anywhere, I am embarrassed to admit I started to tear up, AGAIN…It must be my hormones but I cried a little on the way to music class, Pink’s Just Give Me a Reason blaring in the car, which always makes me cry, just blubbering about how is this my morning over and over again- the rushing, the crying, the frustration, the TOO SMALL clothes- these kids are growing like weeds!

Thank goodness for my friend in music class who actually got out of her car to help me look and she said, “You need another set of eyes.” After searching high and low, she found them in my daughter’s winter coat pocket.

I must have absent mindedly put them in there while busy moaning about my life…

We had a few errands to run in the morning while Gia was at school and it was the usual temper tantrums and such …the day moved on with crying and hysterics on the garage floor, refusing to come inside because I un – snapped her myself.

At this point I was already pooped out but I was invited to a play date- someone I never had a play date with before so I couldn’t cancel on her- first impressions are the most important ones, right? Well, I screwed that one up or rather my two darlings did…get back to that in a second.

In the few hours that we had before heading over to new friend’s house, my daughter, who tortured us with non stop vomiting for a year and a half straight when putting her to bed, decided to revert back to her old ways and hurl the contents of every thing she ate all over my kitchen floor- the reason- I yelled at her, yup, I lost my temper on her, after she insisted on icing the cookies that I made for the play date herself- but the problem was that she was icing and then licking the spoon and the bowl and telling Arianna that she couldn’t help which resulted in major screaming and crying…just writing this is making my heartbeat faster! This is so hard! How do moms do this???

Oh right…they have their children in school for more than two days a week and only two and a half hours at that- I am the only Mom that I know who is basically home all day with these children, and by that I mean children of this age- I know that there are moms who are doing the home schooling thing but they must have some secret, or help, or a husband who comes home at a decent hour!  

We cleaned up, Gia took a mega fast bath to clean off the puke- made it to the play date – the girls were terrible! Arianna screamed and cried when she didn’t get her way and Gia flat out hit me with her dress up magic wand when I said we had to leave…Arianna threw her typical kicking and screaming and thrashing of her legs when I tried to change her diaper, which is always fun at someone else’s house!

The day didn’t get much better and the icing on the cake was the call from my husband saying first he was going to be late and second, his car was dead at the train station.

I didn’t even feel like writing this post because I am tired, frustrated, and to be perfectly honest, sick of writing about these sort of days which seem to happen ever so frequently- I love these girls, I hate these situations.

Something has to change…