Situation: baby squirrel wanders into yard. Dog instantly sees and seeks to destroy. Squirrel evades under patio furniture. Dog manages to capture until silly human owners make her stop. Squirrel runs for life, with a limp.
Man: Good dog!
Woman: Bad dog!
I know I can get my keyboard to make all those fancy French accent marks, but I am really too lazy to figure out how.
We’ve been in Kansas for less than a month, and we’ve had three significant health crises already. And for once, it’s not the usual suspects who are causing all the hullabaloo.
First, there was Bill…on the patio…with the ratchet.
Then on Thursday, our dog suffered a heat stroke. She had to be taken to the vet and given an ice bath and an IV and kept overnight for observation. Really, we’re not bad pet owners. She had been in the A/C all morning and had plenty of water. Bill played fetch with her for about 15 minutes when she started returning r e a l l y s l o w l y. He brought her in, and within 10 minutes we had called the vet, determined she needed help and gotten her out the door. Even the vet was surprised, since we moved here from Virginia and not someplace routinely cooler. Since dogs, and humans, are more susceptible to heat stroke if it’s happened before, and since we haven’t owned her for her entire life, I suspect that this wasn’t the first time. Now we know: absolutely no exercise during the heat of the day, which is basically from dawn to dusk around here right now.
And then last night, I missed the bottom step on the way down, just like I did over a year ago. This time, it’s my right foot and not my left that is sprained. And I was such a baby. I cried, in part because of the pain, but mostly because I was so mad at myself, and I think sobbing is more ladylike than throwing a temper tantrum. Then I had to ask Bill to get me the tissues, and to have to ask him to wait on me, and especially to have to ask him to get me tissues because I was crying only made me cry more and tell him I was pathetic.
“You’re not pathetic,” he comforted. “At least you didn’t hit yourself in the head with a ratchet. That’s pathetic.”
And that made me laugh, because, well, that is pathetic. He’s always got to top me, that husband.
I’ve got a lot of experience with regression in children. Moving, traveling…any disruption to a boring daily routine generally results in my under 5 crowd having a mental breakdown. We are almost through the latest installment, and I’ll get a few weeks of respite before the new baby, the new disruption, and more regression.
{sigh}
Back when Fritz was little, I read all the warnings about toilet training a toddler when another baby was on the way. Don’t do it, they all so wisely and confidently said. The child will just regress and make your life even more difficult. So, even though he had been starting to use the potty here and there from 18 months, I gave up, figuring there was no point. Billy was born when he was 21 months old, and I had 2 in diapers.
Then I starting hearing about this concept of “waiting until the child is ready” to do potty training. Today, I can tell you that I’m not really sure why parents buy into this theory of child rearing. I don’t wait until my child says “teach me” before encouraging the use of tableware. I don’t wait until my child has a cooperative attitude before working on the virtue of obedience. And if my kindergartener doesn’t know her alphabet, I don’t wait until she says “I want to learn to read” before I begin working on basic letter recognition and phonics.
But back then, I ignored my common sense that nagged me that my own generation was toilet trained before the age of three and that it was really possible to do it even with newborn babies around, and I waited for signs of “readiness.” Looking back, I can tell you who wasn’t ready: me. It’s not that I wanted 2 kids in diapers. It’s that potty training is messy work. It was so much easier to change a diaper at my own convenience than to mop up a puddle before somebody started playing in it. Or before it soaked into the wall-to-wall carpeting in our rented apartment.
And then, the next thing I knew, he was three, and I had another baby due in a few months, and I worried about wasting my time because he would just regress anyway. Katie was born when he was 3 years and 3 months old, and I had 3 in diapers.
Fritz never did show signs of readiness. Three months later, I decided enough was enough and I knuckled down and trained him. But this experience didn’t make me any wiser. I waited for Billy to be “ready” until he was past his third birthday…nothing. In fact, he was rapidly approaching 3 1/2 when Katie, only 18 months younger, started using the toilet all by herself (my one and only “ready” child). Jenny was due, Bill was deployed, my life was crazy (I lived a whole year full of regression), and it looked like I was going to have 2 in diapers – but it wouldn’t be the youngest two.
Again, I knuckled down, and I ended up with just one in diapers, except for Katie at night. There were accidents (there still are accidents), and I just got used to keeping a change of clothes for everybody in the car, but we got through it.
With Jenny, I expected that she’d be like Katie – only because she’s a girl and a younger sibling and not for any really good reason. I expected her to train herself around age 2. Nope. But I moved my personal timeline up, and managed to have her out of diapers by the time she was 3. I also developed a greater sense of humor in training her.
And now, my fifth child, has an entirely different mother than my first child did. Waiting until a child is ready just might be good advice, but this mom has different criteria for what “ready” means. If my child’s preferred mode of dress is au naturale, it just might be a good time to begin potty training. If my child is capable of attaining that goal of bare nakedness by undressing himself, it just might be a good time to begin potty training. And if my child indicates that he understands the connection between the bathroom and the liquid coming from his body, then it really just might be a good time to begin potty training.
As for the regression monster, that fear that I would work so hard only to have to begin anew? Eh, I figure they have to regress somehow when the new baby comes, it might as well be toilet training as anything else. Besides, regression means that there was initial success. And if I could have one single month in nine years of parenting with zero children in diapers, that would be an amazing thing indeed.
I can’t wait for school to start. Not for us – I’m not ready yet – but for them, the neighborhood kids.
We’re operating on vacation time here, still. Bill starts orientation next week, but this week all he had to do is pick up his school books. And he did. He was gone about 15 minutes this morning. Checked the block, and he’s done for the week. It’s a rough existence, I tell you.
School – for him, for the public schools, and for us – begins the week after next. In the meantime, I have this dreamy idea of what suburban, vacation living should be like: We get up whenever. Eventually, we get dressed. The kids go outside to play. They join other kids in the big communal area past our yard. They come home for Kool-Aid and crackers and grapes and apple slices. They take a break for lunch, then repeat until dinner time.
On Saturday morning around 830 am, Fritz went into the backyard by himself. Almost immediately, he was joined by our 7 year old neighbor. This would have been fine, except I was still in my pajamas, hadn’t eaten breakfast, and now suddenly everybody wants to go out and play even though nobody is dressed and nobody has eaten breakfast. Thus ended my leisurely morning.
On Sunday, we were barely in the door from Mass when the doorbell started ringing with kids asking if the boys could come out. And I’m not sure when some of these kids actually eat lunch or dinner, since no matter what time we do, there is always someone who comes calling then. In fact, today, around noon, a little boy would have actually walked in through my kitchen door if I hadn’t locked it to keep Peter in. I knew he was there only because the dog grunted in that general direction and I bothered to check. I really can’t have strange kids just walking in this house: the territorial dog is one concern, and just my own privacy and sense of personal space is another.
Last week, Bill laid down the law: no more going out to play after dinner time. Bedtime was getting more and more hectic and happening at a later and later hour. This wouldn’t be such a big deal for my older ones, but my little ones really need their sleep. Bedtime prayers are a family event. The older ones may stay up past them, but I can’t have them running around the neighborhood until 9 pm.
This past weekend, I insisted that the children begin coming in for one full hour for lunch. Otherwise, the meal was more of a snack on the run. We’d find half eaten sandwiches and half drunk glasses of water and milk on the table as my children dash back out in favor of the next game or playmate. My kids can run on fumes all day long, but I can’t allow that (although I wish I could emulate it).
I’ve also had to insist that of all the hours in the day left for playing with friends (they have seven hours of free time between breakfast and lunch and lunch and dinner) that only three of them in total may be spent inside someone else’s house. On hot afternoons, I really don’t mind if the kids retreat indoors. However, at two of the three houses where they are permitted inside, the main form of entertainment is video games. They just don’t need to fill those seven hours with that.
Besides, I don’t necessarily want to host other children all day long every day, and I assume other moms feel the same way. There’s a politeness factor here: how long do you hang out when paying a social call, especially when it’s someone you see all the time? I know this concept is lost on children…and I suspect it may be lost on many adults, too. Yes, having other children over generally keeps your own children occupied allowing you to actually get some work done. It’s great…until the children decide to exclude the two year old, who lets everyone know just exactly how displeased he is with that. Or until it hits those too-late-for-snack-too-early-for-dinner times, and they start clamoring for food. Or until your children decide this is a good opportunity to test your parenting tenacity and begin hounding you for every single off-limit or special treat activity they can imagine or, worse yet, flat-out ignore your reminders of house rules.
Another point of courtesy: I don’t want my kids ringing doorbells, in general. I figure if the neighbors want to play outside, they’ll play outside, and I tell my kids to go out there and see who shows up. Maybe they are inside because they have chores, or family time or their mother is still in her pajamas and hasn’t eaten breakfast yet. Or maybe they are inside because their mother won’t let them knock on other people’s doors, and they haven’t overcome morning inertia and gone outside themselves yet.
Or maybe I’m just a grumpy, anti-social type who really needs to settle down in rural America where the nearest neighbor is at least a half-mile away. Then it wouldn’t matter when school started for the local kids; we’d never have a ringing doorbell…and my kids would moan about being bored, and that would be just awful, right? Hmmm…I think the Army needs to figure out a way to have everyone telecommute…let’s not go to war, but say we did, huh? Works for me.
So, what about you? Do you have kids constantly coming to your door, waking the baby from his nap? Do your kids roam the neighborhood freely for hours on end coming home only for meals? Are they hanging out at friends’ houses indulging in banned activities like all-day TV and video games? How do you squeeze in family time and family meals in an environment where nobody else seems to be doing that? Is seven hours of free time sufficient or is it obscene? Should I just forgo all playtime with the neighbors and put my kids to work as productive members of my domestic society?
It was HOT yesterday after lunch. Pete was napping, I was napping, and the older kids were enjoying a mom-mandated hour of watching TV in the cool A/C. And my husband was laboring hard in our full-sun backyard to reconstruct the kids’ swing set.
Unfortunately, I had been the one to go to Home Depot to buy some replacement hardware for this contraption, and I didn’t realize that two key bolts I pulled from the appropriate bin were misplaced there and were too big in diameter. Bill had warned me that sometimes the wrong lengths get put in the bins, so I had checked for that. I should have realized that the wrong diameters would be in there as well.
Also, unfortunately, I had been the one to go to Home Depot to buy some replacement hardware, because the hardware aisle was just past the section where they displayed their outdoor “end-of-season” furniture including a gazebo swing for nearly half off. And I had a coupon for another 10% off, making this swing for my unbearably hot full-sun backyard too good of a deal to pass up.
Since the kids’ swing set was at a standstill (lacking those bolts), and since his exhausted wife was snoozing, my hardworking guy unloaded my swing from the car and began assembling the needed tools. At this point I was up from my nap and asked him if he wanted to go get the right bolts so he could finish the swing set, but he figured he might as well do my swing which would be faster, and then go to Home Depot later, maybe after dinner. I offered to help, and we set to work in the blazing hot, full-sun backyard.
I was feeling badly that I wasn’t much help. I was moving as slowly as, well, a pregnant woman in late July, and doing much more of the stand-here-and-hold-this than the run-there-and-fetch-that. So my husband, who had been laboring hard in the hot, full-sun backyard and had not rested for a half hour on a soft bed in an air conditioned house, continued to do all the hard stuff, all for my benefit, since it was my gazebo swing he was assembling.
We had completed the frame, and he was doing a last tightening of the bolts, and I was covering all the exposed hardware with little plastic covers. I turned from gathering some bolt covers to see him down on his knees with his hands to his forehead. The bolts he was tightening were overhead, and his ratchet had slipped and fallen right between his eyes. Later he told me he had actually seen stars. All I know is that he pulled his gloved hand away from his head just a bit and a huge drop of very red blood landed on the patio. I ran in for a cool, damp cloth, and then sat him down in a chair in the tiniest bit of shade.
The cut was big and ugly and bleeding profusely, as head wounds are apt to do. I called the health center on post, and found out they can do stitches (good to know for the future), but it was late afternoon and they had no appointments. So it was off to the emergency room. A family trip – woohoo!
It didn’t take long, really. We were there about an hour altogether, and he only needed to have his head crazy glued together, which is good. The kids were impatient, but not badly behaved. Billy wanted to look at a Newsweek magazine, and we let him. Nice photos of blown up Army Hummers…you know, just what I want my kid seeing. I can’t help but want to shelter them from the hard realities of life, especially when those realities might be very personal for them. I’d rather they learn about genocide in Ruwanda than soldiers dying.
And right there in the emergency room waiting area, they were able to witness other hard realities of life. Another family came in. I guessed it was a sick woman, her five children, and her mother who drove her and was now assuming responsibility for the kids while she sought medical help for fever and chills. They were from the “high-rent district” as my husband sarcastically called it. Afterward Fritz remarked that the grandmother’s voice was different than most women he knew. I explained that her voice was likely deep and gravelly because of years of smoking. She was also loud…and mean. The kids noticed it, and I couldn’t protect them from what they saw any more than I could protect the little boy, about their age, who seemed to be the target of the bulk of her nastiness.
I really didn’t understand it. The two older kids, a girl and a boy, looked to be in the 12 to 15 year range. Surely the older girl could have babysat the other ones, I thought. The grandmother told someone on her cell phone that she was stuck with the kids and had to try to keep from killing them…a phrase I sometimes use, too, but usually with a tone of frustration, not loathing. At one point she had four of the kids around her, but the one little boy had been banished to a seat a bit apart. She was handing out a snack, and the little boy, excluded from the group, began to cry. She called him a “crybaby,” permitted him over, gave him a handful, and then sent him back to his corner. She then began to dote over his little sister, about 4 years old, asking for kisses for more treats. What really broke my heart was the look on the older kids’ faces: completely undisturbed by her treatment of the boy. The oldest girl smiled and played with the littlest girl and seemed quite as ease with the whole situation: not just a numb acceptance of abuse, but almost an approval.
And so the cycle goes.
Soon, we left, and my kids were free to tell me what they thought. I guess they got a lesson in empathy. They couldn’t believe that any grown-up, certainly not a grandmother (grandmothers being even more loving than mothers, in their personal experience), would talk to kids like that. All of my rules about talking to others, including the golden rule of not calling people “stupid,” seemed to have been broken by this woman. Why? they wanted to know. Why did she treat them like that? The best answer I could give was that she didn’t know any better. She never learned that it’s not okay.
We had drive-through for dinner, because it was past that time. And then we went to Home Depot, and I got the right bolts (and nothing else). At home, we managed to finish the swing before bedtime. Now, I have a comfortable, shaded spot where I can hold my little ones close and tell them how much I love them. And where my husband can sit and drink a cold beer when he needs a break from working on whatever other projects his wife devises as she wanders through Home Depot.
Up until recently, my husband has been reading two, and only two blogs: mine and Eric Scheske’s. Eric is a beer-loving, non-politically correct father of seven who is usually pretty funny, so it’s easy see his appeal to my beer-loving, non-politically correct husband (and father of almost six) who enjoys being amused.
Due primarily to technical difficulties which will hopefully be rectified within hours, I haven’t been blogging a whole lot. I guess to fill that void, my husband has sought satisfaction elsewhere. Had he asked for recommendations, I could have pointed him to one of the myriad of guy-blogs, or political blogs, or blogs written by priests. There are plenty of interesting, innocuous, but testosterone-laden sites out there. Instead, he has sought solace with another woman. Oh, the infidelity!
I had actually shown him The Pioneer Woman Cooks blog (the Kitchen Madonna referred to it), and he drooled along with me at the recipes, especially the ones labeled “Man Pleasers.” Even if you don’t think you can cook, I don’t see how you can go wrong with the recipes she gives. The ingredients are basic, and usually not too many per recipe. She gives step by step instructions and includes photos for each and every step. It’s like having a cooking demonstration right in front of you, but you can pause and rewind as necessary. The only downside to her recipes is the health factor: unless you work a ranch full-time, I suggest you eat her cooking in moderation. I think I want to buy a ranch and work it just so I can eat like that every day.
I had no idea that Pioneer Woman had her Confessions, too. Sarah told me about that blog when I visited her. Even if she hadn’t, though, I see Pioneer Woman fever sweeping the mom blogs I generally read, and more than one person has admitted to lurking around her place. I checked out her site, and found it worth reading and made a mental note to add her to my bloglines. But due primarily to technical difficulties which will hopefully be rectified within hours, I haven’t been reading blogs much either. But Bill only reads three blogs now and one of them (mine) hasn’t been saying much recently, so he’s not only up-to-date on her latest posts, he’s actually gone through and read some of her archives. Did you read about how she met Marlboro Man? he asks me. I’ve got to tell you about calf nuts, he says. I don’t know whether to laugh or to be insanely jealous.
In the hours it’s taken me to write this post, the cable guy has come and gone, and I seem to have a tenuous connection to the internet. As long as I don’t have to share my husband’s laptop and type with it perched on my knees burning from the laptop’s vented air, I may be back in business. I just hope my content is up to snuff, or my husband may go back to reading only two blogs – and mine won’t be one of them!
It’s not yet 6 am, and Jenny is awake. Of course, she wants attention, too, but this time is my time. I get up early so I can have coffee, pray, exercise (well, probably not this morning on that one), check email, and maybe blog…all without an incessant dialogue between me and one or more little person(s) or the drone of background noise. In four months, this time will vanish, and I’ll either be blogging with a baby at my breast or sleeping later to make up for nighttime interuptions. Between now and then, I guard this quiet time sternly. Jen’s been banished to the couch.
It’s not surprising that she’s up early today, or that she was up early yesterday. We’ve been in the car around 6 pm both evenings prior, and she’s fallen fast asleep. Out cold. We just put her to bed for the night. Frequently, if there aren’t sufficient distractions, she falls asleep around that time anyway, generally while in the middle of a meltdown. It’s a messy situation, and it’s obvious she needs more sleep. I could point fingers at a certain older sister who likes to stay up late (and sleep late) and likes to have company in so doing, but instead, I’ll simply state that something is going to change. I’ll go to bed myself and ignore the giggles and chatter still bubbling with an unnatural energy at 10 pm, but I won’t give up my morning’s peace and quiet. And I really won’t accept a cycle that consists of three nights of yelling at asking little girls to stop talking followed by three mornings of having a someone lying on the floor at my feet complaining about everything from her tummy hurting to how boring it is at 6 am with nobody else awake and how cruel I am for ignoring her (repeat cycle).
This calls for a classic technique: divide and conquer. Somebody is going to be spending their bedtime on mom and dad’s bed.
Yesterday morning, Bill plugged something into an outlet in our den – the room with the computer – and the room lost power. He tried the circuit breakers, but this wasn’t a simple overload. He called maintenance, and they sent some guys out within an hour or so. They diagnosed a loose wire, and set about trying to locate it. They found the offending connection at the circuit breaker box, but they also found, among the web of wires there, about six wires that were charred.
Yes, charred.
This house was built just over a year ago. Fire, especially an electrical fire, is one of those things I’m paranoid about. And after last fall’s experience when my smoke-filled house failed to detonate a single smoke detector, I’m very grateful that God loves us so much He’ll bend over backwards to protect us from what I consider certain death. One of us, and not likely me, is destined for something greater, and we’re all benefiting from the Divine protection offered to that one.
For some time, they left us with some power: A/C and hot water and some outlets. By early afternoon though, they had cut everything off. They started mentioning alternative sleeping arrangements. If not for the A/C, I would have gladly just stayed without power in our own home. It was a great debate in my mind – the comfort of my own bed vs. the comfort of climate control. When you are 22 weeks pregnant, this is a tough call.
Since it wasn’t yet too hot in the house, we stayed for a while doing our sorting and cleaning and other fun getting-ready-to-move things. Then we opted to head to the pool. The maintenance guys were returning as we were leaving. Thank goodness, they called us an hour or so later and told us it was all fixed. And so, after feeding the kids pool-side deep-fried chicken nuggets and fries, we returned to the well air conditioned fire trap with comfortable beds.
As I’ve said to Bill perhaps a hundred times in the last year: I’m so glad we don’t own this house. Our 55 year old fixer-upper in New Jersey is a much smaller headache than this place.
It was a long, busy, first week of summer vacation.
On Monday, Billy got his staples out of his head. I tried to make a same-day appointment, but they told me to just walk in. They made us (all 6 of us) wait for well over an hour. Some things you just have to offer up.
That afternoon, I had an OB checkup. In and out in 15 minutes.
Tuesday was my ultrasound. Wednesday, Fritz had an appointment with the orthodontist and had his expander removed. I can understand him so much better now. And the dentist called and was able to squeeze Billy in last minute for a tiny filling (the first cavity among the kids).
That evening, Fritz had his Scouts den meeting. Only 4 boys came. They all helped in a demonstration to make a foil dinner packet. Then the dad pulled out one already cooked and everyone sampled it. My boys thought it was great. It is true that children are more willing to taste food if they help to prepare it.
When they were all done, out came the snacks with plenty of extras for the siblings who were there (mostly mine, but I brought the snacks). All the kids were on the back of one dad’s pickup truck, but the 4 boys from the den plus Billy grabbed their snacks and ran off to a bit of woods across a field near the parking lot.
This left my girls and two other girls in the pickup truck with Petey. It took about 60 seconds for Petey to look around, assess the situation, and determine that he should be with the boys and not the girls. “Down, Mommy,” he said, and he was gone.
On Thursday, I had the pleasure of meeting little Mary Claire who is so very pretty. Mama Cris is another Catholic, military, homeschooler, and it’s a shame that our paths are crossing just this one time right now. The blogosphere is fine, but being able to hang out in someone else’s house while your children eat their complete supply of graham crackers tops 20 love notes in the com-box any day.
As we were leaving, her almost 4 year old daughter and my daughters were talking about a sleepover, which just isn’t going to happen in these few brief weeks. In the ever-mobile military, you have to accept that the physical closeness of friends (like the physical closeness of the spouse serving in the military) is a luxury. Just before Scouts on Wednesday evening, we ran over to another friend’s house to deliver a goodbye card that Katie had made. The departing kids were packed in the car, the parents were loading the last few things and waiting for housing to do the final walk-through. The mom and I hugged, we smiled, we wished each other well on our new adventures. We didn’t exchange cell phone numbers or email addresses. We like each other, we have stuff in common, we got along, but we weren’t able to develop a really deep friendship. Maybe I’ll never see her again. Maybe I will, and if so, we’ll pick up right where we left off. And in between, we will both have other friends with whom we’ll spend a few hours a few times lingering over tea and good conversation while the kids play, perhaps helping out in a pinch a few times, and then hugging and wishing well when it’s time for the next duty station.
This military life is so impermanent. But in the final analysis, so too is our life here on earth. If you want to learn detachment to things, people, places: be a military spouse.
Yesterday, my friend Rachel and I went kid-less to the IHM Conference. I really enjoyed listening to Laura Berquist speak. It is comforting to hear someone who is at the end now of her homeschooling career (her youngest of 6 just finished high school) talk about all the same issues you face daily. There is hope, you can succeed, it won’t kill you, the kids will turn out great, your family will be strong. Now if I can just bottle that message and get a whiff once a month or so, I’ll be fine!
Then I had to hurry home from the conference to take the kids to their baseball team’s party. This coach, a neighbor and friend of ours, was great. Always encouraging, always displaying and teaching good sportsmanship, always pushing but not too hard – I wish all my kids’ coaches could be like him. It’s no wonder the team only lost one game. It’s not that we had the best hitters or that the coach put the strongest players at the key positions: we didn’t, and he didn’t. He just pulled from each kid the best effort they had and managed to get 7 to 9 year olds to cooperate as a team. It was a beautiful thing to witness.
The party was fun with a kids vs. adults (and teens) pickup game, hotdogs and chips, and trophies. {On the way there, Fritz, with a concerned tone, asked if I was going to play…you know, since I was pregnant and all. I assured him that I would not, knowing that chasing Petey would be enough for me, and thinking it was a good thing I had a toddler to watch since otherwise I probably would have been fool enough to join in.} By the time their later than usual bedtime came around, I was sapped. This weekend will be busy with the Scout Pack camping out tonight, and the boys crossing over to the next level.
Monday is Bill’s last day of work.
The movers come in 18 days.
That to-do list does not have enough things crossed off.
Peanuts do not go well with pumpkin. If the recipe calls for “nuts” and you think throwing in that small 1/4 cup of peanuts and the last of the walnuts too, don’t. The peanuts will overwhelm the flavor in a most unpleasant way.
If you make something yummy, like homemade macaroni and cheese, and you know the kids won’t like it, it is best to put heaping servings on their plates anyway. It is mentally much easier to scrape their plates into the garbage than to scrape the remainder from the crockpot into the garbage. And you do not need to eat a pound of macaroni and cheese all by yourself.
Do not make banana cream pie two days before your husband leaves on a trip. He will not eat his fair share before he goes.
It is much easier to “treat” skinny, need-more-fat-on-the-bones kids than overweight ones. It is difficult to avoid following the same diet of whole milk loaded with Carnation Instant Breakfast and Oreo cookie milkshakes yourself.
Making your own chewy granola bars in an effort to avoid high fructose corn syrup and in order to add certain other things (like finely crushed nuts since he doesn’t like nuts) will guarantee that everybody will like it, except for the one really skinny kid for whom the recipe was custom-made. This skinny kid will also declare ice cream to be “junk food” and make annoying statements like “I just don’t like eating” causing you to seriously wonder if someone switched babies in the hospital.
Attempting to custom-make healthy snacks for the kids, use up ingredients in the pantry and make a meal for another family all in the same few days will generate a whole lot of dishes, crumb/sauce/debris strewn counters, and a dog happy from cleaning the floor.
Reit This Way 