Rockin' it as a Parent

1. I'll spare you the picture, but bran in the diaper is one of those that makes me feel like I have this kid thing totally figured out. Look at my child, eating that wholewheat bread! [Without syrup or sugar! Goodbye, Dave's Bread. But with plenty of jelly. Homemade! But still 4c of juice to 5c of of sugar. But homemade juice! All right, on to the next one already.]

2. When I'm putting the baby down in our bed and the toddler, after opening the door to the bedroom gently closes it again to let his brother fall asleep. Better yet, if he's so kind to follow my request and bring me my phone so I can Instagram while the baby is falling into a deeper sleep, eyes already closed. What can I say? Phone in hand makes me much more patient. [We've come a long way here. In the sibling-adjustment phase, there was no gentle door closing. There was no quiet. And there might even have been water-throwing in my direction. With surprisingly good aim. Using the potty receptacle as a vessel. Filled with what I surmised in hindsight to be water from the toilet.]

3. Voluntarily eating fruit or vegetables. When I come into the kitchen to find that, in my absence, the recent I-can-do-it-myselfer has climbed onto a chair to reach the apples on the counter and eaten half of one. [Progress from when he'd take one bite of each apple.] I tacked on the vegetables to this point, but really those would be mostly asparagus which makes those cloth diapers yet more potent. But still, voluntary consumption. Of course, there are days where he has pancakes for breakfast [I sneak bran into the Krusteaz mix and restrict syrup to maple, gotta be true to myself], only pasta [White! Gasp!] for lunch, ice cream for an afternoon snack, and mostly meat or bread with butter for dinner.

4. No TV all day. Right now, there's a fair share of those days. But there are also phases where the toddler watches more TV. No more than two hours per day and only songs or good shows. [This in itself, highly subjective and enough to merit its own post.] Most days there's perhaps half an hour of TV-watching. [For the toddler, mind you. For the adults: as many hours as we can fit into the narrow kids-are-asleep-but-we're-still-reasonably-awake window.]

5. Hours spent outside. We're lucky, there is a lot to do in our garden. [Don't let my choice of word mislead you, though: there are weeds and dead lawn and strewn toys and general chaos. But it makes for a whole new playground, the outside. When I wistfully remember the college days of TV show marathons and silence in the apartment because it's the polar opposite of the present moment, we take the show outside. I can sit and watch, drink coffee and read or work, and the toddler can mow the lawn, run, climb, all within sight. Yes, I'm definitely more of a peasant than city-dweller.]

6. Dirty clothes. While I wash a good amount of Ketchup and ice cream out of tiny clothes, I'm feeling much better about the stains when they're outside-related. Ideally, they're identifiable.

Now excuse me while I go make dinner.
He has requested peas.
To stick them in his nose?
I'll let you know.

What's on your personal Rockin' it as a Parent list? Let me know! There's always room for improvement over here.