Super Mom? Yes, Ma'am

About two years ago, my daughter A was born.  After being home for a couple of days, I had the panicked thought, "I'm never going to have time to cook a meal again! There is never enough time to do the prep work and then actually cook - she needs to eat so often, and wants to be held at the most inconvenient times!"  Then I took a deep breath and banished the thought from my mind - that was why I stocked my freezer ahead of time, right?  Yep.  So I just kept plugging along and doing the best that I could.  Lo and behold, around the time she turned two I realized that I was really starting to feel like myself again.  I no longer felt like I needed to sleep every time I got 5 minutes to sit down.  I had energy again!  Until then, I don't think I understood that I hadn't fully recovered from her coming into our lives.  Yes, my body was recovered in the sense that stitches were healed, but not from the getting less than two hours of sleep at a time and trying to keep everything from crashing down around me while providing A with everything that she needed.  The mental and emotional stress was overwhelming.  I have many balls in the air, stressful full time job, getting A to and from daycare, quality time with my husband, managing around his crazy schedule and solo parenting during his work week, getting decent meals on the table, visiting family on a regular basis who live 1-2 hours away, caring for our elderly and immune compromised dog, part-time job, house still under renovation...and on and on. 

I always told myself that I'm not super mom and that I would never try to be.  But that is exactly what I was unconsciously doing.  And something had to give.  I was sacrificing my well being to keep all those balls in the air.  I was staying up way too late to get things done, I wasn't exercising, I was frustrated at work and my house looked like a bomb hit it.  The only thing I was really getting right was loving my family and enjoying my time with A. 

I have gradually been putting little routines in place that have helped me tremendously.  Something as simple as picking out my clothes the night before and putting everything I need to take with me the next day in one spot, ready to go, saves me anywhere from thirty minutes to an hour in the morning.  (I am sooo not a morning person.) I've been doing that for a couple of years now.  Other than that, though,  I have mentally resisted the truism that daily routines really do make life easier.  Intellectually, I knew it was true, but I always had an excuse ready for why it wouldn't work for me.

The next thing I worked on was having at least a rough plan for meals for the coming week.  This is usually based around what I have in the fridge that will go bad if it isn't used promptly.  I try to cook and freeze or refrigerate at least three meals for the coming week on Sunday, and I use my crock pot frequently.  (It's so addictive!)  I found a couple of tools that really make meal planning, prep and execution so much easier - since my goal is not just to get any old thing on the table, but to make an effort to have it be healthy and taste good.  I don't remember how I got by without the Six O'Clock Scramble (requires a subscription) or Stephanie O'Dea's Year of Slow Cooking blog.  These ladies know what they are doing!

Without realizing it, my routines have turned me into a super mom!  Not in the sense that I originally thought, where mom is stressed out trying to do it all.  More in the way that if I stick to a few simple routines, I gain a cleaner house, am less stressed and we are all happier and more relaxed.  I actually had the time and energy to bake cookies with A on Monday night!  A work night!  This was previously unheard of in our house! 

I'm on a roll, so more posts on routines will be coming in the next week.  I can't believe I resisted this for so long!  Next up is laundry!

Making Meal Planning Work for Me

I've always hated being asked, "So, what's for dinner?"  My response tends to be of the smart Alec variety, "Whatever you are making."  Why is it that I have to come up with what is for dinner most nights?  There is nothing in my resume or pedigree that makes me remarkably qualified to be the family chef.  I do enjoy cooking, but not the stressed out desperate attempt to throw together a balanced meal at 6 pm that tends to be the norm in our house.  To be fair, my husband can cook and enjoys cooking certain things, but meal planning is not his forte either.  He will occasionally surprise me by making dinner, usually after a trip to our closest Wegmans. (It's 20 minutes away but worth the trip!)

My husband does most of our grocery shopping, and I've quelled my inner control freak.  For the most part, anyway.  I just make very specific lists, including brands.  The quelled part is where I don't get mad or roll my eyes when he brings home the "wrong" item.  I need to get over it and not let my perfectionism force me to do the grocery shopping.

Tangent over.  Back to my point.  Most days, it's like pulling teeth to find out what my husband wants for dinner.  This made meal planning a challenge, until I realized that he really and truly does not care.  As long as it is not too far outside the known universe of what he will eat, if I put it on the table, he will eat it.  He just likes that there is food and it is cooked and on the table before 10 pm.  (Yes, we have eaten dinner at 10 pm.  Not recently, and not since we had a kid, but yes, we have.)  I read it many places before finally accepting that it is true...meal planning is the only way to go.  On my own, I stink at meal planning.  We would eat the same three things ad infinitum.  And I hated leftovers, which was a problem when we were eating the same thing over and over again.  I was skeptical when I found the Six O'Clock Scramble, but I had to try something new. I discovered the Scramble right around the time that my daughter was really starting to eat big people food.  That's what we call solid foods in our house.  Anyway, around that time I realized that I needed to actually feed her well balanced and nutritious meals and that it would probably be easier to do so from day one rather than trying to fix a bad food situation down the road.

I love the Six O'Clock Scramble.  It really is a great solution, giving you a set 5 day meal plan each week. I should point out, though, that this site requires a subscription after the free trial membership. The beauty of it is the flexibility it offers.  So I can look at the offered menu for the week and switch out recipes based on what my family likes or doesn't like and/or what is in my pantry.  Each recipe on the site has tags like make ahead, freezable, express, vegetarian, and too many others to list here.  I like to mix up the meals I choose to include 1 or 2 that I can make ahead on Sunday and an express for whichever night of the week is going to be crazy.  I also built up my recipe box and stored comments on each recipe that we've tried as to who liked what and what variations I made.  Love it!!  Having a recipe box of stored recipes that we like makes meal planning so much easier.  I do wish that it had more crock pot recipes, because I love my crock pot and use it at least once a week.  But I pick 3 or 4 meals from the Scramble and then fill in 1 or 2 additional from Stephanie O'Dea's Year of Slow Cooking blog.  Voila.  Meal planning done!

This post reminds me, I need to call my husband and have him throw our vegetarian enchiladas (made ahead!) into the oven so they are ready when my munchkin and I get home!  Yum!