Tag Archives: balance

One-offs: the glue to hold together a meal plan

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Typically, when we do our meal plan on Saturday (or Sunday morning, right before going grocery shopping), we plan as follows:

  • Sunday – some form of fresh fish
  • Monday – crock pot #1
  • Tuesday – crock pot #2
  • Wednesday – one-off
  • Thursday – crock pot #1 leftovers
  • Friday – crock pot #2 leftovers
  • Saturday – meal to be determined that day

It’s not that we can’t make something on Sunday that lasts into the week; we occasionally do that just to relieve some of the tedium that can set in from keeping to a fairly set routine. Still, this is our most common/standard meal plan template. We then fill in with these “one-off” meals (ones that are designed to fill a single night and are not expected to generate leftovers). DH and I had identified a bunch of these before we had kids, since leftovers were never really as big of a deal in our pre-kiddo days, and our list has had to change substantially in the last few years, to accommodate the toddler/preschooler palate.

Our typical go-to one-off meals these days are those that cost very little to prepare, can be made with items that are easy to stockpile/maintain on hand, and that typically take no more than about 30-40 mins to prepare (often with very little “active” cooking time).

The list includes:

  • Turkey tacos
  • “Brinner” (breakfast for dinner)
  • Fish and chips (where fish can be sticks/squares and chips can include fries or tater tots)
  • Pasta (dried pasta or ravioli/tortellini)
  • Homemade pizza
  • Quesadillas
  • Faux Chinese (assortment of frozen Chinese food items, like dumplings, Gen. Tso’s Chicken, and egg rolls)

I’m curious as to any other one-offs that work for others. Feel free to post any in the comments section. We’re always on the lookout for new ideas, especially those that may be kid-friendly.

The other thing I’d be interested in hearing is any tips on how to get a fast one-off that’s short on active time but that doesn’t lean heavily on prepared foods. I suppose that we could manage to get some of the prepared foods out of our diet (or at least reduce the reliance on them) if I made things in advance and either refrigerated or froze them for later reheating. It’s all a matter of planning. And, since our schedule is still fairly dependent upon meal planning, I’m fine with that.

We do lean on lower-sodium, lower-fat options, when available – but all of these meals rely on some measure of convenience/prepared items. Knowing that we may have no more than 30-40 minutes to prepare a meal, it feels so daunting trying to push these prepared items out of the pantry. Somehow, I doubt that we’re the only ones fighting this battle. Or at least I’d like to hope that we’re not alone out there.

Trying to do two marathons at once

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So, last year, dh and I did a walking marathon together. I have two bad knees, so running is OUT of the question, but I can walk for days. And, as the theory went, I should then be able to walk for a day straight, right? The answer is, as I discovered: YES. I chronicled this in a series of posts (starting with my decision to do the marathon in the first place), so that I could share what I went through. Part of why I did that was so that others who were interested in learning about what it’s like to walk a marathon could see what my experience was like, and part of it was to make a record for myself, so that I could remember (and not have the same issues with recovering this time out).

I decided that I want to walk the marathon again this year, and I have about 8 months to prepare this time – instead of the 2 months I had last time. I have a bunch of reasons for wanting to do this, but I feel like I have to fight for the time to train against the other marathon I’m in – the constant attempt to balance work, family, home, etc. I was on a Twitter party last night about fitness, and one of the questions that came up was about how you manage to get in your time for a workout when you’re balancing against the other things going on in your life (work, family, illness, etc.). When I was training hard during those two months, I manufactured time and dh was a huge part of that – reworking the schedule so that we could manage to free up time for me to do some lighter training during the week. I never did manage to get my act together to do more than a couple of longer training walks on the weekend.

Some of it is that I’m fighting myself – my desire to get sleep, my desire to keep dinner moving on time, my desire not to screw up dh’s schedule so that both of us can get in the right number of hours at work. Some of it is that dh also needs a shot at working out, and that means balancing the schedule of day care drop off/pick up to make it work for both of us. But, mostly, I know this is me – my block to get past. I have to draw a line in the sand and say that this is what I need to do.

The thing is: I learned last year that I can go an entire 26.2 miles in one day. I wasn’t really sure I could do it until I did. And then, when I did, I figured that I would get hooked and want to do it again. the answer is, naturally, YES. I don’t want to do it lots of times in a year, mostly because I’m not physically in any shape to commit to doing more than once a year. But I’d like to work on that. I’d like not to be a size 14/16 forever. I’d like to look at my legs and see muscle, not jiggle over muscle. Also, I’d like to be able to do that marathon again this year and not spend the last mile of it limping from hip pain.

The only way I see this happening is if I actually commit myself to training better and harder, and the only way that will happen is if I find some kind of way to push myself to go to the gym even when I’m tired, even when I’m worried about how to get dinner to the table on time, even when I know it may mean that I’m bringing work home at night when I’m too tired to think. I still haven’t figured out how to do this, but I have less than 8 months to do it.

7 Realities of Life After You Have Kids

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These aren’t all of them, mind you, but a few things have occurred to me since I had kids. Well – since I had KID, and then with KIDS comes some kind of strange new math whereby 1 kid + 1 kid > 2 kids. I hope they don’t put this on a standardized test. Feel free to add more of your own in the comments; my hope is that this will be both cathartic for me (and perhaps other parents) and instructive for those who don’t yet/won’t ever have kids. I feel like I endlessly need to explain to people that this is how things are, because if they don’t have kids, they don’t necessarily see things from that different perspective. I remember what my perspective was before I had kids. But everything’s changed. That’s not to say that I don’t love my kids (I love them immensely and can’t imagine my life without them). I’m just acknowledging that things in my life have changed, and part of why I feel like I’m always struggling for balance is because it’s not something you get back right away after you have even 1 kiddo. Your entire globe shifts by more than a few degrees, and it continues to shift daily (sometimes hourly).

So, here’s my list of 7 things that are the “new reality” for me, at least, post-kids:

1. You can’t just do/say/buy what you want whenever you want anymore. Your schedule is no longer your own, since you now have to rearrange things around when the egg timer expires on the sitter that you’re scrambling to afford paying or the day care that promises to charge you $3 for every 5 minutes you’re late. Saying whatever you want is also out the window, since there comes a point in every parent’s life when they realize that their small human child has turned into a small human-shaped parrot. Words you said five days ago will pop out of the child’s mouth at random points and you suddenly realize that it’s like carrying little tape recorders around in your car. (“C’mon – move it!” – d’oh!) And, of course, buying is a thing of the past without planning. I used to have what economists term “disposable income” (income above and beyond what you need to pay for your necessities, like food and housing). Once I had kids, my income was disposed of for me in Children’s Orchard and Old Navy, at day care, and in seemingly endless quantities of Pampers.

2. Tired is the new normal. Even when you get a full night of sleep, one fuss seems to drain it all out of you. I have a theory about this: since kids seem to have infinite energy at times, perhaps they get it by systematically draining us of ours? Some of this must have to do with keeping up with someone else’s needs all the time. Of course, when they let you nap (and don’t draw on you with non-washable marker), you should consider those kids definite keepers.

3. Your party circuit WILL have to change. Hey – I like a bouncy place as much as the next person with two bad knees…watching the kids play Lord of the Bouncy always cracks me up something fierce. Kiddo parties (or those organized by parents of small children) typically end up being ones that are the easiest to attend, since they’re typically timed not to start at their children’s bedtime. Becoming friends with your kids’ friends’ parents is a great way to continue to socialize; not only do you get to hang out with people who are typically right near you, but you also have a built-in way to find people who have kids of similar age to bounce ideas off or compare notes with on things like the local school system. This doesn’t mean that I am ready to cast off the shackles of my former party circuit; I miss my friends terribly. It’s just that going to, say, a soccer game or a party that kicks off at the kids’ bedtime means I have to get a sitter ($$$), miss reading bedtime stories and giving goodnight kisses to my kiddos (!!!), or risk having melty kids at an event that they’ll likely not enjoy from being so tired attending.

4. You may have to eat your favorite foods on the sly. Unless you plan to become what my mom used to term “a restaurant” (“I’m not making four separate dinners! Do I look like a restaurant?!”), dinners end up relying heavily on whatever the kids will eat. I was flipping through the grocery store flyer earlier and noticed they had shrimp on sale. Shrimp…I love shrimp. And no one else in the house will eat them. Sigh. Even if dh and I are the only ones who will eat something, we’ll typically try to find a way to seed the dinner with other things that the kids will eat. For example, we know that we promised the kids pizza one night for when we have a sitter coming over. We’ll be having a quick dinner before the sitter arrives, so I realized that this was the perfect opportunity to make something they WON’T eat. Crock pot turkey chili to the rescue!!

5. Embrace what doesn’t complicate your life further. This could also be known as “the crock pot rule”. I love my crock pots because they’ve allowed me not to have to fret about not having sufficient time to prepare healthy, tasty meals in the short time I have between when I get home from work with the kids and when dinner needs to be on the table. We eat family dinner together every night, and we try to eat it around the same time every night so that the kids’ routine won’t get thrown off. (Hungry kids and velociraptors have a LOT in common, including the sharp claws bit.) This isn’t to say that I endorse just dragging out frozen dinners every night, but there are nights when it’s a freezer raid to get stuff to the table and I refuse to apologize for it. Who should I apologize to? Every meal has some protein, some starch, some veggie and some dairy. That type of constant 4-food-group plate requires planning, and between weekly meal plans and the crock pot, we’ve been able to keep ourselves mostly sane about dinners for the last several years.

6. Balance becomes a lot harder to accomplish than ever before. There’s a section of Dr. Seuss’ classic “The Cat in the Hat” where the cat is trying to show how much fun he can be by balancing on a ball and successively holding more things in his hands, on his tail and on his head. Eventually, he tumbles to the ground under the weight of all of it (and hopping on the ball), because it’s just too many things to try to balance at once. I feel like that some days. Working full-time and trying to keep the house in some semblance of order while co-raising two kids sometimes seems like a ride on a hamster wheel redesigned by M.C. Escher. The things I love doing, like yoga, have become a lot harder to do in the context of our schedule and reprioritizing kid stuff higher in order to keep to our routine). I’m not resentful; I’m resigned to it. Things will get easier as the kids get older, just as there was this amazing evolutionary leap forward in my quality of life once the kids were both old enough to be left in the living room to play while I finished preparing dinner. Balance will continue to evolve; I just need to continue not to beat myself up about not doing/being everything I want to do/be all the time.

7. You have to do what works for you. This was basically the motto of the online birth group I joined when I was pregnant with dd. We found this oasis of sane in a whirling dust storm of negativity and “PARENTING: UR DOIN IT WRONG” that seemed to pervade the rest of the boards our group was a part of. We supported each other, gave advice that was open and honest and we didn’t jump down each other’s throats when someone who supports cloth diapering heard that another wanted to use disposables. There’s so much trial-and-error in parenting, especially when they’re young; it’s just impossible to follow a roadmap exactly and have everything work out perfectly. What works for one kiddo may not work for another, and what you loved as a kid may be despised by your own kiddo. Constant adjustment and refining is the order of the day. Feeling guilty, or giving others guilt, just is so counterproductive.

 

I’m sure I’ve missed some. These are just my highlights. These are the things I’ve come to realize over the last 5 years and 2 months. I don’t miss childless life any more than I miss the single life. I know the aspects of those times in my life will come back later (and I can just bypass reliving the aspects I didn’t like nearly so much). For now, for me, it’s about embracing where I am NOW.