How do you feel about kids in restaurants?  There are countless opinions out there on what’s appropriate and what’s not, the front runners in dispute about whether kids should be allowed in restaurants at all.  I have a pretty strong opinion myself — I’m sure you’re shocked about that.  Wanna know what it is? Okay…

Chris and I are chronic destination eaters.  What does that mean? Well, I just made it up, but all it means is that we eat out ALL THE TIME.  I can’t remember the last time that we ate three consecutive meals in our home (breakfast, lunch and dinner.) We eat out at least one meal a day and sometimes two — before we had Addie we frequently ate all meals out, everyday.  So, believe me when I say that my opinion on the appropriateness of children in eating establishments is well researched.

Here is the long and short of it: parents should use discretion on where their children will not interfere with another diner’s experience.  Are you going to a place that is well known as a family restaurant?  Go ahead and take the tots.  Is it a place where people go to celebrate special occasions?  Unless your kids have impeccable manners, let those people celebrate and take the kids somewhere else.  And this applies across the board: even though you are at a restaurant, you – not the waitstaff – are still responsible for parenting your children.  Please don’t try to force your kids into an environment where they will be uncomfortable just because you want to go there.  They are kids after all, don’t expect too much out of them, they’re just learning how to be part of society.  Pretty simple, right?

Well, being a restaurant regular over the years I have encountered the “gray area” to that simple rule above.  Here are the common offenders I have seen…OFTEN:

ENTITLED MOM AND DAD: These parents think that they have the right to take their kids anywhere they want to.  They think that they’re paying the bill and thats all that matters.  “If you’re not paying my tab then you have no business telling me or my kids how to act.” Where do you find them? Usually at a sit-down place where diners do not anticipate children being a part of their dining experience.

OBLIVIOUS MOM AND DAD: These parents just have no idea how their family is affecting the people around them.  Their kids bickering or throwing bread is so normal to them that they can’t imagine that it could ruin someone else’s experience.  Where do you find them? Anywhere. There is no price limit on this one. They can be found at Noodle’s and Co. as well as Sullivan’s steakhouse.

SELf-INVOLVED MOM AND DAD: This doesn’t mean they are self-involved parents all the time, just in the place where other people are trying to eat. The highlighted rule above applies to these parents.  They tend to talk to the other adults at the table and ignore their kids’ screaming or misbehavior. Do they think the waiter is responsible for their kid’s outburst?  Is that sheet of stickers supposed to keep them happy during the entire meal? Because all their son is doing is sitting backwards in his chair staring at us while we eat our food, and it doesn’t help that he is waving that sheet of stickers in my daughter’s face while she is behaving and doing her best to eat her chicken. Please pay attention to what your child is doing! Where do you find them? I have seen them everywhere.  Even the food court at the mall calls for some parental attention but these parents don’t agree.

This sounds incredibly critical, I know. But I am not claiming that kids should not be allowed in restaurants, because there are some kids who can handle it.  There are some kids who know how to behave and other diners would never know there was a child sitting in the next booth.  I am just a firm believer that parents need to be realistic about what their kids can handle.  Because in the end, I can’t blame the kids for acting the way they do, they’re just being kids.  And I am not above the rest here, Chris and I have to assess Addie’s mood before we go anywhere and decide from there what restaurants will be appropriate if she were to suddenly forget how to behave herself.  Do I have cravings for places that aren’t the best suited for a two year old? Heck yeah, but it wouldn’t be fair to Addie to drag her to those places and then expect her to act like an adult.

So there you go, spread the word.  That is my decree!

I think its important to add a little addendum to my last post (the evolution of my semi-obsessive diet).  Why?  Because I’m finding that it is very easily misunderstood.  The point of the post was not to whine about the way I look or even pine for the way I used to look — I was talking about the fact that confidence is rarely easily attained.  Feeling good about yourself requires constant work and attention and it is very important to always stay in tune with how you feel.  Every deep relationship calls for this level of attention and if your level of confidence doesn’t represent a serious relationship with yourself then I don’t know what does!

So, while being so open about something as personal as my ever-changing body image can be easily misconstrued, I still think that we all need to investigate how we feel about our bodies and more than that — how our feelings affect those around us.  Or maybe its just me.  In the end I’m not here to tell you what to do. I’m not a trainer, a psychiatrist or even a dietitian, I’m just a mom who wants to be honest about what shakes me off my center.

That’s all for now, I have to get off the couch and onto our family room floor.  Pilates awaits!

Before I had a baby I had a fantastic body.  I know that is an uncomfortable thing to read, and it’s uncomfortable to write, but I’m not going to do the normal self-depricating thing that so many of us do naturally because I have a point to make.

In order to maintain that awesome body I had a crazy healthy diet.  I never followed a “D”iet (you know, Atkins, South Beach etc) But was very strict about whole grains, lean meats, lots of fruits and veggies and little to NO sugary sweets.  Sound fun?  It actually wasn’t that bad because I honestly enjoy all those foods.  But I also really enjoy donuts. And Lucky Charms. And McDonalds french fries.  And milkshakes.  On top of wanting to stay thin and toned I have a horrible stomach that gets sick very easily so I physically can’t eat a lot of foods like ice cream and creme brulee and chocolate mousse.  And milkshakes.

I do enjoy eating crunched up granola bar in applesauce for an evening snack and I genuinely love grilled chicken with veggies.  And its a good thing because I logged many years when those kinds of foods were the only ones I would eat.  Some of it may have to do with the fact that I had an eating disorder right out of high school.  Even though my disorder wasn’t rooted in wanting to be thin, I think I will always be more aware of my body because of that experience.  Regardless of the reasoning behind the way I have always eaten, the interesting thing to me is that even though I always believed that I was making the best decisions for my body,  it took a pregnancy to teach me to really be kind to my body.

So let’s break this down: Pre-pregnancy lifestyle included super healthy foods ONLY, little to no “treats” and pilates every other day.  Post-pregnancy lifestyle includes a healthy diet supplemented with the occasional ultimate chip lovers cookie and a myriad of chicken nugget and hot dog pieces and pancakes for dinner.

What changed during my pregnancy?

First off, I gained forty pounds.  That may not seem like a lot but I have been a size two for years and never bigger than a size four and long & lean since I popped out of my mama.  Forty pounds felt like a lot on my frame.  I gained fifteen pounds in my first trimester and after a warning from my doctor was a responsible eater and did pregnancy pilates every other day for the last two trimesters.  Once Addie was born (three weeks early) and once I was done breast feeding (we lasted 13 months) I realized that I was back to my pre-pregnancy weight but my body just wasn’t the same.  Granted, I have not done pilates every other day like I did for five years prior to my pregnancy but I just have an extra layer of softness that I never had before.  I fought it for a while. We joined a gym, then had to quit after a few months because I didn’t go enough (not for lack of motivation but for lack of Addie liking the child care) I cut out finishing up Addie’s food, I even cut down on the homemade chocolate chip cookies.  But that stubborn layer is still there acting as a buffer between my skin and my ab muscles.  I can still see them but I’m not all skin, bone and muscle like I used to be.

Is that a good thing?  I don’t know.  But I do know that I have accepted the fact that I will not have my exact pre-baby body again.  I can have a great body, a healthy and strong body, but it will never be the same.  This holiday season was the first one since my early teenage years that I let myself eat whatever I wanted.  Do I feel a little more plush than usual?  Heck yeah I do.  But I also know its nothing to freak out about, like I normally would.  I’ll just start up my pilates again because it always makes me feel like a million bucks and whittles me where I need to be whittled.  By allowing myself to splurge sometimes I have become more content with who I am and I hope I will never again be so hard on myself about what I put into my body.

I used to think that I had to maintain ‘perfection’ because I felt so close to it, but I have learned – I am learning – that the only perfection I need to be concerned with is where I feel best about myself – not what I want others to see.  Thats a hard thing for me to admit to and to really adhere to.  But I work on it everyday because I don’t want Addison to ever see me having body issues. I want her to see her body as a vessel with which to play sports and nourish and take her to her full potential – not as something to punish and mold to unrealistic expectations.

I’m a work in progress, as I assume you are too.  But I promise to keep working towards loving myself the way I am, not the way I think I should be.

In my last post, I talked about our family outing to the factory outlets in Castle Rock, Colorado.  As I wrote in the post, although today started with mild weather (for Colorado in the middle of December) with a 48 degree high, by the afternoon it was pretty dang chilly.  As we walked around the stores, all of us bundled in multiple layers, we kept noticing people in really inappropriate clothing for the weather.  I’m talking t-shirts, some shorts, even some sandals.  I couldn’t believe there were people there without coats on, I can’t imagine how cold the shorts-wearing people must have been.

Now, I grew up in Colorado and its not that odd to see a Coloradan on a cold day in a fleece jacket, shorts and hiking boots.  I mean, we ski in t-shirts here sometimes, a little cold doesn’t effect the way a lot of people dress.  But my moral conundrum smacked me upside the head when we were walking past the giant Christmas tree and saw a mom standing by a bench with her three children.  The mom was wearing a nice coat with a “fur” trimmed hood and her baby was in a carrier with a fleece blanket shielding it from the wind.  But her two girls, who looked about 5 and 7, were in jeans and thin long-sleeved shirts.  No coats, no jackets, no hats or gloves or anything.  And there they were, standing next to their nice warm mother, shivering and crying because they were so cold. I was appalled.  My entire family was in shock.  We gathered in the nearest store and discussed whether or not we needed to/should/could do anything.  “Should we buy them coats?”  Well, the parents we SHOPPING so they could obviously afford coats for their children and were both wrapped nice and warm (the dad had joined them by this point.) “Should we say something?” What do you say?

What would you have done?  I am a big proponent of not judging other parent’s decisions because we rarely know the back story, but I have gone over this so many times and regardless of any of the backstories I can come up with as a possibility, nothing I can think of excuses this.  And I am pretty creative.

So tell me, what is the right thing to do in this situation?  Should I have done something to protect those poor, freezing girls?  I don’t know the answer.

Addie and I officially have another travel day under our belts — are you getting tired of reading about our travel?  It sure does happen A LOT lately doesn’t it?  Man.  Another good day, same same all over again.  I WAS thinking about how traveling with a toddler (or baby, or child for that matter) requires an emotional on/off switch.  There are so many things that happen that require that I turn off my emotional reactions and equally as many that call for an emotional reaction.  Its a roller coaster.

• Irritatingly slow woman in front of us in the security line?  Let it slide.
• No seat for Addison on an oversold flight?  Do my very best to keep my cool (we ended up with a seat thankfully)
• Addie kicking the seat in front of her? Gotta care about that poor person and explain to the Goose why she shouldn’t kick the seat.
• Sitting on the tarmac for twenty minutes after landing?  Did my best to not let it get to me…what could anyone do about it anyway?

There is a never ending list of emotional ups and downs.  I just try to stay on my toes and really evaluate every situation before I react.  Is it necessary?  Is my reaction going to make the day harder/worse?  I just do everything I can to make the day as easy as possible.

Although I couldn’t help but laugh at this conversation in the row behind us between two girls and a guy in their early twenties…

“Have you guys heard that new singer? I think her name is Joan”

“What does she sing?”

“She was on a Gap commercial…”

“Joan…Joan…Joan…”

“Maybe it was JONI!”

“Joni Mitchell?”

“Yeah! Joni Mitchell!  She’s brand new.  I really like her voice.”

Cue my reaction…I COULD NOT STOP LAUGHING.  I agree, Joni Mitchell is awesome, but not exactly new.

I got to go shopping yesterday. Alone.  For about five hours.  Now, I know what a luxury that is…I can’t remember the last time I was able to try something on in a dressing room without trying to keep Addie from crawling under the door.  So when I was able to have a day devoted to as much shopping as I could handle I was really looking forward to it!

Here were my highlights:

• I tried something on in every single store I entered.
• I used the STAIRS!
• I stopped at Starbucks and got a drink that I wanted rather than something I could share with my sweet girl.

There were other good things about the day, but the thing that surprised me the most was that while I was out, I really just wanted to be at home with Christopher and Addison.  Can you believe that?  I had an entire day to myself and I kept thinking that I should forget the things that I had wanted to get done, stop the things I needed to do and just drive home and snuggle in with my family.

If we had more time at home between trips then I think I could have really revelled in the day.  But we have five days left and we just got home last week.  I just want to spend every moment with them.  But I came home and wanted only to tell Chris what a great time I had, not that I felt like crying a few times while I was out because I kept thinking about how much I want to just be at home together.  I don’t want him to feel like I am unappreciative of my “me time” that he so graciously wants me to have and enjoy.  How could I come home and tell him that I wished I hadn’t gone at all?

Okay, that’s not completely honest…I’m glad I went, I just wish I had only been gone for one hour, maybe two.  Instead of wasting the day away shuffling between Nordstrom and The Gap.  I know this sounds whiney, I could have left at any point during the day.  But switch your mind into mommy mode, if you rarely get time to yourself and one day you have the freedom to do as you please but you really just want to stay home — would you stay home and miss out on that small window to remember what it feels like to be in public just as YOU and not as MOMMY?  I couldn’t justify missing a day to myself when we just got done with a ten day trip when I had Addie by myself and we are just days away from a ten day trip without Christopher.

Its complicated.  Welcome to motherhood, right?  Do what’s right in the moment or do what you think you should so you don’t regret missing it in five days when you have zero time alone…tough choice.

So, there is my shopping challenge.  Not exactly life changing, but I think the basic idea transcends to SO many aspects of parenthood.  Next time, I’m listening to my gut.

My daughter hates eating.  She always has.  Well, she was a big fan of nursing I have to be honest about that.  When it was just breast milk she was a great little eater but as soon as we introduced her to the world of solid food she clamped those plump little lips and has barely cracked them since.  Rice cereal was a bust.  She ate it voraciously one sitting and was then constipated for twelve straight days.  She would never eat it voluntarily again.  I say ‘voluntarily’ because we worked for months on making her laugh or smile so we could slip that little spoon in her open mouth.  Pureed pears worked for a couple of weeks and we were so excited because Chris’ mom had told us that pears were HIS favorite food as a baby; we thought liking them was in her genes. But she turned her back on those as well.  Peaches were a huge failure as were meats, veggies and pretty much everything that is packaged and marketed for babies.  Eventually we found out that she liked soup, but only ‘adult’ soups, nothing that was actually meant for her.  

At thirteen months when we stopped nursing and I started worrying…if she wasn’t getting her nutrition from me and she would barely eat, how was she going to grow?!  We asked our pediatrician at every check up and every time she told us that Addie was growing just fine and that she was just petite.  “What did you look like as a baby, Katie?”  It turns out that my expectations of having a plump little butterball baby just weren’t going to happen — I have been long and lean since the day I popped out.  My baby girl was just taking after her mama.  But even with that realization my worries persisted.  And still do!  Just the other day I googled “Toddler Nutrition” hoping for some guidance in how much she should be eating in one sitting and when it’s appropriate to give her a supplement drink.  I found some comfort after reading that a portion size for a child her age is a quarter of my portion size and that when she does decide she wants to eat, she eats more than enough for her little belly. 

But she is still a bitty little thing.  She is long and skinny and only 23 pounds.  As her mother I will always be concerned about her nutrition…I’m 28 and my mom still thinks I need to eat more.  I guess I just have to be sure of myself that I am providing her with the best options possible and that I’m doing the best that I can.  I’m doing the best that I can.

UPDATE:  I found a GREAT dinner that is so easy and Addison LOVES it…crescent roll pizza.  Just get the tube of crescent dough at your local grocery store, some pizza sauce, shredded mozzarella and some pre-cooked chicken strips.  Unroll the crescent rolls into the pre-cut triangles, spread some pizza sauce, top with cheese and chicken. Bake per instructions on the dough tube, but keep a close eye on them the entire time…they tend to burn easily.  Not only does Addie eat these like crazy, but Chris and I love them too. They taste like gourmet pizza, seriously.