so Mr B Badger.com and I were discussing this whole parenting gig the other night and decided that it’s like always being evaluated….and being told you are “needs improvement” most of the time.
as an example…little boss loves books – awesome – and of course she loves for us to read to her. now Mr B Badger.com is dyslexic and needs to take his time to read to her…more for him than her cause, lets face it, she is not at the “you skipped a bit, daddy” stage yet, but I do admire his commitment. anyhoo so she will bring books to either of us and sometimes in the evenings after dinner I will sit on the floor and she will bring me books….so these are just board books, not war and peace, with only a few words and pictures to each page. it’s fun and little boss brings a new book over beaming her cheeky – northern england toothy – grin and she perches on my lap for the next exciting episode of “that’s not my “. I launch myself into it with gusto, encouraging her to feel the places in the book that have some tactile teaser on them and two pages in she just get’s up and takes the book with her. I felt quite deflated and a little bit inadequate…was I that boring? had I not made a convincing lion roar? clearly I had to improve…these books are only about six pages with nine words over a two page spread – how crap can I possibly be? it’s not just the reading though….what about food….it’s hard some days after I have presented her with seven different options only to find that she doesn’t want any of them not to channel Joan Crawford. I am putting in more effort to preparing her food than I do my own only to find that once she is out of the high chair she grabs the bread bag off the kitchen bench and helps herself to the crust….why didn’t I think of that. I was recently reading the toddlers for dummies manual – I think it’s actually a “what to expect….” bible, anyhoo so I was just flicking through and got to the section on food and found it quite interesting on their recommendations for a toddler diet…which I wont go into here because I am not suitably qualified and sometimes if all your toddler will eat is chocolate custard and mandarins it’s better than nothing. that’s partly the reason why I don’t read the books – that and Google, if I need to know – I Google, much quicker. the other reason I don’t read the books is they make you feel like a substandard parent if you are not following “the guidelines” for example – up until very recently we have allowed little boss to fall asleep on Mr B Badger.com’s lap every night. books say no, no, no! set up a routine and stick to it and if that involves letting them cry it out then so be it but they must have a routine. yep we do. she has a bath, gets in her pj’s and falls asleep in her fathers arms before being carried to her cot. it’s kind of nice for him since she is usually feral by the time he gets home from work so it’s nice for him to have some quiet time bonding with her – and I have a cup of tea. she is 15 months old now and needs to put herself to sleep at some stage so we have started putting her in her cot awake…and it’s been far less painful and traumatic than any of us could have imagined and we have had 15 months of watching our little boss go to sleep in our arms. of course if we had other children it would have been impossible and she would have been in her cot a lot earlier but we only have one so may as well make the most of it I say….books authors will disagree, oh well, not likely to run into them anytime soon.
so despite my recent performance reviews showing a needs improvement in the areas of food prep and book reading I continue to try new things and tonight made delightful mini frittata’s for little boss. at least if she prefers dry bread over these I will be the well fed one for a change…
barrybadger.com 