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I had to laugh when I realized what the topic at JuiceBox Jungle was this week — giving up the pacifier.
More parenting videos on JuiceBoxJungle
It was almost exactly a year ago that we went through this very battle in our own household and wrote a post on our private family site. I honestly didn’t think we were going to get through this part of childhood, so for your amusement, I’m sharing my angst-ridden post of a year ago to our family:
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They Shoot Fat Women, Don’t They? was the title of a 1989 episode of a TV show called Designing Women. In the episode the character played by Delta Burke, Suzanne Sugarbaker, always proud of her beauty queen looks, realized that she was now seen as “the fat girl” by her friends at a high school reunion. She was awarded the “Most Changed” trophy at her fifteen year reunion, as a snark at her physical appearance, and she accepted the award with a lovely speech letting everyone know that she was going to take it as a testimony of how she has changed from shallow beauty to a woman of intellectual and emotional substance rather than the hurtful comment on her weight gain it was originally intended.
I remember reading an article about this particular episode a long time ago, because the episode was written specifically to address Burke’s real-life weight gain. She was a gorgeous, sexy slender woman when hired, and her weight gain became a problem on set between Burke and the show’s producers/writers. Burke’s weight gain was due to a combination of physical and psychological issues and the more she felt pressured about it, the worse it got. Since then, her weight has see-sawed and she has launched a line of plus-sized clothing. At some point she shifted from running from her weight to trying to help others who were heavy feel better about it.
I’m outing myself as a fat woman. I have been terrified of old friends seeing photos of me online in the shape I am in currently and I have decided to end the terror now.
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As a little girl, some of my favorite memories with my mother are of spending time with her in our big kitchen. We had a large center island with stools you could pull up to it and I would talk to her as she cooked, and sometimes she’d let me help out. I always felt so grown-up whenever she let me help.
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During a Tuesday morning women’s bible study group I attended a year ago, a wise mother of three shared with us that she has her children share what they are thankful for each day at the dinner table. About a week later, I had a particularly rough day with JavaBoy being whiny and ungrateful and I launched into him about all the things he SHOULD be thankful for rather than what he was complaining about. And thus, our “thankfuls” dinner routine was born.
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While my brain is still humming along on the the theme of routine, can anyone explain to me why children have their own little routines they insist upon, and yet routines that would greatly contribute to their parents’ sanity go out the window?
For example, at some point in the day, EVERY week day, I will have the following conversation with JavaGirl while she, JavaBoy and I are out somewhere.
JG: Something’s missing?
Me (knowing full well what it is, but having learned that varying from the script doesn’t help): What?
JG: Daddy! Daddy’s missing?
Me: And where is Daddy?
JG: At work!
Me: And when is he coming home?
JG: At dinner time.
Sometimes I’m the one who says Daddy is at work, but there is no way we are going to get through this conversation without her pointing out that Daddy is not with us and without the conversation somehow concluding with an assurance that Daddy will be home for dinner. As if the man has not followed this basic routine M-F most of her life. But fine, I humor her. It’s a small thing to do.
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One of the most challenging parts of parenthood is coming face-to-face with my love/hate relationship with routine.
It is very difficult to be a Type A personality with an creative person’s soul. I crave a certain amount of order and predictability and yet I hate to be tied down. I have two Christmas Countdown binders (no, really, I do) — one begins in August, and just in case I get off-track, a second plan begins in October — and yet since birth (seriously, ask my parents), I have resisted having a bedtime. I am incapable of following a daily routine to the letter. As for JavaDad… well, he’s so consumed with dreaming up brilliant technical things in his head that he loses track of time, and other concepts, without the rest of us to remind him from time to time to get his head away from the computer and, you know, eat… shave… those kinds of things.
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