My very own Life hacks

I followed Lifehacker before it was cool to come up with life hacks (and before it was one of the more popular hashtags), so now I am expert enough to blog about my own (ha!).

Cooking
I hate to cook.  But I want my family to eat healthy meals together at home as often as possible.  And we are not wealthy enough to hire a cook.  And my hubby does a lot with the kids and at home, but he Just. Won't. Cook.  That means I cook.  And plan the meals.  And do the grocery shopping.  Two things save me:  my crock pot and Ziplist.

I actually have two crock pots.  Darrell convinced me to purchase another when my large one wouldn't fit in the dishwasher.  I thought that was crazy when we had a perfectly good, albeit really larger than we needed, one.  But, he's a genius (don't tell him I said that).  The smaller one is perfect for family meals for us, with a little leftover, while the larger one is great when we have company.  One of my favorite things to make in either crockpot is homemade soups.  This from a woman who never made a single homemade soup before her late 30s. I love being able to toss healthy ingredients in, walk away, and presto, dinner's on later that day.

There are plenty of recipe and shopping apps out there.  I use Ziplist, but I know there are others.  Get one.  I love being able to store my recipes or search for new ones, and then just click to create my shopping list.  I hate actually making lists, but with an app to help me it is organized much better than I'd do on my own, and I don't forget to write down a key ingredient as I often did when handwriting a grocery shopping list.

Raising Kids
It will be some years before I can even think of safely saying my kids turned out great.  They are on a good path right now, and for that I am grateful.  But there are a few things that really have gotten me through this parenting journey.  I'm not sure whether they'll work for you, but even if they don't, maybe they will inspire your own parenting hacks.

Find where your baby will sleep, and go with it.  I was blessed with one really good sleeper and one really bad one as babies.  We still say this is part of why there are over 5 years between our two kids (yes, the bad sleeper came first).  She napped in her swing (because it worked) and often spent half the night in our bed (because it worked).  I know "the experts" don't recommend co-sleeping.  But I can assure you that my child, my husband, and I were all much better off getting some sleep with our baby there than no sleep with her wailing in her crib all night and then climbing out of it before she was a year old.  Yes, we tried letting her cry it out.  Yes, I read every sleep book I could get my hands on.  If you are a good parent, as I'm convinced most of us try to be, you will learn to do what works for you in this and other areas.  Sure, be careful, but do not, and I repeat, do not say "I'd never do that!" not just before you are a parent at all but also before you have a certain type kid.  Just trust me.

Text your teenager her afterschool chores.  At least if you work and she needs to accomplish things after school, and heck, maybe even if you are at home with her.  There is less eye rolling (that you can see anyway), she has a written list of what needs done provided right there (and, yes, it's amazing what they can forget even if the chore list is practically the same every day - just look to your left for a great example), and sometimes the chores are even done before you get home from work.  Win-win-win.

Teach your child to work hard, at something.  I get it that everything comes easily for little Suzy.  Find something that doesn't.  It helps even more if it's something they like but need to work at to succeed, but I'll argue that it helps to learn to put in hard work even if they don't come to like the subject or activity.  Have you seen your child's eyes light up after an accomplishment that they really had to work for?  It is one of the greatest feelings I've known. Plus, you are teaching your child a very important life skill - hard work.  It seems to me that we are too afraid of hard work these days.  Don't get me wrong - teach them all the life hacks you know, but I think hard work is one of the greatest life hacks in disguise.  Oh, and what if after all that hard work, your child fails (or you fail)?  That can sometimes be an even better lesson than success.  For real.

Exercise/Friendship
You need to get regular exercise.  You need time with friends.  Combine the two, at least sometimes.  I exercise two mornings a week with a lady who started out as a work acquaintance but who has quickly become one of my closest friends in our new hometown.  I'm convinced that wouldn't have happened if we hadn't made the commitment to work out together.  Plus, it's much tougher to skip out on the gym when someone else is expecting you there (as evidenced by our absence from the gym whenever the other one cancels).  Another close friend and I run together sometimes, and we've planned a weekend getaway trip to Disneyland based on races there.  I'm usually a solo runner, but I enjoy her company and our encouragement for each other as well.

Married Life
I could probably go on longest here.  But let me just give you two examples: think of yourselves as a team where you are always on the same side, and get a bathroom with two sinks.

Our first home didn't have two sinks in the only bathroom.  Our second house had more than one bathroom but still just one sink in the master bathroom.  I would typically start getting ready for bed sooner, but as a woman, this is a process that invariable takes more time than a man's quick routine.  I'm not even one of those women who minds sharing a bathroom with my husband (although I'll admit that a sealed off toilet is pretty awesome as well), but somehow he would end up in front of me brushing his teeth while I was still finishing washing my face.  Ugh.  Life has been so much nicer since houses 3-7 have had double sinks in the master bath.

Sometimes we have to remind each other, but Darrell and I are on the same team.  We are united on parenting.  That doesn't mean we always agree, but if mom said no, dad says no, too.  If dad promises something, mom tries her best to follow through.  If we disagree on something kid-related, we try to talk privately to work it through, and then present a united front to the kids.  When we argue about other things, we sometimes even stop one another to remind ourselves that, overall, we are on the same team in this shared life.  We will be together even after the kids are grown.  We love them unconditionally, and they are key players on the same team, but we are the two coaches and we have to at least mostly get along.  And kids sense your weaknesses, believe me, so it helps to have another adult on your side!


How about you?  What are some of your best life hacks?

Salute to Moms

First, let me say that my hubby is awesome.  When I am smart enough to ask him to do something for me, he almost always does.  And the things he just naturally does for our family make up a decent list as well.  But most of what he does around the house and for us in general is very concrete:

• He fixes things (which means we can afford 4-wheelers, motorcycles and various other toys, with people wondering how - it's all because my guy can buy them worn and cheap, but have them looking and running well with lots of work; AND he can fix, make, or install just about any other thing in the house, from kids' toys to plumbing to electrical to...  Now, waiting for him to have the time to get to all this is sometimes not realistic, but the fact that he can do it and often does still amazes me)
• He mows, edges, and otherwise beautifies our yard (as long as that only involves green things, not flowers)
• He builds things (if I want a custom mount for my phone in my car, presto, he can make it happen; science fair projects - no problem in this house)
• He can clean better than I can (but generally takes too long and chooses not to)
• Need something organized to fit more in the space you have available?  He's your man.
• He is firm, prone to being harsh and even yelling.  Not that it's always a positive quality, but when the kids need a firm talking to, he's up for the job for sure.
• Works full-time as an engineer, providing for our family

Most of what I do around the house and for our family feels more "behind the scenes":

• Pick up things everyone else (including the pets) leave out of place around the house, sometimes yelling for the offender to PLEASE come push in their bar stool, put their dish in the dishwasher, hang up their jacket, put their clothes in the dirty clothes, pick up stuff the left downstairs, etc...?  Yes, sometimes I feel like this is all I get done
• Manage our finances.  This includes bill paying, budgeting, looking for better deals for recurring expenses, etc.
• Grocery shopping and buying kids' clothes, school supplies, etc.
• Cooking.  On rare occasions Hunter will jump in and cook a meal for us.  If we make it Darrell's responsibility for any meal, the solution is to eat out (and yes, this tends to happen a few times a week).  I am a somewhat reformed cooking hater, and by age 40, finally really learned my way around my own kitchen.
• Laundry.  I'll admit that in part this is due to me being picky and not wanting others to mess with my system, but seriously, it often seems that everyone else in the house thinks little elves magically keep them in clean clothes, and on the rare occasion I fall behind, they incredulously wonder how they've come to the end of their clean underwear
• Facts of life and deep emotional conversation-er.  Yes, even the boy comes to me with his birds and bees questions.
• Maker of all appointments for the kids, activity and vacation planner, and chief transportation officer for all the kids do (although thank goodness Darrell is good at carrying out assignments to help get the kids where they need to be)
• Works full-time in market research, providing for our family

I have no idea how my list matches your family's.  I know husbands, wives, and single parents who manage to do more, less, and just plain different than we do.  And I probably left a few essential things off my list, although one was purposefully because we hire it out (housecleaning), thank goodness!  There are also tasks that we share not included on the lists above (for instance, we split technology duties - he is all things TV while I troubleshoot the smartphones and tablets of the household).  But at least in our house, it seems to me that the mom chores are generally the less in-your-face ones.  What I do seems more behind the scenes and less noticeable, unless it doesn't get done.  So, for all you moms out there like me (and those not like me as well), I salute you!

We all have issues, whether seen or unseen...

There are two things I know about my daughter:  She is undeniably beautiful, and she will always struggle with her weight.

I've had two friends post recently about the struggles of thin girls, and I have another friend who has been thin her entire life and I've witnessed first-hand the teasing she received due to being a "stick", and other euphemisms for being too thin.  I've also watched her, sometimes, eat more at a sitting than I do, and I know for a fact she's not starving herself.  Yes, we need to stop this teasing, and certainly not assume that any girl who is "too thin" must have an eating disorder.  This is just plain wrong and can be just as hurtful as any other name calling and stereotypical statements.  I don't mean for anything I write that follows to diminish that, because we do indeed all have our struggles, whether those are things that folks can see, like being "too thin", or unseen things that only we know about.

But, there is a difference between being "too thin" and "too heavy".  When you are being teased about being "too thin", it is often about jealousy.  It is something that most women aspire to.  Millions of women diet every year, just to try to get thinner.  Millions more exercise regularly in an attempt to be fit (and yes, a bit thinner as well, for the most part).  Most of the rest of us are at least trying to maintain our current fit and thin level.  Even if we were considered "too thin" when we were young (as I was, so I speak from experience here), we now struggle to stay in the "normal" BMI category as we sail through our 30s and producing babies, and even more so as we begin our 40s.  Regardless, you don't wake up one day thinking, "I wish I were fat," even if you are among those underweight few.  And while it's true that being underweight can be just as much of a health risk as being overweight, the every day person in this country doesn't think of that, or probably in most cases even realize that.

Most of us, even if overweight now, had a time in our lives when we were considered thin.  Like her paternal grandparents, my daughter has never really had that.  (Which makes me wonder how much more difficult it must have been for them when they were young, because in that day, there were certainly less overweight people in this country.)

While she was born normal weight, my daughter did not lose weight at first like most babies do.  In fact, she weighed 2 pounds more at her very first check-up at 2 weeks of age (when most babies have just gained back the weight they lose soon after birth).  By three months of age, she weighed 16 pounds.  Most babies just double their birth weight by one year of age, while my girl did that by 3 months old.

In the countless studies extolling the benefits of breastfeeding, we are told that fewer breastfed babies have weight issues later, and that they better learn to tell when they are full if they are fed on demand, etc., etc., etc.  I do still believe breastfeeding is best if you are able to do it (and no, I'm not trying to question your choices if you didn't), but I am only left to wonder if my daughter's weight management would have been any different had she not been exclusively breast fed for over 4 months, and still nursed until 13 months.

Maybe you wonder how I fed her otherwise those first few formative years?  To this day, I am teased by my family about how her first birthday cake did not contain sugar.  I made homemade cake (sweetened with apple sauce) and icing (made with unflavored gelatin), among my many efforts to feed my daughter well and limit sugar and other junk food.  To this day, she is my child with much more of a sweet tooth, so I can only wonder if this early effort completely backfired.  I can tell you that she's the pregnancy I had sweet and fruit cravings with, while with my son I craved meats and fat (including red meat, which I typically avoid).

I won't claim that we adhere to perfectly healthy eating.  My husband insists on junk food being around, but I have always tried very hard to limit it for the kids and myself.  I watered down their juice when they were little, only allowed soft drinks when we were eating out (and only sometimes and those without caffeine at that), I learned to cook from scratch much more as they grew to eat adult food, I researched which additives, preservatives, and other products were best to avoid, etc.

And still I had one (noticeably quite thin female) pediatrician accuse me of letting my daughter have dessert every day and presumably eat too much fruit.  Yes, my daughter was picky and still prefers carbs, but certainly when she was young I forced on her all the good eating habits I could muster, always making her try her veggies and limiting her access to too many carbs and too many empty calories.  And still the pediatrician was very accusatory and said she was just too heavy, RIGHT IN FRONT OF MY 8-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER!  If she had pulled me aside to discuss this, I would have totally understood.  But discussing it like that right in front of my very intelligent girl?  Totally inappropriate, and perhaps even causing body issues much earlier than need be.  Obviously we never saw that pediatrician again.

The only other possible "cause" I can point to is that my daughter had a lot of ear infections as a baby and all through her early years (needing tubes in her ears to help for a while).  I have seen a few studies suggest that can cause a change in taste buds, and perhaps even be related to increased weight gain among children.  Interestingly, her never-thin grandfather also had a long history of ear infections.

Here she is, cute as a button...

 

And lest you think I'm blaming only one side of the family, several other relatives on both sides tended towards being overweight much of their lives, so that's not the case.  I know that being overweight is not an entirely genetic trait, but I must believe in my daughter's case that it was largely inherited.  She watches friends who can drink pop and eat junk food seemingly all they want, some who are so thin their parents even encourage it at times, all while watching what she eats ALL THE TIME not so she can be thin like them, but just so she does not get even heavier.  She can work out 20+ hours per week, eat healthy, and still she will not be considered thin (and, yes, she has done this, although not always staying so fit).  She has to watch the thin girls get most of the attention from boys, because high school boys just don't know any better, in my opinion.  She has to pass clothes down to her smaller mother.  She has to watch her little brother eat like a horse and still need pants with an adjustable waist so they don't fall right off his thin frame.  And it all makes me ache inside, because I see it hurting her.

I should also say that I don't think anyone could, or should, call my girl fat.  (And if you do, I may punch you - fair warning.)  If she were a boy, folks may have called her husky, or something similar.  Once around age 10 or 11, when she insisted that she was fat, I made her try on plus sized kids' clothes to prove my point (not saying there is anything wrong with wearing plus-sized clothes either, just that this was needed to improve my girl's self-esteem).  They fell off of her, much like regular-sized clothes would fall off of her brother.  Even today fully grown, she wears size 6, 8 or 9 to my 4, 6, or 7 (oh, the woes of women's clothes sizing and how it varies by brand, but that's an entirely separate issue!).  She has wide shoulders to my narrow ones.  And so on.

But, despite probably always bordering on and sometimes even being considered overweight, my daughter is so much more beautiful than I've ever been.  Her smile lights up her eyes.  She is extremely photogenic.  Her hair is thick and luxurious.  She has hips and a female figure! (Even when I gained weight, I'm still not all that shapely.)  And she has a quick wit and can hold her own in just about any conversation (despite still being a teenager).  She's a Christian with a good heart.  I hope she surrounds herself with people who know just how great she is her whole life, and I hope she helps others realize how great they are as well.

And here she is, all grown and beautiful...

Because, as I've said many times, we all have issues.  We all have insecurities real or imagined.  We all have the hand we were dealt.  It's how we play it and the kind of person we become inside that matters most.  Because that shows through more than some of us realizes.  Thin or heavy.  Tall or short.  High IQ or not so high.  White or black.  Sinner or saint.  And everything in between.  We all just get this one life.  Let's make it great.