Letting loose

This week, me and Truman spent some serious QT together. We were both sick, so we stayed home in our pjs and spent a lot of time on the carpet in our den, reading books and doing puzzles. And of course putting all the farm animals into the barn for a nap (shhhh says Truman) and then waking them up for a rambunctious round of Farmer in the Dell.

On Wednesday morning, I was really sick and in excruciating pain (turned out to be strep throat) so it was a toddler free-for-all.

Let me just pause here and say 1. I am religious about feeding Truman natural and healthy food. I don’t bring a lot of processed food into the house and I make a lot of his snacks myself (fruit roll ups, graham crackers, yogurt, you name it, I have made it from scratch). Jason is not so religious, so there are typically a few treats in the cupboards. 2. We don’t watch tv with Truman. Not because we think tv is terrible, but because he doesn’t ask for it and I find a lot of the PBS shows – including the one about time travelling dinosaurs - to be sort of lame and boring.

So, back to Wednesday morning. I am in agony. I definitely cannot cook breakfast and we have three hours before we can leave for the doctor’s office. I put a bunch of sugar snacks on the counter, pull up a stool for Truman, and walk over to the couch and collapse. He is in heaven of course. And then the tv came on. And pretty soon he was cross legged on the floor with a bowl of sugar cereal in his lap.

It was a milestone for me, one of those events when you realize that your own personal parenting bible might be a little too strict. Processed food has its place. Cartoons on a weekday are not terrible. And combining them makes for a very happy childhood.

It felt good to let loose and not be such a stickler. It also made me realize that I have a very small window of time when I am in full control of what Truman eats. What he watches. Where he spends his time. In the blink of an eye he will be turning on the tv himself, hanging out with friends at the bowling alley (or wherever teens hang out on Bainbridge), and using his lunch money to buy junk food. It all makes me a little nervous for life ahead, when he is sent out into the big bad world without homemade graham crackers.