My Kids Make Me Eat Better...And Worse

I recently had the experience of being childless and a bachelor again for a few days.  My husband and kids took a little trip and I had three days of being solo.  My husband came back and we had about a week of being wild and carefree again.  However, "wild and carefree" when you are a parent means that you clean the basement while your other half power washes the deck on the weekend.  Yes, it was a pretty pathetic carefree weekend.  When you're in your 40s and you have no time to do the every day life things, crossing off jobs on your "to-do" list becomes a thrill.

The thing I noticed most during this parenthood respite, though, was my eating habits. 

Allow me to explain...

In the first five years of being a parent I gained about 15 pounds.  I blamed my kids.  Well, to be fair, one kid didn't pry my mouth open at midnight while the other threw double stuff Oreos and cheesy nachos into it.  That was completely my own doing.  But staying home for months on end, giving up a career that I loved and dealing with two toddlers was quite stressful.  It made me eat -- a lot.  I was definitely one of those parents who couldn't wait for my kids to nap so I could break out the chocolate and Cheetos. 

When my kids were away, though, I noticed that I didn't want to cook or chop vegetables.  Dinner became a can of Spaghetti-Os or a frozen meal I could nuke if I didn't feel like treating myself with a take-out pizza.  I think, if I didn't have kids, I might never eat a string bean again.  But, because my kids eat string beans, I eat them too.

So the poor food choices children cause when you're up 20 hours a day with a crying infant and the fact that every parent has a secret stash of candy hidden in a box in the cabinets labels "lima beans" are real.  What is also real is that I eat an apple for snack when I really want a Snickers.  It means I buy purple carrots and gooseberries so we can try new produce.  And it means that I actually ate a brussel sprout because Derek made some and I had to prove to my kids that trying new foods are good for you.