I’m feeling rather out of sorts lately and I can’t quite put my finger on why.

I know I shouldn't be, because I shouldn't care what other people think of me, but I’m feeling belittled for my parenting choices because I mentioned that we only play with one color play doh at a time, in an effort to minimize the play doh mess. I don’t have tile/hardwood/vinyl floors and a granite topped table for my daughter to play at. I have a carpeted floor and an old coffee table covered with a cheap vinyl tablecloth. Excuse me for not wanting to have play doh ground into my carpeting. I was also asked if I wasn’t curtailing my daughter’s creativity by only letting her have one color at a time. I really don’t think so. Just the other day she took her one color of play doh, squished it into a blob, stuck a handful of paint brushes into it and told me it was an octopus. I thought that was pretty creative.

Speaking of my daughter, she is really pusing my buttons lately. She’s a stubborn little thing to beging with, but she’s been sick, so she’s gotten her way a little more than usual, especially when it comes to eating (or not eating, as the case may be), and now that she’s not sick anymore, she still thinks she should get her way all the time. Everyone will tell you to pick your battles and one of the battles we’ve had to pick is over food. Because she has some bowel disfunction and tends to be constipated, she needs to eat a lot of fiber and drink a lot of fluids. She was eating really well for us before she got sick, and now she’s back to holding food in her mouth and not chewing or swallowing. Breakfast this morning took nearly 45 mintues when it normally takes 20 at the most. At lunch we went round and round over a bite of corn, which is a food that she likes, for 15 minutes. We can get her to eat almost anything we want if we bribe her with something she really like, usually cheese, but I refuse to bribe her with cheese at every meal because it really defeats the purpose of eating all the fiber.

We’re kind of, sort of potty training, but trying not to force the issue because she doesn’t really seem ready for serious potty training yet. We pretty much just take her to the potty if she tells us she has to go. And she’s figured out how to use that to her advantage. When it’s time to do something she doesn’t want to do, like get in her chair or eat, she’ll tell us she needs to go potty. Even though I can count the number of times she’s actually gone potty in these instances on one finger, maybe less, we can’t really not take her because that defeats the purpose of having her tell us when she needs to go. So at almost every meal, we are interrupted by a pointless trip to the bathroom that lasts a minimum of 5 minutes and is usually more like 10. I think it might be time to start using a timer and when the timer goes of she’s done, whether she’s actually gone or not.

My husband has been on my last nerve lately, too. I’m so sick of hearing him whining about being sick. Take the damn cold medicine and shut up about it already. You have a cold, you’re not dying. The only good think to come out of it has been the fact that he’s been sleeping in the guest room. I have had the whole bed to myself for a couple of nights. I can stretch out as much as I want to, I don’t have to fight for the covers, and I don’t have the human furnace there radiating heat toward me that I don’t need. It would be even better if I didn’t have to be up at least twice a night dealing with a sick toddler who’s been stuffed up and coughing and upset because she desperately wants to sleep and can’t.