Day 9: Things to eat instead of sugar

The past couple of days have been really, really good since my milkshake incident.  I was even able to keep my sugar count below 10 grams yesterday, which allowed me to eat some peanut butter M&M's.  Though I'm trying to get out of the habit of "treating" myself with sweets.  Not the healthiest chocolate snack, but it was movie date night with my husband and he picked those up forgetting about my sugar challenge.  He earned some brownie points.  Here's a picture of my 1/8 cup of M&Ms, which equaled 10 g of sugar.  I added a tsp of peanut butter on top to increase the yumm factor while only adding .5 g of sugar.

I've been thinking about ways to cut sugar from my daily menu and thought I would share with you some of my solutions for when I am craving sugar or ways I'm choosing healthier options. . .

1.  Drinking a huge glass of ice, cold water.  So many times we may think we are hungry, but we are actually dehydrated.

2.  Have a piece of fruit.  My favorite lately has been grapefruit.

3.  Exercise.  Do 10 push-ups or sit-ups.

4.  Playing with the kids.

5.  Reading a book.

6.  Singing along with the radio

7.  Eat carrot sticks or any other kind of veggie.

8.  Clean something.   You know you've been procrastinating on that one.

9.  Make popcorn.

10.  Instead of syrup for you waffles, pancakes or french toast, make a fruit syrup.  We use organic frozen blueberries.  Place in saucepan on stove.  Add 1 tbsp of water.  Simmer, until fruit is hot.  Smash and simmer some more.  Then cool and place on top of breakfast.

The kids love it, it's fresh fruit and doesn't contain any refined sugar or corn syrup.  Here's a pic.

Can I be a Gentle Parent?

The very first two sentences in the forward of the book "Adventures in Gentle Discipline" by Hilary Flower says this . . .

"Sometimes, I really, really feel like hitting my kids. There, I've said it."

And I laughed out loud because that statement is sooo true. I can only imagine the reaction of all my friends reading this that don't have kids - "GASP! How could you EVER even think about hitting your beautiful children?!?!" You may not say it out loud, but you are probably thinking it on some level. I don't blame you, but it's like childbirth, you can never fully grasp the concept fully until you are in the trenches living it. Then one day you'll go "now I get it".

Even though I've had the urge to just completely lose my cool with my toddler, so far I've avoided it. However, about 2 weeks ago when I had to give myself a time-out from him before I hauled off and spanked him, I decided I needed some alternatives. Now, if you choose to spank your children or not too - that's not what this post is about. It's also not about right verses wrong. I believe that couples need to come together in agreement about parameters of discipline, which is what my husband and I did.

When we found out we were pregnant my hubby said, "I will gladly follow your lead when it comes to parenting our kids, you've been immersed in the culture of children, healthcare and parenting choices longer and more thoroughly than I have and I trust your judgement. However, my one request - I insist that we don't spank or hit our kids"

My heart melted even more at those words and again, I was so thankful he is the father of my children. I think that if I did spank it would be a last-ditch kind of thing, when I would be at the end of my emotional rope. When you are in that place emotionally, that's not the time to reason with anybody, let alone my child who I want to have a relationship filled with love, trust and communication forever with. I think hitting my child would cross some line between us, because he would know somewhere there is an invisible threshold where he would be manually forced into submission or obeying. I don't want such a fear-based conditioning to be in our relationship. So I jumped right on board with the "no spanking" thing.

Then you have days where you are trying to have your toddler stand in the corner for his time-out, but he keeps getting out of the corner and looking at you, laughing and running away. I held it together so well for the first 25 minutes of calmly getting him, standing him back in the corner and saying "time-out starts now". Jo from Supernanny would have been proud. However, never have I seen an episode where the mom is also nursing a young infant, which at this point is now screaming because he's hungry. So as I'm trying to nurse my 3 1/2 month old my toddler is continuing his antics. Finally I just had to put him in his room until I fed his brother to keep from completely losing it - believe me I wanted too - and that feeling of being so enraged toward my child was scary once I took a step back.

I called a dear friend later that day and was complaining that my toddler has such a sweet, but ACTIVE spirit. (Btw, for to give you a viewpoint of how truly active he is. . . when your midwife who has interacted with thousands of kids comments "wow, he really is in the top percentile in terms of activity isn't he?" you know he's oozing with vitality). The hubby and I don't want to break his spirit to try and control him by demanding obedience, but instead parent with understanding and love. She responded "That's the beautiful thing about it. He was sent to you because you want to nurture and encourage him. God knew it would take a special set of parents to recognize that amazing spirit in him and work with it, not break it". I broke down in tears, because at that moment I needed to hear that, Yes, I was on the right track and doing the right thing.

I still raise my voice more than I'd like, so when I saw this book at the last Le Leche League meeting I snatched it up. I'm sure it will provide some valuable insight. I'll let you know how I handle my next almost meltdown. For those of you following this, the brushing continues to go well. It's nice to have that one on one connection with my son at various points throughout the day. Now I just have to get my husband to remember to do it :-)