blech!

ONE of the things I find amazing about parenting my two small humans is the incredibly strange phenonmon of trying to convince them of the value and perfectness of things that are good for them that I myself would never contemplate doing. Let's start with the food. Things like peas, yams, yogurt, whole milk, oatmeal and carrots. Whenever any of these things are ingested by the smallies, even in the teensiest of amounts, I feel a wonderful sense of satisfaction. That I am indeed equipped to keep these fellas alive, and in the best case scenario healthy, happy and well-adjusted. This sense of satisfaction is tinged with a slight feeling of hypocrisy however, as I myself feel the following to be true: Peas are disgusting and should make any sane person gag. Yams are all wrong, the consistency, the density - just plain wrong. Yogurt smells like bad breath. Whole milk is altogether too thick and white. Oatmeal looks like wet cement (or worse) and carrots are okay as long as they are raw, cold and dipped in something...like peanut butter. And that's just the food.

As someone who strives for a healthy amount of self-awareness in life, how can I smugly justify making them go to bed early on a Sunday night so they'll be ready to start their week fresh and rested, when I stay up until midnight watching reruns of Grey's Anatomy and Scrubs? How do I feel so emphatically that TV before naptime is bad for their brains and cookies for breakfast will be the end of the world when I, the supposed adult, use my DVR to record The Real Housewives of Orange County marathon and have been know to drive across town, completelty out of my way, just to pick up the world's most amazing almond croissant for breakfast? Just who do I think I am?

I guess it comes down to the fact that in my mind they're perfect and new. These two little creatures who have their wholes lives ahead of them. Lives that I dream about for them filled with health and emotional well-being and good clean fun and wholesome nutrition. I want them to be better than me (and clearly, they already are) and make better decisions and be stronger and wiser. And it just seems like they'll need the occasional brussel sprout to pull that off.