With the holiday season fast approaching, it’s important to adjust your expectations around “normal” routines. (Is there such a thing?) Today, guest writer Esther C. Baird shares her story of dinner gone awry and how she retraced her steps to find out where it all fell apart.

It’s dinner time.  My husband is traveling so it’s just my two daughters and me.  I’ve actually baked homemade chicken nuggets and made a rice and bean salad with fresh veggies and a yoghurt sauce.  My almost four year old likes beans, my six year old likes rice, and everyone likes yoghurt.  You do the math, dinner should be a hit.

And yet, instead of sitting down calmly and eating, I’m picking up my younger daughter’s plate, dumping it into the trash, and sending her to her room where she can sit and, “think about how she is acting until bedtime.”  This comes after she has had two time outs for demanding cookies for dinner, spitting her beans out, pushing her sister, and screaming, “This is disgusting!”  Her tantrum has dominated dinner, and now, both figuratively and literally, she is done.

But while I know I need to act on her horrendous tantrum, I also know that much of this is my fault.  I can’t let her behave this way, so off she goes to her bedroom; at the same time I feel torn because I created an almost impossible situation.  And in this case, hindsight only makes things foggier.

Let’s back up through the fog.  It’s a Tuesday:  the one day that my nearly four year old goes to preschool all day.  It’s a long day for her because despite her zealous commitment to an afternoon nap, at school she just doesn’t fall asleep.  Furthermore, on Tuesdays my six year old daughter has a dance class that meets after school.   This means that when I go to pick up my youngest, we have to hang around at the playground for an additional 30 minutes until dance class is done.  She rallies for this because, well, it’s the playground!

To cap things off, on this Tuesday, one of the new school parents threw together a last minute birthday party.  My gut said, “After no nap and dance class, neither girl will be able to handle the extra activity.”  But my heart said, “Oh go for it, don’t be so uptight.  This will be a great way to get to know the new family.”  I’m working on being less Type A with my girls, so my heart won and I agreed to swing by.

Once again my three year old rallied.  Yes it was later in the day, but there was a new playroom to explore and bedrooms to check out and a climbing structure in the back yard plus, plus, plus . . . cupcakes!!  At 4:30 p.m.

My gut demanded a recount with my heart.  Alarm bells went off.  Tired kids, cupcakes an hour before dinner , mayday, mayday!!  But my heart scoffed: uptight, overly scheduled, inflexible, stuffy . . . so we stayed. By the time we left it was nearly 5 p.m.  My three year old promptly fell asleep in the car and my six year old stared out the window with glazed eyes.

My gut said, “Forget making dinner, they’re beat, there is still homework to do and baths to take.  Just order pizza and call it a day!”

But this time my brain chimed in, “No, you planned a nutritious meal, the food is already purchased and prepped.  They may not eat as much, but one cupcake does not a dinner undo. “

And so I pulled dinner together while my older daughter gamely did her home work and my younger daughter walked into walls and generally melted down.

Cue dinner time.  Is it any wonder that it ended the way it did?  The play date was too much . . . I suppose.  But I don’t know.  The girls had fun and loved getting to know the new children in their classes.  So, then, I should have ordered pizza and bagged the healthy dinner . . . I guess.  But I’m not sure.  I’d already bought and prepared most of the food and I didn’t want to waste it.  Plus, my three year old might have handled any food that way given her state.  My hindsight remains foggy.

And really that’s parenting:  making choices when the answers are not always clear . . . and living with the results.  At bedtime tonight we’ll pray for patience and rest and to be loving towards each other, including Mommy.  I’ll tell them I don’t always know what the right thing to do is, but I know for sure that I love them.

And tomorrow I’ll do it all over again.

Esther Baird is a writer in the northern wiles of Boston, a recent Master of Divinity graduate and a future chaplain. She is a Mommy who never feels guilty serving chicken nuggets to her two daughters when she is on deadline.

Image Credit: bluegum