Cooking, with kids.

There are few things I look forward to less than coming home from a long day at work and having to make dinner. To paint a picture of just how much I dislike it, let me walk you through my day yesterday (which, except for the barf, is a typical day, but you could easily sub out the barf for a blowout or any other baby-related natural disaster).

My son (10 months) wakes up at 5:30 am, I feed him, stick him back to bed. Daughter (4 years old) is up at 7 am. I feed her after she gets dressed for school. Son wakes up, I feed him again. Notice barf all over his carpet from a terrible cough he had through the night. It’s orange, sweet, can’t clean that right now! Prepare bottles for baby, get him dressed, and don’t forget it’s crazy sock day at school for my daughter! Get kids off to school with dad, then scrub scrub scrub the carpet, rug and crib. Stick sheets in the washer. I get ready for work while simultaneously eating an egg on toast and drinking coffee. Fast forward past an incredibly busy, stressful day. Pick up kids. Attempt to cook dinner while trying not to get my daughter to fill up on snacks but also feed my son scraps of food from my cutting board. He’s not satisfied, so food prep is halted while I feed him. Dinner is finally finished but of course my daughter doesn’t want to eat because “it’s boring”. (Which, side note, it is not by the way! I made sweet potato and spinach quesadillas!) I proceed to battle getting her to eat until bath and bed time for the kids. It’s power bath time, which means let’s wash the key areas as quickly as possible and call it a day because I’m tired and starving. Dad comes home in time for a quick snuggle before kids go to sleep. Then I clean the kitchen and settle in with my quesadillas and Netflix around 9 pm.

It is precisely because of this repeated storyline that I eventually turned to frozen pizzas, cans of soup, mac ‘n cheese, grilled cheese, and pretzels for dinner. Inevitably the guilt of serving this utter garbage for dinner gets to me and I think, “Hey! I’m going to start cooking again! With real vegetables! I can totally handle cooking dinner after work, let’s try this again!” If only…

The only solution I could find was to cook dinner, before dinnertime. When I can, I come home at lunch and cook dinner so it’s all ready when me and the kids get home. Luckily I live five minutes from my office so this is possible for me. I’ve done this a few times the past couple weeks and I love the feeling of coming home to dinner ready. I subscribed to Hello Fresh last month and it really makes cooking fast and easy. All of the ingredients for each meal are in its own box, so there’s no hunting and gathering in your cupboards and refrigerator. The recipes are really easy and generally take 30 minutes, so I can get it done within my lunch hour. If you can’t go home at lunch, I don’t know, stick something in the crock pot before work! However that is far less appealing to me as I have way too much going on in the mornings to handle that.

Another solution along these lines is to cook an extra meal on Sunday to start off the week strong. This way we can live off leftovers for a couple of days and by Wednesday hit the Chick Fil-A drive thru and feel like I made a concerted effort at least part of the week! Not to mention, I get to cook with my daughter since we’re far less rushed, starving and ornery as we are after work.

I hope this gives you some food for thought (ha ha!). If you have found any solutions that work for you, please share them. I am no authority on how to reduce chaos in my life, I’m just trying to manage day by day and need all the help I can get.