Tales of an overzealous Mom, volume 492

NOTE: This was supposed to post on Friday, but I forgot to hit "publish." Yay me! Birthday and Mother's Day post coming tomorrow!
###

So my kids had a zoo trip Friday, which I couldn't go on, because of work. (Thank God Lester has a more flexible schedule!)

But I wanted to contribute something to the day, so I made sure to pack a delicious brown-bag lunch they'd love. For Dean, I went heavy on the jelly and light on the peanut butter. For Cary, both sides of the sandwich were spread with equal amounts of each. I made sure to include fruit snacks in with their grapes, because they think fruit snacks are candy. I found stickers of zoo animals and decorated their lunch bags with zebras, giraffes, tigers and toucans. And I made sure to freeze their fruit-and-veggie juice boxes overnight so they'd be nice and cold after hours of walking around the zoo.

Here's a photo Lester took of the boys having their lunch. Look closely. Dean is JUST about to be frustrated. And thirsty.

Because. The juiceboxes were still frozen.

For some reason, they gave the kids lunch at 10:45. Why? No one knows. If they'd eaten lunch at 12 or 12:30 like normal people, maybe there would have been more time for thawing.

But noooooo. 10:45.

The thing is, Lester said to me last night as I was packing the lunches to just put his water bottle and their juices in the fridge. That they'd be plenty cold. But did I listen? Noooo.

Instead, I imagined my kids -- tired from walking the miles and miles of the Baltimore Zoo, sweat rolling down their little temples from the hot sun -- taking that first, long sip of ice cold, refreshing juice and saying, "Man, that's cold. And so delicious. That Mom! She is the best! This sandwich is just right! These fruit snacks are such a treat! But this here cold juicebox? That just really takes the cake. We are so lucky!"

First of all, folks -- it's not even all that hot today. In fact, my poor boys are probably a little bit shiver-y in those shorts. (WHAT IS UP WITH THIS SPRING??) And they got to the zoo at 10 a.m., so I'm sure they weren't even close to being tired from walking around the zoo by the time the dinner bell rang at frikkin' 10:45 (in the MORNING).

So -- all my best-laid plans, thwarted. By too-early-lunches, chilly May days and not listening to my husband's suggestion.

Oh, and P.S. I made Lester a turkey sandwich with Monterey Jack cheese. Guess whose sandwich Cary wanted to eat? "I don't want peanut butter and jelly," he said. "I want a TURKEY sandwich."

Curses. Foiled again.

Sugar pressure!

I just started the effort to rid my diet of added sugars (for at least the month of February) and I was careful not to begin until I'd surrounded myself with a support system -- friends and co-workers who are doing this right along with me and are there to offer encouragement, advice, good reading material or a swift kick in the butt.

So imagine how blindsided I was to feel sugar pressure coming from an unexpected group of tiny little plan-thwarters: My kids!

Yesterday at dinner, I asked the boys what was their favorite part of their school snack (I do this sometimes to assess what items to skip or what to buy more of). After sorta answering my question, Dean grins and says, "Juice!"

"Silly!" I said, "You know you don't get juice." (We send a thermos of water for them for snack.)

To which Cary says, "Mommy, all the kids at school have juice. Except us. We only have water."

"All the kids?" I asked.

And Dean says, "Yes. All of them. Except us."

You hear the daggers entering my heart, right? "Except us..."

Here's how I heard that: "Except us poor, left-out, weirdo kids whose parents clearly hate them and only send them to school with water -- FROM THE TAP!"

I would be less than truthful if I said I didn't feel a little twinge. I always thought I would feel good about our healthful food choices, especially since we have resolved not to be sooo completely crazy about every little thing they put in their bodies. We're not crazy health nuts; we're moderates! Heck, we even introduced them to Five Guys a couple weekends ago! (Mmmmm. Five Guys...)

My poor boys want juice and we make them drink the liquid of life instead! We're horrible!

And for a super-quick second, I honestly thought, "I don't want them to be outcasts. Maybe I can give them juice boxes twice a week or on Fridays or something."

But then I thought about Sugar Free February, and how much incredible effort it takes for me to get through every day without eating something sweet or not great for me. And I thought about the lifetime of unhealthful choices I've made that have contributed to this addiction I have -- because that's what it is, an addiction. I have a sweet tooth, no doubt, and that's genetic. But I have fed and stroked and catered to that sweet tooth so much, I've become a slave to it.

My sweet tooth is my master and it is literally killing me. My yearly hemoglobin A1C reports tell me so in big bold numbers. Each report calls me pre-diabetic and says, "Do something differently or you will. die." (In so many words...)

I want to break the yoke that sugar has around my neck. Why would I ever start the process of putting that same yoke around my children's?

That's why I won't succumb to the sugar pressure -- for myself or for them. An occasional treat is OK, like I said, we're not fanatical about it. But daily juice just gets their taste buds in the habit for something sweet with all meals. If I indulge that sweet tooth, juice becomes soda becomes Big Gulps becomes must.have.chocolate.cake. (Mmmm. Chocolate cake.)

As long as I'm in charge of what goes in their snack bags, they will drink water.  And so will I.