I'll Never Do That.....and other annoying things I've said regarding child rearing.

When Norah was first born, there were things I swore I'd never do.  Things I saw other parents do that horrified me. So I made my mental list and kept reminding myself of it. Until Norah got here, and it was clear that everything I ever thought about parenting was off the table. As she grows, I'm beginning to realize that parenting is like the Wild Wild West. Anything goes and all the grand fantasies I had for how she'd grow up were just that.

Here are a few of my "I'll Nevers":

I'll never let Norah run around with a snotty nose. Ha! Good luck with this one past-self, because it's virtually impossible to keep that thing from gooing out all over the place. In any given weekend, we must go through a whole box of tissues, and she still has constant boogies leaking out.

Jar food? That stuff has too many preservatives to be good for her. I'll make all my own food. Ahh...what a novel concept. There has been many a time when I open up the freezer only to realize we are completely out of home-made food. We can't very well let her starve, so store-bought food it is! The one thing that turned me off was the smell of the foods I was giving her. The brands I've found to like the best are Earth's Best and Sprout. She pretty much gobbles up anything I feed her from those brands. We've had a lot less luck with Gerber offerings.

She'll never watch TV before she's two. At first I tried to justify this one by saying that we were the ones watching TV, but the fact of the matter is, if it's on, she's looking at it. Thankfully, now that she's grown a bit, she doesn't like the TV that much. Crawling around and biting wires is much more interesting.

So what's the moral of this little post? Flexibility is key. If you can't be flexible and bend the rules you made for yourself, you simply won't survive. Don't be too hard on yourself and always remember that you're being the best parent you can be, and that's about all you can do.

Anything you've said you'll never do and ended up doing it? I'd love to know I'm not the only one out there that caved!