Dear Overly Advice Filled Young Mother

This is just a rant, but I'm completely serious. Allow me to be open here for a minute. Lately I have found myself receiving all sorts of advice about becoming a parent from those that are either pregnant or have had a kid in the last five years or so. No, I'm not pregnant, but these (I'm sure well meaning) mothers feel that they should warn me of everything that I'll be in for if I decide to go the parenting route, and even have laughed at my face when I tell them David and I want a big family. Here is just a clip of the advice I've received:

1. You'll never have time for your husband. It's going to put such a strain on your relationship, so much that you won't even be glad to see him get home anymore except that atleast it'll be another pair of hands to help you with the kids.
My relationship with David is the most important thing in my life, so telling me that I'm going to risk losing him because of kids is surely the right thing to tell me, correct? Actually, I think this is the number one piece of advice I've been given that makes me reconsider if I even want to be a mom...EVER. It's not that I honestly think he'd leave, but you make it sound like I'm suddenly going to say "Get away from me, I don't want a hug. And fix your own d**n supper!" Did you really do that to your husband/significant other? What kind of relationship did you have before the baby?

2.  Your body is going to do so many disgusting things during pregnancy (proceeds to name off just a few) and a baby completely wrecks it. You'll never look even close to good again.... But don't worry, it's worth it!
Let's stop right here for a moment, because that advice you just gave me sure didn't sound like you thought it was worth it. Infact, it seemed that you actually regret your choice. On the first part of that, just hold that advice until I'm going through it, and then tell me that I'm completely okay and there is nothing strange going on with me. On the second part, I realize it takes a while to recover, but I've seen moms in great shape that look wonderful after having their kids, so you can't tell me it can't be done, it just isn't an immediate normality.

3. You may think you want more than one kid, but trust me you'll change your mind. At one point in time we wanted a few, but that completely changed after the first one. Kids are hard to handle.
Yes, kids are hard to handle. Did you have some presumption otherwise? Did you never babysit, substitute teach, even be in the same room as a kid? They scream, throw things, break things, poop, rub said poop on everything, get sick so they projectile vomit everywhere, grab the family pet in just the wrong spot, and can basically turn your house into a scene from the end of Independence Day. That doesn't mean that I'm going to change my mind though. I might, but I also might have more of a grace for it than you. You can't predict what my experience will be like based on yours.

So that was just a sample, and I apologize for the rant, but I seriously don't think that people realize that they're "advice" may do more harm than good. They leave some of us awake at night wondering if they're making the right decisions. And for that matter, they make you sound like you hate being a parent. It doesn't even sound like advice most of the time. It sounds more like your the ghost on the road saying "Turn back, while you still can!" Then you end it with "but they are worth it." You have not convinced me of this statement based on your previous statements.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, you can give advice, but stop using the "You'll regret it!" message unless you truly mean that you regret it.

Dick Van Dyke, Porkchops, and That One Time I Was Pushed Out Of Bed

I'm not sure if I should be proud of it or not, but I successfully hooked my husband on The Dick Van Dyke show. It's not that I'm tired of watching Batman: Brave and the Bold, Justice League, Justice League Unlimited, Batman Beyond... am I the only one catching the pattern here?... It's just that I like a little variety every once in a while, but sitcoms usually just fail to catch my eye. I introduced him to Family Guy and American Dad back while we were dating, but there are only so many times you can watch repeats. We tried out The Dick Van Dyke Show one afternoon and discovered something creepy. We discovered that our relationship is almost an exact model of Rob and Laura Petrie. We knew our ideals about family and life were a little old fashioned, but who knew they were 1960's ideals. In one episode they had a fight that David and I had recently, and they fought it almost word for word like we did. As I said, a little creepy.

 

A friend of mine told me she was looking forward to me adding more recipes, and how could I refuse the chance to show off this recipe. My husband is addicted to these, and for once I didn't get the recipe off of Pinterest. This recipe was actually something I threw together one night when we were still living in Greenhill and I didn't feel like doing a huge amount of cooking.

Jessica's Baked BBQ Pork Chops

  Ingredients:

1 Pack of Pork Chops, can be frozen or thawed (2-6 chops, any cut)

1/2 of a Medium Onion, Chopped (Yellow or White)

1 Bottle of Jack Daniel's Original No. 7 Recipe BBQ Sauce

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line the inside of a 8x8 baking dish (9x13 dish if they're big chops) with aluminum foil. Place pork chops inside of baking dish, spread out as much as possible but it's ok if they overlap. Spread chopped onion evenly on top of chops. Pour the entire bottle of bbq sauce all over the top. Cover with foil and put in oven. Check every 30 minutes until cooked through. Amount of time it takes will depend on thickness and if it was frozen.

Last, but not least, I leave you with a lovely tale of my husband. He likes to sleep in the very center of our queen sized bed. It's extremely early the other morning and I've been suffering from medication induced insomnia (Thank you steroids!). So as I lie there counting the passing time on the clock my husband decides that he is going to roll over a bit closer to me... and 5 seconds later I said hello to the floor and he woke up to me giving him the stink eye and threatening to make him a pallet in the walk-in closet. Perhaps we should do like the Petrie's and have separate husband/wife beds.

So our question for this blog: Have you ever found that either you or your significant other matched a TV show character a bit too closely? Tell me about it in the comments below.

Good Idea... and Bad Idea

Since this is my first post, it's probably a good guess that most of you don't know my addiction to Pinterest. Ok, even addiction may be falling a bit short. It's more like I spend more time on Pinterest than the average person does on Facebook. That being said, I don't just pin things to my wall for the sake of saying I did. I actually make a good amount of what I pin. This is sometimes good.... and sometimes not so good. Let's start this thing off by looking at an example of each.

Good: Bean & Cheese Burritos

Courtesy of the blog Money Saving Mom

I am the queen of convenience, but convenience doesn't normally come cheap. My husband loves Hot Pockets, so on the nights that it has been a long day or we don't have much time I turn him loose on a box of them. Personally, I'm not a huge fan of Hot Pockets, which is why these enticed me. They were cheap to make and not too rough on calories. Money wise I came up to $5.24 (before tax) for the ingredients, and since this made 8 for me, that comes up to about 66 cents a burrito. Not bad when Hot Pockets are $2 for a box of 2 and not near as filling. To try the recipe yourself, click the link here.

Bad: Waffle Iron Hashbrowns

Courtesy of Recipe Sweet

It sounded like a great idea, especially since my husband helps me cook breakfast and we're always elbowing for room at the stove. What this ended up though was a big greasy mess. I won't say it didn't taste good, but I will say that it didn't form any kind of solid object. It stuck to the iron, even after I lightly oiled the iron, and I ended up with a huge puddle of grease and what looked more like tater tots that had exploded. The taste was good and reminded me vaguely of a Mcdonald's hashbrown, but the mess made it completely not worth it. I want to give it some credit since the recipe did specifically say to use Cascadian Farms Spud Puppies, but since that isn't sold anywhere near us I used Great Value Tater Tots. I don't know, maybe it would have worked if I had been able to find those exact Spud Puppies.Willing to try it yourself? Click the link here to see the recipe.


Found a good recipe on Pinterest lately? Found one that turned into a horror story? Leave a comment below and tell me about it.