You may wonder what this has to do with health and fitness, but believe me, as the father of a 3 1/2 year old and 1 1/2 year old, the actions of your kids have a lot to do with your mental and physical health. I know that you parents will enjoy this article that appeared in CNN.com Health:
“Raising kids, I used to think, how hard could it be? Anything you can carry around in a car seat can’t be all that big a deal, right? Given this line of reasoning, I deserved every bit of grief I got when my first child, Lucy, was born. Of course, it wasn’t really my fault. I never slept. I breastfed round the clock, taking breaks only for wrestling matches with my unspeakably tight pre-pregnancy pants. My hormones mocked me. So I did whatever it took to survive.
Rather than listen to Lucy cry, I rocked her to sleep. If she woke up in the middle of the night, I let her stay in my bed, even though it meant I’d lie awake beside her. Then, when she was a toddler, I gave up on teaching her how to pick up toys. (I could do it faster and better.) And it wasn’t just toys I was picking up; it was Lucy herself, who always seemed to get a case of rubber leg anytime we had to walk more than a few blocks.
I assumed she would outgrow these habits. But she didn’t. She just got heavier, something I felt acutely when I was nine months pregnant with her baby sister.
This couldn’t go on. But was it too late to change the bad habits — mine, as well as hers?” Continued…
