stress fractures

I managed to give myself a stress fracture in mid-December.  My leg hurt when I walked, throbbed on the stairs, and scolded me loudly every time I carried a child.  Silly leg didn't seem to understand (or care) that these are things that I can't just stop doing.  It seemed like it would hurt forever and honestly it made me cry a few times -- not because of the pain, but because I was SO frustrated that I couldn't do some things I wanted to do and the things I had to do were painful and mainly because it just seemed like it would never end.  And maybe the most frustrating part is that there wasn't anything to DO about it.  Wait.....wait......wait.....and I am not good at waiting.

There are other "stress fractures" in my life too.

Timber's temper tantrums.  I know he will outgrow them.  I know that there is very little I can do to calm the storm once it starts.  But it's SO frustrating!  This morning he spent an hour and a half crying because he wanted blueberry oatmeal and we don't have any blueberry oatmeal.  He's sick and he's hungry so I know he's not thinking straight.  What would make him feel better?  EATING.  Just like the Snickers commercials where the bear turns into a person (or something like that) after eating a Snickers bar.  But what does he refuse to do?  EAT.  I've learned that even providing the blueberry oatmeal is no guarantee he would eat it when he's in this mood -- he would find something wrong with it.  So what do I have to do?  WAIT.  Because eventually he will get distracted from his irrational fit and accidentally put something in his mouth and -- voila! -- the angry bear turns into a sweet little boy.  So not only do I wait wait wait for each tantrum to pass but I also wait wait wait for him to outgrow this phase.  Impatiently. 

Mealtimes.  Feeding kids is the worst.  Today they love mashed potatoes and hate chicken.  Tomorrow one of them hates mashed potatoes and the other two suddenly love chicken.  Next week they will all despise mashed potatoes and chicken.  And a month later they'll eat all the mashed potatoes and chicken off my plate but won't touch it if I fix it for them the next day.  Ditto that to every food I've ever given them.  If I had to identify a specific "stress fracture" in my day to day routine it would definitely be dinnertime.  Even when we fix things that I think they'll really like it's never 100%.  There's always one that doesn't like it.  I know that they will eventually be good eaters (Flora is already much better than the boys -- maybe going to school boosts a kid's appetite?) but in the meantime it's SO frustrating to fix their plates and then hear the usual whining/complaining about what they don't like.  So it either requires a gargantuan effort by me to stand over them and insist they eat their food bite by bite or I don't force them to eat their dinner and pay for it at bedtime when they start whining about how hungry they are.  There's probably a better answer......but I don't have it.  My current plan of action is to put reasonably healthy food in front of them every night and wait for the magical day when they all clean their plates.  Wait wait wait.....I'm not very good at waiting.  

So I know I've been pretty whiny -- "my leg hurts.....Timber is irrational.....the kids don't eat what I fix for them......boo hoo......" -- but I've been thinking a lot about the parallel between a physical stress fracture and "stress fractures" in life that you just have to wait out.  The trick is to 1) give the fracture the time it needs to heal naturally, but 2) put just a little bit of pressure on the fracture so as not to completely disrupt daily life, and 3) avoid unnecessarily stressing the fracture further (which could result in a break).  

I could have listed several other non-physical stress fractures but they're not the kind of things that needs to be preserved forever in blog format.  Hopefully when they fade away I'll completely forget that there was ever a problem.  Hopefully someday I will read over this post and laugh to remember the complete absurdity of Timber's tantrums.  Hopefully someday I won't be able to imagine a time in which the boys weren't eating everything in sight!  (I've heard that getting teenage boys to eat isn't usually a problem.)  Hopefully I'll wonder what those other stress fractures I referred to were.  Hopefully.  But, of course, I will have a whole new set of stress fractures that I'll be waiting to heal at that point.       

Ok, I needed to write all that.  Maybe I'll need to read it later.  Sorry for anyone else who actually read the whole thing.  Sometimes blogs are just for myself.  :)

The good news is that my leg is so much better now!  I've started walking on the treadmill again, although still a couple more weeks before I can run on it.  And I learned a very important lesson -- build up slowly and if something starts hurting then STOP RUNNING ON IT.
I lack patience.....and apparently quite a bit of common sense too.  ;)