Dad Fashion: evening fitness!

     All right, it's eventide.  (You learn weird words singing in a choir.)  If you're like me, and you love to throw caution to the wind and live on the edge, you like to drink coffee so you can stay up late and play videogames.  But alas, as a parent, your kiddo loves nothing more than to stay up late and not sleep even though it's EIGHT O'CLOCK AND HE KNOWS HE SHOULD.  You know what I'm talking about, DanPar.  Don't act so innocent.

Eventide exercises:
     Research shows that in the evening is when you've got the least amount of inspiration to actually get out and do, well, anything.  That's why I talked about how to motivate yourself at the end of this exercise section!  Also, I went easy on you guys.  These are pretty simply exercises.


Exercise #1: Baby sit-ups

     So.  You swear your kid's sleepy.  Sleepy...but not TIRED.  You want a good way to wear him out?  Awesome.  Can he hold his head up?  Cool.  This is what you want.  Just do this, like, fifteen times, and he'll be asking if breasts can produce Gatorade!

     Now, you have to make sure your kiddo can hold up his head by now, or else this is gonna be a floppy mess.  But it's easy.  Babies have this instinct to push out their legs against things.  So, you pull them up from a horizontal position by their hands, and once their feet hit the ground, they'll pop up!  Also, with your sweetest parenting voice, say, "Aaaand up!  And dooooooown.  Aaaand up!  And dooooooown."  My kid loves it, until he's worn out, and then mission accomplished.

Areas worked:
Baby's legs
Baby's arms
Baby's core
Your voice


Exercise #2:  I like that old time walk and roll!

     Basic stuff.  You walk, they roll.  Walking is great exercise, and in my experience, it's just as good as taking the kid for a drive, when it comes to putting the kid to sleep.  (Also, it's much harder to classify driving as exercise.)  There's just something about the outside air that knocks kids out.

     Because this is the last exercise I'm talking about, and because walking is self-explanatory (I hope), let me tell you about motivation.  The way I see it, there are three degrees of motivation that get people going.

Distant motivation: I want my baby to grow up and be a good person, and I want to be fit enough to support him as much as I can.
Midway motivation: I want this kid to go to sleep, so that my wife thinks I'm a great dad.
Near motivation: I want the free samples of coffee they're giving out at the grocery store.

Obviously, the most important motivation is the distant kind, the kind that changes lives.  But because that's so far off, even something that big can seem small.  So I intentionally think up smaller, yet closer, motivations to get myself off my behind and get going.  I fish through my coupons twice a week to see if there's something free nearby.  I tell myself that I can only eat my delicious hogs on a log after I've done 40 push-ups.  I put small pieces of candy on the ground to lead me to where I know I should want to go, as a parent, and as a person.  That's just how the world works.


Dinner!
     So, where I come from, dinner and supper are totally synonymous.  The only difference is that you use supper when you want to sound weird, or you've painted yourself into a poetic corner trying to think of a word that rhymes with "upper".  In any case, here are two meals sure to make you say, "Wow!  This sure is healthy!"  (That's the meal version of saying "Yeah, but he's got a great personality.)


Meal #1:  Goop soup

     Slow cookers.  All day, every day.  They can be a pain to wash, but you can make twelve meals in one day, while barely even lifting a finger.  I mean, you can put a whole raw chicken in there (preferable already dead) and in a few hours, you're good to go!  Of course, this recipe isn't whole chicken, because chicken alone doesn't have enough iron, fiber, and is unable to do the "Blizzard".

     Here's what you do:

1. With some water, slow cook chicken for two hours.

2. Take it out and shred it with a fork.  Then put it back in.

3. Add plenty of water, rice, lentils, and anything green that's been in your fridge for a long time, but not quite TOO long.

4. Check back every once in a while, tasting the broth, adding spices, and adding water, until it looks like the whole thing could come out in a Crockpot-shaped block of soup. 

Lentils are incredible.  Low-fat, high-protein, high-fiber.  I think that if everyone just ate a crapton of lentils, we'd be good to go as far as this whole "fitness" thing goes.  Now, I showed Jessi this soup, and she quickly claimed that it wasn't soup, because it was so thick, and that, in fact, it's probably not even stew.  But it shall be called goop soup, because it rhymes and describes it perfectly.

Also, it's so thick with nutritious goodness, you can "Blizzard" it.

Meal #2:  Buffalo chicken sammiches

     "But wait, Woody," I hear you saying, "that actually doesn't seem gross at all."  Well, these dinners don't necessarily have to seem gross.  I just wanted to show off some healthy meals, while entertaining you with the, er, creativity put into them.  And yes, these are all meals I eat.

     Here's what you do:

1. Take a chicken breast, spice it up with salt, pepper, cayenne, etc., and toss it on the George Foreman grill.

2. Grill it until it's done.  (About 8-10 minutes, probably?  Just make sure it's not rare.)

3. Take that chicken, cut it in half lengthwise, and put cheese in there, so it gets all melty.  In my household, we call cheese the most important meal of the day.

4. Put it in between two slices of bread, add buffalo sauce, lettuce, coleslaw, ranch, mayonnaise, or whatever you think might be good.

Fine, fine, so I didn't come up with the original idea of the buffalo chicken sandwich.  But I'm the one telling you this: it's healthy.  Go nuts.  For a great picker-upper, eat it breakfast, lunch, and supper.

Get your daily serving of fruits, vegetables, and cuteness!