Nursing/Postpartum Tuesday: The Looker Play Kit

Any brilliant strategies for getting kids to drink more water? My almost 4 year old is chronically dehydrated. Her pee is dark yellow and she’s basically never not constipated, despite us trying a whole bunch of constipation remedies (fruit, prune juice, probiotics, fiber supplements, Miralax). She’ll take a few sips with most meals and then tell us she’s not thirsty but it’s clear she needs more water. I would say on a good day, with lots of coaxing to drink, she drinks about 16 fl. oz and the internet says she needs twice that. And there are definitely days she drinks more like 8-12 oz. We let her pick out special cups to drink from. We’ve offered fizzy and flavored waters but she isn’t interested. We try to turn our nagging into a game as much as possible with pretend play, setting a timer, drinking “contests” etc. but it’s only upped her intake a little bit.

Within the space of an hour, I found out that the shower drain is clogged, I was notified that I did not win a big important grant for reasons that seem kind of bogus, and then my husband informed me that the transmission on our Subaru appears to have failed. This is all coming a couple weeks after a giant and unnecessary ER bill and finding out that our kid is 2e. WTF, universe? I cannot take on anything else right now.

i’d really like to cut down on the amount of tv my kids watch in the afternoons, but i’m not sure how to do so while keeping them safe and me sane. i have 3.5 year old twins who go to preschool in the morning and then after school our nanny takes them to the playground for 2+ hours. by the time i get them they are exhausted and want to be on mommy. yesterday i tried to play with them in their playroom, but it so quickly dissolves into fighting (which can lead to biting/hair pulling, etc.) or both wanting to sit on me/so close to me that they can’t actually play or throwing and biting their toys (we are in a strange biting phase). what can i do with them that isn’t screens? on the flip side, i kind of get that they just want to veg out in front of the tv, but i feel like 1.5-2 hours a day is a lot.

Do you find that one person in your marriage tends to be the primary driver of family decisions, and are you okay with that? DH has a go-with-the-flow personality and has told me that he sees me as taking the lead on big life decisions, like where to live. In theory I’m okay with that. What I’m less okay with is the way that it’s very easy, after the fact, for everything to have been my choice, and therefore potentially my mistake. The reason it feels unfair is because a) I don’t just go around making decisions without consulting DH, and b) I’m usually prioritizing the kids and our family generally, not myself. We always talk things through, and I always make sure he’s on board. We’ve never changed our lives over his objections. So I feel like he shares responsibility.

To be clear, this is a simplified version of things. But it’s accurate enough that I would love advice on navigating this. I don’t want resentment to build over time.