toddlers — Blog — Rachel Ronquillo Gray

A few days ago -- after reading 15 books (one of which was Beatrix Potter's The Tailor of Gloucester, one of my favorite childhood reads, read in its entirety. She barely cracked a yawn.), an entire sippy cup of milk, singing "The Wheels on the Bus" at least a hundred times, lots of tossing and turning while my daughter said with sleepy-ish frustration, "Mommy, I want to sleep" -- my daughter finally fell asleep around midnight, and I had to acknowledge the reality: she no longer needs a nap.

When I woke up the next morning, the frustration and upset I felt at the 2.5+ hour bedtime from the night before was fresh in my mind. I thought, with steely resolve, *Okay, fine. We're done with naps. Let's freakin' go.* That day, I had a play date with another mom at the library, and it took up most of the day, so our first no-nap day felt easy. Breezy. (Sort of. My husband took over for awhile in the afternoon so I could fall into a very deep hour-long sleep on the couch, where I dreamed about trying to buy tacos from a biker bar but got caught in some kind of biker gang war.)

I've been sending letters here on Substack for 3 months now. It feels like both a very long time and no time at all. When I first started here, I felt so frantic about defining what this newsletter would be "about" and I felt so undecided about what to name it. So I named it something that felt familiar to me and my blog writing (Friday Bites). It didn't feel quite right, but I went with it anyway. Trying to summarize what my newsletter would be about felt like trying to fold clean clothes while my toddler rolled around in them. But I came up with something, and decided to just...do it. Just write. I can always change things later.

So I started sending letters. It felt important to get out of my head and just start. Stop worrying that no one would subscribe or be interested or read. As I started feeling my way around the Notes section, I tried not to be intimidated by all the other brilliant and beautiful work I encountered. I tried not to get discouraged into silencing myself after reading a lot of Discourse about the state of "good" and "bad" Substack writing. When people started sharing their subscriber counts, I tried not to feel inconsequential and a failure because my subscriber numbers are not huge.

Instead of scrolling Notes and getting sucked into all the noise, I read newsletters from my inbox first thing in the morning, and I use the Notes feature to find new letters to read. When I write, I tell myself that I'm writing for me because I love it and I need to and whoever needs to hear what I'm saying will find me.

Even so, I've been trying to not feel like a mess because my writerly instincts are punching their way out of the little niche box I've been trying to contain them in. Content creator wisdom (which is actually very different from writer wisdom) tells us to find our niche, to specialize, to compartmentalize. To put a magnifying glass on one interest and ignore all the rest. (Much like academia and the MFA, but that's a discussion for another time.)

I just cannot do that. Trying to compartmentalize myself and my writing and my thoughts is like trying to put my beloved late cat in a cat carrier. She clawed, spit, kicked, hissed, dead-fished, ran away, hid -- did everything she could to keep us from putting her in that small, dark cage, so I held her on my lap on the car rides to and from the vet. Everything was less stressful and went more smoothly when we stopped trying to cram her in a box and just let her breathe and be free.

So we're in the middle of transitioning to no-nap days. There have been a couple days where my girl has asked for a nap at 3pm, and I've given it to her. (And yes, on those days, she's fallen asleep past 10:30pm. On those nights, I have only myself to blame.)

I haven't fully recognized the extent to which I've built our days around naptime. When she was doing 3 naps a day, it felt impossible to do any activity that felt longer than a couple hours. When she dropped to 2, it felt a little easier to plan activities and work meetings around them. When she dropped to 1, it felt like a heavy blanket got thrown off our days. We had more flexibility, could plan longer outings. Dropping to zero naps, though, feels like starting a marathon that I am absolutely unprepared to run.

Naptime has always been *my* time. When I worked for someone else, I sometimes used nap time to get things done, and I disliked it very much. When I quit my job, naptime became my respite. Sometimes it was the only time in the day I got to sit down and rest. Sometimes I napped, or read, or caught up on my trash tv. I've structured our days around Before Naptime and After Naptime.

Now, without a nap to break up the day, there is no Before and After. It's all just...Endless Time.

I wake up in the morning and see my day stretch out before me like I-80 from Salt Lake City to my hometown in northern Nevada -- an infinite straight-shot drive under a relentless sun, very few rest stops, and nothing but blinding salt flats to feast my eyes on for what feels like an eternity. I have no idea what to do with all this Time and Space and Light in our days.

What Substack has given me in the midst of the all-over-the-place-ness of toddler motherhood is structure and an outlet. I've set the publishing timeline for myself, and I'm very proud that I've stuck to it. Even though I have days where the only person I talk to is a nearly-3-year-old, my brain doesn't feel like goo anymore, and I suspect it's partly because I'm using it to write and string semi-coherent sentences together on a regular basis.

Writing letters here has reminded me that there are things that I'm excited to write about that are not necessarily related to the niche (grief and motherhood and food) I've put myself in.

And I've decided to say fuck it. I'm going to write about whatever I want here. Because this writing (I've started to call it my public-facing writing) fuels my other writing -- my poems, my more vulnerable essays. I've learned about what I feel comfortable sharing here, in real-time, and what feels better to work on in private by myself and with trusted readers (and my therapist) when it comes time for it.

With the days stretching out like a wagon ride on the Oregon Trail (for a visual, see: Meek's Crossing), I'm starting to feel out our new rhythms, suss out what we need for this new phase we're embarking on. It requires more storytimes at the library, more nature walks, more art time, more playground trips. It requires letting go of guilt around screen time, and it requires more structure for my toddler. Within the structure I make for her, I know I will begin to find time for myself again, the way I did during nap time. (I just have to remind myself, on days that feel like absolute chaotic failures, that I'm doing my best, we're figuring this out, everyone is fed and clean, and tomorrow will be a new day, a clean slate, an opportunity to try again.)

We're about a week into our no-nap life, and I'm starting to feel more comfortable with all the Space, Time, and Light my days are seeing. I don't feel in control of anything, and we still don't have a lot of structure, but I'm figuring out how to adapt. It doesn't feel so daunting anymore -- it's starting to feel more like possibility.

Somehow, my Substack life feels like it's getting more Space, Time, and Light, too. With a no-nap day, I suddenly feel free to write about whatever I want, whether it has to do with motherhood, grief, and food or not. I'm cooking up some fun projects that I'll probably launch in the new year, one to do with cakes and the other with music.

6 months ago, I couldn't have even conceived of feeling capable of planning a regular newsletter, and here I am, doing the damn thing. I'm my own boss, I get to write about whatever I want, name it whatever I want, and I get to choose the box I put myself in. And guess what -- the boxes are getting recycled, and I'm heading out onto the open road.

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When I first found out I was pregnant, I went hard into parenting research mode. I tried to find pregnancy and parenting websites and forums that didn't make me feel like I was joining a weird tradwife club or like I was going to damn my baby to a lifetime of developmental delays if I had coffee or even *clutches pearls* a glass of wine while pregnant. If I saw the word "hubby" written even one time anywhere, I immediately closed the window and moved on to something else.

Soon enough, the algorithm began to flood my social media feeds with parenting and pregnancy content. There are so many fucking opinions out there on what pregnant people should and should not be doing with their bodies, and there are even more opinions on what you should be doing once that infant exits the pregnant body. Lots of fearmongering and finger-wagging about screen time, sleep, routines of all stripes, tummy time, wake windows, feeding schedules, breastfeeding versus formula feeding, etc. etc. etc. I won't step both feet onto my soapbox here, but I'll say that patriarchy and capitalism have done a great job of making parents feel like they a-cannot trust themselves and their instincts when it comes to their own children, and b-are fucking up their infants/kids all of the time. In the midst of all this, I remember reading one article that implored parents to "let" their toddlers "help" them around the house. Sure, the article's author wrote, it might take longer, but the benefits of having your cutie pie help you plant your garden or bake a cake will win out in the long-run. Something about them feeling like part of a team, they'll be more likely to do their chores when they're older, something about them getting good grades when they get to school-age, etc. etc.

I remember looking out into my brand new backyard, imagining my thriving garden, and thinking, What kind of monster *wouldn't* let their toddler *help* them do stuff??? Why would you care about doing a thing slowly if the trade-off is getting to have your little cutie by your side dropping seeds into holes in the ground or watching them whisk up some wet ingredients in a bowl?

Taken shortly before the wet ingredients got sloshed all over the counter.

Fast forward two years to me and my cutie pie in our kitchen on any weekend morning. Let's say we're making waffles, something fairly simple. She's standing in her little Montessori "Discovery Tower" or whatever they're calling it these days, and she's got her cutie pie-sized whisk, and she whisking the shit out of the dry ingredients: flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt. Everything is covered in a fine layer of white stuff. And by everything, I mean *everything* -- the table, her stool, the splash mat underneath her stool, the floor, her feet, her pajamas, her face.

While she's doing this, I'm staring into the middle distance, trying to appear present but also thinking: I may have to replace these dry ingredients with an approximation of what she's flung all over the place (do we think it's a quarter cup of stuff? It might be. Would it destroy the recipe if I was wrong? There's only one way to find out, I guess.)

Okay, so technically this is a pic of the chaos of making dinner, but same rules apply.

This scene would extremely cute if it had not taken us 35 minutes to simply put all the dry ingredients into a bowl. We haven't even measured our wet ingredients yet. We've been up since 8 am, it is now 9:30am, and Mama (that's me) is very hungry.

On a good day (by "good day," I mean my cutie pie has allowed me to sleep enough to not feel sleep-deprived (which could be anywhere from 3 hours to 6 hours, uninterrupted), my patience has not been tested to its breaking point yet, and I'm feeling pretty que sera sera about my kid making a gigantic mess in the kitchen), I can feel whimsical. I can enjoy the fun my sweet girl is having with the whisk and trying out all the different ways she can fling flour across the room. I can take a deep breath, sip my coffee, and let go and let god. We'll clean this all up later, it'll be just fine.

On a not-so-great day (and by "not-so-great day," I mean my cutie pie has been asking for "mommy milk" all night, which means I'm sleep deprived and touched out, my patience ran out at 3am, and there is not enough coffee in the world to make me feel more awake or alive), I sip my coffee and tell her repeatedly: keep the flour in the bowl please, it's mommy's turn to mix now, okay, we'll count to five and then it'll be mommy's turn, wow, you're doing so great, sweetheart, okay, it's mommy's turn, keep it in the bowl please. Repeat all morning.

Either way, our waffles will be done by 10:30am or even 11am. And that's assuming she even wants to help me cook. There are mornings when she doesn't want anything to do with cooking, and she doesn't want me to have anything to do with it either. Instead, she shouts about wanting to play puzzles (with me), freeze tag (with me) or with her doctor bag (with me). Whatever it is she wants to do, it must. be. with. me.

Then, there are other mornings when she's perfectly content to sit in her room, "reading" her books by herself for what feels like a weirdly long amount of time. These are the mornings when I can whip up a Dutch baby or waffles in no time (which is to say, a regular amount of time), and then I can sit and read my own book with my own coffee while it cooks.

Posted up on a stool and read through 3/4 of this collection while making breakfast and my kid “read” through 25 Pete the Cat books.

It seems like cooking or baking with a toddler is exceedingly cute and also exceedingly a pain in the ass. It is both at the same time, no matter what my mood. No matter how messy the kitchen gets or how exasperated I become, it's always worth it to me at the end. Yes, it gives my kid a sense of accomplishment that she helped make breakfast. Yes, my kid's face lights up when she realizes that Bobby Flay/Molly Yeh/The Pioneer Woman/Daniel Tiger is mixing stuff in a bowl exactly the way she does. Yes, my kid now goes on and on about how, when we cook/bake together, we're a team. That is all 1000% percent worth it to me.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is: I've stopped paying attention to Instagram mom influencer accounts and their immaculate kitchens and their children who are doing everything perfectly and also not getting any flour on their clothes or anywhere else and everyone appears to be having the best time and making SO many memories. They’re making the journey look easy, when in reality, the journey is very messy and not always that fun. (In fact, it’s very rarely fun.)

What I am actually, really, trying to say is: I've learned that the key to making food with a toddler is to know my limits and adjust my expectations accordingly. In fact, it helps immensely to have zero expectations. If I can just banish the thought from my mind that my toddler is here to actually help me work toward the end goal (a meal), then I'll be okay when all she does is make a massive mess for me to clean up later. Also, I've learned it's okay if there are some days I'd rather just make the food on my own rather than have my kid "help" me. That's okay, too. Every household chore does not have to be a learning opportunity.

When I think about making food with and/or for my toddler, what's most important to me instead is that she have memories of Dutch Baby Saturdays, or the smell of something good and tasty always cooking or baking. She'll eventually learn how to dump a half teaspoon of salt into a bowl without flinging it three feet away from its target. She's only 2.5 years old -- we have plenty of time.

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