Success is just a meal away

Well the endless fruitless attempt to get my children to eat a reasonable dinner was not a complete failure.  

We had

Microwave chicken (from Aldi - actually quite good - skin comes up crisp and spicy) Mummy got to eat extra skin as neither child eats it.  It has flavour or something.  

Mashed potatoes (ignored as usual - my kids only eat mash made by someone not living with us)

Spinach fried in a splat of olive oil with garlic, spring onion, celery and broccolini.  Also a spider came out of the spinach as it was cooking!  4 year old ate once I explained the spinach makes you big strong and do smelly loud farts.  Anything to get them to eat greens.  It works actually.  

mashed sweet potato - ignored.    4 year old had a hissy fit when sweet potato was put on his plate.

Nuked frozen peas - eaten by both.  2 year old mostly to drop half masticated onto floorboards.  I thank everyday that I have floorboards.

Also my brother - the one who lives with us - won't eat orange food.  Except carrots.  

Then each child ate fruit for dessert.  Youngest 1.5 bananas and eldest 3/4 apple.  

Mummy ate chocolate (for dessert!).  And drank a glass of wine.  

Where is the balance?

I am looking for a way to balance the work life family thing.  Everyone has the same advice.  You need to prioritise and make decisions as to what is important.  But I say sometimes everything is important and all at once!  How can one manage parenting two active boys, a toddler and a pre-schooler and work a professional job that demands "facetime" and after hours work? I am a casual law lecturer for two Universities.  

In addition to parenting and lecturing  I am also supposed to do all of the following:

a) exercise 30 mins at least 3 times a week (although I have also read 1 hour a day every day - what is with that?) or I will get fat and die of health failure

b)  have sex with my husband twice a week or his mental health/our marriage will suffer.

c) continue legal education so I don't accidentally lecture from the stone age

d) keep a clean, decorated, renovated 40 year old house (it needs more cleaning, more decorating and basically a new houseworth of renos)

e) cook healthy nutritious family meals on a budget (admittedly generous) but if anyone knows how to cook a meal that both a toddler and a preschooler will like on the same night please let me know.

f) Everything else a woman is supposed to do.

All of them seem hugely important all the time.  

So far my polciy has been to sacrifice vast amounts of so called metime and sometimes sleep to manage it all.  

I think I had better stop blogging and get back to marking.  2 papers down and 105 to go.  Or something.