Mood Swings, Courtesy of Mommy!

This is the face of  dog who just ate two chocolate cupcake wrappers.

It would be fair to say that our household eating habits have left something to be desired, as of late.  That is, except for the wholesome homemade dinners our church family and friends have so graciously provided for our benefit.  Without them, we would ALL very likely be on a steady diet of cupcake wrappers.

This would be no one's fault but my own.  It's not for a lack of good food that our diet lately resembles that of a raccoon.  When I was on dietary lockdown during the majority of my pregnancy, our grocery choices were primarily dictated by what would prevent Ava from mainlining too much sugar and resembling a bowling ball made of biscuit dough at birth.  We were thrilled that all of our vigilance paid off - at seven pounds even, our little Clenney was just mini enough.  But now that my exile from Sugarland (that's an imaginary destination, not the ear-grating band) has been rescinded, I find myself giving into cellophane-wrapped temptation with alarming regularity.  When I have a midday exhaustion headache, my temporal artery throbs to the rhythm of chocolate, chocolate, CHOCOLATE.

So that is how my caffeine bender began.  With little nibbles of chocolate.  Which led to how I jacked up my poor three week old child yesterday -  through breast milk that probably had the caffeine concentration of a five hour energy shot.  

How could a cognizant, food savvy mother do this?! 

One bite at a time.  

Eventually those chocolate nibbles turned into coffee sips which led to kissing the mouth of a Coke bottle....not to mention numerous cups of incredible Oolong tea that Jason sweetly gifted to me during Ava's NICU days.  Each cup muted my exhaustion more and more, which led me back to the tea tin again and again, until all the breast milk in the nursery mini-fridge was vibrating with a high saturation of caffeine.

And I wondered why Ava Leigh was wide awake for hours and hollering her diaper off.  She was imbibing caffeine and junk via mom at the rate of a college freshman.  DERP.

It finally hit me like a face slap with a soggy gym sock: my diet stinks, and while it's pleasurable for ME to fall off the wagon and let it roll right over my resolutions, it's harming my baby.

So I'm begrudgingly climbing back into the driver's seat of the aforementioned wagon, perking the decaf, and relegating the cupcakes back into their rightful place -- dessert, not breakfast.  And lunch.  And dinner.