Why does cooking have to take so long??

We had chicken fajita success last night!  I confess to modifying the recipe slightly...no homemade sour cream, chicken bullion cubes instead of broth powder, pre-made fajita spices in place of the chili powder (that was unintentional -- I could have sworn I had chili powder!!), and avacado & low-fat mexican style shredded cheese as additional toppings.  (Shhh...I don't think the Oaks at Ojai would approve of the added cheese and avacado.  But we all know that eating healthy is only worthwhile if it tastes good!!)  We also had non-fat refried beans as our side dish.  Justin thought they were yummy, and I'll get a final verdict when I get the little guy's daily report from school -- he gets the leftovers for lunch. 

Which reminds me of my biggest fear about this whole project, which is the fact that when I go through the effort to prepare a meal from scratch AFTER I get home from work, it basically guarantees that dinner won't be on the table until after we put Ronen to bed.  He gets to enjoy the fruits (veggies?!?) of my labor during his school lunch the next day, but it means that we miss out on family meal time together.  I know this is only tangentially related to cooking and running, but it's a major hurdle that I have to figure out how to overcome in this bigger cooking and running project. Justin and I were commenting last night on Ronen's behavior in his high chair -- he was munching on his dinner while Justin and I were preparing ours -- he was being quite fussy.  I've read that fussiness like that can be an "attention getting mechanism" which makes perfect sense to me.  I can understand why Ronen would be eager for our attention during the short period of time that we have to spend with him after he's spent a full day at day care.  Even with his high chair visible and easily accessible from the kitchen, it's still a bummer that I was taking him to bed as the fajita meat finished simmering.  I aspire to provide healthy, home-cooked meals to share TOGETHER as a family...it's going to be a process to figure out how to make that happen.