Feelin like a bad mom

11 yr old boys are difficult. And lazy. And spacey. I believe all of them are that way, so why would I expect different from MY child?

Because he's MINE, that's why.

We were all home yesterday. Day off for Kyan and me (due to a workflow issue it made more sense to be off Weds and work Friday) and Jaben had a snow day. Yay! The whole day home in the middle of the week!

So what did we do??

Cleaned and fought, that’s what.

I cleaned, the boys fought, then I *tried* to get Jaben to clean and he and I fought. That child has the messiest room I’ve ever seen but he absolutely refuses to clean it. And since I don’t want him to miss out on anything, there aren’t any real consequences. So why on earth would I think he’d clean the playroom yesterday without serious threat?

Silly me.

We need a system, he needs to know his responsibilities consistently, and I need for him to HELP me out. Between the 2 of them, those boys can trash the entire house in a half hour. On a slow day. I am only one person and I am TIRED.

So rather than continuing to yell and completely destroying our relationship, I downloaded a chore chart format for Jaben today. Sure I could make one for him, all special and stuff, but I do not have time. Plus, I really just want this to be fast and easy. This will tell him what he needs to do each day of the week so that he can do it in HIS time, so long as it’s all done before bed.

I think I should also make him a morning routine chart (list?) to help him remember what to do in the morning. Like brush his teeth.

Say it with me now…. Ewwwwwwwwww!

Kalahari pics and update

Sorry it's been a while. I'm a busy girl, doncha know! But we had a great time at Kalahari last week!



The boys love it there and would go every week if they could.











A room with a view...



We also got to meet up with Stacy, which was great and not nearly enough time. We had about an hour while they waited for their room to be ready, but the kids all played in the dry play area and Stacy and I gotto talk. It was nice and I'd really like to do it again sometime soon!

Inother, slightly more amusing news... I've been working on Kyan's manners lately. Y'know, making sure he says "excuse me" when he passes gas. Except now it's, "Excuse me,Kyan," every time! And when someone else does, they have to say, "Excuse me, Kyan" as well. It's kinda cute. Then again, it may be one of those things you have to hear in person.

And in PLAY news -- Jaben got the part of the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist!! We could not be happier or more excited! Can't wait!!

Rotten teeth, rotten kids, needing a getaway

Looks like I’m going to live. Thanks to you who posted with the sympathy! It was pretty miserable for a couple days and while I still can’t chew on that side (shudder) or let anything even remotely hot or cold touch it, I’m doing a lot better. Few things are worse than heavy dental work. It’s just brutal.

It’s also completely thrown me off. Imagine chewing gum on a tooth like that. Ain’t gonna happen, right? Right. So I’m off the nicotine gum for now and will get back to it when the fear that it might touch my tooth and rip something up or out passes. I expect a few more days at least. Then, it’s right back up on that horse!! Bet you’re looking forward to more posts on THAT! But… since I refuse to give up it’s going to happen. Your support is invaluable (hint, hint!).

*******************

Yesterday the boys were home with mom for President’s day, which was great for them. And apparently they had a great day – big breakfast, lunch at McDonald’s, total grandma spoilfest.

Until.

Grandma wasn’t thinking and put Kyan down for his nap without a pull up. He’s never slept in his underwear before so it could’ve been ugly. But when he woke up he was dry! Atta boy, Ky! Unfortunately the celebrations were cut short when, upon being brought into the bathroom to go ahead and potty, Mr. Kyan threw a fit, sat himself down on the bathroom floor and proceeded to pee his pants. Grandma didn’t care much for that (ya think?), stripped him down and sat him on the couch.

For me to deal with when I came home.

*sigh*

And that was just the beginning of the night from hell. Neither of those boys were very pleasant to be around last night. Got to the point where I wanted to take one head in my right hand, the other head in my left and ….. SMASH!!

Fortunately this is not an option.

You’d think two little boys who are going to Kalahari tomorrow – Thurs would behave better than that. I swear if it was refundable I’d have been tempted.

Or not. I really wanna go . Waterparks rock, but also I get to meet up with Stacy, who I’ve “known” from my message board for a few years and will be going with her family about the same time. I am so excited to meet her it's kind of silly! With that as incentive, I don’t care how rotten those boys are, I’m going. And I will try to get some decent pictures to share since I have a working camera now.

Till then, have a super week!

*whimper*

I got a filling today. In a molar. It was a really bad one.

No, I'm not being a whimp. Hell, I went thru childbirth on pitocin with no meds... I can handle one little filling!

Except this one isn't little. I swear the man rebuilt my tooth using filling material. There was smoke. And blood.

Okay, I'm making up the smoke but the blood was real.

You know it's bad when the dentist says he'll call the next day to check on you.

Ow.

Probably rambling

I've got a few things I want to talk about but no structured post (unusual, right?) so I'm just gonna write.

First things first. I know you're all (all 2 of you) dying to know if I'm smoking. Well. *sigh* Don't tell Jaben, but yes, I have been. Somewhere in the vicinity of 4-5 a day, which is HUGE for me. But still not where I want and need to be, which is at 0. So I'm moving on to nicotine gum. I've got 3 or 4 in the pack I've been cheating with all week, so once those are gone that's IT. I'm buying the gum tonight, so I'm sure there'll be more whining posts to come. But I need to want to have to do this. Just my way my time. Just... don't tell Jabe. Please. I'll have that conversation with him when I'm ready.

I have to tell you – Kyan rocks!! He’s been wearing his big boy pants for 3 weeks now and he’s doing so awesome! I’m almost ready to call him totally trained, but not quite yet. He goes when he needs to, but he still wants me to come with him. He will tell me he needs to go and runs off to the bathroom, but I’ve got to say, “I’m right behind you!” or he’s not fully comfortable. Usually. He is still wearing his pull ups to sleep, but to be honest I don’t care if he sleeps in pull ups until he’s 6 as long as he’s using the potty during the day. We had a bit of trouble with the pooping part, but once he did it, it was easy. He’s doing incredible with it now!! So yay Kyan for getting past this final milestone for PT-ing! He has been naked trained for so long and I’d gotten to the point where I thought he’d never underwear train. He’s just doing so good and he’s so awesome!

Next week is our annual trip to Kalahari! We’ve made the reservations and got an amazing deal! There were no good packages available online, so my mom called to see if they had any corporate deals associated with her company. I don’t know if what we got is due to her company or just something we got lucky with, but I only paid $98!! Amazing!! The best I could’ve done online was like $269 so this is a major savings. No “specials” to go with it like what we had last year, but that’s okay. We saved a LOT on this deal and with the expanded water park, we’re going to have a blast even without all the extras. Can’t wait!!

Jaben had his review for Boy Scouts last night, to see what rank he will be at. He was shooting for Second Class, and he thinks he should have that, but doesn’t know yet. I can’t wait to find out! He loves Boy Scouts and hopes to some day become an Eagle Scout, so this is very important to him. He’s got the Klondike Derby this weekend, which is a one night camp, and the next day they compete against other troops doing Boy Scout related tasks. That’s about as far as my understanding of the whole thing goes, but he’s excited about it. Oh, and he’s started his drama classes up again (Oliver! And we’re hoping for the part of Dodger cuz he’d ROCK that part!), AND his grandma bought him a guitar and lessons! Jabe’s a busy boy these days, that’s for sure.

I need to post new pics of these boys – they’re growing so fast! My sister sent me a camera (thanks again!!) when she sent Ky a birthday gift (Fisher Price camera that he LOVES – I should post some of his pics too) so I should be able to get some decent pics of them soon. And Ky’s birthday pics should come in soon. And I never posted the Christmas pics. So yeah, I need to do some picture catch up!

Guess that’s it for the random ramblings. If you got this far, you rock! And um… thanks for reading. I’m sure this read worse than one of those “Christmas Newsletters”!

If you love it so much why don't you marry it?

Remember that taunt from grade school?

Well, I'm gonna marry my Swiffer Wet Jet. I am seriously in love with this thing! I had one a while ago and brought it with me when we moved, but alas... it was broken. So I have been using the old fashioned mop and bucket method.

And it was fine, for what it was. But it really didn't seem to get the floors very clean, no matter how often I changed out the water. I even tried hands-and-knees cleaning once (we have NO carpets - ONCE was enough!!) and that didn't seem to work very well either.

But ah, the Wet Jet. I wish I'd bought you sooner. It's so much faster, much less work without having to fill and empty a bucket over and over. Also, I know that my floors were filthy because I used 2 pads per room, and used the entire (small sized!) bottle of cleaner that came with it. I will have to buy more - 2 more because I will probably be obsessed for a while(!) and my beautiful floors will be spotless! Oh and it smells so good. Nothing better than a clean smelling house.

Now I am just waiting for my beige slipcover to come out of the dryer (who's idea was THAT color anyway??) and then I should be done for the day. It's amazing how much eaiser it was without the mop.

Oh, how I love my Wet Jet!

Row row row your boat...

Seriously, it needs to stop raining. Like, 6 hours ago. I'm going to need an outboard on my car just to get home.

Who's raising YOUR kids?

If you’re one of those stay-at-home moms who look down on working moms, or consider them to be lesser parents than the stay-at-home variety, move along, nothing to see here.

** waits patiently **

Are they gone?

Okay good. Let’s talk about ‘em!

Just kidding!!

Seriously though, I made the mistake today of reading a message board of SAHM vs Working Mom debates. There’s a reason I avoid those places… I only read it today out of boredom, I swear. There was a thread titled, “Why do you SAH?” and my favoritest answer in the whole wide world was, “Because I don’t want strangers raising my children.”

OMG why didn’t I think of that?? Here I am, every week, moving my preschooler from daycare to daycare in search of new strangers to raise him for me!

** pops forehead in perfect V8 fashion **

I KNOW that’s not what they meant, but seriously. Strangers? Raising? I hardly think so. First of all, I KNOW my DCP and I trust her. If I didn’t, he wouldn’t be there. That’s not to say I didn’t make a few errors in judgment when it came to care for Jaben, but I learned and in the end he had a great situation with a provider who treated him as a member of the family.

She loved him, she fed him, she got him to school in the morning. But did she raise him?

Um, no. Not hardly. I raised him, and am in fact still raising him… with the feeding and the washing and the teaching of right behavior, and the cleaning of the vomit and dirty dishes, and the morality (what? A single mom with morals?? Unheard of! *snicker*), and the clean your room or I’ll kill you, and the….

Well, you get the picture. *I* raise my kids. With a little help from my friends.

[singing] Ohhhh I get by with a little help from my friends….[/singing]

Ahem.

I’m not against SAHM’s, it’s just when I read those things it makes me kind of gag a little. I remember when I was pg with Jaben, someone (who shall remain nameless) told me that yes, other people would in fact be raising my child. Oh how ignorant and wrong she was. I actually get a little tired of the whole debate. Why is there a debate and why should there be? Everyone just do what’s best for yourself and your family and don’t worry about what other people are doing.

THE GREAT AND POWERFUL OZ HAS SPOKEN!

Um yeah. I might need a nap or something.

Consumed by poison

I am consumed with the thoughts of smoking a cigarette. I am off patches, I am really just fiiiine on my own, with no assistance.

Except.

Except that I cannot get the thought of smoking a cigarette out of my mind.

I know it smells.

I know it would taste terrible.

I know it would, most likely, make me feel ill.

And yet.

And yet...

I wonder if just "one" would remove that thought from my head.

Yuck, that's awful. Ugh, my stomach is upset, I'm dizzy now. Don't want to do that again.

Yes, it might help. At least I'd know.

It's not going to happen. I am sitting here at work, unable to leave the phones. So I remain consumed by the thought.

Of just one... just one to get me thru.