My Kid Circus

Well, today stinks.

It all started with Z this morning.  As I was making breakfast this morning, he called out, “Oh no, Parker went potty on the rug!”.  Parker, our 9 year old dog, has not done anything like that in YEARS.  I ran in shocked and upset and start to clean up the puddle.  Then I notice one of his tub toys sitting on the table.  I quickly put 2 and 2 together.  I say, “Is this water from your toy?”.  Z just stared at me.  So, I asked him again.  When he still refused to answer me I knew that he had truly, flat-out lied to me.  I sent him to time out and stood there stunned at my sweet 4 year old who had turned into a cunning almost 5-year old.

I decided that time out wasn’t enough in this instance since it was such a deliberate lie, which I have repeatedly told him is unacceptable in our family.  So, I “grounded” him.  For him, this meant a day without T.V.  I don’t let him watch that much television anyway, but what he does get to watch, he LOVES!  He will ask me about 20 times a day if he can “watch a show”.  So, I though this would be a heartbreaking consequence for him.  We did so much today, though, that I had to purposely send the little guy to watch a show, so I could be sure that Z felt his consequence.  I felt kind of silly forcing my 2 year old to watch T.V. to teach a lesson to my 4 year old, but it seemed like the best thing to do at the time.

Then came bedtime tonight.  The little guy has made big improvements in staying in his room at bedtime, so I haven’t locked his door recently.  After putting all of the kids to bed, I came downstairs to enjoy the quiet.  About 20 minutes later I heard the little guy laughing.  From MY room.  I knew that wasn’t going to be good.  I ran up there and found him in the bedside co-sleeper WITH the baby!  WHOA!!  She seemed happy enough with him there until they both heard me scream!  So, seeing as though he did something dangerous enough that he absolutely could have injured the baby (or worse), I did what I never wanted to do.  I spanked him.

I feel terrible!  I spent 5 years teaching parents different techniques to use with their children as alternatives to spanking!  What a hypocrite I feel like today.  This little guy can just push me to the limit.

I guess the bungees are going back on the door tomorrow.  It breaks my heart when he cries about his door being locked, but honestly it would probably be best if we just left them there until he goes to college.  I am terribly afraid that we are only seeing glimpses of what our future is going to be with this guy.  Entertaining, for sure, but challenging on even the best days.

He has his second day of preschool tomorrow.  A blog for another day…

My aunt told me a funny story about when my cousin, John was little.  She said that one time after John fell, she brushed him off and sent him on his way.  The next day she took him to the doctor because he had such a bad headache.  It turned out that he had a broken arm.  A different time, she rushed him to the doctor because he was limping around the house.  This time, it turned out that he had a sock stuck in the cowboy boot he was wearing.  I loved these stories, because I felt in such good company in not always knowing what to do with sick kids.

Last week I had my first experience with all 3 kids sick at the same time.  It was a rough week.  Mostly, I felt heartbroken, because when I have a sick child, I want to just hold them and love on them until they feel better.  When there were 3 of them though, and one of them is a small baby, it was simple survival mode.  Give this one medicine, give this one juice, take a temperature, rock the baby.  I love them all so much, I hated that I couldn’t be there fully for any of them.  I am guessing that this is only the first of many times in their childhood that they will all be sick with something, so I hope to find a better way of coping.

I am really not one to rush to the doctor with every sniffle that my kids have.  95% of the time that I have taken them in for something, the doctor says, “It is just a virus.  It will pass”.  I don’t need a 30 minute car trip, plus a long wait in the waiting room to hear that.  So, I generally try to give them time to get better.  This past weekend though, the baby worried me.  She had a fever for a couple of days, wouldn’t sleep, was crying a lot, and then began refusing to eat.  Finally, I put her in the car and went to Urgent Care since it was a Saturday late afternoon.  When we got there, she promptly stopped crying.  She didn’t register a fever, played with the doctor, and even agreed to eat.  Sigh.  The doctor was very nice as he said, “I can’t find anything wrong with your baby”.  Of course I would rather that be the case, but did she have to have a spontaneous recovery as soon as we were able to see a doctor?  I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t one  of those hysterical moms who  takes my kids to the doctor for no reason, but I figured the evidence was not exactly in my favor. Oh well.

Luckily, everyone seems to be feeling better now.  My house, however, suffered extensive damage from our sick week.  I am trying my best to motivate myself to clean it.  Of course, I had to stop to write a blog post first. 🙂

Poor sickie #2

Here is how I knew it was time:  my little guy was running around naked after a bath.  He ran up to me and said, “I need a diaper”. Ok, maybe I have procrastinated potty training longer than I should have, but in my defense, I have been a little bit busy!  I have just been dreading the hourly runs to the bathroom, trying to get clothes on and off a 2 year old, while holding the baby.  It seems like I should be prepared for all of this.  After all, just 2 years ago I was going through the same thing with my oldest, and my little guy was just a baby.

So, I decided to go for it.  I set up a sticker chart.  I got a supply of marshmallows for rewards.  I filled the little guy’s drawer with new big-boy underwear.

I was pretty much preparing for a battle, since the little guy doesn’t like to do things the easy way, but it turns out that he is actually doing great!  He has had a few accidents, but they usually happen when I am distracted and haven’t remembered to take him to the bathroom.  He even stayed dry on a 7 hour car ride!  Well, we did have one emergency stop by the side of the road when we were absolutely not going to make it to a bathroom.  We were thankful at that point that we had boys.  I think it was one of the highlights of the little guy’s whole vacation!

Usually I have some mixed feelings when my kids reach big milestones.  I can feel the excitement of moving to the next level, but still feel the twinge of sadness about how quickly the time goes.  Not so much with potty training.  It is pure joy! 🙂  Once you bring home the new baby and change those tiny little diapers and then move back to the GIGANTIC diapers of a two year old, it is truly eye-opening.  A toddler’s diapers seem dinosaur sized!  We are absolutely celebrating this milestone!  I am  counting down the days until the baby reaches it too.  The idea of a diaper-free house???  I can’t wait!!!

My husband doesn’t even know this yet, but the little guy broke out of the bungee cord lock on his door.  I have no idea how he did it.  It has been working successfully for weeks now, and then tonight I heard a huge crash, and then the familiar thump thump thump of his feet coming down the hall.  That guy, he is exhausting.  Its a good thing he is cute, and generally good-natured.  It is hard to get too upset when I see his sweet smiling face.

I think my big guy is getting restless with our long summer days.  This past weekend, he wanted to go shopping with me so badly.  I told him repeatedly that he wouldn’t find it fun, but he insisted he wanted to go, so I took the chance to have some one-on-one time with him.  I get to do that so rarely, and I  look forward to whatever alone time I get with him.  It didn’t take very long before he decided I was right, however, and he was not having any fun at all.

We had to look for some kitchenware, towels, etc.  Well, he really preferred to look at toys.  At each store we went to, I let him at least look at the toy aisle.  Because I still have a small baby at home, however, my time away is limited to about 2 1/2 hours, and I had a lot that I needed to accomplish in that time. So, I had to hurry him through a couple of times. Finally, he had enough of me.  He saw a transformer toy that he REALLY needed to look at, and I told him it was time to go.  He YELLS, “Mommy, you are always thwarting me.  You are making me CRAZY!”  Wow!  I had to fight myself not to burst out laughing.  How many 4 year olds tell their mom that she is always “thwarting” him?  Poor guy.  I had to let him look another minute after that comment.

He was then happy until we got to Target, our last stop of the day.  Target is pretty much equivalent to Disney World to my boys.  They just love to go there.  Well, unfortunately, I had to thwart him again when he wanted me to buy him a Batman toy.  I had a hungry baby at home (not to mention the already abundant supply of Batman toys), so I told him we had to leave.  He then told me that it is no fun being a kid.  He said he just wants to be an “adult” and if he was an adult, then he would let  kids do whatever they want.  He said he would always buy toys for them.  He then stressed that he especially wouldn’t buy toys for just one boy on their birthday, but always for the other boy too.  I think he has really been holding onto some anger about that one (and, by the way, he only has to wait 3 DAYS after his brother’s birthday until his own birthday!).

I remember being a kid and feeling like it was so unjust that there was a “Mother’s Day” and “Father’s Day”, but no “Kid’s Day”.  My parents always told me that every day is “Kid’s Day”.  As a kid, this definitely didn’t sit well with me.  Since I can remember these feelings of living in such an unjust world, I feel like I can be sympathetic to my Z and his frustration with me.  So, I gave him a hug, and told him that I was sorry that it was so hard to be a kid.  I’m still not going to give him presents on his brother’s birthday, but I suppose I can try not to thwart him too many times in one day.

Okay, I’m sure we aren’t alone on this.  My husband and I (from time to time) see things a bit differently.  As you all know, I haven’t been getting much sleep lately.  So, because I am just too tired to go to both of our boys at night when they inevitably start calling for me, I tend to let them come sleep in our bed.  This way, from my point of view, everyone gets more sleep.  Seems like a workable solution to me for right now, while I have a baby next to my bed.

Apparently, what I forgot to take into consideration is my husband.  He started occasionally complaining about not getting a good night sleep.  Sorry, honey, I know I wasn’t that sympathetic.  I haven’t gotten a good night sleep since early 2004.  Anyway, he then became more insistent with his complaints.  I guess I still wasn’t listening, because he came up with this exercise.  He gave us both a piece of paper, and told me to draw our family sleeping in the bed.  He did the same.  Here is what we came up with:

Well, I did feel for him a little more at this point.  Then, when he was out of town, I took this picture of the boys:

The little guy’s legs might not be facing the same way as in his drawing, but his point was true.  They were both sleeping completely on his side of the bed, leaving me plenty of space!  Well, it was working for me, but I accept that 5 people in a bed is too many.  But be careful what you wish for, honey.  While you were gone, I trained them to call out “DADDY!”, when they wake up in the night! 🙂