I'm a Big Girl Now :)

Growing up way too fast....check out all the cool stuff Sarah can do now....

The Naughty Corner

Looks just like any other corner, right? Ah, yes, but if you ask Alex or Anna where the naughty corner is, they would both simultaneously show you this little spot in our dining room. Not too long ago we very nearly had someone in this corner almost continuously. Sort of like a cycle- Alex would get out, Anna would get sent in (mostly for taunting Alex for being in there in the first place), and on and on it went. I think it was probably a good 3 years (or at least it felt that long) where not even one day went by without someone in it at least once. A few days ago Anna commented "Mom, how come we don't ever use the naughty corner anymore and why doesn't Sarah ever have to go there?" This got me thinking....

When did we stop using sitting in a corner away from us as punishment?

• I think it was about the same time that going outside, playing with their friends and watching TV all became cooler than spending time with us. They still get in trouble, it's just that their currency is different now. To send Alex to the corner for 8 minutes will not have the same effect as grounding him to the house for a day. Although, to be honest, the whole grounding the kids to the house is really just a mean and cruel punishment on the parents. Not sure who came up with that idea, but stupidly we also enforce it around here....

Why don't we send Sarah to the corner?

• This one is tougher. It's certainly not because she doesn't ever get into trouble. Sarah IS trouble, plain and simple. The corner is still there, we still own a timer. Either we have become softer or we have realized that sending her to the corner for 2 minutes will most likely not make any difference and so why waste our time? Yep, she's the baby and she's gonna get away with it all :)

Why, out of some 5,000 pictures I have taken since Alex was born can I not find even one picture of anybody in the naughty corner?

•  Pondering this one I think it is because at the time we were sending them to the dreaded corner of shame, the last thing I wanted to do was take a picture and remember it. It's not that I don't have pictures of my kids crying, I certainly have my share of those. But absolutely none in the corner....weird, huh? I guess the only thing I can say about this is that when Alex and Anna are older and in psychotherapy for irrational fear of tight spaces and corners, I can deny all knowledge of how this could have developed :) After all, there is no proof, right?

Anybody else have a "time out" ritual like this?

FOOD

As I was looking back through the last couple of months of pictures, I noticed a trend. I took a lot of pictures of Sarah eating. Or, perhaps, Sarah is just always eating....

On second thought, I think that this has occurred because Sarah is always on the move but when she is eating, she is slowed down enough that I can actually grab the camera and get a picture....

The rumors are true....

Yep, it's official. We've lost our minds. As our friend Mike says, "Teeth are overrated. So is money. And time." Hockey here we come!

Parenting Moments

There are just some days when I feel so absolutely proud of my kids and the kind of people they are turning into. No, this doesn't happen everyday- they are just normal kids after all. But, tonight, when I was so tired from lack of sleep earlier in the week and feeling under the weather myself, my sweet little Anna made me feel that it is all worth it. Here's the deal.....earlier in the week Anna received a birthday party invitation for a friend at school. The party is this Sunday and the invitation states that they will be doing pony rides. I figured they are probably going to a local farm of some kind and I would give the mom a call to figure out where it is and get more details. But, in the meantime, we had told Anna she could go. Needless to say she was pretty pumped up about riding a horse. She has done this once before, again at a birthday party. Well, tonight was 1st grade parents information night at school. I was hoping I would run into the parents of the girl who invited her to this weekend's party and just get more details then. No luck. However, I did talk to one of Anna's other friend's moms who stated that she did call and found out the party is in Rochester and they were going to drive the girls down in a few vans. Yikes. An hour drive in a car with parents I have never met before. It was all I could think about during the information night. I kept going through in my mind how upset Anna was going to be if I didn't let her go and how could I tell her she couldn't go with all her friends and ride horses. The guilty parent complex. So, I got through the night and braced myself to break her heart and have her hate me by telling her I wasn't ok with this plan. And I told her. And she said, "Oh, ok. I understand". No tears, no pleading, no making me feel bad for saying no after I had said yes. And in that moment, I have never been prouder of the beautiful, mature person Anna is. She has always been good at handling disappointment and change and is in general relatively laid back and calm. I now have such a new appreciation for these qualities. Anna was born to do something awesome. I'm not sure what, but for tonight it was making her overtired, stressed out, under the weather mommy feel a little less inadequate as a parent :) Love you bananas!

Hooray for School!

School is here, some are happy....

Others are not...

Either way, it is here and we are back in the rat race!

Goodbye summer :(

Someday Sarah will hate me for this post....

But, that is what mothers are for, right? Embarrassing their children with such pictures. Since Sarah has been potty training (well, if you can call randomly peeing on the toilet and at other times, peeing on the floor potty training), she seems to really like doing all things in the nude. Including eating. For anyone worried about the hygiene factor, YES, I did wash the chair :)