Biggest Parenting Fail To Date

Katie R.

Warning:  This will make you cringe, especially any gentlemen who may be reading this.

Approximately one week ago my Aunt and Uncle graciously let us spend the night at their home on our return trip.  They have an awesome pool and recently added a beautiful pool house (you will understand why I added this later).

Things were going great.  The kids were playing and Wes only came close to drowning a few times.  I stepped out to go to the bathroom and Andrew decided he had to go too and I was thinking great at least he didn't pee in the pool. We go into the pool house and I was distracted by something, I can't remember what, but Andrew decided he really had to go pee and I quickly lift the seat. 

So... apparently I did not lift the seat all the way up and it came crashing back down.  Unfortunately Andrew was already going potty so without going into too much detail the toilet seat connected and the scream that came next was unlike anything I have never heard.  He screamed and screamed and screamed and the only thing I could think to do was rush him back into the pool so I scooped him up and had him sit on the steps in the cool water.

Finally he stopped screaming and we were able to assess the damage.  Again, don't need to go into too many details but he was bruised in a place that no male should ever have a bruise.  Luckily he bounced back quickly and after a week the bruise is gone.  The only semi-permanent damage seems to be that before he goes into any bathroom he asks "I don't have to put the lid up do I?"
To which I immediately answer "Nope buddy you don't." 

Yep... another fine parenting moment by me.

No More Compliments

Katie R.

So a few family members mentioned that my kids can't be that bad, although that is usually within the first few minutes of meeting my kids when they are being "shy".  I also don't mind being truthful about my kids negatives (and positives when they arise) because let's be honest as parents we want to know that our kids aren't the only ones throwing tantrums, pouting and basically being completely irrational and ridiculous. 

So this past week has been pretty ok.  Wes is getting a little (meaning I don't have to have him tethered to a pole) more independent and Andrew has been pretty chill.

What is my mistake?  I actually told Katie D. and another friend tonight that he's been doing well and this had been a good week.  So what happens a mere 5 minutes later?  I am such a terrible mother that I asked him to go potty before we left for a picnic. A tantrum would have actually been preferred to the response of yelling "NO I AM NOT GOING POTTY".  I knew he had to go potty and so after scolding, threatening and talking through clenched teeth he went potty.  The rest of the night was not terrible but far from awesome. 

I know he's 4 and these behaviors are normal; however, it will teach me to brag about my kid.  And by brag I mean saying "he has been ok this week". 



The many emotions of Andrew

Annual Summer Trip to Ohio/Indiana: Family, Firsts and Chicken Bones

Katie R.

On Andrew's last day of preschool we picked him up and hit the road.  A short 15 hours later we arrived at Joe's parents house and the 16 day trip began.  

Family & Friends
We were so lucky to see so many family and friends this trip, although I am pretty sure we won't be invited back to a couple of houses, we had a great time.  In fact my uncle called my dad and said "it's a great Sunday here because Wes is at your house."  We all laughed and assumed he was kidding but we are still not 100% sure. Happy Family Photos:

Drinking water from the jeep tank.  Gross.



Needing a photo with his head in the alligators mouth at the zoo.

With his cousin Lauren.

The best we could do at a photo with all 4 kids

Dancing to the clock

Reading with Cousin Caleb

Hot day running in sprinklers

Watching mountain lions at the zoo

The trivia game that took 2.5 hours until the white flag was raised
(beer and wine may have contributed to the incompletion)

Endless hours of playing baseball

 

 And then there is this:

"The Look"

Most attempts at a photo of the cousins

  

Firsts
This trip we had a few "firsts".  Andrew went to his first baseball game (which was scheduled to begin at 1pm and thanks to ESPN ended up starting at 8pm).  Wes decided he no longer would sleep in a pack-n-play.  Andrew learned to run and jump in the pool without someone catching him.  And my mom made bacon cookies. 

Cincinnati Reds Game

Photos taken at 1am (5 hours past his bedtime)

 

The next day before a 4 hour nap

 

Wes

 

 

Wes climbed out of every crib and pack-n-play on the trip.  We hoped he would go back to his crib when we got home.  No such luck.  We put him to bed and after getting out of his crib 4 times decided it was time for a toddler bed (pictured here) and this pretty much explains how the first night went.

 

Swimming



Very proud of himself. He would go under and push off the bottom before my uncle grabbed him.

 

Bacon Cookies 

Bacon and chocolate chip cookies.  My dad's request for father's day.  Only had one bite.  Why you ask?  Because they 1/2 cup of bacon grease & butter in them!

 

Chicken Bones 

 

Although not our finest parenting momements, yes plural, in the past month Wes has spent 3 evenings chewing on chicken bones.  Once at a brewery with our friends, once at my uncle's when he woke up during dinner and wouldn't eat anything but chicken bones and finally at my aunts when he kept climbing out of bed so at 9:30 he ate a 2nd dinner where he chewed on a chicken bone and a rib bone.  Yes we are awesome parents.

 



Are We There Yet? I'm Not!

When Colby turned 2 I was excited about potty training.  We got him a kick ass potty, tons of cool underwear and we were ready to go. Imagining a world free of diapers for one kid sounded fabulous and exciting. We may have thought we were ready but we weren't.  Yes, I knew that boys usually potty train later then girls, but Colby and I were having conversations about pooping and peeing so I knew it had to happen sooner than later.  Well, it took later. Flash back to this post: Poop Blog!  The allure of a diaper free world quickly showed it's under belly of accidents, mad rushes to a bathroom, screaming kid not wanting to go in a public bathroom and poop in underwear that you attempt to clean because it's your kids favorite pair.  Ugh, I don't wish potty training on my worst enemy. Fast forward 2 years to today and I'm faced with it again.  I get the question from people "Is Lincoln showing signs of being ready for potty training?". Good lord, he may be ready...okay, he's ready but it's me that isn't.  I'm not ready to deal with the headache and accidents again.  It's stressful and time consuming and it's summer so I'm pulling rank and waiting.

And then I pull out the kid potty today to dust it off and clean it up so when "I'm" ready it will be good to go. And then Lincoln sees it and insists on sitting on it immediately (and in the kitchen). He hung out there for a bit but no action happened.  Yeah, I get it..he's ready! I've decided to leave the potty out (not in the kitchen anymore) and plan to offer it as an option to him but I'm not going to do any pushing of it until after my vacation in July. This mom needs to get her chill on before going down this road of parenthood again!

Please, just try to use a napkin!

I'm lucky, my boys are good sleepers.  If they stay up late they sleep in.  Also, they have never been early risers. They go down around 7 at night and wake around 7 in the morning. I know, I'm really lucky. The tricky part is that when we need to get somewhere in the morning I don't wake them until they wake up but we have to rush once they do.  When that happens I get them dressed right when they get out of bed.  You may think, no big deal, but if you give them peanut butter toast for breakfast it can cause a bit of chaos.  Lincoln is a good eater, however, his napkin usage is left wanting. The boy hates it of he has any food stuck to his hands but why use a napkin when you have a nice clean shirt on.  I'm usaully on top of it, but again, on mornings when we are rushing around I don't keep as good an eye on Linc as I should. 

Exibit A

From the picture you can see his hand patterns run down his sweatshirt! You can also see where I haven't wetted down his hair yet! The boy looks like a hot mess.

Exibit B

And here he is seeing if he can rub some of it off on the couch. Awesome. Well, we made it to our destination on time but barely.  I guess that's the trade off for having good sleepers. I'll take it!

Conversations by Colby

Just a few conversations from the life of Colby!



Tom: Colby, do you want to go have a catch?

Colby: Actually Dad lets just go throw the ball!



Colby: Is it night time?

Me: It is buddy, we have to start getting ready for bed!

Colby: I think I'm going to wait until the moon to comes up before getting ready for bed.



Colby (just after eating a huge dinner): Mom, I'm still hungry!

Me: Are you kidding me!

Colby: Well, my stomach is full but my knee still feels a little hungry.



Colby:Hey Mom, I have a question!

Me: Yeah buddy, what is it?

Colby: Do you sit on the potty to pee every time?

Me: Yup, every time.

Colby: Huh, well how about that!

To The One I Love

To the man that loves to read with them. To the man that loves to play with them. To the man that listens to them.

Oh, and more importantly...to the man that plays Angry Birds with them. Happy Fathers Day!

Wes vs the Pediatrician

Katie R.

So it was time for his 18 month appointment and in a moment of pure insanity I agreed for him to have a n1.5 hour appointment for some kind of study they were doing, such is the life of a patient at a teaching hospital. 

Of course I had to wake him up from his nap which is always a bad plan, but he was fine by the time we arrived.  Then we went into the room and the nurse told us to get his clothes off so we could do weight, height and head measurements.  Although I heard her say weight, height and head measurements by Wes's reaction I believe he heard her say water boarding, caning and pulling out all his toe nails.  He screamed the entire time and in true Wes formed turned it off the minute she left the room.  Here he is seconds after she left:

So now it's time for the doctor.  We have had this dr a couple times and he is a nice guy although he is a resident and pretty overwhelmed by Wes.  We start out by answering questions and Wes eats goldfish out of the bag.  Now as much as he hates the nurse he loves the doctor.  5 minutes into the apointment he is on the drs lap.  10 minutes in he is wearing the drs stethoscope.  15 minutes in he's eating a snack, sitting on the drs lap, wearing his stethoscope and pulling his nap badge as far out as it can go and snapping it back. 

Finally I get him off his lap and Wes is walking past the diaper bag and immediate begins yelling "amen, amen" which means he wants to eat.  I grab the goldfish which he throws all over the floor.  Next the pack of peanut butter crackers which again are tossed dramatically on the floor.  Finally I realize he sees a white page (a prescription bag I had picked up for myself) and a light bulb goes off that he thinks it is a dunkin donuts munchkin bag.  I calming explain that its medicine and not munchkins to which he now throws himself on the floor, yep the dirty germy hospital floor.  The poor resident looked like his head was going to explode and promptly said "well he looks great." 

Then to top it off the nurse gives him shots followed by a new book and new toothbrush.  He screams until I open the toothbrush and then as I was chatting with the nurse I look over and he's wiping the chairs with his new toothbrush and then putting it back into his mouth.  Seriously?

I have since seen the wonderful, amazing nurse at Andrew's appointment but no sign of Wes's dr.  My guess is he's either still at a bar or he's changed his career to geriatrics.

I'm a Boy!

We race cars, dig in the dirt and play pirates, but we also have tea parties, play dress up pick flowers.  We don't discriminate our TV watching either; we enjoy watching princesses as much as handy men. I start by mentioning that because the story I'm about to tell took me for a loop.

Colby does a great job brushing his teeth at night.  I let him put his toothpaste on his toothbrush so we go through it pretty quickly.  His current toothpaste had Jake and The Neverland Pirates on it and was blue.  Well, as everything does, it ran out.  During his last day of school Lincoln and I went to Hell, I mean Wal Mart, to grab a few things and all they had for kid toothpaste was Hello Kitty and Tinkerbell. In this house we love some Tinkerbell, so I grabbed it and off we went. 

Fast forward to that night, I call Colby into the bathroom to show him his new toothpaste. I show him and tell him it's pink because of its bubblegum flavor. To my total shock, he drops to the floor and begins to throw an epic tantrum.  Tom had to drag him out of the bathroom to try to calm him down. Once he wasn't screaming Tom and Colby returned and we brushed his teeth much to his chagrin, did bath time and I took him into his room to try to talk to him and get him ready for bed.

Once I finally got him calm and talking he explained to me that Tinkerbell was a girl cartoon and that pink is a color that girls like and that he was a boy and wanted blue toothpaste. He kept repeating this and said that because he was a boy pink was a color he was never going to like. WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN? HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? Ok, so my little boy is a little boy, I get that but it was like a light switch! Ugh, so I validated his feelings and told him I understood and that I'll do something about the toothpaste. 

It's not like I didn't think this would happen to some extent but I thought I had a little more time.

*Update-the following night I gave Colby the option to use our toothpaste (because it was blue) but he insisted on his pink toothpaste because it was his own special one! WTF! Good times being a parent!  I'll keep you posted on how that continues to go!

Picture Day

I've mentioned before how much I love Colby's school, teachers and program.  As the school year comes to a close I keep reflecting on how much my little man has grown and learned.  I think most of my joy comes from his independence. Don't get me wrong, he is 4 and that growing independence can lead to headaches, timeouts and beer for me but his teachers have guided him to be the best little man I know.  I had the fortune to help take a class photo last week and was so impressed how well behaved and sweet all the kids were. Imagine twelve just 4 years old sitting or standing and smiling while I tried to capture them all.  It was a great moment and the pictures really do tell a thousand words. 

Colby stays one more year in this school and then Lincoln will go here.  We are so fortunate to have found them!

The Best Prize Ever....OK maybe only for Ohio State Fans

Katie R.

So I've never entered my kids into any contest until now.  On the Ohio State Alumni fb page they asked for photos of the "little buckeyes".  They said they would draw at random and the kids would receive a prize.  Of course I couldn't turn this down.

Now, all the other entries were cute babies in football hats, kids at the game and adorable girls in Ohio State cheerleading uniforms.  I entered this:

So they said it was random, and I'll take their word for it, so someone was either really happy because it was funny or really upset because it was ridiculous.  It looked 100% out of place with all the other photos which made me laugh even harder.

So what was the prize?  A football signed to Andrew and Wesley by #45 Archie Griffin. Although Andrew wasn't sure who he was after a quick google search, Mommy's explanation and Grandpa's reaction he is now very proud of his prize.

 

GO BUCKS!