boot camp

G has an attitude problem.

He has an embarrassingly bad attitude and he's been sooooooooooooooo disrespectful that I don't even like to talk to him.

I've been working a lot and he's kind of gotten to do his own thing and apparently that isn't a good idea.  He spends too much time watching cartoons or playing Wii or even being online.  I have had to convince him to go outside and he doesn't stay out long, saying, "I'm cold, let's go inside and play Wii."  This coming from a nature boy is odd behavior.

So I'm taking on less work in the hopes that I can work with him on his behavior and attitude.  Day #1 was rough, he fought me on everything...simply for the sake of fighting.  I'd tell him something (or give him an order if you want to look at it that way) and he'd get in my face and stare at me with a nasty look on his face and not say a word...daring me to do something about it.  So I do do something about it (did I just say do do?) and that's either sending him to his room or spanking him.  I give the "punishment" a time limit and he's usually calmed down and forgotten about it by then.  And I take away stimulants...Wii or TV or the computer (he loves to watch Youtube videos).  These are privileges and he's come to think they are a right.  And there are time limits on entertainment.  We do a round or two of Mario Kart and then it gets shut off.  He throws a fit and gets sent to his room, etc. and he loses that privilege for the rest of the day.  I am kind of scared about having a kid who can't entertain himself.  That never used to be an issue with him.

I've instituted a 9 pm bedtime.  Not much wiggle room, 9 pm hits and it's bedtime, period.  And I'm not putting him to sleep, he can put himself to sleep.  I think that's going to be the hardest one for E, he usually lays with G in his bed until he falls asleep.  The first night G cried and whined and gave lots of attitude but the second night, he went in and crawled into bed and I gave him a kiss goodnight.  I had to go in his room once because I heard chatting.  I found him hanging from his bed, his feet like hooks into the mattress, his head under the bed making Roarbert the lion dance.  Weirdo.

Dinnertime has been another attitude riddled battle.  Last night he got to stay at the dinner table, long after we were done eating until he ate his dinner himself.  Usually E gets frustrated and he doesn't want to sit at the table forever so he feeds G.  G knows this and so he just doesn't do it himself until E gets mad and does it for him.  So he sat at the dinner table and didn't get to leave until he ate himself.  Guess what?  He eventually did it because he got tired of sitting at the table.

Duh.

Christmas should be fun in the attitude department.  Christopher the Elf went back to the North Pole to talk to Santa about G's bad attitude and now G is worried about being on The Bad List.  He's working to get himself back on The Good List.  I hate Santa but heck, if he helps out I think I'll exploit him.  If he's ungrateful for the gifts he's given I'll probably lose my cool and no one wants that to happen.  It's messy.

My father!

I turned the TV to Thomas and the new "making tracks to great destinations" episodes start out with a man talking, reading a letter he wrote to his son and he ends it with, "Your loving daddy."

G said, "Mommy, he knows my father's name.  My father's name is Daddy!  He said my father's name!"

I told G that his father's given name is actually Edward but that he probably prefers to go by Daddy.

G said, "Edward?  Like my name?  I have my father's name!"

I love watching the wheels in his head turning as he figures things out.  

Another parenting principle

Success is inspirational; disaster is educational.

I like to expose G to things that I have a good inclination will not work out well.  If I only exposed him to things I knew he'd love/like or things that we'd done before he'd never learn how to handle himself in different situations.  For instance, dining out.  He's usually kind of a turd when dining at a nice restaurant.  Most of the time he doesn't want to eat and he certainly doesn't want to sit and be quiet because, well he's a 4 year old boy.

He's into a new behavior of throwing a fit when he has to leave somewhere he doesn't want to leave.  As in throwing a big, screaming, kicking, throwing himself around fit.  Yes, he's done this before but it's a lot harder now that he's older and larger in size.  It's really embarrassing to be "that mom" dragging a screaming child out of the library.

So I have found myself avoiding places that I know he'll love because I don't want to deal with the fit that will surely come.  Places like the library.  He loves the library.  I'm good at reserving books online that I want to check out for him so that I can just run in and grab them and he doesn't have a chance to become invested in library time.  I'm not doing him any favors, keeping him from doing something he loves.  I need to give him the opportunity to learn that the world doesn't revolve around what he wants.

If we don't have time to do something he wants to do I don't explain why because that just gives him ammo in his argument on why we should do it.  But he's old enough to get an explanation I suppose.  I know I ask, "Why?" or "What?" when a demand is made of my time.  I just want an explanation so I know what's going on, I like to have all the information possible to control my environment the best...it's why I don't like being surprised.  So next time he asks "But why?" instead of glossing over an answer sure to displease him I'll just give him the answer.  Maybe if I give him more control over his his time and his environment he'll self-learn how to control himself.

damn kid

I forgot to lock the bathroom door, again.  Foolish me.  

G walks right on in and starts asking me to do something for him.  I'm sitting on the toilet with my pants at my ankles.

Calmly I say, "Son, please leave.  I'm going potty and I would prefer to be alone."

Ignore.

In a stern voice I say, "Garrett, I am sitting on the toilet, you don't need to be in here.  Leave."

He stands in the wide open doorway, rocking back and forth on his heels while whistling innocently like Dennis the Menace would do.

(btw he purses his lips and sucks the air in to make a whistling noise).

One more time, "Garrett PLEASE for the love of all things holy would you leave me the hell alone.  NOW."

He looks at me and without missing a beat continues to rock on his heels, whistle and grin.

So I grabbed a roll of toilet paper and threw it right at his head.

And I don't miss.

That's why I'm going to win Mother Of The Year again this year.

 What?  You've never spent the majority of your day with socks on your hand down the legs of the underwear you're wearing?  I love the way his brain works.

 He tells me, "I'm going to work out and get big and strong and fat like you mommy."  

 He was playing with his little learning laptop and said, "Oh no, I need to go poop."  Then he stopped on his way to the bathroom and said, "Hey I can just take my laptop with me."  I gave him a minute and then peek. Hahahaha!

He was working out to Nickelodeon Wii Fit

Winner, winner chicken dinner!

1.  I took almost the entire cabinet of CD's that I've been packing from house to house (which have all been downloaded to my computer anyway) to Hastings for their buy back program and made almost $250.  I was expecting like $50 or $60.

2.  The waiter at Buffalo Wild Wings forgot to put E's sandwich order in with the rest of the order so E got the sandwich for free...which made it so that we could afford to justify a $15 tip for a lunchtime bill totaling $23.

3.  While wandering the food section of Walmart for groceries a teeny little woman with long, white blonde hair walked up to us and hugged my husband.  Because it was his sister.  The sister with the same name as me who I have never met in the 11+ years that E and I have been together.  How random is THAT?

4.  We got two new memory foam pillows ($100 value) for free because of the boxspring debacle.

5.  G got to visit Santa and I got a cute picture and candy cane out of the deal.  Santa gave G a candy cane for him, for mommy and for daddy.  G promptly came to each of us and gave us our candy canes and insisted that I open his, which I did.  He then packed his around in his hot little boy hand.

6.  While G was emptying all the change in his pockets (we'd been collecting it) in the little red bucket of the Salvation Army bell ringer outside Walmart people kept coming up to him and giving him money to put in the bucket.  I think it was his super adorable elf like stocking cap.  He happily kept shoving money into the bucket.

7.  I sold the bed frame from my queen bed on Craigslist for $100.  Less stuff in my house that is not being used and more money in my pocket.  Sweet!

8.  I didn't hit the two deer that tried desperately to get me to hit them on the slightly nerve wracking, blizzard like conditions drive home from town.  AND G fell asleep which is going to suck come bedtime tonight but he needed a nap and it made for a quiet drive home.

9.  We came home to find...get this...well over one foot of new snow from this morning until when we got back this evening.  E and G were so excited that they can't wait until tomorrow to go sledding, they're out there sledding in the dark.

10.  Transcription work is a little bit of slim pickings this time of year (what, do criminals take a winter holiday?) but I fired up my computer and found 13 new audios assigned to me today.  So it's been nice saying hi here and all but if I'm going to get the 24 files I now have in by deadline, there will be no playtime for me.  Grateful but worried!

11.  My Christmas 2012 family ornament was in the mail and I love it.  I got Christmas cards out yesterday so I'm really ahead of the curve on that one!

12.  My son was an absolute buttface (hey, I can say it, he's mine) today and all I did was laugh about it, there was no way I was going to let him sink my ship today!  He got a smart swat on the butt at Walmart when he refused to go to the bathroom and I had to quite literally DRAAAAAAAAAAAG him all the way from the cart out in the store into the toilet stall.  And I didn't feel bad about spanking him, not one little bit.  Even the most "gentle" parent would have thought it justified, believe me.  When he was peeing he kept yelling at his own crotch.  "Pee!  Stop coming out!  Stop, I don't want to pee!  Don't do that, stop it!"  Oy.

13.  I had a good hair day, which is a miracle in and of itself.

Oh ow

We have to return one of the boxsprings from our new mattress set because it came out of the package torn in several spots.  I was holding up the top mattress and E was pulling the boxspring out.  You know those plastic edge cover things that you're supposed to take off?  Well since we knew we were going to return the boxspring for an undamaged one next time we go to town we left those on.  E wasn't watching what he was doing, G was in screwing around behind him even though he'd been told to get out of the way, and I was watching the two of them...so I didn't see how close the boxspring was to my face...until it came scraping across my facing, hooking onto my nose ring and tearing down my lip.

Um, ow.

Tears.  Real ones, not the, "I want to make you feel like a jerk," ones.  E was concerned, I told him to just go get the boxspring from G's bed (we're using it temporarily until we get the new one tomorrow).  Once he left the room to do that I let myself cry a little.  That mother trucking HURT.  One we got the temporary boxspring in I took a look at my nose but I knew it was bleeding because G felt the need to tell me he could see blood.  He was very sweet and got me a piece of toilet paper so I didn't drip blood on the new carpet.  Which is actually kid of funny because since the day the new carpet was put in G has been making comments about various members of this household getting a bloody nose and dripping on the carpet and being in big trouble with Mommy.  Stands to reason I'd be the first yes?

The hole is torn a little bit and it swelled up so fast that I didn't have time to get the nose screw out.  It is nice a clown red.

So what did I do?  I waxed my mustache.

Because when I was checking the damage to my nose I noticed that I had a 5 o'clock shadow going on on my upper lip.  Why can't people (achem, Edward) tell me when my mustache gets that bad?  How many people have seen it and walked way laughing at the fact that I have a better mustache than most 16 year old boys?

This getting older thing/hormones changing thing is for the birds.

Conversations of corn

We had corn as part of our dinner last night.  G forgot about it until he went poop this afternoon.  So we had to have the great "why corn comes out whole in your poop" discussion.  G doesn't believe the facts, he's convinced that the corn puts itself back together in your stomach even if you chew it really well.  Oy.  

p.s. does anyone else's kid sit there and pull the toilet paper off the roll and across his lap to use it as a train track that he runs his finger (you know, the train) down?  While taking a dump.  I'm tired of re-rolling up the toilet paper.