You're grounded!

Ah kids. Gotta love 'em. As many of you know, Chris and I have 4 children: a 16-year-old girl, a 13-year-old boy, a 12-year old girl and a 7-year-old boy. As much as they bring joy to our lives, they also provide plenty of headaches, frustration and general consternation. 

Here's my question. What consequences do you enforce when your children misbehave? In this case, when one of the teens misbehaves at school? And how severe should said consequences be when the act isn't even anything catastrophic or earth shattering and he's already served an in school detention for a whole 15 minutes? It's just the cliche, misbehaving when a substitute teacher happens to fill in for the day. What punishment fits this crime?

Gone are the days when we'd look at our middleschooler with the stink eye and he'd quiver in fear. Now we actually have to follow up that stink eye with action!

Here are some ideas we've come up with so far: 1. Make him run lines until he either drops in exhaustion or loses his school lunch. (This may actually be the most effective form of punishment for our son since he definitely is not a runner). 2. Let him catch my husband's pitches to him. (Again, could be pretty effective since catching is his least favorite baseball position). 3. Make him miss a friend's Royals watch party. 4. Take away his phone for several days. Hmmm, decisions, decisions.

Which would you choose?

 

Eww gross!

One of my favorite activities is cooking. I could wile away an entire day perusing my go to cooking haunts, sites and books to develop more creative menus for the hubs and kiddos.

Last week - spicy Thai noodles; pork chops simmered with spiced apples and onions served over glazed squash and potatoes. This week - shrimp with parmesan and parsley rice. And since I know all my friends and family are on the edge of their seats waiting to see what I've made, I like to take pictures of the finished masterpieces and post them on FaceBook. Here's my beef (or pork/chicken/fish) about this though.

None of the pictures I take, make the food look REMOTELY appetizing. The colors are muted and dull. Pork chops are ghostly pale, vibrant cilantro fades to a dark seaweed like appearance. Yum...not really!

With these visuals, my ability to boast about the finished products becomes obsolete. And let's face it, why else does anyone post pics of food they just created on FB unless they're bragging just a little? If they say otherwise, don't let them fool you, myself included :-)

Who gets custody?

After an over year long absence from blogging, I've decided to resume my blogging site again. Missed me haven't you? :-)

Tonight I'm feeling a little more brave about the topic (and a little courage called red wine doesn't hurt) I'm going to write about. After all, I've been threatening to write about this, but just haven't done so until now.

When I ask who gets custody, you may be thinking I'm referring to children in a divorce case. While I am referencing a divorce, the custody agreement I'm questioning doesn't pertain to the children, but to the adults themselves, as in who gets custody of the formerly married spouses? Do you keep sole custody of the husband or the wife? Is it possible to get joint custody?

Let's look at this logically for a moment. For joint custody, you'd have to have both parties agree to an equitable amount of time spent with you. Now that the friends are no longer married, your time commitment would double just to be able to spend equal amounts of time with the former spouses. If you rarely saw them when they were married, how do you propose to spend even more time with them as individuals. And what about vacations, holidays and birthdays? Do you alternate times, every other year?

Now the flip side, sole custody. Just the word "sole" signifies someone is going to be left out. And how does this scenario play out? Do you remain friends with the person you knew the longest? If you loved both the husband and the wife, do you completely sever ties with one of them? Either way, sole or joint custody, it's a no win situation when you dearly love both parties. My head (and my heart) aches just thinking about it. I think I'll just have another glass of red wine.

You're Invited

I'm just going to outright admit it. I have never enjoyed children's birthday parties. Even my own kiddos'. In fact, I enjoy theirs the least. Before you lambast me as a horrible mother, I have to state that I do enjoy seeing my children and the other little ones I know celebrate their special day.

I just loathe the behind the scenes activities that need to happen to make that special day occur. 

With the advent of Pinterest, the stakes are even higher - you can search for color palettes, cake recipes, party favor ideas, gift suggestions...the possibilities are mind boggling. Here's what Pinterest does to me. I pin the ideas and themes I think I can do or would want to do and then in reality do NONE of them. 

I have friends who pin ideas and then actually implement them. Look up Lindsay Beach on FaceBook - I love you Lindsay! I see her party favors and treats and in amazement exclaim "wow, those are spectacular! But I just don't want to do that!" Then I think, what kind of mom does this make me, that I can't muster up the same desire? And then after this half second of self deprecation, I get over it. I simply realize that party planning isn't my forte. Doesn't mean I won't be on Pinterest tomorrow as I begin planning my soon to be 6 year old's party. Maybe this time, I'll actually follow through on a pin or two. Or maybe I'll just call Chuck E Cheese :-)

Eyes Wide Open

Go figure. I can't sleep on the eve before All Hallows Eve. Maybe it's the two dozen mini cheesecakes waiting for their homemade whipped cream hats, or the 50 hot dogs waiting to be mummified, or the pizza dough spider waiting to be constructed. Whatever it is, I'm waiting for the almighty sleep fairy to hit me over the head and knock me out and send my head spinning with miniature birds and stars rotating around me. Alas, no such luck.

I'm not sure I can remember the last great night of sleep I had. Friday night, Robert woke me up twice to tell me HE couldn't sleep. That whole encouraging your kids to share thing is overrated. Saturday night, Haille came home early from a sleepover, AT 2 AM. She knows the garage door code and let herself in after walking home by herself from across the street. Again, why are we teaching her self suffiency if it's going to impact my slumber. And tonight, who has joined me on my eyes wide open journey, Philip the 3 year old, patiently waiting for me to complete this blog so he can play on the iPad. The only kid I can count on to not wake me up is the almost teen, Emma. That's just because she never leaves her bedroom anyway.

So what's my point you ask? I'm sure you're waiting with bated breath for it. Well here it is....I've got nothing. What else do you expect at 3:30 am? :)

No Cutting!

I found myself in an heated exchange today - with a stranger at a McDonald's drive thru. An afternoon snack run turned into my losing my temper and f-bombs apparently flying out of my mouth. As I've said many times in other situations, it wasn't one of my finer moments.

Here's the scenario. I needed sugar. In a bad way. Therefore a vanilla cone, regular coke AND chocolate chip cookies were ordered. Unless you've been holed up in a cave for the past decade, you know most McDonald's drive thru's have two lanes, I'm assuming to better manage traffic flow. I blissfully ordered my diabetic coma in waiting and patiently waited for my turn to curve around the bend to pull up to the pay window. I carefully nudged my SUV around the corner in front of the other car in the other lane. However, every time I moved forward, the other car tried moving in front of me. Now, drive-thru etiquette with two lanes requires that every other vehicle takes turns. I just assumed this was universally understood. The other driver apparently wasn't aware of this unspoken rule and decided to call me a f*cking bitch.

I have to give this girl credit. She was quite the multi-tasker. She was able to curse at me, cut in front of my car AND twirl her hair, all without ever putting her cell phone down and ending her conversation on it. That's talent!

However, being the mature, level headed individual I am, I couldn't let this atrocity occur without speaking out against the injustice of her cutting in front me. Oh no not me. Naturally I yelled (and my husband swears I said this) "why don't you put your f*cking phone down and pay attention" I tried spewing out a few more choice words but I simply ran out of space to move my car. It was my turn to pay. Thank goodness for that, because all 4 feet, 11-3/4 inches of me was apparently itching for a fight :-) Not really. I simply realized fighting about whose turn it is at McDonald's was just a little bit lame. Again, not one of my finer moments. But dang it if my vanilla cone, Coke and cookies didn't taste all the more sweeter.

It Does Take A Village

One of the few times you'll hear me agree with Hillary Clinton is that I do believe it does take a village to raise children today.

In our tribe, there are 4 kids, yes I know, Chris and I aren't very bright :-). They are busy and involved in many activities - soccer, karate, basketball, baseball, softball - you name it, they have or are doing it now. Sometimes we have to rely on others to help get them to their various events.

This made me think of the other "villagers" we rely on to help shape and form our children. This includes, but is not limited to: teachers who spend 5 days a week, 8 hours a day with them, coaches who encourage them to play and work hard, and friends/neighbors who help shuttle and babysit at the drop of a hat.

Every time our kiddos come home from school and run out to play with the neighbor rugrats, I am grateful for our little village here on Legler Road. Philip is usually with Macy and Julia at the Loes' house. Robert is outside with Connor and Mitchell. Haille is zooming around on her bike with Riley and Chloe. And then Kenzie and Emma are holed up in Emma's room watching tv or listening to music. Didn't I just list more than 4 kids? Can you guess which are mine? That's the point, you can't. Children run back and forth everywhere, getting popsicles here, having juice boxes somewhere else. And I actually love it.

Does our village get overrun by the little natives at times? Absolutely. But that's when we tribal leaders (parents)take council at the Hargrove hut for a cocktail or two. Or better yet, we retreat to sacred sites like Hereford House for a peaceful dinner sans kids and yes, more cocktails. :-)