Cutting Myself Some Slack

I try not to judge other parents too harshly (like I did before I had kids, lol) but sometimes you see something that makes you feel a bit better about your own parenting.

I'm certainly flawed myself. I don't think I spend enough time playing with my kids, and I go through phases where I kind of give up fighting to get veggies in them (although the "give up" phases usually don't last too long, thank goodness). I raise my voice too often, and I don't listen enough. (This could be a post about parenting New Year's resolutions, ha ha.)

I was at a house party recently with a lot of kids. The average age I'd say was 7 or 8, but they ranged anywhere from 10 right down to little Angie (fake name, btw, to protect privacy), who was a year and a half. Her mom is a sweet lady - easy to talk to and lots of fun. She loves both her kids dearly (she has an older daughter as well who is 6). This goes without saying of course but I had to throw that in there in her defense.

At the party she wasn't watching Angie all that closely, and Angie was by far the youngest and smallest kid there. I have been called over protective many times (I'm a helicopter mom - I can admit it ;) but I think many moms would agree that letting an 18 month old crawl around underfoot with a bunch of rambunctious, running, falling and dog-piling big kids is a potentially risky situation.

Nothing happened of course, and Angie left safely in her mom's arms. Still, it made me realize that none of us are perfect parents, and close supervision in a busy social situation isn't something Angie's mom is good at, just like sitting on the floor doing a puzzle for the tenth time isn't something I'm good at.

So there! I hereby, if only for today, officially cut myself some slack :)
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Maybe They Can Learn From Each Other

The occasion: a friend's birthday party. The competition: musical chairs. Let the child personality analysis begin!

Lil' J got knocked out about half way through, and obediently sat out for the rest of the game, along with the other early departees. His mellow response in the face of rejection was in keeping with his "whatever, it's just a game" temperament. Live and let live. Peace, man. Have a great day. Z z z z z.

Alyssa, on the other hand, was NOT happy with coming in second. Second!! HMMPH!! "I HATE that game! I'm GLAD it's over!" Seething words, that luckily were spoken under her breath and only loud enough for me to hear, or she would have been sent away for the longest time-out in the history of all things child related.

There's an upside to the Diva dramatics - she's very achievement oriented, and barely bats an eyelash at working her butt off to attain mastery or success at something. The downside is that she's, uh, a little tightly wound.

Lil' Bro, on the other hand, will try something for awhile, and if it's too hard will make peace with the idea of NOT doing it, and move on to something else. "Mama, I'm all done wid dat." Z z z z z. He's super fun at parties though, and will never embarrass his mother. TERrific.

I've tried helping them both with varying degrees of no success. I'm not going to say I've thrown in the towel completely, but let's just say I have embraced a new strategy: hoping they can learn from each other!
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Goodie Bag Success!

I found what I was looking for at another dollar store: I was able to get enough pencil cases for the boys and the girls. I've stuffed them with candy and trinkets (pencils, erasers, stickers, etc.).

I like the contents to be useful, and as a parent any time I can promote writing or drawing I try my best. With that in mind, I don't think I've ever done a goodie bag that didn't include a pencil/pen/crayon of some kind.

One year for goodie bags I gave each child a pad of construction paper and a small box of crayons. An added bonus to this approach is that if you have leftovers (I usually make a few extra bags), then you have usable craft supplies for your own kids.

With Glowing Hearts

Yes that title was a shameless attempt to get Google traffic to my AdSense blogs... lol...

But I tell ya, my heart was sure glowing at a friend's daughter's 4th birthday today - I was so proud of my two!! They were the best behaved kids.

At the food table, mine were the only two that sat nicely waiting for pizza while the other kids roamed around. Either I nag my kids more or I don't feed them enough.

In the play area, they were nice children (I'm still trying to figure out where Alyssa and Joseph really went and who the impostors were). They had a blast but did not misbehave.

There was a ball pit, and Alyssa watched carefully to make sure she didn't jump on anyone whenever she jumped in. Joseph hugged a younger child on the trampoline, and was good about taking turns on the slide. He even used their bathroom to, uh, do number 2, which is a stretch for him.

"Mommy are you so proud of me?"

You bet :-)

3 Parties In 2 Days

Phew! Glad that's over. Don't get me wrong, we had loads of fun, but now I get to have a "down day" on Monday.

I told Alyssa we had NO plans for today. (It was yesterday when I told her that... as I write this, it's about 1:30 am on Monday.) She said "Really? Can't we make some plans?"

Uh, nope.

No park trips, play dates, parties, swimming lessons... nothing. Yippee!!! Now I have about 300 photos to edit and a few discs to burn (I love all things photography related, though, so that's a happy chore for me).

I don't know where the summer has gone!! I know we're only half way through, but I had this vision of summer being this vast expanse of free time. What was I thinking.

Off I go to get some sleep...