How quickly I fall

Quick recap of Sunday night. Noah puked EVERYWHERE in his room. I have never cleaned up so much puke in my life. I spent a good 3 hours cleaning him and his room. This all after a day of listening to him tell me how mean I am. Apparently when he does something bad and gets in trouble it's MY fault when he gets grounded. Why wouldn't it be? His biggest problem is simply not listening. I tell him to do something and he doesn't do it or half does it. I tell him he has 10 minutes before he needs to brush his teeth for bed and 20 minutes later he's trying to negotiate staying up longer. I MAKE THE RULES! YOU FOLLOW THEM! It really isn't that hard.

After restoring his room to it's previous non smelly state and telling him goodnight again he tells me how much he loves me. He tells me thank you for taking care of him. I let him stay home from school just to be sure he was over his yuckiness. All day he was very kind and helpful...until.  UNTIL I told him he had played the computer enough for the day. You would have thought I'd told him to remove all of his fingernails. Immediately I went from loved and cherished mommy to evil mean lady. How quickly I fell from that pedestal. Now I'm under it. I'm being squashed by it again.  Seriously?!? After all the crap I do!


It really wears on me. I'm so tired of him acting like this. He has rules. He knows the consequences if he doesn't follow them. I feel like I've written this same thing over and over again. I try talking calmly about his behavior. I yell, which I know is bad. I try everything I can think of and still I come out the bad guy. If he behaved he wouldn't be in trouble. Our rules aren't even that strict. I talk to my sister a lot about this. My nephew is the same age and we both have problems with the boys. I really hope this is just some defiant phase. When he's mad he says he'd like to go live somewhere else. Sometimes I'd like that too. Sometimes it's just too much. I'd never actually make him go anywhere. I love him too much. I just need him to stop. I need him to listen. I'm not asking to be up on the pedestal. I just don't want to be underneath it. I'd be happy to hang from the edge. Happy to just not have him tell me how awful I am.

A Photo an Hour

I love this link up idea. You choose a day and take one photo each hour that day. It gives you a little peek into other bloggers daily lives. So here is how my day went....

7:30 am - Wake up to the cute little face! I'm really surprised she slept this late. She's had a nasty habit lately of waking up at 6 or 6:30. I'm not a fan of waking up before 7.

8:30 am - Noah says goodbye to Emily and leaves for school. I used to drive him but now it's just easier if he rides the bus. He really likes riding the bus now anyway.

9:30 am - Heating my coffee up...again. At what point do you give up on drinking the coffee and just pour it out?

10:30 am - Leaving for the car dealership. They called and offered us a free oil change! Yes please.

11:30 am - Waiting for the oil change to be finished. Emily is always great to take places as long as she's not sleepy. She gets really grouchy when she's tired. She is afraid of new people if they come to close but she will gladly smile and "talk" to them if they keep their distance. She was the star of the waiting room. She fake coughed a lot, everyone would laugh, and she'd do it again.

12:30 pm - All that waiting made me hungry! I had to grab Burger King on the way home.

1:30 pm - Working on my book list for the Summer 2014 Book Challenge.

2:30 pm - Dishes. Because some has to do it.

3:30 pm - Noah gets home from school. He did NOT want me to take his picture... so now I have a nice closed eyes photo.

4:30 pm - Library! Time to stock up on books for the challenge!

5:30 pm - Dinner time. A quick easy skillet meal.

6:30 pm - A little playtime before bed. Emily is usually in bed by 7.

7:30 pm - Shaun T time. I've been doing T25 lately. I love it and hate it. I'm having to modify a lot though because my knees are awful. I swear I have the knees of an 80 year old! - This is to make up for the Burger King.... =)

8:30 pm - Bella is afraid. Anytime it is really windy or thundering she has to be smushed up against someone.

9:30 pm - Relax and read. I love this book. I've read it a bunch of times and it still makes me laugh. It's called Bright Lights. Big Ass. by Jen Lancaster. She is hilarious.

10:30 pm - Getting Emily's bottle ready for when she wakes up in the middle of the night. Off to bed! It's sad but 10:30 really is a late bedtime for me now.

These two!!!

I think my biggest concern when I was pregnant was for Noah. Would he like Emily? Would he be jealous? I have been so lucky that he hasn't had a problem with her. At first he was getting into a little more trouble at school and at home. I think that was due to all of the changes that were happening. However, from day one he has been in love with Emily just as much as I am.

He loves playing with her. He always wants to hold her. If he can't he gets upset. He often asks if he can go wake her up from her nap to play...no. =)

She loves him just as much. She laughs at him more than at me or my husband. Noah is so sweet with her. I love watching him entertain her.

Noah has grown up so much. I can't believe he is 8! He is an amazing big brother.

Forgotten

I realized something while I rocked Emily at 3am. I have forgotten. As many times as I watch her sleep soundly in my arms while she takes tiny breaths I will forget. I look and her and think I will hold this memory forever. The devastating truth is I won't. I know I held Noah thousands of times late at night. I snuggled him close and thought that very same thing. Yet now he is 8. I struggle to remember holding him. I know I did. I just have no vivid memory of it. I remember being tired. I remember being a little overwhelmed. I want to remember things like: What did he smell like? What did his weight feel like in my arms? What did his little baby breaths sound like? It's gone. As this realization occurred I began to cry as quietly as possible so I would not wake my adorable sleeping baby.

I look through Noah's baby photos and honestly a lot of that baby time is one huge blur in my mind. How could I forget something so special. Why did my brain choose to remember say...the time he spit up on Joey's red hockey shirt but not hold onto the times I spent alone with him in the quiet of the night. We have so many videos of him as a baby. When we watch them I really get a grasp on just how much has leaked from my brain. I found myself thinking, "Oh ya! He had the cutest laugh!" "I forgot the time he did that."

I'm already forgetting sweet Emily things. I couldn't remember exactly how her newborn baby cry sounded until I watched a video of her. Was she really that tiny? Her body was always curled up into a little ball. She made cute little O shapes with her mouth.

I don't want to forget. I want to hold onto ever single piece of Emily that I can. Someday she will be 8. Someday I will watch a video and it will jog my memory and at the same time it will break my heart because I have forgotten.

My sweet baby Noah:

Little Emily:

Another Year

Noah is now officially a second grader. He woke up early this morning. An hour early. I was happily sleeping when he woke me up and asked, "When are you going to get up?" He stood dressed and ready for school. He was obviously very excited about his first day. All morning he kept asking me how much longer before we had to leave.

I was, as usual, a little sad. He just keeps growing up and I can't stop it. I wish I could freeze time for just a little bit. I was so ready for him to go back to school. He was getting bored during the day and that ended in him getting in more trouble than usual. The last few weeks have been tough. Now the house is quiet. It's just me and the dog. She sleeps most of the day so she isn't much company. It's too quiet! This will be a nice break though because in about five weeks Emily will be here and I know it won't be so quiet anymore.

I hope Noah has a great first day!

Where do babies come from?

I'm actually surprised it's taken this long for Noah to question how a baby managed to get inside me. He hasn't asked any questions other than, "So does the baby eat the food that falls into your stomach with it?" I told him then that she isn't in my stomach but in my uterus. After that he had no further questions.

Until last night.

I was tucking him in and he said, "So how did Emily get in there?"

Cue the crickets chirping.....

I just told him it was bedtime and we would talk about it in the morning. Although I thought I was prepared to answer this question when the moment actually arrived I had nothing to say. He's seven so he doesn't need all the specific details. I decided I would give him a tiny bit of information and if he asked for more then I would tell him more....

So this morning I first asked him how he thought she got in there. His answer: A doctor cut me open and put a teeny tiny baby in there. Then the doctor stapled me up.

That's a little scary lol....

 I told him that God takes a little part from the mommy and a little part from the daddy and when they're together in the mommy's uterus they make a baby. The baby grows and grows in there until it is big enough to be born.

I was waiting for him to ask, "What parts?" but he never did. He just started talking about how babies have wobbly necks. He also mentioned that since I'll be busy watching Emily he can probably do whatever he wants since I won't be able to ground him.... I don't think so.

I know there will be more questions to come. Hopefully I won't have a panic moment like I did this time!

..end of my rope.

I want someone to tell me how to get a child to listen. So far I'm not having much luck. Lately it seems everything is a battle and I'm losing. I think we are going on a record number of days that Noah has been grounded. It's really ridiculous. This is summer. He should be outside playing but instead he chooses to misbehave and gets grounded.

It always starts with something small. I've asked him to clean up or to stop doing something. Somehow it snowballs into an argument over why he doesn't want to do it and why I say he has to do it. I'M the GROWNUP! When did I lose control? When did he stop just doing what I tell him to do because he's the kid and I'm the mom? By the end of the night I've run out of things to take away from him.

I need more tools. I need Supernanny. I need someone to say do this (and have it work). I don't like going to bed frustrated and angry that I can't figure it out. I just want him to listen to me. This has to stop. I spend the most time with Noah because I'm home all of the time. Once Emily is here I simply will not be able to constantly argue with him while trying to take care of her when it's just the three of us. It just won't work.

Today we are making a list of his rules to hang up. Maybe if he can SEE them he'll be more likely to follow them. Today we are making a list of his consequences for NOT listening...NEW consequences because obviously just losing things he likes isn't working.

Wish me luck....

Want! Want! Want!

I HATE...absolutely hate bringing Noah to the store with me. Noah has developed a bad case of the gimmes. For some reason he thinks that he should get something from every store we go to.
Walmart
Target
Walgreens
THE GAS STATION!

I can't take it. As soon as we get there he asks, "Can I get a toy?"
The answer is almost always, "No, you have a ton of toys at home. You don't really need more right now."
This inevitably leads to whining and him following me around the store repeating favorite phrases like:

This one is five dollars. That's cheap!
Why are you getting stuff but I'm not? (Because I'm buying groceries and we have to eat?!?)
This says buy one get one half off!
You never let me have anything!
This isn't fair!
Please! Please! Please!!!!

Noah knows he can save his money up and buy what he wants. He does it all the time. He really does have way too many toys and I refuse to buy more. I'm tired of whisper yelling at him to stop asking up and down every aisle of the store. I've tried grounding him from things when he doesn't stop asking. He hates not being able to go play with his friends so that is usually the first thing to go. Even that doesn't stop him from begging the next time we have to go somewhere.

I really have no idea how to get him to stop. I avoid taking him with me as much as possible....

Do your kids want want want? How do you make it stop stop stop?!?

A quick Q&A with Noah

1. What is something Mommy always says to you?
I love you and clean up your room

2. What makes Mommy happy?
hugs

3. What makes Mommy sad?
When I am naughty

4. How does Mommy make you laugh?
Tickle me

5. What was Mommy like as a child?
Probably bad... maybe good a little

6. How old is Mommy?
28 (He's right!)

7. How tall is Mommy?
58 inches...He's very close =) I'm 62 inches

8. What is Mommy's favorite thing to do?
Read a book!

9. What does Mommy do when you're not around?
Nap.
I do nap... =)

10. If Mommy becomes famous, what will it be for?
Singing
I highly doubt I will EVER be a famous singer lol

11. What is Mommy really good at?
Reading

12. What is Mommy not very good at?
Playing video games.
I'm awful at video games. Noah won't even let me play with him.

13. What does Mommy do for her job?
Nothing
Thanks Noah...

14. What is Mommy's favorite food?
Crab legs

15. What makes you proud of Mommy?
When you don't ground me from things.

16. If Mommy were a cartoon character, who would she be?
Sandy from spongebob.
What? A squirrel?

17. What do you and Mommy do together?
Play outside and go to the library

18. How are you and Mommy the same?
We have the same last name. Our eyes are the same color. Our skin matches.

19. How are you and Mommy different?
You are taller. You have baby in your tummy and I don't.

20. How do you know Mommy loves you?
You cuddle me a lot.

21. Where is Mommy's favorite place to go?
Library! or Walmart.
It's definitely not Walmart lol.

Strangers!

A while ago I was at Burger King. This woman came up to me and said, "can you keep an eye on my daughter while I take my son to the bathroom?"
Before I could answer she quickly walked away.
My heart started racing "Is she crazy? What if I was nuts and wanted to steal her baby?"
She was gone maybe 6 minutes. Obviously I was not nuts and did not steal her baby. I can see if Noah had been with me she might have thought, "Oh this nice mom will understand my situation and help me out" but it was just me in the back of the restaurant NEAR the door. I would never leave Noah alone with a stranger for even a moment. Even now that he's seven I still tell him all the time at the store, "You have to stay by me. You can't just run off and go look at something."

You just never know what crazies might be out there.

I don't want him to be terrified about something bad happening but I want him to know that there are people out there that you can't trust.  I used to just teach him about not talking to strangers and never go anywhere with a stranger. Then I read this article.  Now I teach him what kind of strangers are "tricky".

Independent

I've become very accustomed to how independent Noah is. If I want to sleep in and Joey is at work. No problem. Noah wakes up. He comes to tell me he's awake and heads downstairs to watch tv or play until I get up. If he gets hungry he knows where the breakfast food is. He can pick his clothes out and get dressed by himself. I don't have to entertain him 24/7. I don't have to watch his every move every second of the day.

This all goes away soon. I'll definitely miss it. I'll LOVE having Emily here but I'll miss my days of sleeping in or taking a shower whenever I want. I think back to when Noah was a baby. My day revolved around him. That's okay. That's how it should be. That's what being a mom is. I also need to keep reminding myself that this time Joey will be here to help me. Last time he was deployed the entire first year so I was pretty much on my own. This time I'll have help.

Sometimes I wish that Noah and Emily would be closer in age. Then I really think about it and and I kind of like that he is a little older. While I'm taking care of her I don't have to worry about also watching him every second. He's already telling me that he will be my helper. I can't wait to see them together!