It's just a doll... breathe in, breathe out....it's just a doll

There is such a difficult line to navigate in parenting between gaining your child's trust so that they will share things with you and being their disciplinarian, possibly having to punish for the things. It's especially difficult as a single parent without the good cop/bad cop option.

So today I made major headway when Betsy showed me the very secret thing she wrote in her diary: "Nat, I love you." carefully spelled out in her Hello Kitty notebook. So now I've posted it on a public blog and I'm a very bad mommy whom she should never trust. She doesn't read that well yet. This is Nat. I have very mixed emotions about my 6 year old having crushes on teenage boys. On the one hand alarm bells are going off screaming caution. On the other hand, it's cute, it's normal and I'm so happy that she shared it with me. She was embarrassed and so I told her about my crush on Shawn Cassidy and Ponch from CHiPs at roughly the same age. She laughed, "you mean in the 50s?" I told her that she can have crushes but she can't go out with real boys yet. She said, "I know, but maybe when I'm like 17?" Ummm.... yeah. Maybe. With this one I'll be lucky if we make it to 12. I'm trying my darndest to steer her towards nerdy pursuits and I'm pretty sure she's going to need glasses soon so hopefully that gives us a little cushion. Sigh.

On a slightly related vein, this afternoon she was playing with her barbies. First she filled a plastic tub with water and it was going to be a lake for Barbie to take her kayak. Then I went outside and it was a bathtub. All the Barbies were completely nude laid out on a towel either having just bathed or getting ready to bathe. I kind of freaked when I saw that Ken was naked too. Since I remember the naughty things my Ken and Barbie did (and I know what a naughty adult I've been!) I was kind of concerned.
"Betsy, shouldn't they be wearing bathing suits?"
"They're wet mom and there's not enough"
"But won't they be embarrassed for Ken to see them naked like that"
"He's just a DOLL mom!"
Oh yeah. So true. I don't know how I'm going to get through these next 12 years. Too much to worry about!

Back-up Plan

So the kids and I decided today that if we ever find ourselves homeless, we are going to live under this tree in overlook park.





Betsy has already planned out where all the furniture will go. It will be kind of like how this family lived in forest park. Truly though, I think that when park rangers and the public see how cute the kids are, we shouldn't run into any problems. In fact, why are we even paying rent now? If you are trying to get a hold of us and we are unavailable, well, now you know.

This pretty well sums up my dating life...

She has red "hair" and her name starts with an e - coincidence?

We've entered a new Era folks!!!!

Guess who got to sleep in this morning???? ME, that's who!!!! Yes, it's true, I slept in until 11:00 AM with both children here. This is the most unbelievably fantastic thing that has happened to me in YEARS!

My mom gave me the advice years ago to put the cereal on a shelf where kids could reach it so that kids could get up by themselves and watch cartoons. That is one of the secrets to happy mommies. And happy mommies are better mommies. This is one of the better pieces of advice I have to say. The set up has been in place. The cereal is stored on a low shelf. I also recently started buying milk in half gallons because the gallons are too heavy for kids to pour. They know how to turn the tv on. They are old enough that they have a little bit of common sense and aren't going to be sticking forks into wall sockets and trust me, I would hear and come down if there were any loud noises. I have a very finely tuned mommy ear.

Skill - wise, we've been ready. The hold up has been my scaredy-cat children. At least, that's what they tell me. These little manipulators play the "I'm scared" card to keep me at their beck and call. They claim that if I am upstairs and they are downstairs, monsters could get them and vice versa. I haven't told them that if there REALLY were monsters, I wouldn't be able to do a damned thing to protect them and we'd all be dead, probably torn apart limb by limb. I'm not sure they're ready for that line of logic for why they shouldn't be afraid. What this means is that every morning when they wake up, they immediately come into my bed, climb on me, climb on each other and basically act as annoying as possible until I have to put one or the other in time out and am forced to get up and deal with the situation.

But this morning, I felt like crap! I've been sick the past two days and never had the chance to just sleep it off (like my bachelor friend who passed this disease to me), but for some reason I stayed up late last night. Oh, I know why. It was all the coffee I drank just to be barely functional yesterday. This morning, the idea of getting out of bed when the kids came in to start their usual routine of jumping on my bed with me in it seemed like the worst imaginable disomfort. I BEGGED them to go downstairs and let me sleep in, but no, they were too scared, they were hungry, blah, blah, blah. I was NOT getting out of bed, but they were equally determined to not leave me alone. Finally, I resorted to the time-honored parenting tradition of bribery. Betsy now understands money. "Betsy, if you will go downstairs and make yourself some cereal and watch cartoons so I can sleep, I will pay you $5". She was off the bed and down the stairs before I could finish my sentence. As soon as she was downstairs, Ian was quick behind. Aaaahhh!

I feel like that was some sucky parenting to bribe my kid to do something for totally selfish reasons. BUT, what she doesn't realize is that she now proved to me that her not doing it before has NOTHING to do with fear. If she was truly afraid, the money wouldn't have changed that. So in a way, I tricked her and next time I can ask her to do it and if she says she's afraid, I will be able to remind her that she's actually not. Future prices are always negotiable. Future prices could be along the lines of, being allowed to continue eating in this house. ha ha ha!

Come join my pity party!

It seems everyone I've talked to over the past week has had as much or more to gripe about as me. I would say this week has shaped up to be an all time low for the year.

Monday: Got dumped via email by nice but apparently clueless guy I'd been intensely dating for all of 3 weeks. I'm tempted to tell his mommy on him since she seemed to have failed at instructing him in basic ettiquette.


Tuesday: While still in a daze from my heartache, I tried to distract myself by taking the kids to the swimming pool. I let my worry guard down! What was I thinking??? I remember walking in and thinking "Creston Park feels like such a friendly, safe place, I'm so glad we live in this neighborhood." So, I had my purse and the bag with all of our pool stuff. I didn't have a lock and with my feelings of security for some reason made the very dumb choice that it seemed safer to leave my purse in the locker where it wouldn't be visible than out on the lawn. We piled all of our clothes and extra towels on top of it, shut the door and went swimming. Well, I'm sure you can all see where this is going. We came back to the locker ready to shower and get ready for an evening of fun at an outdoor concert, but something wasn't right. The locker wasn't as full as it had been. OH NO!!! My purse was gone. I immediately rushed out to the front desk to report it and had all the lifeguards looking around although I'm sure the thief was long gone. I called the police who considered it a non-emergency and then had to comfort my two scared and dripping wet children to get ourselves home. yes, this is when I realize all the things that were gone. Besides the contents of my purse which included my cell phone, wallet, ID, debit card, car keys and camera, they took: 1)Our shampoo! Well, we weren't goign to take the time to wash our hair at that point. Never mind that I had colored my hair not 3 days before and I was likely to completely fry it by leaving the chlorine in. 2) Our towels! Fortunately with all the running around to call the police, we had sort of drip dried. 3) Ian's shirt! He had to just go shirtless. 4)ONE of my shoes!!!! This was teh worst of all. So, without my car keys, we couldn't drive home. Without my cell phone, I couldn't call anybody. And even though the pool staff let me use their phone, who could I call? I don't have anyone's phone numbers memorized. Okay, I had 2 - I knew both my sister's numbers and neither answered. Without my wallet, I couldnt' pay a cab. Without my shoes, we were looking at a long walk. Big bummer! Fortunately the pool staff lent me a pair of flip-flops. Big kudos to the Creston Pool staff!!!! Thanks for all their help.

The past day and a half has been spent trying to replace all the things I lost. It got very expensive - I've spent around $600 now and I won't be able to replace my camera for a while. I won't ever recover the pictures on my phone and camera, or the sound of Ian's voice saying "telephone mommy" that I recorded, the "LOVE" that Betsy spelled with toys on the floor that had been my phone's screensaver. I'm sad for that.

The upside is that my sister Joanne was my savior! She was there in my time of need to watch my kids while I did stuff and then to drive me around to run errands. We actually had a fun day hanging out yesterday. And nothing bad happened really. We are all safe, it's only money.

Wednesday: After a long day of running around town, I started to feel a scratchy throat. Then I started to feel feverish. By morning, my throat hurt so bad I couldn't sleep and I am exhausted from all the stress of this week. So the kids are at the sitter and I am just trying to get better. Imagine the sound of the air coming out of a balloon and that's how I feel.