Parenting

I apparently suck at it.

I just don't do it right. My kids argue, they refuse to cooperate, they openly defy me, they fight with each other and me in public, and I cannot reason with them at all. I admit I have a volitale personality and I tend to go from 0 to screaming in about 1 second flat but I swear they not only know the correct button to PUSH, they are sitting on it. I have 3 kids. I want them to be productive, helpful, happy, content, accomplished kids now and responsible, productive, happy adults. At this rate one of us is not even to going to live to see that adulthood. I feel awful when I blow up at them. I find it very difficult to reason with them when all they do is tune me out and ignore EVERY blasted thing I say.

I am constantly comparing myself to other parents I know. Their children are always polite. Their children help each other and do not fight with each other in public. How do other parents do THAT.

I am thinking my attitude is not helped by the fact that I have been burning both ends towards the middle with running said kids hither and yon, no one is getting to bed at a reasonable time, we are all tired and I am sick. Hopefully tomorrow will bring some miracle suprise like completely compliant and helpful children, a clear calendar, an unstuffy nose, no cough and the strawberry jam already made and in the freezer. Yeah, I don't think it will happen either.

Blog Challenge

Stacy's challenge this week is:

Just write. Stream of conciousness. Doesn't matter if it even makes sense. Who
cares if it flows. Just start. Just type whatever pops into your brain. Go.

She says the reason for this challenge is that she is in a blog funk. Well, I am sure that, given the fact that my last entry was June 6, it is obvious that I am in a funk too. My main problem is that I never know what to blog. Is it interesting to anyone but me? Probably not. Is it worth documenting? Again, probably not. Should I do it anyway so that I get more comfortable getting my thoughts out of my head? Yep absolutely. So she says to follow the stream of conciousness so here it goes.

Silence and solitude, even at 10 o'clock at night I can not find it. DS(3) will.not.go.to.bed. Took a long nap today so guess what? Yep not tired. Drivin' me crazy. Crazy I tell you. Just once I would love to come out here, sit down with my laptop and enjoy......silence. Of course I would have to turn off the TV to get actual silence. I don't think I can do that. Ace of cakes is on. That is a cool show. I wish I could bake and decorate half as good as Duff and his team do. Those cakes are amazing. Speaking of cake, tomorrow is DH's birthday. I am a terrible planner. Or really the issue is that I am a terrific procrastinator! Yep, you guessed it, no cake. What is a girl to do when the DH is getting a year older, we are going to dinner with the parent sets and there is NO CAKE? Uhhhhhh, first panic. Then realize that tomorrow one can call the restaurant and see if they can create a special, last minute, dessert for me. Hmmm, yep I will try that. If that does not work? Off to the store I go to pick up a cake mix. After all there is nothing that is more important about a birthday when you are already in your 30's.... dare I say mid-30's than cake. After all as the 4 yo on TV just informed us, "sugar keeps you awake!" LOL. So how do I swerve this over to another topic? Just go I guess. I love college sports. My sport of choice at this very moment is college baseball. Particularly "my" school's college baseball team which is one win away from the championship series in the College World Series. The only thing standing in our way? An annoyingly persistent UC Irvine team that will.not.go.away. They came back on Arizona State tonight in the bottom of the 8th inning with 4 runs to tie the game and force extra innings. They finally won, downing, arguably, the best team in the tournament 8-7. It took 13 innings to win last night. They are persistent. They are like Oregon State, "my" team, was last year when they won 7(!!) elimination games to take home the national championship. Frankly our fans don't know quite what to do with ourselves since our backs are not currently against the wall with a win or go home philosophy. All of that could come to an end tomorrow night. UC Irvine is going to be one tough opponent. But their pitchers are tired, they have played two long games back to back and we had a day of rest. Can we do it? Tune in to ESPN2 tomorrow at 4 CDT to find out.

Interesting? It was to me. Maybe blogging is not my "thing". Should I quit? Maybe. But I am not ready to throw in the towel yet. Until the next time......

Will it never be over???

I am so darn sick of school mornings. Now granted I have it about as good as any mother could because DH does mornings in our house and I get to sleep. However, there are still incidents that cause mornings to be a stressful event nearly every day. Today it was stalling and procrastinating resulting in a missed bus. Now normally DH can take the offending child on to her school because it is located in the general direction of his job. BUT this is Wednesday. Wednesdays are the day that DH has to be at court to sit on the Grand Jury. This has been going on for all of May and will be going on for the rest of June. Two months of every Wednesday. I just knew, when I heard breakfast being made only 5 minutes before the bus was due that I might as well get up and start getting dressed because there was no way everyone was making it to the bus on time. Now, as stated, I am aware of how lucky I am not to have to do this chore daily, this is the second time in as many weeks that I have had to get myself and the 3yo up and out to take this child to school. Grrr. You would think that we could get through one week without this problem. School is not out for another 6 days and since these last weeks are such an utter waste of time, it makes this issue doubly annoying.

Only 6 more days, only 6 more days, only 6 more days.

They did it, They did it!!

I am a huge college sports fan. My team of choice is the Oregon State University Beavers. Our baseball team is the defending national champion team after an unlikely and hard fought series of wins in Omaha last year. This year started out so well with a 20 and 3 record going into the Pac-10 conference but the team struggled down the stretch and finished the regular season under 500 in league. We got an at-large bid to the Charlotteville, Virginia regional and in true fight back fashion just won their 3rd game in two days to win the regional and earn our way into the super regional after losing a heartbreaker game in 13 innings on Saturday. Now, due to a twist of fate that surprised us all, Michigan did not apply to host so we get to host the super regional here in Corvallis.

GO BEAVS!!!!! We need 2 wins to get back to Omaha. What a great weekend of baseball.

He is 3!

My DS turned 3 today. Even though he is a very smart boy and we have talked over the last few days about him turning 3, it was not particularly outstanding as days go. Actually my older DD and I were gone most of the day to a rabbit show for her. When I got home DS was down for his nap so I still did not get to wish him Happy Birthday for a couple more hours. By the time he got up, it was literally just minutes from his actual birth time, 5:35 p.m. PDT. It is sad that this was not more special for him. But he will get a special day on Monday when we celebrate with my brother, aunt and uncle, parents and DH's parents. We are planning a picnic in a park near the In-Laws' house and it should be fun.

He is my baby and I am sad that he may be my last. I have always planned to have 4 kids and he is only #3 but I feel so overextended right now with the family I have. Due to health issues I had with DS's pregnancy I MUST lose some weight before we even consider another pregnancy. That combined with some plans in the works for a major vacation trip in 2008 means I will be nearing 35 before I even consider getting pregnant. I am not sure it is going happen. I wish we had made more of a big deal for DS this year. I want to celebrate every milestone as if it might be the last one I celebrate with one of my kids. Turning 3 is a big deal and it should be celebrated. He does not care cause he does not know any different, a birthday, for now, is just like any other day but I know the difference and I shortchanged my baby.

Somehow a post that started out being about my boy has turned into a whine session about me. He is my boy and it is his day. HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR SON.

Blog Challenge

This week's blog challenge from Stacy at Scrapshare is to do a love/hate check using the 5 senses. Here is mine:

Love:
The SIGHT of my children playing together outside in the sunshine.
The SMELL of the clean, crisp air in the early morning.
The TASTE of the first strawberry of the season.
The SOUND of the house when everyone else is gone
The FEEL of a snuggle or a hug from any of my kids.

Hate:
The SIGHT of toys all over the floor.
The SMELL of cooking brussel sprouts, broccoli or cabbage. Ick.
The TASTE of artifical sweeteners. All of them leave a nasty and lasting taste in my mouth and throat.
The SOUND of whining or fighting before school when I can't send them outside to work it out amongst themselves.
The FEEL of sugar spilt on the kitchen floor and left for me to find and clean up.

What are yours?