Kids should've named our BODILY FLUIDS!

Kids should have named things. They should have been in charge of coming up with the names of illness or bodily fluids...

Remember that jogger I posted a couple of weeks ago. The one that WOULDN'T stop jogging in order to go to the bathroom? I'm not a runner...I don't understand it...maybe SHER will enlighten us since she ran a marathon in my town...but REMEMBER THAT PICTURE?

Totally disgusting...

Gross...

Nauseous...

Okay, well now since we are on the subject of THAT subject, I need to tell you a funny story.

MountainSport Man and I were brushing our teeth on Saturday. I know, totally cute we do it together right? (We really only have one sink...so not cute...annoying and frustrating!)

PeePs runs in and pulls down her cute princess undies and pops on the toilet...

...then comes this conversation:

PeePs: "I have water poop on my panties."

Me: I stop mid brush and stare...thinking to myself...OH CRAP!

MSM: "You pooped your pants?"

PeePs: "NNNOOOO...Water Poop!"

Me: "PeePs, did you poo your pants?!" Then the smell hit my nose and I began dry heaving and spitting my toothpaste out as quickly as possible "Oh my gosh, you did POO your pants! Why?!" --shrieking like I had witnessed a murder!

PeePs: very calmly, "No Mommy...not poop...just WATER POOP!" then she touches it.

Me: "PeePs...DON'T TOUCH IT!" Still confused as to what water poop even is, but totally relieved she didn't POO her pants.

MSM: Walks over to inspect. Then starts to chuckle. Then looks at me.

Me: "What?"

MSM: "She went Diarrhea in her underwear a little before she made it to the toilet!" he says still laughing. "A perfect way to describe what it is!"

Me: With my shirt over my nose, "She is a smart little one huh?" as I begin to laugh. And then I remember she touched it!

CRAP...

Literally!

Anything your kids have said that explain things better than what they are normally called?

Love

Shelle

To Be Honest...Spanking vs. Timeout

I decided to take on Mrs. Flinger's Brutally Honest Monday!



So I am going to hit on a subject that in my studies to achieve my degree was ultra sensitive...but I had no idea HOW sensitive until I became a member of the MOM crew...



At play groups the subject comes up quite a bit...and I have an opinion and I'm not afraid to voice it...okay, sometimes a little afraid...and every once in a while...just a tad bit shy to get it all out there...(I know what those of you who know me are thinking...shy? Yea right...but truly I am, if I barely know the women and have just been invited or have pushed my way into an invite...then yea, I'm a little shy to voice my opinion)



But my blog is a whole other story. This is where I can lay it all out and get YOUR honest opinion.



I really love getting to know how other people parent...or how they would LIKE to parent when they start having children of their own...because babysitting a child and actually having your own are TWO very different worlds!



So my question posed to you is...what is YOUR take...are you a parent that spanks your child? Or are you a parent that uses TIMEOUT...If you have no desire to learn how I feel than stop reading now...I warn you, I am giving an honest opinion and this is personally how I feel! Okay, carrying on...



I believe that spanking is okay. Yep you heard it right, I personally feel that if your child is going to burn themselves, get run over in the street, or be disrespectful...they deserve a good swat on the butt. Not a pat...or a caress...but a SPANK on the bum. I do have rules though...



As my husband and I were preparing to have kids I was taking a class on child development and this issue came up. I'll never forget what the professor said...it has stuck with me and it is something my husband and I agreed on when we were discussing punishment for our children when we began to have them. The professor said, "I believe that one hit constitutes punishment and two hits is abuse."



Basically saying that one good swat on the butt is not going to be overly dramatic for your child...that if you need to prove a point quickly,than a spank on the bum is a good effective way to do this...but that if you have to hit them more than once then that treads a scary line of being angry AND out of control...and when you are out of control when you are trying to punish your child then you are bordering abuse because you are not thinking straight...you are consumed by rage or anger.


My husband and I have totally stuck by that rule. If we decide to punish because our child is going to hurt themselves or they are sassy, rude, or disrespectful than we have ONE good swat...that's it. We miss or we feel like we didn't get a good enough swat in, then TOO bad...then when they have calmed down we get down to their level and discuss why we did what we did. It seems to work for us. It actually has gotten to the point where all we have to do is tell them to go to their room and cry and when they are done crying to come out and talk with us...we don't hardly even SPANK at all, if ever, anymore...not even this child...





It's true...this IS Brutally Honest Monday...I would never lie to you on Brutally Honest Monday! My Sassy girl swishes her hips back and forth as she is sobbing into her hands and walking into her room...but sure enough she goes into her room and I yell, "Shut the door I don't want to hear you cry" where she dutifully shuts the door. Then about a minute later she is not crying anymore and she comes out and says, "I all done crying Mom". It's great...at least MOST of the time...it isn't a perfected science.

Timeouts or grounding my child, for me, are punishing me. I am HORRIBLE at remembering that I have given them timeout or have grounded them. I have tried, believe me I have. I'll say, "Don't you talk to Mom that way" than I'll say, "you go to timeout right now...I'll come get you when your time is up". I even had a "Naughty Room", stolen from Super Nanny. So I would put my child in the naugty room and then I would go about my day. I would FORGET them in the naughty room...

or...

I would send them to the naughty room then sit there and listen to them rant and rave and wail and gnash teeth...just to count the seconds until I could open the door...(I think the rule was 1 minute for however old they were).

Timeout was ALWAYS my first option. It didn't work...not for my little boy and not for my little girl.

Just to reiterate...I only spank if I feel and deem it necessary...and never when I am extremely angry. I may yell and stomp my feet...but I know when I need to go into another room and take a minute to compose myself before issuing any kind of punishment to my kids!

The spanking is not making the impact I would like with DCar anymore...for example: about a 1/2 year ago I told my boy that if he kept teasing his sister that I would spank his bum...he then looked at me and then continued teasing. I grabbed him and spanked his butt. You know what he did? He broke out in laughter...that's right LAUGHTER...he instantly covered his mouth and TRIED to stop...but like his MOM...when we have the giggles, we have the giggles...there IS NO STOPPING.period. So spanking doesn't work anymore for DCar...

but I have found out what does...in another class I remember they said, "Find something they hold of value--something they deem they cannot live without...then you threaten to take it away from them and you follow through!"

This has worked great with DCar. I take away what he holds most dear and sure enough...he is instantly a better kid...it's great!

I am lucky though...I really have great and mostly behaved kids...

I HATE-HATE to punish my kids...I hate it with passion to the point where I loathe it, but I know that it is necessary to have boundries and to show your children that there are consequences to their actions...that YES they have their free will...they can choose whatever they like...and that when they choose right the consequence is SWEET!

SO...how do you feel? What works best for you?

Drama for the Mama almost 3 year olds

I know that it seems like I am always taking pictures of my almost 3 year old little girl...okay it doesn't seem...I am, literally taking pics of my little girl all the time! I also blog about her quite often because basically, she is my constant companion when I am not at work! Her world is wholly centered around me and what I can offer her in a day to amuse and entertain her!

Which is completely scary right?

With DCar...he's chill...I almost forgot he was around or existed when I was a stay at home Mom...okay not true...but I was trying to get your extremely smart brains to really get the difference of my two children...

DCar=chill, easy-going, NO terrible two's, 99% happy, and has always been able to entertain himself!

PeePs=fast to anger, frustration, yet fast to happy, content...screams when she doesn't get her way...makes up excuses of why she screams, "DCar touched my arm and now my belly hurts!" She can sleep longer than any bear during hibernation...nasty when she wakes up...yet she cuddles and says,"Mom, I wuv you" more than my husband and DCar put together!!! She like to got shopping and loves to try on every shoe available to her at her height range...yet will scream bloody murder if you try and move her away from said shoes...

(sidenote: people have stared at me while I have hefted her up and over my shoulder or into the basket to continue shopping...I'm surprised I haven't been called in for stealing a child, or that PeePs hasn't caught on to the fact that she can yell, "Don't take Me" and instantly someone Good Samaritan will save the day...Heaven Save Me if she EVER figures that one out!)
I'll give her credit and say that she DOES find creative ways to entertain herself...all of which end up making me get off my bum to clean it up or help her with this or that...it's tough let me tell ya, especially when I am trying to work on my short stories (soon to be posted here on this blog for all of you to be my critics!!!)

So to say the least...the girl puts me through an emotional rollercoaster...where one minute I am wanting to rip my hair out, bury myself in my huge mound of laundry, and curl into a ball to sleep away my years of breeding and raising children...to...feeling over joyed for the very fact that she brings layers to my life, makes me laugh out loud, and I can't help but feel extremely blessed that she chose me or I chose her to be her guardian and earthly example...

With all of this said....

Here is my PeePs...playing with her Dad in the water, showing off her slight flexibility and loving the attention of her most favorite person! She is happy...she is content...she is enjoying life.

Then we get out of the pool..."It's time to go PeePs, we have to get home..."

(I had innocently thought that my legs didn't need sunscreen, even though they are whiter then an albino's. What could be so harmful as 20 little minutes on front and back? It's like child labor on your brain...with time--fall, winter, and spring--my mind forgets that I burn REALLY easily...I was burned, toasted, fried...and it was already showing...which meant; get home pronto, rub aloe vera in skin for hours, take a shower, then repeat aloe vera rub, until sting and burn goes away...I.HAD.TO.GET.HOME)

PeePs decides, after we pull her out of the water and drag her to where our stuff was, that her "belwee hurts"...she can't leave.

See her agony...how can I not let her stay you say? Hmmm...watch and learn people...watch and learn...don't let the dramatics fool you. PeePs is extremely good at her dramatics, their believable to the naked eye, but I have caught on to her rythmn--I know the trick to pull her out of her achingly, painful, and tortuous belly ache...let me repeat...watch, LISTEN, and learn...

"Hey PeePs, we are going to Wendy's to get a vanilla frosty, but only happy smiling faces, with no belly aches get one...DCar do you think PeePs will be able to get a COLD Vanilla Frosty with us? I don't know DCar, she says she has a belly ache..."

And Voi-la ladies and gentleman...she is healed...

Have a funny kid story or an ahhhh cute moment? Write it as a comment or email me at blokthoughts@gmail.com and I will post them. You can remain anonymous or I can link you in!

No! Peeps don't open that!!!

Isn't having your children potty trained kind of a love/hate thing? I mean to be perfectly honest, with boys it's just a love thing...boys can potty anywhere! With DCar if he needed to go to the bathroom we would find the most secluded piece of dirt and let him have at it, or if we were standing in the Hollywood Tower of Terror line at Disneyland's California Adventure Park we finished our water bottle, and stood around him, and let him "try and fill the bottle", (we had to make a game of it to help him get over the stage fright, think about it...you know what I mean)...it was wonderful!

But girls...it's a whole other story. You would think with me being a girl that I would remember that girls make everything just a little more difficult when it comes to bathroom anything...(hey girl...you know it's true, don't deny it)...pulling over to the side of the road basically, sucks, with PeePs! Sure I can hold her and help her try and pee...it doesn't help that she absolutely refuses to go anywhere but on a toilet, so we have to have DCar show her its okay, and then she ends up getting it all over the one holding her!

I had another wonderful experience with PeePs while at Target the other day. She had to go to the bathroom immediately after we get there and get her settled in the basket and we take off at warp speed passing by the bathroom sign, she innocently points and says, "Mommy I have to pee!"...BOOM, instantly my patience is gone...(why does she wait until I get her all settled?) but I get her out of the cart and take her to the bathroom, just in case this is serious (DCar will NOT enter a Women's bathroom so he stayed outside to "watch the cart"...like it was going somewhere? Gotta love his pride...gets it from his Dad!)

She sits down to go to the bathroom and she has the same process everytime. First she has to take off ALL of her clothes from the waste down...I still don't understand that...anyhow, then she has to sing...so after the ABC song, TWINKLE-TWINKLE, and her new favorite, the SIGNING TIME theme song, she goes pee. After having to wait through that whole process I end up having to go pee too... so I sit and go to the bathroom and, of course, she encourages me to sing. I just chuckle and say that mommies don't have to sing when they pee. She insists, so I appease her and sing, "I like big butts"--okay just kidding I didn't...I showed her who was boss and didn't sing. I get done and stand up to pull up my pants, but first... I have to fix my garments, well by that time PeePs had flushed the toilet for me and opened the door...imagine me with my shirts above my chest, my chin holding up my shirt, my legs spread out, and me bending over to get my pants to pull them up...Hey stop laughing this is a serious situation here...well, when you can finally see through your tears ...imagine being the Target employee who got to see that pretty sight through the mirror! OH I feel so bad for her...I know it was NOT a pretty sight...she is going to have to pay for major therapy! I scream, "No, PeePs don't..." but it was too late...the damage was done.





So potty training a girl to go to the bathroom for me is a love/hate sort of thing! I never had to worry about her opening the bathroom door before being potty trained because I wouldn't have had to go to the bathroom in the first place at Target...I try to avoid public bathrooms if I can...

Lots of Love, Shelle

PS-David Archuletta and Michael Johns were my favorite for this last week! I do hate how people are saying that David Archuletta can only sing one way...HELLO...don't know if you have noticed but they all only sing ONE way...David Cook sings sexy rock, Michael Johns sings his way, Brooke White sings slow and plays an instrument...more like Jewel or someone like that-They all have their own comfort zone, their own sound, and they all sound better doing it that way...they all sound awkward doing it any other way! So that is all I have to say about that!

Wild Little Girl-Crazy Plane Trip!

So we are at the end of our weekend and Saturday Night after the competition we ended up staying at the Stoddard's house in Roy. We watched old videos from our Lake Powell trip with them...Funny how we change! Well PeePs didn't get to sleep until midnight...and then Lisa and I got to talking and didn't get to bed until 3:30 in the morning and then I was up by 6 am getting ready to drive down to the airport. I woke PeePS up shortly after and she was NOT happy about it. Well I just threw her hair back in a ragamuffin pony tail and we headed to the airport. Well after checking into the airport and waiting 45 minutes to get through security we finally arrived to wait for our flight to board and get a seat assignment. Well shortly before we were to board the aircraft we found out that our flight was delayed because of maintenance. We waited another 45 minutes and finally were allowed to board. In the meantime PeePs was acting like a crazy girl...so my mom had her running back and forth to the garbage throwing away things for her. The girl just got some burst of energy...and I was TIRED!!! Well we went to board the plane and jaksyn ran the whole way!!! We got on the plane and took our seats. PeePs decided that she wanted to sing and talk...(Can anyone say drugs please?) Okay not really...but I am human enough to admit that I wanted a child safe tranquilizer for some peace! We buckled in and taxied out to await our turn to take off. We waited...and waited...and waited! I'm not sure how long we waited out on the tarmac...but it felt like hours...I'm sure it was more like 30 minutes...the Flight Attendant got on and informed us that the de-icer wasn't working and we were going to have to taxi back into the gate. When we taxied back in...we were informed that we were staying on the plane while maintenance tried to fix the problem. After about 20 minutes they finally decided to let us deplane, and we were back in the terminal...and again my daughter had bolts of energy! We weren't in there long until they found another plane for us. We quickly boarded another plane and were able to take off and get back to St. George...the following is what happened during the flight!


PeePS with crazy hair...when she sat up it looked like she had put her hand in a socket!

She is still going and you can see how happy I am about that!

Ahhhhh...bliss!!!

My Two Rascals-So just my thoughts!

December 31, 2007

Okay so I don't do much of this...like write my thoughts and stuff unless it has to do with a picture. But I was thinking about this year and I just have some thoughts. This year has been so crazy for our family. MountainSport Man is going to school and we are living with my very patient parents! I have to work...pretty much full-time for benefits so that MSM can go to school full-time and concentrate on grades and getting through school as quickly as possibe! I have always worked one way or another, but when we lived in West Jordan I had the opportunity to stay home with my kid (DCar) while MSM worked. I didn't think I would like it very much...I thought...to be honest...that it would be boring. Now that I have had to start working full-time and I have done it for a year and some...I can pretty much say...without a shadow of a doubt that I LOVE staying at home. Once I got the hang of staying home and realizing all I could get accomplished in ONE day...I started having FUN. NO..I didn't make money...but I was my own boss...I prioritized my day and I accomplished SOOOOO much. I managed to clean something, do laundry, work with DCar on his letters, sign language, or reading, play with DCar, go to lunch with a friend, go grocery shopping (or just fun shopping), put DCar down for a nap, read, pick up after DCar, and have dinner made (okay most of the time) by the time MSM came home from work. I embraced being a mom and a homemaker and I am telling you now...it was my calling. Since going back to work, I have realized what a blessing that was! I miss it! Don't get me wrong...I love that I am blessed with a job that is flexible and I can work my schedule around my kids, but they are missing out on the full mom that I can be. I know other women can do it...and they are much more organized and stronger than I am...but I am finding it hard to be a good MOM and a good EMPLOYEE. Trying to manage both I feel that no matter how hard I try, I'm letting one or the other down. I don't get as much done during the day when I work because I have to sit behind a desk. I get home and am exhausted and so I am definitely not giving my kids the quality time that they deserve...on my days off I want them to be just that...days off. I suck...and I am sucking at juggling both. I know I have to endure until MSM graduates...but it has been hard. But it has helped me with one thing...I totally appreciate and will be forever thankful when I can be "just" a Mom again. It is definitely hard work but work that makes me happy. I LOVE my kids...I love the joy they bring to me in my life...I love even the trials that they bring...it's a struggle, it's hard, and I definitely mess up ALL the time being a MOM...but I LOVE everything that comes with it...even the tears...and believe me there have been a lot of them! I can't wait until I can be a full-time/stay at home Mom again! I miss my kids...even though I see them all of the time.

So I made these collage's because I got these pictures taken of them and never was able to show all of them...so even though these are old...here are my two little Rascals...I'm very partial, but I think they are adorable! DCar is 5 and loves to laugh, play any video game, and ride anything with wheels! PeePs is 2 and loves to color, play dress up, and do anything DCar does! So ENJOY! Oh and have a good NEW YEAR!