Fun stuff

I just finished making scratch-off reward cards for Emily.  I cannot wait to use them.  I'm trying to be chill about her still waking up wet some mornings since the doctor said it's still totally normal and can go on until 7 or 8 or even older.  But still, she does do better with staying dry when we keep track and make a big deal of her staying dry.  I'm trying not to pressure her because for the most part, I do think a lot of it has to be when her body and mind is mature enough to hold her pee all night, but if keeping track helps her to stay dry, then why not.  So if she stays dry all 7 mornings of the week, she'll get to scratch off two prizes, and if she stays dry 6 days out of 7 she'll get to scratch off one....staying dry 5 or less does still get a star on the chart and an atta girl, but not scratch-off prizes.

I made some the other day, but they called for contact paper but I didn't have any, so at the suggestion of a commenter, I used a white crayon to color the "prize" to put the waxy layer down and then painted over it with nail polish.  It worked ok, but to use nail polish I think you really need to be scratching it off in a specific time period when it's dried enough, but not too dry because it wasn't real easy to scratch it off.  I made enough for 4 weeks, so obviously the nail polish is going to be very dry.  Plus, I don't want to waste my nail polish, and the smell was bad.  I could have used paint, but my hand was very tired by the time I got done coloring them all with the white crayon.

So I picked up some contact paper and voila, much better.  Just draw some circles on the contact paper, paint them with (mostly) equal parts acrylic paint and dish soap mixed together, once dry peel off the back and stick them over the prize on the card.  I did stuff like McDonald's sundae, extra time before bed, extra bedtime story, take a walk, go to the library, blind bag (I'm sure most parents know what those silly blind bags are), mommy/daughter date...I'm most excited for that one, so I hope she scratches that one off soon.  We went to this Chinese place the other night for dinner and it was soooo good, I had been craving Chinese and it did not disappoint.  Emily actually liked quite a bit of what she had and said how much she liked it there, which is pretty rare for her.  So I think if we do a date soon, we'll go there for lunch, and then I'll take her to the Dairy Go-Round.  It's this ice cream place where the building looks like a carousel and they have carousel horses all around the building.  She hasn't been there since she was pretty little, I don't think she could even walk yet, so it'll probably be like the first time there.

I also made her some chore charts with money attached to them.  We're pretty bad about remembering to give her an allowance, so I thought I would make up a bunch of non-weekly chores that she can do and each one has so much money attached.  So like, she can sort through her toys bin and put them all away in the right containers for a dollar, today she sorted her clean laundry and put them all away for two dollars....I think we'll also give her a weekly allowance, but I want it to be pretty small, like a dollar a week because there are certain things she should be doing no matter what and not because she is getting paid.  But I also want her to learn the value of money and to learn to save and spend it wisely. 

So we'll encourage her to save it, but every now and again maybe we'll see how much she has and tell her if she wants a toy she can pick something out.  Then she can learn that she has,  say $25.00 but this toy she wants is $30 so she cannot get it and she has to either pick something cheaper or save a little longer for that toy.  Then she can give the money to the cashier when we check out....I'm excited.  We also have good deed money.  It's clipped to the fridge with a post it and $5.00, and she has to do 5 good deeds to get the money.  But they'll just be good deeds that we happen to witness her doing, so like today without me telling her to she picked up the toys she had laying out so she could bring out these special toys from my office.  I did tell her to do that the other day, but the fact that she remembered, and did it today without being prompted was good, so I gave her a check mark toward her good deed money.

The other night I was playing Mario on Wii (I introduced her to it and now I am hooked on it again.  I just beat it again for the millionth time, and I just started over again) and it was around midnight and suddenly I heard Em crying from her room.  I ran in there and she was just sobbing her little heart out, but I quickly realized she was still asleep, so she must have been having a nightmare.  So I told her it was ok and I rubbed her back and she calmed down some but not much, and then I started singing and she calmed down almost instantly and settled back into a peaceful sleep.  I hate that she had a nightmare but man, I loved that she needed me and just my singing (which I've done since she was an itty bitty newborn) calms her almost instantly.  I cannot even remember the last time she has cried like that in the middle of the night.  It may be close to a year now.  Anymore, once I tuck her in for the night, that's it.  Which I know all you moms of newborns or even older kiddos who just have difficulties at night are like pshhhhha, such problems.  But it's true what they say, you'll miss it one day.

I wouldn't want to go back to the days where I had to go in multiple times a night or get woken up in the middle of the night....but she's growing up way too fast and it feels good to still be needed.  She has been pretty difficult this weekend, not listening and just being loud and getting into mischief, but it doesn't matter how rough of a day we've had.  Once she is tucked in for the night, most nights I have to really fight the urge to go in there and snuggle with her.  Mostly because I know I'll never get out of there without waking her up.

I just printed off some "kindergarten" line paper.  I think I'll start working with her on writing her name.  I won't push her, if she gets it she gets it, but if she has troubles I won't keep pushing her.  I get annoyed at how much different pre-school and K is now since I was a kid, so I definitely don't want to heap the pressure on her to learn a bunch of stuff that I feel they are too young to be learning yet.  When I was a kid, pre-K and K was all learning through playing.  Sure we had lessons about numbers and colors and stuff, but I think school starts off way more academic now rather than play, and I even know of some Kindergarteners who have homework in K.  Really? 

I'll admit, I am a little nervous about Em coming in, her first year in formal school, with a bunch of kids who have either been in daycare since they were infants or who at least did 3-year-old preschool....I do worry she will be behind a bit.  I know some kids her age that can write their name.  But at the same time, I know she is smart in so many ways, and she, of course, won't be the only kid coming from a stay at home/work from home mom household who has not been in daycare or pre-K all this time.  I heard someone say how they are so glad their kid has been in daycare all this time because of how much they know and can do and my kid still loves me and they know I love them and they were not raised by daycare.  Ok, I am not knocking working moms/kids in daycare whatsoever.  I know we're all doing the best we can do, and had it not been for some very fortunate circumstances that I was lucky enough to have, I would have been working 40 hours outside the home and Em would have been in daycare at least a couple days a week.

I am not in any way saying that daycare kids do not feel love or that they feel neglected or abandoned.  We all love our kids and working or not working is not indicative of our love for them.  BUT, being home with me these years has provided Emily with a lifetime of memories and closeness to me that she could never get from daycare.  I'm not saying daycare kids are lacking from not having that, but I do believe Emily a  received wonderful gift of getting to stay home with me.  I stayed home with my mom, and I love the memories I have of those days.  You have all your life to go to school and work, to have deadlines and rules and times you have to be someplace.  I have absolutely loved being home with Emily these last 4 years and most days not having to go anywhere, and just cuddling a lot of days, or playing and laughing.  I guess I am just saying I am very happy with my choice, and I hope most moms can say the same, whatever their personal situation is.  Yes, she may be a bit behind the other kids at first, but I would assume the teachers look for that to see which kids may need a little more help with things to "catch up". 

Boy mom

If your Facebook feed is anything like mine, it's flooded with a lot of ads, or parenting facebook pages that share these ads and the biggest thing right now is "Boy Mom" stuff.  Coffee mugs, shirts, hats..pretty much anything you can find to declare that you are a mom of boys, and love it.

Ok, it was cute for maybe 5 minutes.  But now it is everywhere, and it needs to go away.  Not only has it overplayed itself, I feel like it's all part of the mommy wars.  I know it's somewhat positive, but come on, unless you are a troll living under a bridge, we all know you love your kids.  It's not really something we need to declare on our clothing.  And while I know the whole "movement" if you will, started with all the annoying crap of "but you're a woman, don't you want a girl?", it's become just as if not more annoying than assuming all women want daughters. 

Maybe some will claim I am just "butthurt" but to me the whole boy mom thing sounds like their saying as a woman, having a daughter is such a cliche, and I (along with the millions of other people in the world) am so unique because I am a woman who only has sons and I'm such a rebel because I love it and I don't need a daughter.  In other words, yet another reason to claim that you are better than someone else.  Or as I like to call it, overcompensating because you really want the thing you claim to be thrilled to not have.

In the end, it doesn't matter.  Can't we just all be happy with what we have and quit trying to "one-up" everyone else?  Yes, there will likely always be that stereotype that thinks all women want a little girl and all men want a son to pass their manliness down to.  I get it, it must be very frustrating for a woman to have the joyfulness of their children, regardless of what sex they may be, unfairly denigrated because they are not the sex that society thinks all women want.  I'd imagine the same thing happens to men with all girls...except you know why they don't sell a ton of merchandise for men that say girl dad?  Because men do not give a shit.  They don't care what other people think.  Maybe they would like a son, maybe they couldn't care less, but they don't feel the need to declare the love for their child on their clothing because some people fall victim to generalizations.

People who might think it's not good to have boys probably think that way either because they don't have any girls and wish they did, so they assume all women want a girl, or they do have a girl(s) and cannot imagine having a boy.  People tend to be afraid of things...or at least see it as foreign when they do not understand it.  While I don't have two girls in the physical sense, we did spend several weeks preparing for a girl, and in our hearts, we have Kayla.  I had things purchased for her, I had ideas for her room, and I had visions of future experiences with my little girl, years before they could even take place.  Then not many more months later, we began preparing for another girl.  Our house is filled top to bottom with Barbies, cute stuffed animals, pink and purple, Minnie Mouse and mermaids.  Emily isn't a complete girly girl, she loves to run and climb and get dirty, but she's definitely a girl...and we have the damaged ear drums (why do girls have to shriek like that) to prove it.  I am a "girl mom", so the idea of having a son is completely weird to me because I do not have one.  Just as the idea of doing girly stuff probably sounds pretty foreign to a mom of boys.

But I am not better than you because I have a girl, and you are not better than me because you don't need to have a girl to be happy.  Some of us got the gender we may have been hoping for, some maybe did not but learned how fun the gender is that they did get, and while some may long for the girl or boy they never had, we all love our kids.  As I said, having a boy seems completely unrelatable to me, but since we are done having kids, there is a small part of me that is sad I never got to have a boy.  I do wonder what it would be like to have a son.  Had we had one, his name would have been Joseph Francis.  I loved it.  I'm a bit sad we never got to use it and have our little Joey running around.  He would have been named after his Papa (Joe), and sort of his Baba (Victor Joseph, but he is known as Joe to his whole family) and his middle name would have been after my grandpa's middle name.  Oh man, how proud my grandpa would have been to have shared his middle name with his great-grandson. 

Now I admit, I AM one of those people that will see a mom of three or more boys and think oh, poor woman.  Or when I hear of a woman that has a few boys, and then they have a girl I think oh good for them, they got their girl.  But, that is MY opinion, and partially because 3 or 4 of any sex sounds insane to me.  My sweet little girl is loud and messy enough, I cannot imagine two or three or more of her.  And I'm sorry, maybe it's a stereotype, but boys do strike me as being louder and messier.  And let's face it, there is some truth to that stereotype....there is a reason we never see shows like Jackass with women because women just don't do those kinds of crazy things.

Part of it is probably due to the kind of guy my husband is.  He's a "man's man".  He cusses (ok so do I, but I do have a filter) belches, farts, is loud, loves sports....sometimes he does all but stops short of beating his fists on his chest.  He is dirty and messy, and just a force to be reckoned with.  When he enters the room, everyone knows.  So the idea of having boys, or being the only woman in a house with sons and my husband, all I could envision was coming home to some maniacal scene of the house torn apart, sword fighting, and kids (or my husband) swinging from the chandelier.  My daughter is already boy enough when my husband gets her riled up, I could not imagine the amount of therapy I would need in a house full of crazy, loud, noisy stinky boys.  Now if my husband wore a suit and tie to work, and sat in an easy chair and read as a hobby and was quiet natured, maybe my opinion on having boys would be a little different.

Plus, for whatever reason, I always wanted a little girl.  I knew I would be ok if I never had a son...it would be a little sad, but I knew if I never had a daughter, I would be very sad.  I would have loved my son, no doubt about it.  In fact, I think I would probably surprise myself by how completely in love I would be with having a boy...but I think a part of me would always mourn the little girl I never got to have.  So yeah, I assume most women want a girl, because I want girls.  But not all women want girls, so surely those women also do not assume other women want them.  I don't see the need to defend your love for your sons because some people have an opinion or preference different from yours.  Also, the whole "don't you want a daughter" talk usually comes up during small talk.  Small talk is the armpit of conversation, regardless of the subject.  Small talk consists of people asking a newly bereft mother how many children she has or confessing how much you hate a dish at a potluck, to the person that brought that dish.  It's during small talk that someone asks how someone's husband is, only to find out that the couple recently divorced.....if human intelligence and compassion could only be measured by the topics or depth of conversation held during small talk, our society would be doomed. 

Women who feel the need to defend their boy mom status say, well no one will ever love their mother as much as a son.  Mmmm, not really.  Yes, most kids do seem to gravitate to the opposit sex parent...mama's boys and daddy's girl.  I am a proud daddy's girl myself.  But that is not always true.  My daughter thinks the sun rises and sets on me.  She loves her daddy no doubt, but I am her one and only right now.  But I am sure much of that has to do with the fact that I have been with her since day one.   I had three months of maternity leave in which she was either in my arms or right next to me on the couch.  There was the exception of the two months I went back to work, where she stayed with my dad during the day (whom she is still very close to today) but I then became a stay at home mom for a little over a year and a half, and since then I have worked from home.  But aside from the rare day that I need her to entertain herself a bit while I work, I pretty much only work when she is napping or in bed for the night, so to her, I am still around as much as if I didn't work.

So that is an average of 10-12 hours a day spent with me, almost since birth.  She sees daddy a lot more now, but when she was a baby, she was in bed for the night by 6:30 or 7, and daddy was at work all day, so he was lucky if he got an hour or two with her at night.  Now that she stays up a little later, he has about 3-5 hours with her a night, depending on how late she stays up, but still, that pales in comparison to my 10-12 hours a day.  And, no matter how much a girl might be a daddy's girl, sometimes no one else but mom will do.  As I said I am a daddy's girl through and through, but even at the age of 38 and almost 14 years since my mom passed, sometimes there is nothing in the world that would comfort me like the idea of my mom's hug.  Daddy's don't always get that boo boo's aren't always physical and you just need some hugs and comfort, or that sometimes, you just need to cry. 

So everyone wants to say that no one can love their mother better than a son, but I really don't see how anyone could love me more than Emily does.  Most days I cannot take two steps without her being right there with me, she tells me she loves me and that I am her best friend about 152 times a day, and to my delight, she's still quite snuggly.  So let's let this whole "boy mom" fad die its hopefully quick death, and just love your kids.  You don't have to defend your love for your son, no more than you have to think you're better than me because you don't need the daughter that I have.  Sons and daughters are different in many ways, and that is not a bad thing.  Men may not always make sense sometimes, but for this, let's take a page out of their book and not let this turn into yet another thing moms go to war about with each other.