Who’s judging you.

Kids eating fries? Not my kids!

I could not believe that people gave their kids burgers and fries, or even ice-cream and cake… or even took them out to restaurants… of course this was before I had kids!

Talk about judgmental… Thinking that I would be so different from all these other moms who obviously didn’t care about the health of their kids. And if I ever saw kids in a restaurant or the mall throwing a tantrum… well, lets just say that ‘my’ kids would never behave like that!

Fast forward to today… feeding my son ice-cream for lunch while at the mall. Although they were pretty well behaved, like every other mom, I have come to realize that to keep your sanity… you just cannot sweat the little things.

In general, my kids eat well at home… they love broccoli (I think that most kids do)… so fries and ice-cream at the mall does not really worry me much any more… right now I am trying to figure out how to get my 3 year old to stop sucking his thumb, and my ‘almost’ 2 year old to stop sucking everyone’s socks!

At least both the newborn and I enjoy when he is sucking his pacifier.

Kids, are they equal?

Newborn babies cry a lot, at least so ‘they’ say.

We were alone with the newborn last night, as my eldest wanted to stay with his grandma, and in true second child spirit, so did the toddler.

So my husband and I were alone with the baby, and he really cried a lot (the baby, not my husband)… even from the time that I left my mom’s house with him… did he miss his brothers? Although it was his feeding time, and I felt guilty about starving him just so that we can get home a little earlier, I really wondered if he was missing his eldest brother’s constant chatter while in the van… He cried a bit before he went to sleep… and then he cried a lot this morning… my husband’s answer is to give him a pacifier and put him in his crib! My actual words to my husband were “pretend that he is a newborn baby”…

I guess that it is just natural that we give less attention to the children that come after the first one… I guess its not very fair… I guess that we should treat them equally… I guess we really can only try to do the best we can…

My grandmother has a really wise saying, she had 9 kids and when asked about which one she liked best, her answer’s always the same… she says “I have 5 fingers and they are all different, but if you cut off any one, would the pain not be the same?”

It seems like its true… we can only really appreciate our parents when we become parents ourselves!

Dealing with preschoolers.

Kids lead to chaos.

Chaos in your marriage… in the house… in the car… at grandma’s house… as soon as you have 1 kid, life as you know it is over, and don’t even try to get it back. Instead, move on… have some more kids…

I’m only kidding about that… unless you want to experience “real” joy… like me!

I usually fall into the same trap of planning to do a certain task during the day… which leads to either neglecting the kids, or getting stressed out if they don’t allow me to execute my plan… (Like many parents I am sure). But today I discovered that if I make a plan for all of us together, then there is a higher probability that I can get them to cooperate with me.

A friend of mine (and a teacher) gave me a really good idea, which I would like to share with parents of kids (especially older toddlers and preschoolers). We made a schedule and colour coordinated the time of the day… We have ‘foody time’, ‘tv time’, ’play time’, ’colouring time’, ‘computer time’, ‘outside time’, ‘bath time’, and ’sleepy time’… where each activity is a specific colour. This way, my son can start understanding that he’s done one activity and its time for the next. Today there were less arguments, negotiations, and ‘deals’!! Of course, there will be the days when the schedule works about as well as a sock, but I think for the most part, this seems to be a great way to make life a little less chaotic. Good job Sabzari!!

Who’s sleeping in your bed.

Kids are always in our bed… at least it seems that way to me. We have an elaborate co-sleeping plan going on here… both boys have their own beds in our room, and the baby has his crib here too.

I “thought” that if they had their own beds in our room that they would not need to come into our bed… but I guess I was wrong… again! Some nights they are all in the bed… and it’s a queen size bed… not large enough for 5 bodies in my opinion…

The main offender is the middle child, I think that he has figured out that the only way to get full attention is while the other 2 are asleep… he has become a bit of an insomniac. So one night, he gets off his bed (with his pillow) and runs to my side of the bed (as he usually does), and he saw my eldest son sleeping with me… he totally “freaks” out… full blown tantrum in the middle of the night… EVERYONE wakes up… my husband is trying to get him to come on his side, he is throwing himself on the floor, the baby is crying… My eldest just gets off the bed, goes back in him own bed, and goes back to sleep… like we are disturbing him too much…

Middle child syndrome? He wanted to sleep on the floor… we had to wait for him to tire himself out, “almost” fall asleep on the floor, and then put him back into HIS OWN bed… poor kid! But of course before the morning comes, he will end up back in our bed.

The worst part about them in our bed, even worse than sleeping on the edge of the bed… in one position… usually waking up to “a lot” of body pain and stiffness… The worse part has to be the random smells that emerge from beneath the blanket… usually waking me from sleep… and to whom does it belong??

At least my husband could put the blame on someone else now!

Mine not yours!

Kids are possessive… as everyone knows… with everything… and I do mean ‘everything’!

My older 2 are always battling over a toy, or a book, or spoons, or bags, or packaging material… pretty much anything! But lately, they’ve added the baby to the list!

The eldest one really loves to play with the baby… I guess that since he already knows what its like to have a younger sibling, he does not have any jealousy with this new one. The ‘almost 2 year old’ is a bit threatened by the newborn, and usually stays away from him…

So yesterday, the ‘almost 2 year old’ was playing with the newborn and my eldest says to him “Go away, he is MINE! You don’t even like him!”… And so started yet another fight!

I have used the “timeout” method so many times that it really doesn’t even work anymore! Now I just take away the object in question, tell them its “MINE”, and let them cry about it for a while…is that bad parenting?

Everything really is ‘mine’…