Miss Independent

Kaitlyn is starting to be a lot more independent these days.  She INSISTS on doing things on her own with no help at all, until she is ready to ask for it.  If you help her without her permission, she will throw drop to the floor and throw a fit. 

I'm am having a hard time letting her do things on her own.  It's not that I don't want her to be independent, by all means please go potty by yourself, but I just forget that she is a big girl now and she is capable of doing these things on her own.  I'm just used to doing things for her.  It also doesn't help when I need to get things done fast and she's busy being all independent and taking her sweat time.  It is helpful to send her to the bathroom to wash her hands while I'm tied up with the demands of Tyler.  (I also need to remember that she is two and she LOVES to play in the water.)

Daddy says that she is super independent in the mornings.  She opens her door, crosses the entire house, opens the bathroom door and enters the room and shouts "good morning daddy!"  (Her door is a pocket sliding door and our room is the farthest room away from hers so needless to say, I'm pretty impressed with her.)  He tells her to go potty in our bathroom and he gets up to get ready.  She brushes her teeth while he shaves.  He then tells her to go pick out an outfit to wear; I already have outfits for the week ready for her in the top drawer of her changing table and she just picks a particular outfit she feels like wearing.  She undresses herself and he helps her get dressed as much as SHE lets him.  He gives her the squirt bottle so she can wet her hair and then he puts it in a ponytail.  (He does a pretty good job if I may say so.)  She then goes and picks what she wants for breakfast and she sits at her little table in the living room and watches a little Mickey Mouse Club House before it's time to leave.  She helps drop off Tyler in his room first, then will walk to her class, give daddy a hug and a kiss, tell him to have a good day at work, then settle in the days activity.  (She usually gets dropped off at morning snack and will look at what the other kids are eating to see if she wants some or not.)

She really is growing into her own little person and it really makes me proud.  It also makes my life a hell of a lot easier because I don't have to constantly ask her if she needs anything.  She tells me when she needs to potty, or wash her hands, or is hungry or thirsty.  She tells me what she wants to play and where she wants to play.  I do occasionally have to remind her to do things, like take a big drink of water when she is playing in the hot sun, but for the most part she is my little independent girl. 

Memory

It used to be said that if you want information about things that happened in the past, you ask me.  My brother hates that I have such an awesome memory.  It usually gets him in trouble or causes moments of embarrassment in front of his friends.  I think he is also jealous because he honestly cannot remember things that happen earlier in the same day.  I am usually the final judge in an argument about things that happen in the past.  Well if Christy says so, then it is so. 

I remember lots of silly details of things that happened to me and the people in my life.  Like I totally remember the time that my aunt and I were crab fishing at a hotel dock with a piece of string and some bait that some guy gave us because we were just using string at first.  We did catch a crab after a few hundred attempts and we were totally going to bring it home as a pet but my dad put the kibosh on that and made us return him to the bay...joy kill.  I also remember the time my grandfather, who spoke VERY little English, caught a cicada for my brother to play with and totally traumatized the poor kid because he thought it was a giant fly* and my mom found him hiding and shaking in the closet when she came home from work.  (*My brother is still kinda jumpy when it comes to house flys because I used to torture him with a fake fly because I thought it was funny...at the time.)  There are tons more stories that I remember, but that is another post in and of itself.  (Maybe I'll start doing meme Monday's or something.)

Nowadays though, I can't remember anything.  I attribute this to being pregnant twice and birthing two babies who literally suck the life force out of me and leave me a stuttering, gibbering mess at the end of the day.  I have to leave myself notes and reminders about everything.  If I don't have it written down, it will be forgotten.  I have reminders constantly going off in Microsoft Outlook telling me when to go to meetings, when to run reports and even when to go to the potty.  (Ok, so I'm not that bad, and my bladder tells me when to do that.)  I am constantly checking and rechecking my calendar because I always feel like I'm missing a meeting or forgetting to do something.  It's driving me insane and it's causing me to be wrong a lot with Jerry which of course is the worse than missing some stupid doctors appointment that I scheduled months ago and never got a reminder call the day before to confirm that I'm still going to show up.  Sheesh.

I need to find a more better and more efficient way to remind myself of what's going on in my life.  If I'm not at work, I don't get those Outlook reminders.  I'm too lazy to text everything in my phone and these days I'm lucky to remember to bring my phone with me.  I can't run around with sticky notes attached to my body and besides, they don't stick very well to skin.  Carrying a planner is not an option because I have enough to carry and my diaper bag is busting at the seems.  Sigh.  If only I was rich enough to hire an assistant to help me keep my life in order.  One can dream though.

(This post was originally slated to be posted in June if that says anything about the current state of my memory.)

Buyer's Market?

So I am a little bitter about this whole buying a house business.  I mean everyone in the universe is saying that we are in a buyers market and now is the time to jump on the bandwagon and buy a house.  I have been resigned to the fact that we will rent until our children go to college for just a few more years because that's what is in the plan.  (Yeah, we always follow the plan.  Kaitlyn and Tyler were both planned.)  I was super excited when Jerry was conned decided that it was indeed a buyers market and that we could get into a house while having a lower mortgage than our monthly rent.  Score! 

This whole house buying debacle adventure has been a less than thrilling one to say the least.  We were looking at those foreclosures at first because we could really save some money and get a house for around $100,000.  People, those houses are in foreclosure for a reason.  The very first house we looked at was in foreclosure and had been abandoned.  I should have run away screaming when we pulled up to it and the grass was up to my eyes.  However I kept an open mind and my babies glued to my side.  We stepped into the house and it was a real gem POS!  There was still broken furniture left in the house from the previous owners.  There was mold growing on the ceiling of the nursery.  (There was a crib in there so I'm going to assume that it was the nursery.)  The ceiling was falling down on the lanai.  The pool was an electric green and I am still convinced there was a big sci-fi creature swimming in it.  (There was definitely water movement and I don't think it was the creepy crawly.)  I was pretty bummed out at the sad state of the house.  We quickly asked our realtor if all the foreclosed houses looked like this and he reassured us that they didn't and this was probably one of the worst he's seen.  We trusted him because he came highly recommended to us by my parents so we trekked on.  We looked at 10 houses that first night and NONE of them were even fit to live in.  They all needed work in some way and we really couldn't afford the time or money to get them to move in ready shape.  I was discouraged to say the least.

Fast forward to a week.  We finally found a house that was move in ready.  It was in an ok neighborhood, not my ideal location, but there were no cars on cinder blocks in the front yard.  (This was a prerequisite for a neighborhood that Jerry was comfortable living in.)  We actually fell in love with the house and the potential it had.  There were some things that would need to be updated, the VERY pink carpet throughout the house, but it had everything that we were looking for.  We put in an offer and found out that we were 1 of 4.  The good news was that the bank was not looking for investors to buy this house so we weren't competing with someone who had a large amount of available cash.  The bad news was that we had no idea what to bid on this house in order to get it.  Long story short, the bank did not ask for best offers and took the highest initial bid which was not ours.  (We bid $10,000 over asking price and were willing to go $15,000 to get the house.)  Disappointed, because I really started to fall in love with the house and the potential it had with just a few updates.

After another few hundred houses we find another one well below our price range, in the exact neighborhood we want, with a great floor plan and plenty of space.  We moved very quickly on this house.  Score!  No bids at all on this house.  We played the game again and offered $10,000 above asking price willing to go $15,000.  Good news, we were the very first bid, bad news, it's game on for everyone including investors.  We lost this house by $1,000 because there was a cash offer on the house.  Suck it!

So buy now we are mostly defeated and decide that we will not compromise.  The house must be in the perfect neighborhood.  It must be at least 1600 sf.  It must have a two car garage.  It must have a fenced in back yard.  It must have a separate area for the playroom.  People, things happen for a reason because we found a house with all that and more.  It's a 3/2/2 with over 1800 sf of living space.  We have an extra large living area with a semi-open floor plan.  There are two fireplaces, although I'm not sure why there is even one since we live in Florida.  And the coup de gras....a pool!  We initially did not want a pool because I am paranoid concerned about my little ones, but we are stoked and are prepared to pay out the nose for some high tech pool fence and alarms.  It is also 5 houses down the street from my parents.  Don't know quite yet if that is good or bad, but it's exactly where I want to live because of the schools that are near by.  All three schools, elementary, middle and high school that I want my children to attend are within walking distance. 

We low balled an initial offer.  (The sellers' agent was desperate and constantly hounding our agent to make an offer.)  There were a few counters on both sides and we finally agreed to a price...we got the house for a steal!  Everything is going great, we close on the 24th of September, tell our landlords to bite us that we are giving them 60 days notice, even though we don't have to give them any notice, and they can keep our deposit to use as the last month's rent and we'll be on our way.  Inspection goes well, except the roof needs some repairs, our realtor says the sellers' need to pay for it, they agree and we are happily moving onward and upward.

The bad news, the underwriting company for the mortgage is at  a complete standstill and there is no way we can get this done by the 24th.  WTF!  Of course our mortgage guy, who also is our realtor, is a pro and is on it.  He finds a new underwriting company that can keep us close to being on track.  We are now a week behind which throws a minor wrench into our plans because we have engineered our work schedule around our move.  There are meetings and trips and a MIL visit that have been pre-scheduled and now cannot be canceled.  I guess Jerry's mom will have to help us move while she is on vacation.  We'll also have to rent a POD instead of a UHaul and may have to spend a week living with my parents.  Ugh. 

Good news, this house meets our present AND future needs so we won't be moving for a very long time.

Cry Me a River

I will never understand why parents are so against letting their children cry.  Have you ever read a story in the news where a child died because they cried too much?  I know I never have.  I have also let both my children *gasp* cry!  They are both healthy and well adjusted children.  Dare I say they are even very happy!  I know I've mentioned before that Tyler is the happiest baby in the whole world.

Sometimes children need to cry.  Hell, sometimes adults need to cry too!  If I have tried everything in my power to meet my children's needs and they are still crying, I let them.  I let them be alone in their rooms and let them cry.  I check on them to make sure they are safe, but I let them cry.  After 5 or ten minutes, I will go in and comfort them and talk to them about how they are feeling.  Of course this works better with Kaitlyn because she can talk back and tell me how she is feeling.

The only time I feel it's not ok to cry is when someone takes a toy or other wanted item away from Kaitlyn.  I always tell her to use her words and ask for whatever it is back.  I want her to be able to communicate that taking things away from her is not ok, but no one will ever know that if she just screams or cries.  She is really good right now at asking for her things back.  It usually comes out as "That's not nice!  Give me back my  insert object here."  We are working on the manners part, but at least she's using her words.

I feel like telling a child that it's not ok to cry is like stifling their emotions.  I know a person who hates to cry and even hates to show any emotion.  She just bottles everything up and puts on a happy face for the rest of the world.  Unfortunately, she had a sort of a mental break recently.  I will not go into the details of what happened because it is not my story to tell.  However I will say that crying was not allowed by her father.  Crying was looked down upon and stifled, even made fun of.  Not a healthy environment if you ask me.

I am definitely not saying that you should allow your child to cry uncontrollably all day and all night.  That would probably drive everyone bat shit crazy, but letting them cry it out every once in awhile never hurt anyone.  The most important thing is to talk to your child, no matter how old, about how they are feeling and the reasons behind why they are crying.  (If your child is really young, you could always teach them sign language so they can communicate with you.)  Let the tears flow.  It's such a release and everyone needs a good cry now and then, especially children.

Holy Turnaround Batman!

Can I just say that this year, so far, has been really positive?  Not so much on the teacher part, but on the students' part.  (The teachers are complaining too much about the new grade book system, meetings, turning in lesson plans, etc. and it's making me nuts.)  I really thought that the students were going to be super rebellious this year with all the new policies and procedures, but you know what? they are responding quite well.  We are also getting more parental involvement.  Mainly because students are wanting their phones back because they think they are dying, but hey, it's a start.

The number of detentions, students assigned to ABS, cell phone collections are high, but that is really to be expected.  They are testing their boundaries to see what they can get away with and it's really not much.  Teachers are enforcing the policies and administration is backing them up.  Parents are also backing us up because they knew from day one that these new policies were going to be enforced with a heavy hand.  When you don't have too many behavior issues, then the focus can be shifted to learning.

I don't see very many electronic devices.  Sure you see the occasional student trying to sneak a peak at those missed texts, but for the most part they are off and put away.  It's so refreshing to not see a student glued to their cell phone.  It's also nice to not hear a student blast their music while they are walking down the hallway.  I get bombarded enough with the yelling and adding thumping rap "music" to the mix makes me want to climb the walls.  Parents are also asking the office to hold on to cell phones for a few days so the message really sinks in with their children.  Parental support finally!

Kids are running to class.  They don't want to be late anymore which is a huge change from last year.  The tardy sweeps are working because students' don't have any place to hide anymore.  I guess they could hide in the bathroom, but if you've ever seen a high school bathroom, you would choose that as a last resort.  Just walking by them makes me gag.  Kids don't want an afternoon detention because it means they have to miss the bus or sit around and wait to go home.  (School gets out at 1:30, buses leave at 1:50 and detention doesn't start till 2:00 and ends at 3:00.)  If they miss detention, it's an automatic ABS.

Hopefully these changes will stay with us throughout the year and the number of discipline issues will go down and real teaching and learning can happen. 

Tie Your Tubes

I will NEVER understand why some people who have children constantly complain about being a mom and how hard it is.  I especially hate it when women who choose to stay at home complain about being a mom.  Can we say WTF?  This burns me to no end.  If you hate staying at home with your child, then get a freaking job!  Put them in daycare.  They would be much better off since you hate spending so much time with them in the first place.  If you are counting down the minutes to nap time/bed time, then you either need to A) put your kids up for adoption, B) run to the nearest doctor and have them write a prescription for you so you can just go through the motions without feeling anything or C) get yourself a job and put your kids in daycare.  If you hate parenting so much then I suggest you go with option A or B.

I hate when people constantly complain about being a parent.  I'm not talking about the occasional rant about how you have to fight with your kids to eat their veggies, or thanking God that it's bedtime because it has been a rough day.  I'm talking about people who throw parties when their child is sleeping or go to stay the night at grandma's house on a daily basis.  I understand that parenting is hard.  I have those days too.  There is no instruction manual on how to prevent a tantrum because you didn't put in the right hair bow, or you didn't let little girl flush the toilet and say bye bye to the pee pee.  But people, what the hell did you expect?  It's not always ponies and ice cream.  Didn't your mother wish upon you all the terror that you brought to her?  I know my mom did.  She still tells stories about how I ran rampant through her house and destroyed things Tasmanian devil style.  She still insists that's the reason she waited 11 years before she had another baby because she needed that much time to recover from the damage done by hurricane Christy.  She almost made me think that I was going to birth the spawn of Satan because you know, that's how karma works.  (BTW, I ended up with two children that everyone is jealous of.)  My mom is still waiting for my children to start with the head spinning and pea soup projectile vomiting. 

So in order to save myself from the tireless ranting of "How I Hate My Children" I'm going to do some unfriending on Facebook and some unfollowing of a certain mommy blogger.

8 is Great!

Oh bud bud!  You are 8 months old now.  I thought time went by quickly when we only had Kaitlyn, now I feel like time is stepping it up a notch.  I really want it to slow down a little bit because before I know it you will be off to college leaving me to clean your messy room while sobbing uncontrollably.  Not that I know anyone who did that, ahem Sean.

You are a man on a mission.  You are army crawling all over the place like nobodies business.  You can now pull yourself on the step from the playroom and crawl up into the living room.  You can also pull yourself up on the step to the kitchen and crawl in there too.  (You caught me off guard the other day when you did that BTW.) 

You hate being still, therefore the jumperoo is the devil and you do the splits when I try to put you in it.  You will only sit in your high chair if you are eating or drinking.  You want to be on the move 24/7 which means a lot of flopping, flipping and turning in your crib. 

You can now put yourself in a sitting position.  Sometimes you needs help and use a toy to help push yourself up, but you get it on your own most of the time. 

You are waving hi and bye now which is SUPER cute.  I love it.  You also mimic our pitch of saying hello and it sounds like you are also saying hello when you wave.  You are amazed that your hands can perform this function and so you wave often. 

You can also clap.  You say ayayay when you clap.  Super cute as well.  I love to clap and see you mimic me so we do this a lot too.

You scream and stick out your tongue when I pick you up from daycare you are so excited to see me.  You crawl so fast and knock down all the other babies and crawl over them to get to me.  As soon as I pick you up you wave bye bye to everyone in the room and then plant a wet, sloppy kiss on me.  (It's really more like you bite my chin but I will call it a kiss.)  This truly makes my day and all stress leaves me when I see how excited you get when I walk in the room. 

You are an eating machine!  You feed yourself cheerios and puffs.  I put them on your high chair tray and then you slap your little hand on top of one and then put it in your mouth.  Sometimes when you are patient, you will use your little pincer grasp to pick them up.  You also love teething biscuits, Earth's Best is your favorite brand.  You can hold your own bottle which is convenient when I need to do the dishes and you are screaming at me telling me you want milk.  You can also drink from a sippy cup and love to chug down some water. 

You are not signing yet, but you understand when I sign to you.  When I sign eat or milk, you get really excited and kick your feet.  I'm sure you'll start signing soon and boy will that open up a whole new world.

You are learning so much and I am still amazed at how much you are like a sponge soaking up knowledge.  You are my sunshine.  You make me happy.  I love you with all my heart.