uh oh...looks like someone's got a case of the Mondays...

boom booms

"I think I heard a firework! Or maybe it was my bottom. Maybe I tooted."


I can't make this stuff up.


Picnic in the back yard, boom booms at Meridian Hill Park, sparklers to cap off the evening and five-year-old fart jokes. It doesn't get any better than this.

Happy Fourth!

the wrath of Khan

Sorry, trekkies, as much as I love me some Cappy Kirkie, that's not what this is about.

One step forward, two steps back.

This is how I felt last night when my daughter was crying hysterically about her shirt getting wet (?!) and me trying to get her to stop, shut up, calm down, anything but the horrible noise she was making. This was also after two other earlier in the day brat-moments: 1. our not getting cookies at Safeway (we picked them out, but they were never rung up, so no cookies in the bag when we got home) and 2. having to take a bath instead of a shower.

Sigh. I just need to walk away in these sorts of situations and not let myself get caught up in her five year-old over/emotion/reaction...but it ain't easy...and even when I KNOW this, it's not always easy to DO this.

I'm not proud of feeling this way, but sometimes it's a KKKHHHAAANNN moment...

heckle and jekyll

There was a turning point the other evening in my approach to disciplining my daughter. She had a meltdown as we were walking to the store, because I wanted to go one way and she wanted to go the other.

In the past I may have gotten angry and even yelled at her, depending on how frazzled I was at the moment. I may have even given in, even if it was the wrong way! But the other day I just wasn't having bad behavior from either of us. I took her arm and got her across the street safely and then I told her to stop carrying on and kept walking. She tried to maintain the tantrum for another block and a half, but I basically (pretended to) ignore her. Well before we reached our destination, Hyde was gone and Jekyll was back. The whole incident wasn't mentioned again until we got home (sometimes when I'm pissed I tend to harp on things), but when we did get home I told her calmly that if she ever pulled that sort of behavior again she would be punished.

"No T.V?"

O.K. Whatever works. Hopefully we won't have to test that out.

Sounds simple, I suppose, to the innocent bystander, but let me tell you, these emotional pitfalls can be one of the hardest parts of parenting for me. Especially dealing with feelings of anger. You know, all the human stuff.