Tracy's Tips for the Day

These are some parenting rules I came up that help me survive the daycare I call my life. The sources are varied. You may totally disagree with this list, and think I'm nuts. That's alright by me ;). I am kinda nuts some days.

1) Tell your kids how great/sweet/wonderful they are, and how much you love them. Not once a day, but 5-15 times a day. It's not overkill. They'll start recriprocating and you will never, ever get tired of hearing "I love you mommy... I love you SO much... I love you to OUTER SPACE" come out of their mouth. Gosh, I am sniffling just typing that particular quote up.

...then another cool thing happens, they start loving on each other. Hearing Emily imitate us by telling Jude how cute and sweet he is warms my heart. She also likes this line that we say a lot- "look at those sweet curls, they kill me! I can hardly TAKE him!" It's like a dang hippie

 commune around this place sometimes! (sometimes more like the funny farm and an episode of "Roseanne," but that's another posting).

2) You have to get over the following or you'll go nuts (and it's hard... very very hard to do so):

• The play-do colors remaining separate. They get mushed together and turn into one browinsh lump. It's OK. It really is. It took me a while to figure out, but the kids really don't care about the pretty colors as much as you do. Same thing with the finger paints. My kids mixed the play-doh within 7 seconds of opening it. We were left with a nice brown mix. Yep, you know what is coming next. We basically made roaches and dog poop out of it. {snicker} As Jesse pointed out "what do kids all across America make with play-doh? Genitalia. Ours aren't there just yet." (You KNOW you did this too!) I would like to write that we stopped them from making the roaches and dog poop, and explained the inappropriateness of the situation, but that would be a big fat lie. Sigh.
• Fear of public restrooms. They are gross. Your kids WILL put their hands all over the toilet. They won't want your help getting onto the seat. You won't have time or ability to doctor up the toilet each time they have to go. Sometimes you are lucky just to get pee half in the toilet/half on the floor around the toilet. You have to let them do it. Just try to wash up afterwards and pray their hands don't go in their mouth in the meantime.

3) Everything - floors, clothes, faces, etc. is washable. Accept this motto. Embrace it. If it isn't washable, you need to hide it until later (like 18 years later). I have come to realize in recent months that I am quite the opposite of a germ-a-phobe. I read on another mommy's blog that she used Clorox wipes on toys after playdates. Say what? I have never wiped down a toy in my life! I didn't know you were supposed to do that (maybe this should be added to my list of parenting failures, LOL)!! I told Jesse this and he said "yeah... don't see us doing that anytime soon. If there is a booger bigger than my pinkie on a toy - I may flick it off..." 

(Let me just insert a quick prayer and THANK YOU to the big guy for putting Maria's cleaning service in my life twice a month). Note to self: Buy Clorox wipes.

4) There is a fine line between letting them be kids and being obnoxious. Mine cross it a lot. But try to let them get as near it as possible. Let them sing a song (loudly) at the dinner table in the Olive Garden. Other diners will think it is cute. BUT, you probably need to stop them after one or two songs. Its so not cute after that.

5) Best parenting advice my mom gave me- choose your battles. The day I made a conscious decision that I didn't care what Emily wore to school and that she could dress like a clown (and she DOES dress like a clown) if she wanted, was the day my morning stress level (its HARD getting 5 people ready in the morning!) got cut in half.

6) Pottytraining- only THEY decide when they are ready. I am proud to say I am the mother of a newly pottytrained 2.5 year old. And she did it herself with minimal intervention/tricks/guises from me! More on that later because we all know I can't resist a good opportunity to elaborate on the subject of poo (I surprise myself with my classiness...really I d0... gee I hope a bunch of my colleagues come across this posting and read what the HR Manager blogs about in her spare time... that would be awesome. For some reason I just can't stop myself from sharing TMI... that part of my brain is missing the wiring/filter that is supposed to exist).

Speaking of potty habbits-here's a brief conversation from last night- let me set up the scene. I had just gotten four kids out of the bathtub, Presley and Kaylee were doing their nightly series of naked streaks down the hall, laughing hysterically while dodging Jesse's attempts to wrap them in towels (they are slippery!). Emily was on the potty and I was trying to get toothpaste on all the toothbrushes while keeping one eye on Jude. You can see from the following that I was not successful in this.

Emily "EWWW. Jude is eating pee."

Me- "What? What are you talking about? You can't eat pee."

Well, apparently you CAN eat pee, if you STICK YOUR TOOTHBRUSH UNDER A PEE STREAM IN THE TOILET AND THEN STICK IT IN YOUR MOUTH. I want to cry just thinking about it. And he just sat there with those luminous, insanely BLUE eyes sucking loudly on his toothbrush staring at me with a little half smile on his sweet, dimpled little face.

Needless to say, Emily got a lecture about NOT letting Jude anywhere near the toilet.

7) I think its somewhat natural for kids to talk about boobs all the time (I hope?). I was at a party this weekend and this little cutie patootie kept poking me there. Her mom saw it and just rolled her eyes as she told her to stop. According to the mom "she is obsessed with them! She wears my bras and high heels all the time... it's quite disturbing." (Even more disturbing if you could picture this mom's bras- I'm guessing somewhere in the range of a double EE... but I digress.

8) Computers + Ambien + Facebook = bad news. Oh wait, that's not a parenting rule... but aLIFE RULE I wish someone had told me about before I went about posting a bunch of silly stuff on the site one night when in an Ambien induced stupor. Thankfully the posts were nothing offensive or stupid... just silly. That stuff makes me llllooooopppyyyy if I stay up too long after taking it. Note to self. PUT the laptop AWAY and GET OFF THE INTERNET within 10 minutes of taking Ambien!

Just some things I have discovered on this journey. Gosh I love this sweet little family of mine.So00000 much. SO MUCH TO OUTERSPACE. 

Some recent pix (the second is of Presley playing hide n seek with me):