The Fourth Child

 

   If you are a parent of more than one child, you might have noticed that your parenting style relaxes with each child.  For those of you that know me well, you know that my parenting style was a little lax to begin with, so you can only imagine what I am like with Gretchen. 

   With Emma, she didn’t receive a single bite of solid food (that I know of) until she was 5 months old.  Then she was allowed to have cereal made with formula.  Gradually, over the course of a few weeks, vegetables and fruits were added – one at a time.  All the vegetables had to be tried before fruits so that she wouldn’t get hooked on sweet things.  After all possible food allergies had been ruled out (at about 9 months or so) she was allowed to get little bites of real food every now and then.

   Gretchen was 6 months old (new APA guidelines) when she got solids, but it was only about a week before we were feeding her off our plates.

  Now I am at that point that if it will keep her happy and QUIET for a couple of minutes, she gets it….

  Yep, she’s got an Oreo.  They’re her favorite.  I can give her an Oreo and she is quietly concentrating on her business for a good 10-15 minutes.  Of course, there are consequences.

   I don’t mind the mess…because sometimes she works so hard on that cookie….

    

…and I get an extra few minutes of peace!

What I Did Over Summer Vacation

(or, Why I can’t wait for the kids to go back to school)

  I will preface this post by saying that I used to be a really light sleeper.  The least little noise would have me awake for hours.  Now I can apparently sleep through a nuclear holocaust.  I don’t know if it is my age, my medications, or just pure fatigue from having 4 kids…Jason thinks the kids know what they are doing and go into Ninja mode when they see I am still asleep.

   I think I gave birth to Dennis the Menace, or maybe Phineas and Ferb.  (I even have a Candace to go along with those two!)  Yesterday morning I awoke to my kitchen with food all over the floor, and the freezer door wide open.  Odd, since we just installed a new, higher baby gate.  Given the fog that I generally wake up in, I just cleaned up the mess and fed the boys.  I observed later how they got in…(they thought I wasn’t paying attention.  Either that, or they just don’t care.) 

   Jake got a small stool from the garage, along with a couple of towels from the laundry pile.  He threw the towels over the gate and set the stool in front.  Then he got Grady and stood him on the stool and “helped” him over the gate, where he landed on the towels.  Grady then got one of the chairs and pushed it so that it was facing the gate.  Jake could now easily climb in and out of the kitchen.

I don’t know what shocks me more – Jake using Grady as his accomplice, or Jake being the mastermind (he’s supposed to be “mentally challenged”, right?) 

    Later that morning, I had to put them in the tub.  I went back to my room to get some laundry together and get dressed, and when I returned there was 2 inches of water on the bathroom floor.  They had decided to stuff half a roll of toilet paper in the toilet, and flush it.  When the toilet wouldn’t eat all the paper, they kept trying…at least they apologized profusely for that  stunt.

  As I was cleaning up that mess, and then trying to get syrup off the living room floor (don’t ask) They once again got into the kitchen and into the locked pantry and brought a snack into the living room….

  It used to be a bag of Andes candies mint chocolate chips I had used to make fudge awhile back.  Now it was a Mo-Mo gravel pit/feed trough.

   All of that – before noon.  And all of this really isn’t out of the ordinary.  A couple of weeks ago my psychotherapist remarked that she felt sorry for me, and she didn’t know how I did it.  That is when you know things are bad – your shrink feels sorry for you.

   Those of you that know me well know that we have tried many forms of discipline without success.  Time out, spankings, reward systems, taking away favorite toys, verbal reasoning, threats….you name it.  My new trick is redirection.  When the boys get to be too much and I can’t handle it anymore, I put them somewhere they (usually) can only get into a minimum amount of trouble…..

  I bet I have the cleanest kids boys in town!