Mommy dearest or mommy-rella?

Warning: Not your normal post of a gushing parent about their wonderful children. Children don't always 'feel' like a blessing. Sometimes, they are just a pain in the arse.


Sometimes I think that my kids think that I am mommy dearest...or that's the way they treat me sometimes. I admit, that I am fairly strict with my kids. I think that you have to be. Give them an inch and they will take a mile as the saying goes. But it is tiresome...gruelling even. I don't like repeating myself. I don't like yelling at my kids any more than they like being yelled at. So why don't they listen? Why don't they obey?

Most people will just say that they are just being kids but I have a responsibility as a parent to bring my children up to be good adults (there are too few of them in the world as it is). Yes, you have to love and nurture them, but our job is also to teach them. And lets face it, undisciplined, selfish, lazy, narcissistic children become undisciplined, selfish, lazy, narcissistic adults (there are too many of them in the world as it is).

All I ever get is mommy, I'm hungry, make me food. Mommy wash these clothes. Mommy fix this toy. Mommy mend these clothes. Mommy this and mommy that. I think I find myself more of a mommy-rella. I spend day and night cooking, doing the dishes, washing the clothes. I know that most children aren't really thankful until they grow up and have their own kids but is a little love and respect so much to ask? (Don't answer that).

I don't think that we demand that much from our children. Play with a toy, put it away. Eat politely. Don't fight with each other. Use the potty when they need to. It's not like we demand them to keep at spotless house (anyone who has been to our house knows that). We don't demand that they have perfect manners. We don't think children should be seen and not heard (although, some days... a girl can dream).

I think I am just tired of being the responsible parent sometimes. A little tired of the "long suffering." Tired of being treated like mommy dearest for trying to be a good parent.

Hmmm, maybe I am just tired...time to go to bed.


For those who don't know what "mommy dearest" is, it's a reference to an old movie from the early 80's.

Our Anniversary

On Saturday, we celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary. We have actually been together for...let's see, 19 years! Wow, is that right? Unfortunately, we have been pretty busy lately, so we did not really have time to make any grand plans. We actually did have some small plans but it didn't quite work out. Anyway, we decided to take the kids up to the mountains for a little nature hike with us. We went to the San Gorgonio wilderness area. The kids really enjoyed themselves. The girls went around collecting little souvenirs to bring back with them. Caitlyn collected a big pile of sticks. Emily collected some pine cones. They were such little troopers going up some of the really steep hills...although, personally, I was a little sore the next day (I can't believe how out of shape I am).

We stopped part way to enjoy some refreshments and snacks and they were ready to go again.

We had hoped to take the girls hiking and camping a lot so that we could develop within them the love of the outdoors that we have but it has not quite worked out so well. We took Emily up to the Mammoth area when she was young for her first camping trip but got hit with very cold weather and kind of a freak snow storm (it was not the time of year yet for snow). We ended up staying at a motel and having to leave early. We came back to a heat wave in Riverside.

When I was pregnant with Caitlyn, we made it up to June Lake in the winter once. But we stayed in a cabin. I don't mind roughing it but I'm not sleeping on the hard ground while pregnant. It's hard enough to sleep on a soft bed when you are pregnant. We pulled Emily in a little sled we got her, but she refused to have fun. In fact she was determined not to be happy for some reason. But we were video taping her and caught her smiling at one point.

After that, Caitlyn came and we were not ready to take an infant up to the mountains to rough it in a tent. So we waited again. I think that by the time we thought Caitlyn was ready to go camping, the price of gas hit the roof and kept going up and we could barely afford to go visit family.

So Caitlyn has never camped out before and Emily has only camped out once in our backyard. So we have been afraid that they are going to be too "soft" and won't enjoy the mountains as we do, but the few times we have taken them out to go hiking or on little nature walks like this one, they have always done extremely well, so we are very pleased. We have a couple of little mountain climbers in the making...the little princesses that they are!When the sun goes down in the mountains, the temperature drops pretty rapidly, so we retreated down the mountain for some dinner. On our way home, we took the girls for a walk around the grounds at the Redlands Temple. Thankfully, the protesters were not out that night and they had already set up the nativity display.

We had such a great time. Emily could not stop talking about how fun it was for days. So I think that now that the price of gas has come down a bit, we will try to hopefully make it back up a few more times while we can.

Who knows, maybe we will actually make it out for a real camping trip this next year when the weather is right!

Christian's Birthday

Christian's birthday was yesterday but since Sunday's are pretty busy for us, we celebrated on Saturday. Our best friend, Marian came over and brought steaks to bbq. Christian's Dad came up from San Diego to join the party as well.

The girls worked on decorating a little gift for their dad. Emily drew pictures on the present and Caitlyn worked on the card. Caitlyn just started learning to write her name. And the girls were so proud and excited to give their gift to their dad.


We had a nice lunch and gorged ourselves on way too much chips and guacamole. Then we did presents. Christian got a selection of books and clothes and a really expensive piece of burlap!

We finished off with some birthday cake. Nothing fancy this year, just a plain chocolate cake.

Halloween

Halloween came and went. It was a bit anti-climatic after all the pre-Halloween festivities. I think Christian and I were done with Halloween before it got here.

Caitlyn and I decided to bake some snickerdoodles for a Halloween treat. I guess it's not really a Halloween cookie, but they taste so much better than the bland little rolled out cookies you cut out and decorate into Halloween shapes (and a lot less work).

Caitlyn helped pour some of the ingredients in the bowl and then she covered the balls of dough with the cinnamon mixture.


Then it was time for the endless minutes in the oven. Here is Caitlyn sitting back and admiring our work.

After that is the very best part of baking cookies....

eating them, fresh and warm from the oven!

We were supposed to go to another party that night but Christian couldn't make it back very early from work that day and we still wanted to let the girls go to a few doors to go trick-or-treating. We decided to take the girls to a nicer neighborhood and stop by a friend's house to say hello before heading over to the party but the girls were having so much fun, we never made it to the party!

Date Night

No, not for me and Christian but for Emily and her Daddy. Last night, the Riverside Children's Theater was putting on The Jungle Book at UCR and Christian and I decided to go see Kristina Jorgenson playing the mother wolf while the girls stayed back to play with Sophie. It sounded like a good idea anyway (any idea to get away from the kids for a little while IS usually a good idea).

So, arrangements were made, a quick dinner prepared. Caitlyn took a nap. I cleaned myself up and put on some clean clothes. The girls sat down for dinner but as Caitlyn approached her seat, she gripped her stomach and said that she didn't feel good (which was weird since she was just as right as rain before that). Then she quickly put her hand to her mouth and I grabbed for a bowl and half her lunch came back out (incidentally, she chews her spaghetti a LOT better than her sister...but that's another story). Her whole body was shaking from the sickness or from the effort of trying NOT to lose her lunch. But soon she was done. I had her lay down while I talked to her dad at work to make new plans. Anyway, the long and the short of it is that Emily got to go in my place and I stayed home to nurse my sick baby who was already feeling pretty damned good by the time Christian came back to pick up Emily.

We had actually considered taking the girls to the play originally but had decided that Caitlyn was still too young. Plus the previous play we had attended at Ramona High, the sound was so bad during parts of it, that we had a hard time ourselves trying to keep up with the story. So we decided that the kids could wait and we would investigate to make sure that the production value was better at the new venue (Plus Kristi volunteered Todd to watch the girls and who am I to say "no" to that?).

Anyway, I tried to explain to Emily the best I could about what she was going to go to. Emily was positively beaming as dad came to pick her up, giving mom and sister hugs as she left. I don't know if she was more excited for the play or just for a night out with dad.


p.s. I stayed home and folded laundry and watched movies with Caitlyn all night. She ate her dinner shortly after Emily left and has not showed signs of any sickness since. What was up with that? ...the little stinker.

Trunk-or-Treat

So I was playing with the night mode on my little digital one shot camera (which I have not used once since Christian got me this camera some 6 years ago). I took this picture of our pumpkins in front of our house.

It was a bit blurry. I obviously need a tri-pod. Which I have, but am always too lazy to pull out (especially for frivolous little shots like these). But I can see some potential for it's use.

Last night, we took the girls to the trunk-or-treat over at our church. It was kind of a small event (at least compared to the big stake ones we've had in the past. And some people put quite a bit of work in decorating their trunk for the occasion. The girls had a lot of fun though. They don't ask for much. They got to put on their costumes, see some of their friends, and got more candy to boot. Mommy and daddy are a little less enthusiastic about that part but it's all part of the fun of Halloween I guess. We'll thin out their Halloween booty later....shhhh.
Here's another night shot of the girls playing a bean bag toss game. They got four bean bags that they threw into the eyes, nose, or mouth of this scary clown face.

Again, a little blurry but definitely has some potential. I'll have to give this a little more thought next time and get my lazy butt up to pull out the tripod.

But if you can control the subject (which you have to admit is impossible when it is little children), you can get some neat action affects like you see in the last image of Cailtyn below.


The youth put on this spook alley inside the building and we were not going to take our girls in there but got pressured inside (I blame Jenny who said that she was even taking baby Emily in...I'm ratting her out to her mom right now). Anyway, the guys said that they would do a light "spook" for the little ones. But it was dark and just the costumes and props were too much for most of them. Caitlyn and I were the first to go in, followed by Josh Wilkes. I thought the rest of them were following behind us but apparently, big and little Emily plus Sophie were not going to have anything to do with it and chickened out before going in (unbeknowst to us). Caitlyn did really well until about the 2nd turn in the maze and decided that it wasn't such a good idea when it came to the end and we were supposed to crawl through this foggy tunnel to get out. They had to let us go around and she was shaking a little by the end of it. Josh was a little warry but went through the tunnel by himself (well, I think one of the guys in there helped him through! Way to go Josh!

I felt really bad about taking Caitlyn in afterwards. But she is such a little trooper. We left afterwards and she recovered and started comparing treats with her sister on the way home.I don't think I did any lasting damage by taking her into the spook alley. She didn't even wake up that night with nightmares or anything...or did I?

FHE - Pumpkin Carving

Last night, the Wilkes came over and we carved pumpkins with the kids for Halloween. We did it together last year too and the kids had so much fun. Emily can carve a pumpkin almost entirely by herself. Caitlyn didn't get to do much last year since she was still pretty small, but she got to help out a little this year.


Here is the result of everybody's hard work...
Afterwards, we had some cupcakes while we sat back and admired our handiwork.


Now there's pumpkins seeds roasting in the oven!