Parenting is Hard and Makes No Sense

We all know this right?

Let me tell you about our most recent example of how this played out at our house...

Many of our friends and family may know that Tessa has always been quite the picky dresser. She has also been a bit of a "spirited" child. (I just love that term - it sounds so fun! It's not so much...most of the time.)

A little background...

From the time she was 2 until about 2 months ago, Tessa has worn jeans by choice approximately zero times. Uncomfortable, and probably more importantly in her mind, unstylish, Tessa would NOT wear them for anything. No bribe would work. Tears, wailing, and gnashing of teeth ensued any time the topic was broached. It quickly became a battle just not worth fighting.

On another note, occasionally, spirited little Tessa would have a particularly chatty day at Pre-K or Kindergarden. Nothing serious, but enough for the teacher to bring it up at pick-up time or move down a color on the color chart. This never bothered Tessa and didn't really do much to deter her the next day.

Enter the infamous "Jean Punishment." This was a brilliant idea that worked almost without fail. In the course of our 10 years of parenting, we have tried countless ways to get our kids motivated to do what we want - sticker charts, chore charts, work punishments, time-outs - you name it we tried it. This was the simplest and the one with the most success. If behavior was an issue at school, Tessa wore jeans the next day at school. Every time and it worked. The following days were so much better!

Now, you may ask how we got her to actually put the jeans on since they were so terrible. I have no idea. It defies logic. I have no idea why, when it was a punishment, she would willingly put them on without an argument, a tear or even an ounce of hesitation. But, thankfully, she did. And, it worked. Her kindergarden teacher kind of thought we had achieved expert parenting status. In reality? We were just lucky. Something worked and it stuck. For a while anyway and then it stopped working and we started trying new things all over again.

Anyway, that was all just backstory to what happened tonight. And, why parenting is just such a wild card and just hard.

About 2 months ago, Tessa decided jeans were not so bad. Little by little, she sweet talked her dad into a handful of pairs. On our last trip to Ohio, she only packed jeans. That's it.

And, now tonight, we had tears about jeans again. She has no clean jeans for school tomorrow. The horror. How ironic right? My how things have changed! (And, now I'm getting flashes of what is in store during our junior high and high school days.)

Interestingly enough, she has four pair of dirty jeans on her bedroom floor. I did laundry today. I tried to logically explain to her, through her tears, that if she had simply put those jeans down the laundry chute, they would have magically been clean by tomorrow morning. Somehow, that logic didn't seem to help and just made the tears fall faster and louder.

Parenting is hard. Consistency is key until it doesn't work anymore. Kids love things until they hate them and vice versa. Logic is hard to communicate and is mostly lost on them. So is irony. (Sarcasm may fall in that category for some families, but not ours. It's so common in our house that they picked up on that real quick.)

All we can do is keep trying until something sticks and try again when that doesn't work anymore either. And, we have to hope that our unconditional love sticks most of all. Because even though they're not easy to figure out and they may do things that drive us batty, we wouldn't have it any other way.

Surprise! It's Race Week!

{I wrote this post forever ago and forgot to take it out of "draft" mode after the race. SPOILER ALERT: I didn't get a PR and neither did mom. There is always next year...}

Back in May, I received a Facebook message from a friend in Newark to contact one of my mom's running buddies, Kathy. I texted her right away and here's what she had for me...

Perhaps I said yes too soon. Here is what followed. 

Yes. It is fast. In fact, it is a 7:44:30 per mile pace. I'm not sure I had clocked a mile under 8 since high school. But, I was up for the challenge as I've never really done any training for a 5K and I wanted to see what I could do. 

At the beginning of June, I started working on a training plan I found online. I don't remember where I found it and it doesn't really matter anyway since I didn't really follow it. 

What I did do was run faster. 

To run faster... you have to run faster.

Every time I went out, I tried to stay under 9 minutes. Once a week, I would run two miles relatively fast (8:45/8:30 ish) and then run a progressively faster mile. Last week, I hit 7:16 on my third mile and was thrilled! 

Other than that, I didn't do too much. I just ran and ran faster. 

This week, I sent Kathy a text asking how mom was feeling and if she was thinking of doing anything better than 24:00. They agreed that much into the 23's wasn't super doable which made me feel a little better. I was glad to hear she wasn't thinking totally crazy thoughts.  I was heavily doubting my ability to string two miles under 8 together. Although, I know she can do it. She's a beast. :) She ran a 7:15 the day after I ran my 7:16. 

My guess is we will push each other through it on Saturday. And then, she will be beat me. 

By the time you all read this, we'll know the results. It's been fun training for a short race and learning to run faster and not longer. I think it will only help in my half training for the fall. If for no other reason, now I know I can run faster. Plus, I've had the pre-race butterflies just like every week but with less stress on my body.

Most importantly, it has motivated me to run this summer. I usually take the summer off or at least slack off. Mom has always set such good examples for me in so many areas of my life. This is no exception. 

If my mama can do it, so can I. :)

Colorado! Photos!

We took the kids out for another trip to Colorado to visit cousins. Tom and the boys were going fishing anyway, so I decided, why not? And, so we loaded everyone up onto a big airplane and went west.

By car, by bus, then plane, then car again... the kids loved it all.

This was my seat buddy. His attention span was very short on this trip! All in all, for a three year old traveling after his bedtime, he did great. 

After a late arrival, the boys left early in the AM to start their fishing expedition. The kids and girls hung out and played and talked. 

We all got brave and took all nine kids to the park. This is a pretty good feel for how we felt. Kids everywhere and this isn't everyone!

Josie seemed particularly old this trip!

Here's everyone! You can't seem them all but they're there! 

I took my three to Kohl's for a little wedding dress shopping. They were really, really well behaved! 

Jack showed off some of his wedding moves.

We walked to pick up Chinese food one night too. I would love to be that close to restaurants!

Sunday morning, we loaded up the troops and went into the mountains to meet the boys at a mountain home. The kids did great and the views were spectacular! 

Right about the time this photo was taken, my phone received a bizarre tornado warning. It was bizarre because we were about 10 miles away from cell service. The weather did seem ominous, but certainly not tornado weather. 

While these kids were playing whiffle ball, I went inside to go to the bathroom. 

I went to flip the switch and... uh oh... no power! Didn't stop the kids from playing! (It did rain a lot and it turned out a tornado touched down about 10 miles from where we were. We were lucky to only lose power!) 

Later in the evening, it cleared up and became a beautiful evening! I took the "good" camera and got some good shots of Tom and Joey fishing in the river onsite. No fish, but great pictures!

Just point and shoot. Right Joe?

Finally, it was time for the kiddos to hit the hay and the adults to hit the fire. 

Hilarity ensued and only we will know the truth about these photos. 

We played a quick game of twilight whiffleball. Katie or Jason hit it the furthest but I had two shots that nailed the pitcher directly. So, basically, I won. (It's my blog. I'll say what I want.)

Then, it got really dark and really pretty. 

The power came on around 1:30AM and we all got up and flushed toilets. (For you city dwellers, no electricity means no well pump means no water to flush toilets. At least three of us were in diapers.)

A trip home and more playing rounded out the fun-filled family weekend. Colorado - we'll be back!

Moment in Time...Captured

Every once in a while, I get in a panic and worry that I will forget all of the little things that happen in our daily lives as the kids grow up. That panic has set in recently, so here are the memories of this sunny, yet cool, day in May.

JACK

We had a Mother's Day event at Timber Run today. Toward the end of the afternoon, Jack climbed up on a stool, turned around and jumped off. This is not something he would usually do. Did he land on his feet? Nope. His knees? Nope. He landed smack on his forehead. Much crying and a cold compress later, all that remains is a big strawberry.

TESSA

At the same event, there was a word scramble filled with words used to describe mothers. Tom was helping Tessa and asked her what were some words she would use to describe me to see if any were obvious on the scramble. First word that came to mind? Bossy. Amazingly, not on the list. She thought for a while and then said "Well, she does a lot of laundry. Is that one of them?" Also, not on the list. Apparently, our last bout of putting away laundry may have been a bit tenuous.

JOSIE

As second grade comes to a close, Josie's spelling words are getting much more difficult. I am not kidding when I say that I struggle with spelling, and even pronouncing, some of them. In fact, I can't even define a handful of them. I'm glad she's being stretched but man, I'm thankful for spell check!

Last week's list:

incident
avarice
moderation
score
nimbly
poised
derisively
lea
jutting
indignant

This week's list:

dully 

glinting 

exhaustive

dabbed 

rubbish  

proprietor

pleasantries

acquiring

crockery 

briskly 

Random Thoughts & Photo Dump

Man, it's been a while. I blame the never ending winter. Who gets snow the week of Easter?!?! Especially, when Easter falls mid-April?!?!

Enough of that...

Random thoughts on this random Thursday...

The girls like stealing my phone and doctoring photos with A Beautiful Mess. They're pretty cute and sweet on their brother.

Jack is also a fan of stealing my phone. Usually for Subway Surfer but this time I got him to take a selfie.

Josie is such a reader just like I was. Now, I tend to get stuck playing mindless games on phone like 2048. Every once in a while, I force myself to read instead. I love curling up on our sectional in the hearth room and reading. Josie apparently does too.

She picked out a real winner at the library last week - an Italian Dictionary. 

I was in a goofy mood this morning on my way into work. I like those moods. They don't come around often and they don't tend to stick around either, especially on office days. I probably should have gone and done something creative but instead I sat at my desk and filled out condo questionnaires and other random paperwork.

We checked out an architectural salvage company this weekend. Wow was this place cool. Tons of neat stuff for a home. And, a Spiderman statue. Too bad it was sold.

I'm feeling very (very) iffy about the upcoming Indy Mini. I was sick last week with a cold and didn't run at all. Now, I can't keep up a good pace and everything hurts from my knees down. I haven't been very consistent with my mileage this cycle and I think it's catching up to me.

Also, I've given myself a pass on one part of my running goal this year. My thought was that if I hit under 1:50 in a half, I would train for another marathon. I decided this week that I may be sabotaging myself with hitting that time because I really don't want to train for another marathon. So, new goal... if I can hit a sub-1:50, I can quit running. (I'm in a "I hate running" season right now. It will pass.)

The "Marathon Man" we saw during the October race reached his goal of running the most marathons in one year. I can't remember how many but it was a lot. I'll bet his knees hurt worse than mine.

I'm signing Jack up for preschool which makes me tear up a bit. He saw the brochure and thought it was hilarious that Santa comes to preschool.

I decided on Friday that I wanted to make bows for the girls to match their soccer uniforms. I got this one done - beginner's luck because now I can't seem to make any more without really screwing it up.

We "planted" a "garden" this year. Use of the double quotes is needed because it was a little more like sticking seeds randomly into some dirt. Our plot is where an old, dead pine tree used to be. I used a yard rake to churn it up a bit and then let Tessa stick some seeds in haphazardly. I'm pretty sure you won't find those instructions on any gardening blog.

I want so badly to be the type of household that has a bountiful harvest every summer and fall - so many zucchini that you have to put it in everything. Well, we didn't even plant zucchini. We have lettuce, spinach, red peppers, jalepeno peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, basil, and spearmint along with some sunflowers and sweet peas for Tessa. My best guess? We'll scrounge up one or two cucumbers.

The 100 Acres at the IMA is really cool. Tom was a little less than impressed on Saturday when we took the kids out to enjoy the 70 degree day. But, I still say it's cool.

Promptly after "planting" a "garden," and frolicking around in the outdoors, it snowed.

We got a call on Saturday asking if we wanted tickets for all five of us to go to the Pacers game. In a suite. Uh... yes please! The kids were totally spoiled for their first professional sporting event! They loved it though.

We've done a lot of spring cleaning this spring, including the guest room and the garage. The garage could already use it again.

The kids are loving the ability to play outside. Everyday they beg. And, Josie finally got up the guts to take off the training wheels on her bike. Her favorite thing to do is ride around the loop in front of our house. I have a sneaking suspicion that Tessa won't be far behind.

Soccer's been a big hit this season too. Josie is figuring out to be a great defender. Tessa finally decided on her own that she wanted to play. Moms of younger kids - I learned an important lesson. It is best to wait until kids are willing to play on their own accord. Tessa's a real go-getter this year! Attacks the ball and wants to be in the action. Better than the field crying she did the last time she played.

I heard a really great speaker at MOPS this week on Discipline - Marianne Miller - website here. She made it sound so easy. I have really been trying hard to implement her strategies this week but find myself saying her big no-no's, like, "Stop crying" and "if you ______, I'll give you _______" and "you'd better do ________ or else _________." Baby steps right? Most importantly, I remember that she talked about how God made each of our children exactly the way they are for a reason. That helps when Jack is screaming and stomping because I won't let him eat his fourth piece of Easter candy. Or, when I start to win at Candy Land.

I just looked through an old photo album of me when I was a kid. I can't believe how much I see Josie and Jack in those pictures. Tessa? Not so much.

Every once in a while, these two get really photogenic.

Other times, I get this.

I forgot how much 3 year olds love egg hunts. He thought it was awesome.

Told you it was random. Until the next random update...