SavvySpoons

June 21, 2007 Savvy Spoonie 3 Comments

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde…

Have come home to roost inside my daughter.

Yes, the child who so lovingly embraced sisterhood, who loves to hold and sing to her brother, and is “so happy” to have him here, is at times replaced with a screaming, stomping, crying psychopath.

For example, “The one with the messy room”:
I asked Marlena to pick up her disaster of a bedroom, to put some toys away and throw out some trash. Basically clean it enough for me to vacuum and pack some of her stuff. All day yesterday she didn’t do it. Now, to be fair, she had friends over for a good portion of the day, during which I did not expect her to clean. However, the time before and the time after was intended as cleaning time. Instead, she spent the time in her room drawing line after wavy line in a notebook.
Sigh.
I came into her room with some boxes and packed up some toys and books around the mess. Then I told her to clean her room. When I came back in to check on her, she was once again drawing wavy lines in a notebook.
Sigh.
Last night I informed her that she needed to clean her room today. She went to bed with a massive crying screaming fit about how poorly she brushes her teeth and how she is going to start brushing them for six minutes every morning.
Sigh.
This morning she asked for TV with breakfast and I reminded her about the loss of TV caused by last night’s massive screaming fit. After breakfast I told her to clean her room. She whined about not wanting to. I explained that I had already spent an hour in there last night, and that now it is her turn. She started yelling.
Now here is the clincher, I am keeping Hannah and Simon overnight tonight for Ellen and Dan. It is not the type of overnight you can cancel. So while I would normally just say, you can’t have your overnight if your room isnt clean, I can’t.
So instead I tell her that I will clean her room by throwing everything on the floor into the garbage. She begins to scream.
Finally I tell her, I may not be able to cancel the overnight, but I can ground her and let her friends have a movie and such without her.
None of it had any effect on her. When I left her in her room she was screaming about a new deal, how she wasn’t going to clean her room, etc.
Ugh, Where did I get this explosive maniac?
Finally, after calling Lee in desperation and having his help climbing down off my ledge, I calmed her a little, gave her a CD to listen to, and told her there would be no further negotiations until the room was clean. THEN, and only then, would we talk.

Boy, there is not enough alcohol in good parenting.

holidays

June 19, 2007 Savvy Spoonie 3 Comments

We had a mellow Father’s Day weekend. We took Lee out for dinner on Saturday so we didn’t have to face the holiday rush with the little ones. We “went Outback” and had yummy beef cooked with garlic potatoes.
Mmmm….. good steak.

Then Marlena and I gave Lee his presents, which consisted of a DVD of pictures and movies set to music, a card, and for his geeky side, a locking carabiner. (I mean one with a combination, not one that locks into place.) We then took him to the Freehold mall for a massage and Apple store visit.

All in all it was a grand ole time.

We had Shane and Maggie come by on their way to Nashville, and Kate and her mother Betsy came over to see the baby and visit the beach with us. I was a little nervous about Oliver on the beach, but he was fine. He sat with me in the shade of the umbrella and nursed for most of the day, but rode happily in his sling when I walked in the water for a few minutes.

We are getting ready to move, soon we will be in a house that doesn’t make us angry.

Here is a wee video of Oliver checking out the camera, he is pretty sceptical about it.

Uncategorized

June 15, 2007 Savvy Spoonie 3 Comments

Power corrupts… absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Woman gets harassed and humiliated by airport personnel for use of a sippy cup.

Okay. What the hell are we becoming in this nation?
This poor woman was detained with her toddler for having and then spilling tap water from a sippy cup. She was harrassed and detained against her will, humiliated, and made to clean up the water, all because she said “tap water” instead of “nursery water” or “bottled water”.

WHAT THE HELL IS NURSERY WATER???!!! Has the transportation security administration transported us to a distant land when water takes on special characteristics if placed in a sippy cup from a nursery?

I can tell you this, I am tired of reading about people being humiliated and harassed by airport security personnel. I am tired of varying degrees of enforcement and the uncertainty of knowing what will or will not be allowed onto a plane each time you travel.

None of this actually protects us from terrorism, it simply allows petty ass-hats employed by TSA and airports to mistreat and abuse us.

If this ever happens to me, I am going to immediately ask for the names and badges of all involved and start talking lawyer. This crap should be illegal. If it were done in any other setting, it would be. You can’t even treat suspected shoplifters as badly.