Tired Mama.com

More rules

At six-thirty this morning my younger daughter marched into the kitchen and announced to me that her older brother was out shoveling the snow off the driveway in his pajamas.

Youngest daughter had gotten a lecture from me this past summer for going out to play one morning in her nightgown and I guess she wanted to make sure the lectures were going to be fairly distributed.

'That's okay,' I replied. 'It's still dark out and he has a coat over top of them.'

'So, it's okay to be outside in your pajamas when it's dark out?' she asked.

'Yes,' I replied, 'but only in the mornings before seven and only when you're working and have a coat on.'

'Oh,' she replied. She left the kitchen satisfied with my answer.

My baby is now almost ten years old, I wonder how much longer I have before she realizes that I'm just making this stuff up as I go along?

Ah well, at least the walkway is cleared.

Hockey Nights in Canada

Over the Christmas holidays Tired Papa and our son built themselves a hockey rink in our backyard.

It's nice. They built boards and put a heater in the pool house to work as a little warm change room and they even put up nets to stop all the pucks from breaking my kitchen windows.

My hubby and our boy go out there when it's dark and cold and they shovel, sweep and flood their rink.

The kids of the neighborhood and my younger children have been using the rink a lot. It's great exercise for everyone and they all have a great time outside.

Me? I've been making a lot of hot chocolate and popcorn this winter.

Do you know what I like most about the ice rink though?

I like looking out my kitchen window and watching my two boys working on the rink and then playing hockey together.

They're not just making an ice rink, they are creating memories. Memories of a father and son working together, creating something together. 

It's good.

Really, really good.

And all the dead grass I'm gonna have back there in the spring?

Totally worth it.

Facebook is good, bad and other.

My son wants to be on Facebook.

Sigh.

His school decided to have someone come in and talk to all the kids about being safe on Facebook and guess what? Now everyone in his grade wants to be on there. Most of these kids didn't even know it existed until the 'talk' and now it's the place to be.

I had always told my kids that they couldn't be on Facebook until they were thirteen but that's still ten months away for my son. 

I'm on Facebook. My fifteen year old daughter is on Facebook. When my son tells me EVERYONE he knows is on there he's not kidding. I've looked and most of his buddies really are on there.

I don't know what to do.

I do know enough about the privacy settings on FB to limit his activities. I suppose I could demand my son's password and go on there regularly to check on what he's up to.

My son is going to get on Facebook eventually. I'm afraid that he may go on there without my knowledge if I clamp down and so no to him now. But he still seems too young to be on there for my comfort. I'm afraid of who my son might meet on the internet and what he might learn.

But I also realize that my boy is smart and I also know that I have to trust him and let him grow too.

Blah.

I still don't know what I'm going to do. I'm really torn on this one.

Double blah.

Reality Check

Two days ago I was reminded that I can go from being a totally exasperated, snappy and impatient Mom to being a totally protective, paranoid and smothering Mom in less than a second. 

In the blink of an eye.

In the moment it takes for one's heart to skip a beat - to stop.

It happened when a Doctor said to me, 'I don't like the look of this and I think we should run a few more tests. I want you to take him over to the hospital. Now.'

Everyone is fine.

But ah, the guilt will live on for a while yet - a long while yet.

Sigh.

Learn from me

IF you happen to have a young child in the house and you HAPPEN to be in the bathroom standing at the sink doing their hair in the near future and IF you're over uh, thirty?

DO NOT put your hands on your child's shoulders and take your face and put it next to theirs and smile in the mirror at the two of you.

Because if you do, your skin will look OLD and WRINKLED and well just, AWFUL next to your child's gorgeous creamy even-toned plumped complexion.

Trust me on this one. Do not try this for yourself.

I'm still trying to recover.

No. Just no, okay?

I knew that parenting would be a challenge. I knew I would make mistakes.

What I didn't realize before I became a parent was how much negotiating I would have to do.

And I'm okay negotiating with my husband and for work.

It's the negotiating with my kids that is starting to drive me crazy.

There's the bedtime negotiating. That whine for just five more minutes.

There's the homework negotiating. The plea for putting it off for a while.

There's the 'who gets to sit in the front seat' fight that I seem to always be negotiating.

There's the ' yes, you HAVE to wear your winter coat to school' discussion I must negotiate EVERY flippin morning.

You know what? It is wearing me out.

All this negotiating, and the bickering that goes along with it, is driving me crazy.

I need a vacation. A looooong vacation.

Where should we go?