Pick Your Battles

The joys of parenthood are too numerous to list.  As are the pains.  We love our children with everything in our souls, I believe that.  They can also drive us to drink, I'm pretty sure.

When you are about to be a new mommy or new daddy, whenever friends, family, co-workers or acquaintances find out your having a baby they offer you all sorts of advice.  Everyone has a story, and everyone knows better than you.

I smiled, and listened to everything everyone said.  Then promptly forgot it all.  The one piece of advice I never did forget, though, was "Pick Your Battles".

Pick your battles, huh.  OK, I can see the wisdom in that.  Sometimes it seems like parenting is a never-ending uphill battle, so that would make sense.  Let the kids think they've won every once in a while.

So, with that in mind, early on with my daughter, I decided to just let go of the wardrobe issue.

Remember when they are babies and you can dress them however you wanted.  How cute you think they look in the most adorable clothes you could find?  Yeah, then they turn 2/3 years old and want to pick out their own clothes for the day.  You gently steer them in another direction, because honestly everything in their drawers and dressers you picked out anyway.  Then they turn 4 or 5 and they want to pick out their own tops and bottoms at the store.  A little bit of negotiating goes along way to make sure they have at least matching pieces.

So now we are going to school and picking out our own outfits.  The day will come that those strong-willed little people will decide, "I WANT TO WEAR THIS AND ONLY THIS!".  On that morning, the best thing to do is just say OK and walk away.

Pick Your Battle moment.  Do you really want to argue at 7:00AM with a toddler.  Have you ever tried to argue with a child?  Doesn't go so well for me, at least.

So what if your 4 year old daughter goes to preschool with her party dress and beat up sneakers on?  And maybe at 7 she thinks it is really cool to wear purple leggings with a long sleeved Christmas shirt and her cousins gray boots.  In June.  No problem.   And when your son is 3 and has a favorite outfit, does it really matter that it is a green Jets tee with red shorts and camo socks?  No, it does not.  And when he is 5, running late for the bus in 1st grade, tell him to pull an outfit from his closet.  When he comes over with plaid shorts and a striped shirt, you just laugh and go with it.  Hey, it was the same color scheme, so it matched!

Think about it this way, he is probably the only one who can pull that look off!  LOL.

Wardrobe isn't the only Pick Your Battle issue we have in our household.  In case you have forgotten I have an 11 yo daughter now too.  We have lots of Pick Your Battle moments.  Every day.  How about you, anything you constantly argue about with your child?  Do you find moments that you just have to stop and laugh out loud for real, and just agree to disagree with them???

Our Summer Vacay is Over!

Back to school was yesterday!  Oh my, our 4 weeks off was fun-filled and now it's over.
I have a 6th grader and a 1st grader.  And both of them went to new schools, as well.
If you remember, we moved a few months ago, so even though they were able to finish out the school year by me driving to and from school each day, since our address changed that meant a new elementary school for my son.  My daughter would be going to middle school so that actually did not change.  Whichever address we were at, it would have been the same school.

Last month I took my daughter to orientation at her middle school. She was very excited, but it was still next school year.  She hadn't finished 5th grade yet, so the reality didn't exist.  Then the day before school was to start, it was open house.  This is where she would get her schedule, agenda, gym uniform and meet her teachers.  It was mass chaos and that is when I realized she was super nervous. She made me walk her hallway at least a dozen times.  We practiced from where the bus would drop her off, find the 6th grade hallway, went to each classroom, to the gym, to her elective class and to the cafeteria.  She practiced with her lock and asked where her locker might be.  She got to see a couple of friends, and saw who would be in her classes.

We got home and put all her supplies together and labeled everything.  She tried on the gym uniform and picked out her outfit.  We distracted her a little with some Sparklers leftover from the holiday weekend and then it was time for bed.  She asked me if we could have coffee in the morning together before school.  I was about to say, 'What?', when she clarified she meant could she have hot chocolate when I had coffee.  Whew, lets not rush time anymore that we have to, you know!  I told her she'd have to wake up at about six in the morning.  She was OK with that, to which I snorted because this little lady would sleep all day if you let her.  I didn't hold my breath, but everyone took showers and off to bed it was.

My alarm goes off at 6am, I hit the snooze one time.  I walk into her room to see if she still wants to wake up this early, thinking she is just gonna roll over.  Um, hello...she wasn't even in her room.  Me, still being disoriented was so confused, I check her bathroom, nope not in there.  I hear something downstairs.  I go down there and the girl is dressed and making her breakfast.  The Keurig is on and she is pulling out mugs.  What???  If I wasn't so out of it I am sure I would have laughed.  But there she was, all excited and ready to go.  I told her that I had to go get cleaned up and I'd be right down.

We drank our drinks, her dad came downstairs to see her off before he went to work.  My son came down just a little before she and I needed to head out the door for the new bus stop.  Got him dressed and out the door we all went.  Our bus stop is not down the block where we can walk to or see from our front door, I have to drive the kids down the main road of our development just about the 3/10ths of a mile allowed by transportation.  Wouldn't you know it, we get there and she gets out of the car, finds a new friend to talk to and doesn't even look back.  Its a good thing my son came with me or I'd have been lonely.  The bus pulls up and I did get a little wave, so that was nice.  Bye for now my little girl.

Next up is my little man.  We get back to the house and I give him his breakfast and drink.  We have a little more time to pass, I let him watch some TV, but  he was excited to go and kept asking when we leave.  Finally it was time to get his backpack on and drive back to the bus stop.  This time we both got out of the car and talked with another parent and child that was already there.  His bus comes, and now I have no kids for the rest of the day.  Am I sad, or am I speeding home to have a mimosa???  Just kidding, I went to a friend's house and we took her little kids to the pool.

I get home in the afternoon in time to go with my father in law to the bus stop for my daughter.  He needs to know where the stops are for the days that I work.  Here she comes, whoo hoo, I am so excited to see her I give her a big hug and ask how her day was.  Her response, 'Eh'.  After all that, all I get is a measly 'eh, its OK'.  I ask her if it was better than she thought, was she nervous for nothing?  She just said the classes seem shorter than she thought, but it was kind of a blur because it was the first day.  She did have a little homework though.  She told me to ask her again in a couple of weeks.  Oh, OK, sure.  No big deal, I guess.

We decide that we can leave her home for the little bit that we will be at the bus stop for her brother, so we head out again to pick him up.  I see his bus pulling up to the stop, so I get out to greet him.  This is the first time he is on a bus by himself.  He used to have his sister with him.  So, there is all the kids from the neighborhood, but where is my son?  I look questioningly at the bus driver and she looks in her rear view mirror.  Then I notice him waving at me through the window and he gets up.  As he is stepping down off he has a big smile on his face and he says, 'I forgot this was my stop!', he laughs and gives me a huge hug.  That is my boy, in a nutshell.  It takes him about 3 seconds to tell me about his day and as soon as we get home he asks his sister how her school day was.

Everything was going to be fine.  She was going to adjust to middle school just fine, and he is going to do great in a school all by himself.  At the end of the day if I can say that with confidence, that is all that matters.  Our normal after-school chaos resumes and as I fill-out and sign all the paperwork they both brought home, I smile to myself and think we always worry for nothing, it seems.  

I am proud to say the kids had an amazing track-out and were ready to go back to school.  They had play dates galore, I spoiled my daughter for her birthday, she also went to an away camp so my son got some one on one time with his parents for the first time ever.  We took them to the movies and out to eat a bunch of times.  I think some happy memories were made this summer break 2015.  We aim to get through first semester and do it all again during fall break in September...