The Lego Monster

My kids love Legos. Eva loves destroying the creations. I hate stepping on them. This is a picture of Michael with a Lego creation he made and the instruction booklet he made to go with it. I think I need to start keeping the instruction booklets for the Lego stuff (Atlantis, Star Wars, power miners, etc.) in a binder in page protectors or something.

How do you tame the Lego monster?

Bedwetting Over the Age of 5

I took Callie to the doctor for her "kindergarten" checkup and vaccines. The doctor wanted to know if she was fully potty-trained. I told him she still wets the bed some. I didn't express that it was a problem, but he suggested all kind of stuff, from bed alarms to medication.

The thing is, I know lots of people with kids who wet the bed. Some of these kids are approaching 10. I don't want to medicate her to dry up her bladder. She just sleeps heavy. I never had any problems with the boys, and I know everybody is different, so I'm not worried about it. It will stop eventually. She is dry during the day and never has accidents during the day.

Does your older kid wet the bed? Suggestions?

Disciplining Parents

The other day Eva, who is 2, says in a menacing tone to me:

"Mommy. NOW. One, two, ten."

Where did she learn that? I never COUNT as discipline!

Underdressed Kids ... Let Them be Comfortable! #LazyParentsGuideToLife

Do you care what your kids wear?

Sometimes I do, like when we go to church. I make sure they have on a decent shirt and pants (not jammie pants and not sweatpants and not even jeans).

Sometimes I do, depending on WHO I’m going to be around. Like if we’re going to be around a bunch of people who are ridiculously judgmental and would call The State on me for mal-dressed kids, I make them wear normal clothes.

Otherwise, I plead “part of why we homeschool is so we don’t have to worry about dress codes and wearing what everyone else is wearing.”

Like when we went to the first day of our parks and rec homeschool art class. I knew there would be dressed up Duggars there, but my boys are most comfy in loose-fitting pants with designs on them that closely resemble jammies. Besides, it’s ART CLASS … they’re gonna get messy!

We had a doctor appointment right after that and I had to take all 5 kids and didn’t have time for them to change clothes, so I took them to the doc in their comfy clothes, too. Normally that’s a place where I want them to look a little nicer, but that day I just didn’t have the brain power to care.

I mean, other than wearing their jammies in public (like you wish YOU could), my kids are happy, healthy, clean, well-educated, well-exercised and well-fed and are just generally good kids.

I can’t wait for Anonymous to comment about how I’m a lazy parent, to which I will pre-respond that I (literally) wrote the (e-)book on lazy parenting and am currently tweaking it, so I agree with you.

UPDATE as of April 23, 2016, still working on it .... haha!

And as of January 31, 2020, I have not had time to work on it! Moved to the country and too busy keeping up with homeschooling, a house, a pool, friends, family and fun!

When Children Die

My friend Eva recently told me that the friend of a friend just had a baby who had meconium aspiration like my baby Sam had when he was born. This baby was in the NICU a couple of days, and then he died.

This story haunts me. I keep asking myself this impossible question that I will not know the answer to until I’m dead: “Why did my baby live and her baby died?” It’s not like I’m a better person than that baby’s mother. I’m certainly not more worthy.

A few weeks later at gymnastics class I met a woman who told me she had 4 kids, but one had passed away only 8 months earlier. And she’s pregnant again. Her son was 3 ½ when he wandered into their pool … a pool that normally had all gates locked and an alarm system. I didn’t get all the details because I didn’t want to pry too much on our first meeting. I didn’t want to say the wrong thing, so I told her I was sorry and that she’s amazing and congratulations on the new baby. I savored a little book of photos she had of her son.

They’re in the process of tearing up the pool. She came upon Hell and couldn’t go around it. She had to go through it. She is amazing because she came out the other side. She’s trying to live a normal life, taking her kids to gymnastics (among other things), when I’m sure she would much rather crawl into her bed and stay there all day, every day.

She mentioned getting together sometime. I gave her my “mommy card” (my business card with email, phone and web site). She told me she’s writing a book about her experience of the first year after a child dies. I believe there is a reason for everything. For sure these days I’m seeing my kids differently, taking them less for granted. What if today is the last day of life for one of my kids? Accidents happen all the time.

I still look at Sam and wonder what I would have done if he had died. We never know how we’ll respond to something like that. Divorce often ensues. Relationships with the other children are damaged. It’s hard to comprehend that the dead one is most likely better off than we are; happier, at peace, looking down on us or hanging out among us wanting us to live life to the fullest and probably not wanting us to let the death envelop us.

Thank you to that mom for sharing her story with me. And now I’m sharing it with you. Maybe you want to share it with a mom you know. Or maybe you want to go eat a pint of ice cream. Now go hug your kids.