Holly’s Happenings

I know that the products I had for my children when they were small were much better and far more advanced than the products that were available when I was in the first few years of my life. For instance, when I was a baby, car seats weren’t used, let alone mandatory. My mom has told me stories about how she would hold me in her arms when we were in the car (She didn’t have a drivers license, so she didn’t drive when I was a baby). My point is that technology had advanced in a big way from the time I was born until my children were born, and it has only gotten better since!

My children are a little more than 2 years apart in age, and one of the things that made my life the easiest when they were small was a good stroller! One of the worst things about strollers, even 13 years ago, was the fact that they were heavy and awkward! On top of that, if you wanted to take it anywhere that didn’t offer paved walks or smooth floors, you played heck trying to push it!

Parents these days have the benefit of advanced technology as well as the experiences from parents like me to thank for things like the Bugaboo stroller. These are, without a doubt, one of the most awesome strollers I have ever came across and I wish like heck they had these when my kids were little! Not only are they nice to look at, they are also light weight, compact, very well built and offer parents the ability to not only use them in places that offer paved paths and finished floors, they can easily be used in areas with rough terrain like paths and grassy areas!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that strollers had advanced from what they were when I was a small child to where they were when my own children were small, but a Bugaboo stroller would have been nice to have had VS the strollers that were available when my children were small!

I love my daughter, I really do! But honestly, she’s going to be the reason I end up in an insane asylum some day..LOL! It’s been several years since she’s been to a funeral, so much so that she was at an age where it was still OK for me to pick out the clothes she was going to wear. Well, at 13, she won’t let me pick out her clothes any longer, which is probably a good thing.

So far tonight, she’s come out here in at least 6 different pairs of pants or shorts and a minimum of at least a dozen different dress shirts and t shirts wanting me to tell her which ones would look the best to wear to the funeral home Sunday. It’s not so much that I mind her trying all the different clothes on, what I mind is the fact that all of them will wind up on her bedroom floor and in the laundry when she cleans her room tomorrow. **SIGH** The joys of parenting a teen girl.

I thought I’d give you a little bit of an update from this post where I went on a semi rant about how I was tired of everyone blaming me for the problems in my family. While I do take the blame for the wrongs that I have done, a dysfunctional family doesn’t happen just because of one person.

I did, for the most part, cut off communication with my sister for almost 2 weeks. After getting an email reply from her that said “Fine, good luck”, I replied back to her simply saying that there is no need for her to talk to me that way, that I’ve dealt with what I’m going through for most of my adult life, I’m used to the road blocks and hassles, but that I do get through them. She, of course, couldn’t accept that and came back with a “Talk to you like what, I was just trying to help” reply. As much as I wanted to write her back and give her a piece of my mind, I decided that it was best to just keep my mouth shut! Amazingly, after receiving daily calls from my mother prior to the email exchange with my sister, the calls from my mother also stopped. I love both of them very much, but I am so sick of the game that they play going back and forth telling each other what I’ve said to them. I wasn’t angry with my mom, I never once did anything but listen to her suggestions and use the ones that I could. But she “assumed” that since I wasn’t very happy with my sisters “interference”, it meant I wasn’t happy with hers either, and nothing could have been further from the truth!

As much as I hate to admit it, taking a break from both of them actually alleviated quite a bit of stress from my life and allowed me to put the focus on things in my own home! I feel like I’ve made some good progress with the kids! We’re not arguing as much as we had been, and they are actually doing a decent job keeping up with the chores that I give them. My daughter has made HUGE progress when it comes to her room. Last Sunday she and I cleaned it from ceiling to floor, washing walls, throwing stuff out, etc. I’m THRILLED to say that her room is still as clean as it was when we finished up last Sunday, which is major for her! She’s done a wonderful job of putting things back when she’s done with them, putting away the clothes that she’s tried on but decided not to wear rather than letting them pile up on the floor and putting away the clean laundry that I give her. She has also done an awesome job of following my rule of having nothing to eat or drink in her room other than water. There has only been 2 times this week where she didn’t follow that rule, but she was quick to bring the dishes out of her room when she realized she shouldn’t have them in there!

I’ve also got to say that my son’s attitudes have really calmed down as well! He’s been much more receptive to me when I ask him to do things, and if he does get an attitude with me I simply look at him and say “This will stop now”, which usually gets him to snap out of his attitude pretty quick. He’s been an awesome helper when I’ve asked him to do things and he’s also done a much better job at tuning his sister down when she’s doing things that he finds annoying, which is a major step for him! There have also been many more times over the past week or so that the kids have been getting along than times when they were fighting with each other, which is a major improvement!

Hopefully we can keep things going, but I also know that it’s not very realistic to expect things to always go well. But it sure has been nice!!

It’s strange when you “wake up” one day and realize that your kids aren’t little any longer! My oldest child is just a few weeks away from being legally old enough to get his learners permit to drive. It seems so strange to think back now and remember him as a baby that I held in my arms, or the little toddler who proudly proclaimed “I eat Pop Tart cereal” in his first sentence.

Now his spare time is filled with phone calls from his friends, MySpace messages and video games. And the things that he and his friends talk about and do crack me up! Last night my son was laughing so hard he had tears in his eyes. When I asked him what was so funny he showed me a message on his MySpace from one of his friends that said “The treadmill stole my cookie, should I run after it?”.

And it’s so strange to think of my daughter, who is just a few weeks away from “officially” being a teenager, as the little 2 year old girl who, curled her tiny little toes into the molding on the car door and used that to boost herself up enough to flip into an open car window. Now her days are filled with boys, music and sports! But one of her favorite things to do in her spare time is play with the dogs and she always seems to get the dogs doing something when she’s playing with them that make all of us crack up laughing!

Yes, there are days when I wish I could turn back time with my children and have them still need me for everything, and there are days that I dread thinking about what life has in store for them! But I know that they are at a stage in their lives where I need to give them enough space so that they can spread their wings and learn things for themselves. The days of mom being able to do everything for them have passed and I can only hope that I’ve taught them well enough so that when they spread their wings and fly, they soar like eagles!

I’ve spent the bulk of the past 15 years being a stay at home mom. I understand and accept that besides taking care of my children and their needs, I’m also responsible for the bulk of the work around the house. I’ll admit that I do have my days were I slack off pretty badly, but I always get things caught up too.

But here’s my “problem” and I’m hoping all the other parents that read here can give me their thoughts and input on this! My children are no longer little anymore. My oldest is a few weeks away from being able to get his learners permit to drive a car and my youngest is, and I quote, “43 days away from being 13, so I’m technically a teenager mom”. That being said, they are MORE than old enough to help out with chores around the house. I don’t ask much of them, just some of the basic stuff like helping with the dishes, bringing their dirty clothes out of their rooms and picking up after themselves. For the most part, they do pretty good, but there is one thing that my daughter does, well, doesn’t do actually, that is driving me up a wall!

I have asked and asked and asked her to PLEASE turn her jeans right side out when she puts them in the dirty clothes. But for some reason or another, every last pair of her jeans that are in the laundry still end up inside out. Yes, I do realize that this is something VERY minor, but her inability to respect my wishes is grating on my last nerve! So, here’s what I was thinking about doing. Since she seems to like bringing her clothes to me inside out, I thought that I would give them ALL back to her, washed, folded, and hung, inside out. Or should I just absolutely refuse to wash the clothes that are inside out? I don’t know what to do, I honestly don’t, I just know that it’s getting frustrating. It’s the little things that seem to get to me the most, as well as her almost constant lack of respect for what I ask of her.

So parents, give me your input, because I honestly don’t know what to do anymore. Do I try the giving everything to her inside out method and see if that makes her realize what a major pain it is turning everything right side out? Or is there something that you’ve tried that works even better? I’m TOTALLY open to suggestions!!

For the past 6 weeks or so, my husband and I have been in the planning stages with my step daughter for our two children to spend some time with her this summer. We’ve got the date for them to fly out to the east coast down, but had never really talked about a return date. My husband and I were thinking a week, maybe 10 days, but I was totally blown away when I was talking with my step daughter last night and she said “I’d like to keep them for the month”. Even now, twelve hours later, I’m still not sure what to think…LOL!

I honestly don’t have a problem with the kids spending a month with their big sister, she’s an awesome young lady who is very responsible! The things that I worry about include the fact that the kids have never been away from home for that long of a period of time and it’s been many years since they’ve spent any significant amount of time with their older sister. Yes, they are teenagers and they do need to learn to be away from home like this and I know they’ll have a wonderful time with their sister, she has a TON of stuff planned to do with them, I just worry.

One of my options is to shop around the different airlines for the best buy on flights that would allow a flexible return date, or I could just simply purchase one way flights for the trip out there, talk to them after the first week to see how they’re doing and how they’re feeling about being so far from home, and decide then when they’ll come home and but one way tickets home for them.

It’s just nerve wracking, and yes, I know that I’m probably making more out of it than I need to. Maybe a month away from each other is exactly what we need, especially my husband and I! But WOW, hearing the words really put me in shock!

It’s been a very nice and quiet Mothers Day so far, with the kids sleeping in late and my husband and I being able to enjoy some peace and quiet this morning! After getting up early yesterday morning, spending hours at my daughters track meet and then helping my husband stack a shed full of fire wood, we were both VERY tired after dinner last night! So we decided we’d take a quick nap before wrapping things up for the night. Boy did that ever backfire on us. We laid down around 6 PM and didn’t wake up until after 1:00 AM…LOL! We got up long enough to let the dogs out and make sure everything was locked up then went back to bed and slept until around 7 this morning.

For the first time in a VERY long time I feel rested! Today is going to be a kind of laid back day. I have to bake a chocolate cake and we’re heading up to my sisters for dinner with our mom. It would be nice if the weather were going to cooperate today, but it’s not. It’s currently raining and will be raining all day long. But that’s OK, we’ll get to enjoy some good food and some good company!

I’d like to wish each and every one of the mom’s who read here a wonderful and happy Mother’s Day!

I tell you, I have had more frustration over kid stuff in the last week than I have in the past year! It’s to the point that it’s not only taking it’s toll on me, it’s also starting to get to my husband as well! I understand that parenting is not an easy job and does not have a users manual, but for it to get to the point that it is affecting my family this much it’s beyond ridiculous!

After everything we’ve been through in the past week it would be so easy for me to turn to drugs or alcohol to try and numb the feelings I’m dealing with, but I know that’s not the answer or solution. Besides that, knowing me the way that I do, I’d end up in alcohol or drug rehab because it would become an addiction for me, and with everything we’re going through right now, we don’t need that added to it!

So please bear with me for the next couple of days, I have a TON of things going on and need to deal with them and get them out of the way, then I can get back to the things in life that are enjoyable to me, a.k.a. blogging and hanging with my online pals!

I figured I’d better stop by and give you an update about what’s happened since my post last week. Nothing with the situation involving my daughter has been settled, but that was to be expected because of the fact that this week is the OAT testing, and every student needs to be present for that. However, there was something that happened last night that has both my husband and I very upset, my husband more so than me.

There was a track meet last night and my husband went and took one of the dogs with him. While he was walking around with the dog he turned a corner to see the main girl that we’ve had problems with going through our daughters bags at the same time that one of her friends drop kicked our daughters lunch box 20 yards across the football field. When they seen my husband coming towards them they ran away, but several other kids that were sitting there watching these two do this came forward telling my husband what all had been done. The girl we’ve had so many problems with had taken my daughters cell phone out of her bag and had been making calls with it while digging through my daughters bag. There is also a missing digital camera, but we’re not 100% certain it was in her bag yesterday.

My husband gathered up my daughters things and went to the track coach to get our daughter and told the coach she was leaving. When the coach asked what was going on, my hubby explained about what he had just seen and the coach was IRATE! He told my husband he understood and said it was fine for our daughter to leave because all that was left to do was clean up and the other kids could take care of that, he also assured my husband that what happened would be dealt with. This morning my husband took our daughter to school so that he could go in and talk to the principal, but amazingly the principal had a feeling one of us would be coming in. The coach had called him at home last night telling him what had happened at the track meet. The principal told my husband that after testing was over for today the situation would be dealt with immediately and that he would call us and let us know the results. My husband made it clear to the principal that this kind of harassment was going to stop now or we would take it up to the next step. He also took in our daughters lunch box that was ruined because of being drop kicked across the football field.

I just want this to stop, both what is being done to my daughter and what ever my own daughter is doing. It takes two for a situation to get this out of hand! But I also cannot believe that the girl that has been doing this is stupid enough to now be caught by both myself and my husband. Does she not realize that because of everything that has happened lately that people are keeping an eye on what’s going on? Or is it more that the only people that are going to do anything about it are my husband and myself and that’s why she just keeps doing stuff like this? It’s just so frustrating! I’ll update later when we hear what all happened!

After the events that unfolded at one of my children’s schools yesterday, I find myself sitting this morning thinking about how much things have changed since I was a kid! When I was in school, you felt safe and supported. Yes, there were bullies back then, there always has been and there always will be, but they were usually put in their place and the bullying came to a stop. The same goes for kids teasing other kids, it’s always been around and it always will be, but the teachers and principal always knew when a line was crossed and it was time to put a stop to it!

I have never been a parent that sits back and says my children are perfect and/or innocent, nor will I ever be. I know how my kids are here at home and I know the things they have done in the past. But you have to try to move on from things that people have done and you have to try to give them a chance at changing their lives. Just because someone does something once, or more, doesn’t always mean they’re continuing to do so. I “try” to give people the benefit of the doubt until they give me reason not to.

At one point yesterday it became necessary for me to pick my child up from school because of some teasing and making fun of that was being done by their peers. Although my child had told me that these persons had given them problems and had been just plain mean and vindictive to them for some time, I chose to think that my child had been doing the normal thing by stretching or twisting the truth to make things worse than they were. But imagine how I felt when I walked into my child’s school to pick them up and seen a group of children standing outside of the office doorway laughing and pointing and saying some not so nice things. And imagine how surprised I was as I neared the office only to see that when this group of kids moved away my child was sitting there with tears running down their face and that it was my child that was the focus of their attention, and that the office staff was just standing there, watching and allowing it to happen without saying or doing anything!

I’m not going to go into details because it’s just not necessary, but I will say that as a parent, this was probably one of the most heartbreaking moments I’ve ever experienced. To see my child sitting there, literally falling apart, and absolutely no one was supporting them or making these children stop what they were doing. I can’t help but wonder what type of parents these children have that would allow their children to think treating someone like this is totally acceptable. I also can’t help but wonder how these children’s parents would have reacted if they had seen their child being treated the way that I seen mine being treated! I kept my cool, but I did cry in front of the office staff and I did tell one of them that I could not believe that I seen what I did and that it was 100% UNACCEPTABLE and I would not tolerate it! And before you tell me to just deal with it, you need to know that what was being said and done went WAY beyond the realm of normal teasing.

So many things have changed since I was a young child myself. Some of those changes are good, some, not so good. But schools really need to stand up and pay attention to what is going on. And parents need to teach their children to not treat other people how they would not want to be treated themselves! Yes, kids are going to pick on each other, that’s simply part of life. But when it gets to the point that it affects a child so severely that the child is an emotional wreck, it needs to STOP! NO parent should ever have to witness what I did yesterday. To see your child in the emotional state that they are in and know that the people who are supposed to make sure that they feel safe and supported just sit there and allow this to go on is almost unfathomable!

As parents, we need to teach our children that treating people like this is NOT acceptable! No, no child is perfect, and at some point in time they are going to pick on someone. But to do it non stop to the point that it not only affects the child at home, it also affects the child at school, is simply too much! Would I feel this way if it were another child being treated like this than mine? ABSOLUTELY! No child should ever have to be put in this type of a situation, nor should they ever be made to feel this way!

OK, I’m going to shut up now, because I’m starting to repeat myself here, thank you for listening!

I just looked at my calendar and realized that Mothers Day is a little more than three weeks away. It wasn’t until I became a mother myself that I honestly realized how special Mothers Day really was! Over the years I’ve given my mother many wonderful gifts and cards to let her know how much she means to me, but this year, I’d like to do something really special for her!

A few years before my father passed away, he had purchased a ring for mom that had birthstones of all three of us kids on it. You could tell from her reaction that it wasn’t the ring that she would have chosen, but she wore that ring religiously for many years.

Mom is a little older now and the years have caused her knuckles to get larger because of arthritis. She doesn’t wear the ring my father gave her anymore because of this. So I was thinking that a new mother’s ring that could fit her finger would make an excellent Mothers Day gift this year, especially one like this:

Whatever I end up doing for my mom this year for Mothers Day, I know that in her eyes it’s more about the thought put behind it than anything else. I have no doubt my mother knows how much I love her and how much she means to me and that I’m proud that I call her mom! And as a mother myself, I can only hope that my children grow up feeling as loved as I did by my mother! Even though I was not her biological child, there has never been a single moment of my life where she has made me think that I was anything but her own daughter!

Mom, if you read this, I LOVE YOU! Thank you for being a wonderful mother!

I know that raising a girl is much different than raising a boy and my almost 13 year old daughter is proving that more and more with each passing day! No matter what I do for her and what I buy for her, it’s just not the right thing that I should have done or bought. If I buy her a new shirt, it’s not the right style or color. If I rearrange her closet like I had been talking about doing, I didn’t put things where SHE thinks they should have gone. And if I purchase something like hair products or acne treatment products she goes into this rant about how it’s not the best acne treatment product I could have purchased.

I know it’s the age and stage of life she’s going through right now, and I really am trying hard to not take the things she says and does personally, but she’s just about pushed me to the edge today. I’ve been on her for two weeks now to clean her room, and bring me out her dirty clothes. She’s been whining non stop about how she can’t find clean clothes to wear and I’ve pointed out to her time and time again that if she’d just bring me her dirty clothes, she wouldn’t be having that problem. Maybe I’m wrong, but she’s the one that has let her room become the disgusting pig sty that it is. I’ve cleaned it for her several times over the past few months and within a week or two, it’s completely trashed again, so I’m DONE! If she wants her room to look like that, it’s on her because I’m sick of working my tail off only to have her turn around in a week or two and have it look just like it did before I spent a day cleaning it.

So now she’s in her room screaming and yelling, throwing things and telling me what a horrible parent I am because I’m not letting her do what she wants to do, instead I’m making her clean up her mess. She cried that if I’d just help her she’d get busy and I told her to get a good start on it to show me she’s serious about getting it cleaned up and I’d consider helping her, to which she replied “SC**W YOU”. Sorry kid, you’re not getting ANY help from me because if I’d have talked to my parents like that when I was a kid, i wouldn’t have been able to sit for weeks!

OK, I’m sure my regular readers know that I do not normally blog about the types of things that I’m about to write about, but this time I simply can’t help myself. Partially because when I told my kids I was going to blog about this they said “NO YOU WON’T”, and partially because, well, I’m sorry, it’s just TOOOOOOO funny! (and somewhat gross)

The kids are off school on a snow day today and the morning was a nightmare! The kids were fighting all morning long about anything and everything you can imagine and were completely driving me up a wall! Fortunately, they seem to have calmed down some this afternoon! Sometime after 12, I decided that I REALLY needed to get a shower! We have 2 full bathrooms here in the house, the one up front has a tub/shower combo and the one back here just has a shower stall. For some reason the shower back here just does not get good water pressure. We’ve checked everything to make sure there are no water leaks or anything like that that could cause the lack of water pressure, but found nothing. When we first moved in, the kids actually preferred the shower back here because the one up front has a window in it that has that bumpy opaque glass in it and it freaked them out to think about showering in front of a window even though we proved to them that NOTHING is seen outside! In time, however, their fears of using the shower with the window passed and eventually it ended up that no one was using this shower back here, so we actually turned it into our indoor storage area for wood for the wood burner…LOL! But the commode in both bathrooms are regularly used, which is VERY handy in a house with four people!

So, back to my decision that I REALLY needed to take a shower…LOL! (See, us old people tend to get off track now and then…LOL) As I went to take my shower I went to use the commode and upon lifting the seat was greeted by the smiling face of a near 6 foot long Mr. Hanky! Yes, I am drastically over exaggerating when I say 6 foot, but I’m not over exaggerating when I say that the size of said Mr. Hanky is something that should NOT come out of a human! The worst part is that I have what could probably qualify for the weakest stomache on the face of the earth! I can see something or smell something and sometimes even hear something and will IMMEDIATELY start gagging! So when I seen the version of Mr. Hanky that was greeting me, yup, you guessed it, it made me gag!

Since I knew it did not come from myself or my husband I went out to where the kids were and informed them that one of them needed to take care of the situation ASAP! This led to an argument consisting of the two “perpetrators” insisting that said Mr. Hanky did NOT come from them. OK, let’s be amateur detectives here for a moment. The inhabitants of this house consist of myself, my husband, my two children and three dogs. Neither my husband or myself use said bathroom except just before showering and none of the three dogs are trained to use the toilet, and even if they were, well, I won’t go into that here…LOL! That being said, the ONLY other people that have been in this house today are my darling children, both of which almost exclusively use the front bathroom.

Eventually my darling daughter volunteered to make sure that Mr. Hanky was properly disposed of, all the while giving us plunge by plunge details about what was going on…LOL! It was one of those priceless moments in life, if you have the state of mind to find things like this funny! And it totally turned our day around, at least for now. So, yes, it is a bit gross, and yes, it’s definitely not someting that I write about here regularly, and for anyone that was offended, I’m sorry! But I just couldn’t help myself!

I can’t help but think about what life was like for me when I was growing up. I grew up on a large farm, we had livestock as well as crops, and I honestly don’t remember ever thinking that I was bored and had nothing to do, even during the summer months. Life during my childhood was busy, but it also seemed very care free! I don’t remember worrying about things like predators or making sure the doors were locked at night. I do remember worrying about things like whether or not I had finished my chores and my homework while trying to fall asleep at night.

Kids today have a much different world than the one that I grew up in. We’re seeing more and more stories in the news today that detail how a child will be hanging out with their friends on the swing sets of their local playground one day, and the next day they are behind bars for crimes that they are being charged as adults for. As a parent, I can only do my best to raise my children in the hopes that one of them does not become one of these type of news stories.

It’s all over the that Jamie Lynn Spears is pregnant, so I’m sure that’s not new news to you.  But what may be news to you is that her mother, Lynne Spears, had a book deal to write a parenting book called “Pop Culture Mom: A Real Story of Fame and Family in a Tabloid World”, but that book has now been delayed indefinitely.  I for one think that this woman had no business writing a book about parenting, even if it was simply a book about how bad of a parent she is.  But that’s the benefit of being famous, you can write ridiculous things and people will buy them up because you wrote them.

It’s sad about Jamie!  I’m sure millions of pre-teen girls looked up to hear as a role model.  My own daughter is 12 and regularly watched Zoey 101.  Fortunately she now plans on not watching the show again!  At 12, she realizes how badly this young girls choices will affect her life.  But what is amazing is how openly accepting the general public will be of her pregnancy, simply because it is a more accepted thing in today’s society.  People make bad choices in their lives, and young people are even more prone to doing so than most adults are.  But lets hope that the young girls that looked up to Jamie Lynn Spears realize how much her bad choice is going to affect the rest of her life.  Then again, it may not affect it the way it does normal girls because she has money, and many teenage girls that get pregnant don’t have that luxury.  They instead end up leading difficult lives because they can’t finish their education and they find out that as soon as they tell the father that they are expecting, he’s usually history!

I was sitting here reading through some of the top news headlines at my favorite news site when I read one of the headlines to my husband. The headline read “Is Nicole Richie back in drug rehab“? My darling daughter, who seems to think she has to butt into everything my husband and I say to each other, blurted out “Nicole Richie has the diarrhea”? My husband and I about fell out of our chairs laughing! One of these days she’s going to get herself into a sticky situation if she keeps butting in on peoples conversations!

First, an update as to how our week without my hubby is going. As I said yesterday, I was up shortly after 3:00 A.M. The kids had a doctors appointment at 8:15, so they didn’t go to school in the morning. Brat gurl was having a rough morning, she cried on and off for quite a while after daddy left. Brat boy simply couldn’t wake up. He slept in the car all the way to the doctors appointment, slept in his chair in the waiting room and dozed on and off while we were in with the doctor. The reality was that I knew if I took him to school after the appointment, he would get into trouble for falling asleep in school, so I made the decision to bring him back home with the warning that he was to go straight to bed and get some sleep.
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I’m sitting here, waiting for a phone call.  My daughter is finding out today whether or not she made the cut and is on her 7th grade basketball team.  Last year she played on the young kids league, but this year it’s an actual team.  She has spent her time since last years season practicing and doing anything and everything she can to hone her basketball skills, so if she hears today that she didn’t make the team, she’s going to be crushed!

My husband left to be to school in time to pick her up at 4:15, which is only 7 minutes away, but trying to not be anxious waiting for this call is getting more and more difficult!  I guess I’ll go put away my laundry from earlier, that should help make time pass a little bit faster!

Today is a monumental day in the life of my 12 yr old daughter, as well as my husband and I as parents.  Today my daughter was “picked up” by her “boyfriends” parents for her first date.  It is so hard for me to imagine that the little girl that was so small at birth that she had to wear preemie clothes, is old enough to have a boyfriend!  But as much as I’d like to keep her little, I realize that as a parent I have to allow her to grow into the young woman she was meant to be.

It all came about from a phone call yesterday between her and her sweetie.  They talk on the phone quite often, so I didn’t think anything of it when he called this time.  My husband and I were busy trying to get some things done around here when she came out of her room and said “I have a question for you guys”.  So we stopped what we were doing and listened to her say “J’s mom and dad want to know if they can come get me tomorrow for lunch and afterwards go to the pumpkin patch with them.  They’ll pick me up and bring me home when we’re done.  PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE CAN I GO???”.  I didn’t know what to think at first, I mean, as her mom I wanted to say no, but I also know that “J” is a very polite young man who always says hello and asks how I’m doing when he calls here and I happen to answer before my daughter does.  So, I went ahead and told her she could go, which I think made her happier than she’s ever been because, when she got off the phone she told me that I was the best mom in the world…LOL.

So, right around noon today “J” and his mom and his little sister showed up to pick my baby up.  The dogs did not behave very well, so it took a while to actually get them into the house…LOL.  “J’s” mom seems just as nice and polite as he does and he talks about his little sister the same way my son talks about his…LOL.  It’s hard to think about the fact that I’m sure this is the first of many “dates” for my little girl.  I don’t want her to grow up, I want her to stay little enough that she’ll always need me.  But I know that in the reality of this thing we all call life, that isn’t very realistic.  So the only thing I can do from this point is to be there for her and listen to her and teach he how to be a young lady.

Can anyone tell me how we, as parents, know that we are steering our children in the right direction? No parent wants their child to grow up and be on the news because they are an ax murderer. We all want them to be on the news for something good that they’ve achieved or the wonderful technology that they’ve invented. But how do you know if you’re doing a good job?

I have 2 children, one is 14 and the other is 12. The 14 year old is a boy and the 12 year old is a girl, and as far as siblings go, they couldn’t be more different. The 12 year old loves to be active and participates in sports and school activities. The 14 year old is a computer geek who would rather be challenged by the latest video game or computer program than ride a bike.

I do my best to be fair and firm with them, but sometimes it’s difficult to not want to reach out and choke them, especially when they sit and nit pick with each other until they drive me nuts. But I know that all siblings argue and fight, it’s a natural part of life. So I don’t step in until I see that one or the other is being completely disrespectful. My fear is that one is challenging their self more than the other one is. They are both extremely intelligent yet one excels in school while the other does miserably.

So how do I know that I’m doing right by both of them. How do I know that they’ll both grow up to be well adjusted adults? And how do I know that one of them won’t be an ax murderer?