.::still blinking::.

Tonight at dinner, jj and I were discussing how nice it is that Gentry can talk and ask for the things that he wants, or tell us what is wrong. However, I wish that is all that was coming out of his mouth. The rest of the time I am thinking, “Shut it kid, we just fed you 15 minutes ago and pancake syrup is not a beverage, so stop asking for it.”

Today when we were at the library, where it is generally known that you should be quiet, Gentry would not be quiet. I kept saying, “Shhhhh,” or “be quiet please.” After about the nine hundredth time I had had it with saying it and apperently he had also.

He punched me in the face.

To say the least, I was angry. We left and I forgot to do a timeout. I don’t get the deal with timeouts. Gentry is good and will sit wherever I put him but 10 minutes later he is hitting me again. The only good that they do is that I get to be away from him for a minute and a half, so that I don’t tear his head off.

The other day at church he hit me during the sacrament, so we went out in the hall and had a timeout. On the way back into the chapel, he hit me again, so we went back into the hall and had another. Then when jj came back and sat with us, he hit jj. I am getting a bit frustrated with the kid that does not listen to me, ever. It is so frustrating to know that he understands but refuses to be nice or cooperate.

Any advice? Maybe I should have him neutered. I have heard that makes puppies calm down. Just kidding. But seriously. Arrrrgh.

The Living Scriptures man came to my house today. I hate salesmen. I am an easy sale. When I answered the door I told him that I am not interested. I said that I had Youth Conference in an hour. He said that it would only take 6 minutes, and that he got credit if he came in. He also said I would get a free dvd, I don’t really care about that. I let him come in.

He told me all about the dvds and all the stuff that the company does and blah, blah, blah. During the course of this, Gentry went from happy playful boy to boy on a rampage. For the first 20 minutes he climbed on the coffee table and stood there for a while, continued on to the game cupboard and dumped all games and peices on the floor. Continued to the corner with all the large toys in it and dragged them to all parts of the lower level of our home. After he had bored himself with everything in the house he went into his corner and pooped (in his diaper), he them came back ready to play. He then noticed that I was not paying attention to him, and that the person that was distracting me had a bag of movies. Lucky him. He thought. I would not let him play with the movies, or the guys pen, or the guys keys, or anything the guy had. He burst into tears and started throwing a tantrum. I was really getting bugged, angry kid that stink was helping with my impatience.

If the guy had taken 10 minutes like he had promised, I probably would have bought the movies. But he did not, and the semi-orderly house had fallen apart while he was here and I just wanted to get him out of the house before I had to leave. I told him that I was not interested. He took this as a que to get more free stuff out of his bag of magic tricks. Really, I said, you are very nice, but I am not interested. More free stuff was offered. Seriously, get out of my house. The longer that he was there the more time that I had to think about how much I did not want these movies. Luckily for me.

When he finally left, I realized I was glad that I did not get these movies. Even though I would have gotten like 10 free dvds, a book about the Nauvoo temple, and some cds by the mormon tabernacle choir. I am picky about the amount of church that I let into my house. I love the gospel, but this is not the gospel that Living Scripture is sharing. They just want to make money. Besides that, I had the living scriptures when I was a kid and I did not like them that much. I don’t remember thinking they helped me learn the gospel.

Also, why would I want the media to teach my kids about the gospel? Isn’t that my job? And if these are the same people that are putting out the extreme manuals that I am supposed to be teaching from, then I don’t want it in my house. The guy even brought up that Elder Ballard had given a talk in conference about having good media in the home. Hmmm, I thought, you must be trying to guilt me into this, because I don’t recall the talk and I want to appear to be a good mormon to a complete stranger. Right? No.

I hate Mormons profitting off other Mormons. Most of the time they do it by guilt, making us think that we have to have all the correct paintings, sculptures, etc. And all the fake spiritual music. It makes me gag.

I love the gospel, but I am thinking very carefully about what I am allowing in my home. I will not let certain movies in my home and that includes ALL movies. Just because something claims to be mormon, does not mean it is something that I want to teach my kids.

The end and amen.

I know I signed up for flickr so I would not have to bog down the window, but I simply had to share these.

Tonight for family home evening we went to the ice cream place at Thanksgiving Point again. This time I documented our indulgence. It was oh, so, good. It is not like we don’t get enough ice cream around here. It is so hot that all I can do is think about taking baths in ice cream.

Also, I thought that I would share a few other things from my camera phone. Over the weekend we went for a hike with our friends Dan and Lindsey. It was really fun. I packed the baby up in the hiker baby carrier. jj did the mountain climbing and the descent. Here are a few pictures of that.

jj and Gentry. They are the men.

In this one Dan is the purple dot with legs in the middle of a huge rock slide. The rock slide is not happening in this picture it happened sometime before, perhaps the day before. What you cannot see is that he is carrying his 6 month old son on his back.

Here we have jj and gentry, Lindsey, and Dan trying to roll a rock down the mountain into the lake. It did not ever work, but they tried really hard to cause another rock slide.

I did not set this up, but I did find it amusing at Macy’s. Oh, the pleasures of being a grocery shopper.

This is the fine speciman of a man that I am married to.

My baby loves anyone above me. I was discussing this with jj the other day.

If Saddam Hussien and I were standing in a room and the baby needed comfort, he would choose Saddam.

Strange, I would think. He is the murderer of millions and totally freaking looking and has crazy eyes. And he probably smells bad.

But seriously, he would choose anyone over me. Even the weapons of mass destruction guy.

My child comes up with his own words. He knows the correct words but he does what he wants with it to make it his own.

Bug=Buggah, Boogah, Buggas (this is plural) or Bugger. It often sounds like bugger, as in this comes from your nose. He is fastenated with bugs.

Up=Uppie. As in pick me up woman, you are my beast of burden. This often starts as just “up”, but quickly becomes uppie repeated very quickly and then it gets louder. And if that doesn’t work, he will start to climb you by lifting his little leg in the air and grabbing at the waist of your pants or your belt.

Shovel=Sha fie, rhythms with pie. This is what you dig with. For a long time he was saying just “fie” and we did not get it. Recently he has added the “sha” and suddenly it all clicks.

Rock=ock. As in I need to go dig in the dirt with my “fie” and find a “ock” for each hand. He used to repeat this like crazy. Can you imagine? Ock Ock Ock Ock Ock Ock Ock Ock Ock Ock. Say it as fast as you can a lot. For like 10 minutes, or all the way home from work in the confined space of your car.

Beverage=Wahjuice. I need some wahjuice in my cup, no I mean your cup. Everything is better if it is from your cup with a little bit of my back wash in it. This is a combination of water and juice, I think that it favors the juice a little bit more though because water is not usually what he wants and he gets upset with me if he wanted juice and I gave him water.

F-word=as in the mother of all swear words. He says this to mean several different words and everytime he says it I think where did he learn this. I really, REALLY don’t say this one. But he says it to mean flag and sometimes also for frog.

I had my own weird word moment the other day. I felt a little like Jessica Simpson. Gentry has this little flag (you may insert appropriate Gentry word) that he got around the 4th of July. He has pretty much destroyed it and I said to jj, “We better throw it a way, it has been deficated.” As soon as I said it I knew it was wrong, but I could not remember the correct word. jj was rolling in laughter and said, “You mean desicrate.” Oh, right. Yeah. That is what I meant. Is this chicken that I have, or is it tuna? It says chicken by the sea on the can.

I set up a Flikr account. You can take a look here.

It is nothing terribly exciting. Perhaps later, I will go pro.

My little boy is learning when he has to go to time outs. Today he hit me and I asked him if he had hit mommie. He said yes and went and sat in the naughty spot all by himself. He is so smart. I don’t know if he is learning not to hit though because he hit me four more times today.

Tonight we put the kid to bed at 8ish and around 9ish he was screaming bloody murder. So I went to see what was going on and he had one of his little legs stuck in the slats of his crib and could not get himself out. He was so sad. So I tried to get him out and I could not do it either. So I yelled for jj and he did not come and I kept trying. I really could not get him out though and I started to try taking the front of the crib off and I yelled for jj again, he did not come. Finally, somehow, the kid just got himself loose and I picked him up and we went and yelled at dad. Grrrr. Sometimes the deaf make me so angry.

On Monday I made sure that everyone in my family knew that my patience reservoir for the year had dried up and that it had dried up the previous Saturday, and I was not to be bugged any longer.

At dinner time when I was supposed to be cooking frozen pizza, I threw a chocolate box from the living room into the kitchen with all the furry of my little flabby chihuaha arm, just to let everyone know I was serious about having no more patience.

So I stomped upstairs and was playing on the internet and then realized that I do this everyone month. Oh the joys of the female body. Since then I have kept myself drugged and caffeinated and things have calmed down a bit. What I really want though is an iv of diet cherry vanilla drpepper pumped into me. Also some of the green Cafe Rio dressing would be lovely on anything.

And it would be nice if the kid would stop following me around destroying the house. I guess I just need a bit of a vacation from the whining of the kid. I like him and all, and think that he is gorgeous and the cutest kid ever. But seriously whining all day long gets old at about 9:30 am.

Pretty early on, after I had had G. I read the book Confessions of a Slacker Mom. I have pretty much done the things that she has done. Her name is Muffy Mead-Ferro, she lives in Salt Lake with her family. I don’t think she is part of the church, I am pretty sure in fact. Anyway. She has raised her children to understand they are not the center of her world, which later would translate, “You are not the center of the world and the world does not revolve around you.”

I think that this is such an important lesson to teach kids. I love my son and would do anything for him. But if I focus all my attention on him and let him know that he is the center of the universe, he will always think it.

Ayelet Waldman said it better then I ever could.

I have also seen this sentiment in other women that I have been around. I went to La Leche League again to see if they could help me with my son not eating. They said that he was fine and I am now starting to work on just eating healthy food and having good snacks available.

This other woman came also. She was on her second marriage, they both had children from previous marriages and a little girl that is the same age as my little boy and she was still breast feeding her. This little girl still slept in her parents bed. The womans husband was starting bugged by it. All the La Leche League woman totally took her side, and gave her advise on how to make her husband see that this was for the good of everyone. I knew that my opinion would be totally out of place and did not share it.

As I have said before, I breastfeed my son for one year, 12 grueling months. I don’t know if I will ever breast feed another child again. It was so hard for me. But, my problems with it was the pain that it caused me at the beginning and the way that it made my hormones out of control. These were physical problems that harmed only me. However, if the breastfeeding had been affecting (or effecting, I don’t know which to use) my marriage, I would have quite immediately. I would have done this because although breastfeeding does help a child with their immunities and brain development, breastfeeding cannot help a marriage that is about to fall apart. And really which is more important to a child? Health or being in a stable family where she knows that her parents love each other, and that they also love her. The question then is are you thinking more of the family or of you and your child. I think that this woman was being selfish and if the husband wants the child out of the bed, then get the child out of the bed. Besides, no one likes and audience. This woman is teaching her child that she is more important than her husband, and she is sending the exact same message to the husband. But I doubt that he will stick it out if this pattern continues. Husbands should be first children should not be able to drive a wedge between a husband and wife. If they are able to do that then the marriage will fail.

There is another woman that I know who is completely in charge of her children. Her husband cannot do anything for them. I don’t know why. I have been places with her and we have been like half an hour from home. Her husband will call her to tell her that the baby is crying and she will pack up and leave as quickly as she can. So the baby is crying? So what? What can she do for this child that the husband cannot? I think that this is a total lack of parenting skills and I think that it drives the husband out of the picture. This womans children’s lives are the focus of their family and the mom and kids are all one happy family as the dad is sidelined and watches. I don’t know why they are this way? But it frustrates me to see a father who does not participate.

What I believe is so important is to make sure that the parents relationship is the one that is in the center of their family. When parents are not the center, then the kids are in constant worry that things are going to fall apart and that they are going to be the reason for it.

When children are brought up to think that their parents world revolves around them then they in turn grow up thinking that the entire world revolves around them and they expect it of everyone and everything. When children are given everything and never have to work for anything they will always expect this kind of treatment. When these children turn into adults they will be ill-equipped at taking care of themselves and functioning, working, thinking and contributing to society, they will be a burden to those that allow themselves to be taken advantage of.

When children are allowed to work to get the things they want and need they are taught about work and the value of it. They grow up knowing what they need to do to get where they want to be. When parents don’t always take care of childrens problems the children learn how to deal with problems. These parents teach their children that struggling is not a bad thing and hard work will eventually pay off.

I have seen this with G. He ran down the driveway one day and fell and hit his head. I, of course, ran and fetched him and hugged him until he felt better. But the next time he started running down the drive way, I did not stop him. He knew the consequences of his actions, but maybe this time he had learned to stop running rather then falling. I watched and hoped he would not hurt himself, and he didn’t. If I had not let him run, how would he or I have ever known that he could do it?

I don’t want my kids to try everything. There are some things that are just wrong that you don’t need to try to know they are bad. But sometimes the parents, who are one loving unit, have to watch as their children struggle, stumble, and fall. But letting them know that they are there for them, and that we love them. Not that we are their strength, but that we know that they have the strength in them. We know they are capable. We know things are hard, but within them is the power and knowledge to do the things that are best for them.