As I mentioned in the previous post, I’m a little cranky lately due to being sick as a poor, mangy dog all weekend. Incidentally, I don’t get that expression, why “sick as a dog”, are they somehow inherently sicker than other animals? Anyway, since it’s the first of the month once again I’m going to give the meme another shot. If you feel like participating it’s open all week, just click on the linky at the bottom, add your post and if you feel like it add my button at the end of your post - just grab the code on the left side-bar (scroll down!).
Ok. So, back to me being cranky, evidently it’s reflected in my choice of Ten Things to Teach my Children this week because I’m not so much looking to the future this time as listing things that I wish they’d learn RIGHT NOW.
Most of these are points I make daily, hoping that somehow they will learn them through the sheer force of repetition. It’s not working so far, but I’m hopeful – or deluded, one of the two. These are all meant for both my children, of course.
1. If Mama says she’s sick, don’t whine, get in her face, or make unreasonable demands because that’ll just make her crankier and you’ll get more timeouts.
2. It’s so much more productive to ask for stuff in a happy voice rather than a whiny voice, whiny voices grate on my ears and trigger the timeout reflex immediately.
3. I am not a referee. Am I wearing a whistle?
4. You don’t need to use up half the liquid soap every time you wash your hands, you’re not scrubbing in for surgery. (Although I do appreciate your newfound love for hand washing).
5. Nighttime is for sleeping, if you wake up during the night you turn around and go back to sleep. You don’t need me to help with that. You don’t need milk. You don’t need a diaper change. And if you want water it’s on your bedside table. You don’t need to call me at night. I can’t stress this enough.
6. Water guns outside are good, water guns inside the house are BAD.
7. Negotiating with me is fine until I give you THE LOOK, once I give you THE LOOK negotiations are over and action is in order.
8. The easiest and fastest way to get what you want is with a smile, a hug and a kiss. How hard is that?
9. We no longer watch tv while eating as I’m sick of feeding you because you’re in a Dora-induced trance-like state, you eat your food then you can go watch tv. Get over it.
10. When I scream at you for dumping a bowl-full of water out of the tub onto the bathroom floor and you do it again a minute later, I’m going to take the bowl away. It’s been like this for two years, why do you always look so surprised?
11. And a bonus bath related one that is a point of contention every night: Stop drinking the bath water, it’s dirty, it’s soapy and it’s very likely at least one of you peed in there.
Gosh, it felt good to get those off my chest! Now all I need to do is figure out how to actually teach them these things… NOW!
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