Cute Enough?

Tanner's life has been a series of difficulties (for me). I firmly believe he has survived (at the hand of his mother, at least) because he's just so darn cute. But how far can cute take you?


Last week, on only the sixth day of school, I received a note from Tanner's teacher. Tanner had been misbehaving, but not just misbehaving, willfully being disobedient. He actually told his teacher he was "choosing to be naughty," and then did the opposite of everything he was asked for the day, each time looking at her, waiting to see how she'd react. She asked me to please talk to him about it. This is the beginning of school. Isn't everything supposed to go smoothly for a while? And we've never had any problems with Tanner in two years of preschool or kindergarten. We have spent his whole cognizant life trying to teach him that he has a choice how he acts, and that no one makes you act or feel a certain way, in order to help him control his temper. So apparently, he's decided to choose to be naughty.

Well, he soon learned that choosing to be naughty is also choosing to march back to school the next morning with your mom (how embarrassing! What kind of a mom would do that?) and look your teacher in the face with a sincere apology and promise to behave better. It is also choosing to not play video games for a week. He found that he really didn't like the choice.

Unfortunately, he also likes to negotiate consequences to a level that he can deal with in order to disobey and not suffer too much. At church on Sunday, I told him that if he walked out the door, he was without his gameboy for the rest of the day. He started bargaining, asking if I could make it 2 hours? 3 hours? how about just the xbox for the day?. He hadn't even broken the rule yet, and here he is making deals, deciding how much punishment would be worth the action. I'm in for it!

Tanner's also been full of quotables lately. To Jamie, his single aunt who is dating someone: "I think you'll date him until you like him enough to want to marry him. Then he'll dump you." Good thing he's cute.

My Advice: Hire a Maid

I had a conversation with McKayla the other day that reminded me of when I was younger. I simply asked her to finish her chores, and you'd have thought I had demanded that she solve the world's problems by the way she reacted. Somewhere in the ranting and crying, I heard the accusation, "You just had kids to do all your work for you!" It reminded me of the similar conclusion I had drawn as a kid. I was seriously convinced that my parents (mom especially, since she was the one doling out the jobs) had so many kids (five, to be exact) because they (my parents) were lazy, and each one of us kids gave them one more slave to do their work. Every bathroom I cleaned, every lawn I mowed, every dish I did convinced me I was right. Why else would they have so many kids if they weren't just plain lazy?

Now I can see it was crazy, not lazy, that drove them to it! :) I offer sincere apology to my parents! I had no idea that their lives would have been so much easier without me (or the other 4 for that matter). Seriously, it's beyond description how much easier life would be without kids - not better, just easier. No amount of household chores could ever compensate for the work those little monsters create. I also realize that I'm getting just what I deserve, so you don't have to tell me that again, Mom!

Cheese!

This is what happens when you tell your children that a new Chuck E. Cheese's is going to open soon a couple of miles from your home: