Family Torture

After days trapped inside with paint fumes, I thought I deserved some fresh air and exercise! Silly me! I asked if we could go skiing and Murray agreed it was a good idea. Unfortunately we were in the minority. The entire time we were gone at least one person was asking "how much longer do we haaaaaaaaaave to ski?" or "can we turn back yet?". The constant whining somewhat diminished the enjoyment of the activity so we gave up after awhile. A for effort though right???

Camping 2013

Summers go soooooo fast! Every year we say "we should go camping sometime!" and most years we end up pitching the tent at GG's for the golf tournament and that's about the extent of our tenting time. This year we took a weekend and actually went to a real campground, woohoo!

The kids love it and lugged up all the sleeping bags, mattresses and pillows quite excitedly. Then I remembered what I hate about camping: the loading & packing of all the stuff! Gotta make sure to put the tent in last so it's the first thing on top when we get to the site. But the cooler should be packed last so it'll stay colder that way, but it's one of the biggest things so should go into the van first.... it was almost a paralyzing conundrum! Finally I had everything ready to load. Unfortunately it wasn't at 2pm as I'd planned, it was 5:30! I was going to take the girls out and set up the tent ahead of time and come back for Murray so we could eat at the site and have a bonfire. Another plan gone bad but not the end of the world.

We got everything set up and explored a bit and then turned in for the night. Checkers was incredibly restless and preferred to roam around and shake his head every 5 minutes. It was a looooooooooooong night! The kids were oblivious but Murray and I woke up not feeling too refreshed!

Nevertheless, we're camping and we're going to have fun darn it! But what to do? We shall go on a lovely nature hike and find the waterfall! We are certainly not sitting around in a tent to play iPods! I told them if they wanted to play video games in the woods, I could have thrown them over the fence in the backyard and saved myself a LOT of work! I didn't spend 5 hours baking, packing & loading to watch them do what they could do at home! They weren't very moved by my speech but didn't ask for electronics again.

We eventually found the start of the trail and began the hike. They were all excited at first, zooming along, racing around and chasing each other along the path. Then the novelty wore off after an hour and we still couldn't tell if we'd found the waterfall or not. We'd seen some water flowing over a small pile of rocks in a stream but were looking for something a little more impressive. The brochure mentioned it was "small but striking" so we kept looking, and looking and walking and looking. We ran out of trail and started back around the loop we'd taken and saw lots of other stuff in the woods but nothing that we'd consider "striking" !!! The girls weren't impressed either and made sure to let us know by subtly mentioning things like "I'M BORED. DO WE HAVE TO KEEP GOING? WHEN CAN WE STOP? CAN WE TURN BACK YET???" At one point, Murray overheard a grumbled "I feel like complaining my head off!" He lost it and said "we didn't have to come camping you know."  (<---- a="" br="" murray="" s="" that="" tirade="">
We got back to the campsite and had some lunch and shortly after that, Boo got dropped off for a sleepover as Teena & Dale had a party and we won the babysitting lottery :) They were quite excited to have her there and showed her around and got her bedroll set up. They spent the rest of the afternoon at the playground and activity centre while I cleaned up lunch, read my book and then got supper ready.

That night we did have a campfire and s'mores, roasted hotdogs, sparklers and a couple Dragons Eggs that we probably weren't supposed to have. (something about no explosives in the rules I realized after). Grammie and Grandad love campfires so they joined the party and supplied the hotdogs and stayed to enjoy the evening with us, hooray, a party!

By the time our guests left and brush & flush was done, everyone was wiped and settled down without too much furor.

Teena had saved the day and brought some ear cleaning stuff so I was able to get Checkers' ears in better shape and he slept better which meant we slept better. Somewhere towards morning, I felt Murray pushed up against me, so much so that I was barely on the mattress anymore. I looked over to see what was going on and Checkers had confiscated his mattress so he was trying to get off the ground and use mine! (despite the fact that I'd made a very nice dog bed with the removable trunk liner and some towels!!!)  Fussy puppies do not make great tentmates.

Lovey & Boo were awake at 6:30 and fairly chatty so that was the end of my shuteye! We tried to read quietly in the tent but that didn't last long and everyone got up for breakfast. They went for a swim while I dried out the tent and tore it down and reloaded the van. We grabbed a pizza lunch at the canteen and headed home!

Good times!!!

they got the "small" part right!

Exercise Tuesday!

Look at Sweetie go, with no assistance!!!!

Sweetie's on a mission now! Tonight she was giving it her all and really made a lot of progress. I think it helped that Honey was in absolute misery about a variety of things. There seems to be a direct corrolation between how unhappy one girl is and how hard Sweetie bends over backwards to be extra sweet, kind, helpful and well behaved. She sure knows when she has an opportunity to shine and stand out and she milks the heck out of it.

I think Honey must still not be feeling that well, or was overtired, or had been invaded by a horde of really angry aliens. She started off with the two wheeler and the other two were on scooters. After a few minutes Honey decides the bike is TERRIBLE. She CAN'T do it and turns the whiny waterworks on full blast. No problem, Lovey wants a turn on the two wheeler and is willing to trade the scooter with her. Sweetie is scooting along, happily minding her own business and all's well with the world for about 30 seconds. This is how long it takes for Honey to dissolve into another breakdown over the scooter. I forget what she had against it exactly.... but she leaves it on the side of the road and walks with Murray for awhile. Somehow the scooter comes up and she cries that she DOES want to use it. Sweetie promptly hops off of hers, tells Honey to go ahead with it and she'll run back and get the other one. She's only pouring it on a little at this point, but she's being good, kind and helpful. Who wants to mess with that?????

Eventually Honey gives up on the scooter again and I continue on pushing Lovey on the two wheeler for awhile. Then Sweetie wants a turn so Lovey trades off with her and walks along.

By the way, we went on this mission because Honey drew a fairy picture that she wanted to send in for a contest and we headed to the mailbox so SHE could mail off HER entry. The whininess continued and we offered several times to take her home but she refused. She wanted to mail the letter so she sucked it up for awhile.

Meanwhile Sweetie was really getting into her role as "the perfect child" and commented frequently about what a great time she was having and how she enjoyed working and practicing and getting all that exercise. She wanted to know if we could go out every Tuesday night and have "Exercise Tuessday". Besides chasing after the bike, I was mostly just exercising my patience and abilities to block out unpleasant sounding children. Not sure I want to make THAT a regular activity!!!!!!!

Sweetie made a lot of progress on the bike and got many long stretches of riding by herself. After half an hour she was tired and having a harder and harder time keeping the handlebars straight. She was very excited about getting so far on her own! By that point Lovey was ready for another crack at it so it worked out well. Except.... Lovey hasn't really figured out the balancing thing very well yet and keeping her upright requires more effort! Sometimes she gets herself centred but it's fleeting and will take a little more practice. Even with the bike buddy handle, the constant tipping was starting to bother my back so I switched off with Murray who was probably ready for a break from Honey's latest problem.

We mailed the contest entry and shortly afterwards she decided she wanted it back. She'd never draw another fairy that well again! It never occurred to me that she'd want to keep her picture and I'm pretty sure they don't mail back all the non winning entries. That kept her crying all the way home. I had to leave her behind because I couldn't talk about it anymore and Murphy & I walked in front of her the rest of the way (but not too far ahead Grammie, don't worry!)

Lovey had more spills than anyone tonight but never quit. She worked on that two wheeler almost the full length of the road home and probably never coasted/pedalled more than 2 feet before crashing mittened-hands first onto the pavement. I thought she'd be discouraged or frustrated so I told her how impressed I was that she'd worked so hard and she looked at me in surprise "It was so much fun Mumma!"

Needless to say someone had an early bedtime but had another whiny fit about that! She got to stay for all the Harry Potter though so she was lucky! We read a mermaid story with the other two after we tucked her in kicking and screaming. She hopped out of bed after we left and screamed and pounded on the door the entire time though and won herself a 2nd night going to bed early. That news didn't go over well but she seemed to catch on in a hurry!

Exercise Tuesday got off to a shaky start and we'll probably never get Murray to come again. (He expected it to be awful and Honey fulfilled the prophecy!) BUT 3/5 had a great time and enjoyed it! The problem is, you don't always know which kid is going to be rotten so any outing is a bit of a crapshoot. I don't like to just leave everybody home on the assumption that it's going to be awful. NO! drag them out in all their miserably glory and hope for the best, that's all any good mum can do!!! :)))

(just think of the memories dear, this will be a funny story later! really!! well, ok yeah, much later but still!)

Two Timbits To Go Please!

Mean Mummy on the rampage today! Lovey's violin lesson has been changed to Mondays now and so I had to pick the girls up from school as it would be too late by the time they got home on the bus. However, dismissal time is too early to go to the lesson. I thought we'd have the unusual treat of getting a snack after school and went to Tim Hortons. We were just washing up when they started talking about doughnuts. Since we all know their supper habits are less than stellar, I told them they were only getting 2 Timbits each. Lovey & Honey were not impressed and immediately flipped into full whine ahead!

H: but I want a doughnut!!!!

L: why are we only getting Timbits???

H: I don't want Timbits!

and some other annoying, unappreciative comments like that accompanied by the whiny voices and I made a fast decision.

Me: well, that's fine. You don't have to have any. Whiners get nothing.

They quickly looked at each other and got quiet realllllllllllly fast. Sweetie came out of the stall to wash her hands and didn't say a word about wanting a doughnut. That girl catches on really quick!

We went to line up and I told Sweetie to go look at the Timbits and decided what she wanted. The other two followed her to make their selections, apparently unwilling to believe that I really wasn't going to get them anything. They came back to tell me what flavours they wanted and their mouths fell open when I reminded them that they weren't getting any Timbits.

We got to the counter and I'm sure the other customers were watching & waiting to see if I was really going to buy a treat for just ONE of them. You bet your sweet bippy! I requested two Timbits and the poor cashier didn't know what to do. The math didn't add up at all. You can't exactly split those things! She came back with the doughnuts in separate bags and looked apologetic. I told her we'd just be needing one bag and she took the empty one back and we left. Sweetie trotted along quite happily while Lovey & Honey followed. Once out the door, Honey worked up a good cry but Lovey didn't say a word. After a couple minutes of no progress, Honey turned off the tears and we got to the car and headed out.

It was a tough call. What's the big deal right? Two timbits, who cares? It wouldn't have killed me to buy 4 more! I felt awful only buying a treat for one of them, I was really tempted to change my mind and tell them "ok but NEXT time there won't be anything!". Then I remembered how much and how easily they launch into these annoying whiny voices when they don't get their own way. I thought they'd probably learn more from not getting those two little doughnut balls than they would by getting them with a vague threat about "next time!".

What a whine-oh!

The whining is about enough to drive me the rest of the way crazy! It is particularly bad on Sweetie's part. Any little thing sets off a tirade, mismatched socks, crooked bangs, an unappetizing meal etc will have her on the floor, screaming, whining and crying.

The other night I'd just had it with all the fussing about such ridiculous things! I told her I was going to start keeping track. Every time she whines about something, I'm putting down a little tickmark. If I get to five, Bunny sleeps in my room for the night!

Boys oh boys did THAT get her attention! With about a week in, I've only gotten Bunny one night and she's refraining like crazy! Most days I only get one or two marks, some days she's been up to four but for the most part she is really holding it in. I try to warn her before she gets going and have been really playing it up that I loooooooooooooove to catch her and I get bored when I'm not getting many tickmarks and she is determined that I won't "win"!

One night at supper I saw her getting geared up and said

Me: I haven't gotten to make any marks lately!!! don't you feel like whiiiiiiiiiiiiiining about something?????

Sweetie: (scrunching up her face & sticking it close to mine) No! do you feel like looooooooooooooooooosing????????????????

She cackles when I complain about not having many marks in a day and the other two are supporting her all the way. "C'mon, let's help Sweetie so Mumma will lose! You can do it Sweetie!! we're going to help you!!!"

We've gone from 492 outbreaks from her a day, down to 1-4. It is a remarkable change and I hope it lasts! I can definitely see her thinking about her reaction as things bother her. Much more effort is being put into using words instead of just screaming every time something isn't to her liking. It's been an amazing and fast transformation. I do feel slightly guilty using Bunny against her but I can't argue with the progress so far!