We are enjoying ourselves here in New Braunfels.
Daniel is managing to get into EVERYTHING. I can't ever sit down because then he is getting rocks out of the fireplace, breaking boxes, pulling tables down ontop of himself, getting into photo albums, trying to get into the toilet, opening cabinets, tearing paper, etc. That little sucker can bookit! He even began disassembling the high chair - don't ask. He is definitely the trouble maker. Good thing he is cute.
We found an awesome spider on the back porch and it is huge. So I took pictures and hopefully I can upload some and post soon.
We went to Natural Bridge Caverns yesterday. That was really fun. Luckily the boys are used to lots of walking because it was a lot of walking but it was cool. A large part of it we couldn't visit due to the fact that it was under water from all the rain. But the boys enjoyed it a lot. Daniel was cranky but we are used to that :)
Today it looks like it will be a nice day so we should be off to Schlitterbahn. Except Esther who has a stomach bug and is in bed. Although we were all sick it does not appear to be the same thing we had so she is keeping her distance (not that she wants to get out of bed)
Darren is in New Jersey until late Wed. night or early Thurs. morning (depending on how you look at it)
Oh last night I got really mad at the boys and Alex just kept egging me on so I calmly spanked him to which he got the giggles and I spanked him again and he bust out laughing. I realized that apparantly that form of punishment will not work with him. I left the room, cried when I thought about spanking him (i rarely do spank) and felt overwhelmed. Hopefully this makes me human and not a terrible mom. Will need to rethink all punishments and come up with a different plan of action. What do you do when even spanking doesn't upset a four year old?
Will post more soon.
2 comments:
Let me know when you find a good, fair, and effective punishment for a four-year-old. Ugh.
Glad you are enjoying your trip! We all are going through TX withdrawals. I hope to come visit at Thanksgiving. I'll keep you posted and hopefully we can see each other!
Glad to hear you are enjoying the trip and that Daniel isn't still throwing up. Sorry to hear mom is sick. I talked to her yesterday and she didn't mention it. Hope Schlitterbahn is fun -- who else went?
Hate to tell you this guys, but it gets HARDER to find effective punishments as the kids get older. Spanking, occasionally, does NOT make you a bad mom - we've all been there. Sometimes it's all that works and I've done it too and yes, I've felt bad afterwards too.
Harrison is getting to a pre-teen age where he gets moody, sullen, angry at us for no reason, etc. I was warned by friends this would happen due to hormones, but didn't think Harrison would get that way b/c he's always so easy and easy going.
We've found ourselves doing a lot of yelling at the kids lately (well, not the last couple of weeks but before that) and taking away privileges like crazy. It was making all of us miserable. So Marlon and I had a long talk about how our punishing was not effective and we needed a different approach. We decided that maybe since the kids are all older, we could try a less punitive form of discipline and maybe they would just do everything we expect them to do and not make any punishments necessary - you know, kind of be more "adult" about things even though they aren't adults. We had a long talk with each of them (separately) and told them that we'd love to be able to just have a peaceful, harmonious home with no yelling and no needing to take away privileges of sleepovers or whatever privilege they were losing and that instead if we mutually respect each other and they do things the first time we ask and stop doing things the first time we ask, then we wouldn't even need to punish.
And you know what... it's actually WORKING! The last couple of weeks I haven't had to raise my voice or punish at all and everyone has been making a real effort to "keep the peace." Of course they're still fighting with each other, but I just remind them of our goal to have a peaceful harmonious home with no yelling and no punishing and it gets them to stop right away.
Of course there's a difference between 11 and 9 and your kids ages!
Good luck!
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