Please be an effective parent

I am so pissed at my flingin flangin house right now. Not only does our roof still leak despite our shoddy attempts to “patch” it last spring, but we have had power surges/ outages all stinking day. The wind has calmed down here (as yesterday I thought it was going to blow our roof clean off.) But we are still getting these dumb 1/2 a second outages. Just enough to turn my computer off right in the middle of typing something. This morning I was in the middle of a comment on Michelle?s blog and this afternoon I was in the middle of writing a post. Good thing I wasn?t working on actual work as I would be really irritated if I lost my work. Ohhh I hate that!

So now I have to recreate what I was originally writing about.

Yeah… not a whole lot going on here. I gave up the ghost on the potty training bit. Yesterday the boy clearly had to go and when I made an attempt to put him on the potty he erupted into fits of screaming. I also realized that even if I got him potty trained, there isn?t a pair of underpants out there that would actually fit him. Sure I could let him run around without any, but yeah… I don?t want to do that. So for now I am letting him gain a little weight and keeping him in diapers.

CS?s grandma is doing a little better. She?s still in the hospital and we still aren?t sure when she is going to get to come home. They drained some fluid off of her lung and took her off some of her daily meds. She thought she was going home yesterday but was sadly mistaken. Much to her chagrin. CS?s aunt arrived from Kansas last night to see Bunny. I was so nice to see her. She also got to meet the boy for the first time. He thinks Aunt Di is pretty great.

I finally got photos of the packaging posted for the chocolates. They are very simple, but that is what I like. There was also a suggestion over at Soul of Adoption that I include a little note in the boxes that says the money is going to help adoptive families. I hadn?t thought of that, but I like that idea. So I will include that somehow.

I promised you guys a story about why some people should not procreate. Oh how I hate stupid parents.

So I take the boy to a local mall anchor store for photos Tuesday afternoon. All is well and good. The boy looks adorable and is his usual “angelic” self. Our name gets called and we are ushered into one of the back photo rooms. There is a bench just outside of the room and there is a mom and her two little girls on the bench. Susie & Liv. I should not know their names. I do because so does every other patron of this particular photo establishment. Susie is a curious little girl. She wanted to know what was going on in our photo room and would stand at the door and ask questions. The minute she would open her mouth her mother would say, ?SUSIE, you need to get over here right now.” In a mean and nasty tone. What would the little girl do? Ignore her mother. This perpetuated a viscious cycle of mom yelling and little girl ignoring. The photographer finally put one of the backdrops in front of the door, but we could still hear them out there. The little girl then found some other poor sap to pester. Finally the mother said, “if you guys keep this up we are leaving.” or “they are going to kick us out of here if you keep acting that way.” Good riddens!!! Alas no. The mother was one of those… full of empty threats. Gee I wonder why her daughter ignores her? It certainly couldn?t be because she hits her daughter in public, could it? Yep… this mom actually hit her daughter in public. I didn?t see it. It sounded like a swat on the butt, but still. 1) you never ever ever ever hit a child. 2) you never ever ever ever hit a child. Period.

This woman was the single most ineffective parent I have ever seen in my life. Her children ran amuck all over the photo studio. Girls behind the counter wanting to talk on the phone. Girls in the supply closet. Girls climbing up on the counter. Girls trying to push buttons on the computers. It was little girl pandemonium. The photographers and front desk girls were crazy busy and this mother was doing nothing more than giving idle threats.

So ladies and gentleman there is an important lesson to be learned here. Please for the love of GOD be an effective parent. If you tell your child that you will have to go home because of their behavior do it. I have done this. No 1-2-3 warnings. No second chances. Cancel your outing. For instance: the boy and I went to a craft store the other day. There were no carts remaining so I had to carry him. He asked to be put down. So I let him down and said, “Please don?t touch anything.” He does understand me. He proceeded to touch things. So I picked him up. We walked around the store and the child tried to swindle me with kisses. I said I will put you down if you don?t touch anything. What did he do? Tried to grab stuff. We left the store. It never escalated to crying and screaming. I did what I said I was going to do. If he couldn?t behave we would have to leave. Effective parenting. Please do your part.

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