Wornoutwoman

It starts early... the pressure to be popular.  Lately, that's been the theme around my house. I cut my hair off shorter than my son would like and the response is: "Mom, you know I love you the most - but you've lost some popularity points with me until you grow that back." And today when I had to discipline him - I heard it again. Here's what I keep telling myself. I'm not trying to be his friend, like some of the parents in today's world.  You see I care about how my son turns out and if that means being the bad guy - then so be it. Today we worked on respect for his parents.  Lately, he's had a smart mouth on him which needs to be handled before he turns into one of those Disney teen characters on TV (which is why we don't watch those shows). After he'd been banned in his room for a short period and we'd had our talk about why he was punished, he crawled onto my back and hugged neck from behind.  He cuddled ever so sweetly an...

My son's birthday was this month, on the 11th. He turned the big four! My goodness, how time flies. He'll be 14 before I know it. We had a party at a huge indoor inflatable play zone that had every bouncing gym you could imagine. It even had a huge inflatable 16-foot tall slide. We had 16 kids and 45 people in total, with all the parents and our family members. I knew that with the number of kids that were being invited I had to change up the birthday rules a little. I asked lieu of giving my son 'birthday gifts' that they bring dog and cat food as donations to the humane society. A) I don't need a million more toys and games cluttering up my home that my son will soon lose interest in and B) I wanted to give my son the gift of giving back. Today we took an entire trunk load of dog and cat food to the animal shelter. I had a 20lb bag, 2 big 15lb dog treat boxes, and multiple types of smaller dog and cat foods. It was quite a loot, and it took 4 trips...