Church with little ones....

We are a church going family. I love going to church....but every time we walk in the doors and get settled and ready all I can think in my head is "how long before someone has a meltdown?" We have a great church where the older two go to sunday school, they have a nursery for the little ones, it's so kid friendly that even if your kids were goofing around no one would look at you funny. But I have a huge problem where I expect too much from my kids. I expect them to be on their best behavior and sometimes when I do that I forget one little thing....."they are kids!" Today the two older kids went to Sunday school, and since Tys is afraid of strangers and Bella's so little we kept them with us in the church. Today they surprized me big time.....the two little ones fell asleep in there. My husband and I were able to listen to the whole sermon. I don't think we've been able to do that since before the kids were born. One thing I have learned though is to always be prepared. I always have snacks in the diaper bag, ones that aren't noisey so they won't disturb anyone. I usually have a book or small toy, and we always sit towards the back so if one of the kids do act up we can take them out for a minute or two. It's not hard to take kids out and have them behave, you just have to do it enough so they realize what you expect from them, and you also....like me....need to drop your expectations from being so high the kids will never reach them. They are kids.....and if you make it through a couple hours without anyone hitting, screaming, or fighting then it's been a good day.

School Clothes Shopping....

When I was growing up, the day we reserved for shopping for school stuff was always one of the funnest days of the summer. I used to be so excited about it and always had tons of fun. We would always go to McDonalds (which at the time was gourmet dinning to me!) and spend the whole day trying on clothes and picking out all our favorites. I mean come on...who wouldn't love clothes shopping. How about the parents that have to see the bill! Wow I never realized how fast it all ads up. And we shopped a lot of sales. I can only see the bill getting higher every year as the kids get older and each want more expensive, name brand, clothes. My 6 year old already only likes Air Jordan, Sketchers, and Echo. We bought 3 pairs of new shoes for the 3 boys yesterday, like 10 pairs of pants, 2 sweater jackets, 5 shirts, and a new dress for little Bella. I thought we did pretty good. We made it a fun day for them, we took them to the food court in the mall and let them get whatever they wanted (Big surprize it was McDonalds). I think back to school shopping will be something they'll always remember too. The good thing this year though is the 2 younger boys we can still talk into getting the cheaper shoes by saying how cool they are! Our oldest already thinks we're nuts and he has his own style. We're obviously not the "cool" parents we think we are. Well, as long as no one has a major growth spurt this year we should be set with shopping. Here's hoping!

Terrible Two's

I've been giving the terrible two's a lot of thought lately. It seems with each kid they have gotten worse. You would think that with each kid I would get the hang of it better and it would seem simpler. Well that's not the case. I think with my 3rd though I've finally figured out the reason behind the "terrible two's." I think 90% of his fits that he throws are not because he is being a stubborn brat, but because he has something he wants to tell us, but he isn't able to speak them to us yet to where we understand him. I've been trying harder to listen to him, and help him explain what he wants. But I can tell when I'm in a hurry and stressed out I don't try as hard and that seems to be his "bad" days. I'm sure we'd get frustrated too if we wanted something and couldn't tell people what it was and no one understood us. Maybe by the time Bella starts going through her terrible twos I'll finally have the hang of this and be able to pass through that phase in a breeze.