Just Heather

We just returned from the store where I paid—gasp—full price for a Kit Kat. As I handled my checkout on the U-Scan register, I asked Stacia to make sure Brenia didn’t touch anything, as she is wont to do. Not 30 seconds later, I hear “Mo-om, Brenia opened a candy bar!” I yanked the bitten into candy away from the toddler, instructed them both to hold onto my cart and do not move, and proceeded to scan the offending candy.

For some reason, my daughter failed to grasp the concept of why she would not be allowed to eat the candy since her little sister had a bite. Hmm, let me think, should I reward her for ignoring her sister when she was specifically told to watch her? Somehow I’m guessing you know my answer on that one.

So here I sit, eating the candy bar that cost a grand total of:

  • $.56 plus tax
  • 5 straight minutes of tears
  • 2 time-outs
  • 4 red poker chips
  • 1 massive, splitting headache

One more thing via Silly Old Bear since I wrote this message in my head all the way home in effort to drown out the chorus of “no fairs” and “I want candy”:

If, as you live your life, you find yourself mentally composing blog entries about it, post this exact same sentence in your weblog.

I got my Mixmania CD in the mail the other day and have been enjoying the eclectic mix all weekend. She’s a little bit country; I’m a little bit rock and roll. The CD is a unique and fun mix. I thank her from the bottom of my heart all the way to “mahbootay.” Anyone who manages to combine The Beach Boys, Prince, and Beer Run deserves a huge round of applause. Another big standing O goes to Jim for putting this all together.

I had to search quite a bit before I found the creator of my CD. Here’s to expanding my blogroll—one CD at a time.

I giggle at one aisle every, single time I shop at my favorite grocery store. Yet, somehow I just keep forgetting to pass it on. They have recently reorganized the store and gotten all new signage. One sign—above the aforementioned aisle—reads:

Water
Wine

Since having children things come out of my mouth that just make me stop and say “what?!” Nevermind the all-too-obvious things we thought we’d never repeat from our parents:

  • I’m not [insert name here]’s mother!
  • Because I said so!
  • Don’t make me count to three young lady…

I’m talking about the things you would never comprehend as a sentence in your pre-parent days that just fly out of my mouth on a regular basis:

  • Who put the Froot Loops in the toilet?
  • Why is there toilet paper in the hallway?
  • Stop licking your sister!
  • Get your foot off the t.v. screen.
  • Don’t put your toes in your mouth!

There are some things about parenting you just can’t even begin to explain to someone without children.

I just returned completely empty-handed from a 30-minute trip the grocery store for much needed milk, meat and produce. As I’m sure you all know, I buy nothing that isn’t on sale. So I spent my time walking through the store with a toddler gathering the bargains. I get to the checkout only to discover that my handy dandy Kroger Plus card is not attached to my keychain since it was loaned to my husband in order to save money on our Family Fun Day at Indiana Beach. The cashier says “I’m sorry.” So I politely asked if there was a store card she could swipe to get my discount.

“No, sorry. We don’t do that here.” Then she starts scanning my over-priced groceries. What?! Like I would pay full price for anything. She actually looked stunned when I told her I didn’t want any of it. Then she looked around completely clueless while I left my cart exactly where it was, gathered my munchkin and left the store, passing a manager who barely glanced my way much less noticed me as an extremely unsatisfied customer leaving without my groceries.

If I didn’t have a free $20 gift card to go back and get the stuff tomorrow, I would definitely not be Krogering any time soon. At least I can revel in the knowledge that they won’t actually see a penny of my money.

Stacia has always been a bit of a difficult child. Behavior management has been an issue we struggled with for many years. She’s high-strung, temperamental, and—lately—a major smart-ass. I got so fed up with the temper tantrums we were still having at age 4 that I finally took her to a psychologist to find out why the terrible twos seemed to be lasting for years. He was not so helpful. Basically he said that she is a naturally high energy child and the best way to handle her behavior was to put her in high energy activities like swimming and soccer so that the excess energy did not manifest itself in tantrums. I can occasionally notice a difference in behavior during soccer season when she’s busy, but not enough to warrant the $300 opinion.

Last year I stumbled across a pretty harsh behavior management program that worked for a little while. She was flat out grounded with no privileges whatsoever—completely confined to her room—until she earned her way out one level at a time. When she was on the bottom level, it was severe but it seemed to work. For awhile. As school came to an end, the snottiness and outbursts grew. We decided to change tactics.

I put together another plan, focusing more on positive efforts. I bought a set of poker chips with blue being for good behavior and completed chores and red being for poor attitude and behavior. If the red outweighs the blue, she is grounded until chip count the next week. When she has more blue than red, she gets to buy special privileges and treats. Last weekend she spent 12 straight hours doing extra chores in an attempt to get ungrounded. She just squeaked by with enough leftover to buy a goofy red, white and blue headband she’d picked out for the 4th.

I really thought she learned her lesson with the first two weeks and we were going to get somewhere. Not so much. Tonight, she’ll be grounded yet again by around 45 chips! It has been a tough few days, which I’m hopeful can be chalked up to coming off an exciting weekend with too much sugar. I have gently reminded her each day that she needs to be completing her chores to earn blue chips. For this, I was rewarded with super-sized temper tantrums, for which she was rewarded numerous red chips.

I just don’t know what else to do with her. I’m so tired of hearing “no” and “I don’t care” and the infamous “why do you hate me?” anytime I try to get her to do something. We have moments when I think this is going well. Things will be better now. Then there are moments when I wonder what I was thinking when I decided to do this all over again.

I got my Summer Mixmania CD in the mail on time—I promise—I just forgot to post my song list. I’m not the most organized person in the world so getting my list of 512489 things to do before I leave town actually done before I leave town is not easily—or usually—accomplished. Mixmania was fun, though I’m not a huge music person. Spencer helped me actually mix and burn the CDs once I picked my songs. He had so much fun he actually mixed his own Summer theme CD. I spent 3 weeks on mine. He threw his together in 20 minutes before we left town. I included it in my mailing to Jim to send overseas for some of our soldiers.

And now for my long awaited song list. Some are just plain old summer songs I had to include. Others are more personally meaningful to the season. Those will be detailed for your amusement.

  • Ace of Base, The Sign I lifeguarded with a guy one summer who sang this particular song all. the. time. He was so hot, I would have listened to him sing country.
  • Sheryl Crow, Soak Up the Sun
  • LFO, Summer Girls
  • Maxamillion, Fat Boys The official summer road trip song of 1995.
  • Will Smith, Miami I did make an effort to avoid the obvious Summertime, but you can’t make a summer CD and not include Will Smith. Just look at him—the boy screams heat.
  • No Doubt, Spiderwebs What is it about summer that brings out the stalker-type guys?
  • Paul Simon, Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard Spencer played with a band in college. I can picture many summer nights sitting around watching them play. This was a favorite cover.
  • Grease, Summer Nights Obvious, I know, but I just couldn’t resist.
  • Alanis Morrisette, Head Over Feet This was a big hit the year I fell in love with my sweetie. I can still remember every detail of that summer whenever I hear it.
  • Bob Carlisle, Butterfly Kisses Surprisingly, its inclusion has nothing to do with the fact that it was my Daddy Dance song at our summer wedding. It’s all about the “sticking little white flowers all up in her hair” line. I can’t be the only one who remembers making white clover crowns as a little girl!
  • TLC, Waterfalls The infamous drunken dance song for the summer of ’95. We had a whole routine and everything. Don’t ask.
  • Styx, Rockin’ The Paradise My name is Heather and I’m an official band geek. When you spend your high school years in marching band that’s all you know of summer. This was our big song during my final season.
  • Switchfoot, This Is Your Life I don’t know what it is about summer that makes me reflective, but there you go. It’s worse than New Year’s Eve.
  • Jewel, Morning Song I think this goes back to our first summer together, but this is pretty much how I feel every morning in the summer. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s light outside when the alarm goes off that makes me want to rebel against actually getting out of bed.
  • Smashing Pumpkins, Luna Our wedding dance song. I must have asked him to play this song for me a hundred times that summer. It was a nice break from the madness of putting together a wedding in 3 months. I think it always helped to remember the part after all the madness, when it would just be Spencer and I—married. Finally.