I feel like my family shouldn't be allowed to leave the house...

Last weekend, we went out to a local Vietnamese restaurant. It is a small restaurant, with maybe 12 tables. There were maybe 4 other families eating when we walked in.

As we walked in, my son, VERY LOUDLY, said(as everyone turns to look at him), "Are these CHINESE people??" A very nice young server came up and told him he was Vietnamese and didn't seem too worried about it, but my face was RED. The server then tried to serve my children nothing but beer all night. He was joking, of course, but Night was worried he wasn't going to get any noodles.

After having a yelling match with Keira (in the bathroom hallway-not in the dining room though I'm sure everyone heard us and was ready for my disruptive family to get the hell out of there), we all walked across the parking lot to TARGET. We found a very good deal on THE SIMPSONS GAME for the PS2 on clearance, but I wish we wouldn't have bought it. It is the only thing on tv now!

When it was time to leave, Keira threw another fit. (terrible twos? Can we say horrendous, abominable twos??) Josh and Night took Keira out to the car while I finished. She screamed the entire way. I think I heard people talking about that horrible noise, but maybe I was just being paranoid.

Keira continued to scream for the next ten minutes. She screamed until we pulled into the Steak n Shake parking lot, and I asked Night what kind of shake he wanted. "Strawberry." THEN Keira stops screaming and politely says, "I want a strawberry too please."

"NO way, Keira Bryce. You do not get an ice cream because you were screaming this whole way. You need to be polite if you want to get treats like ice cream." I knew it was going to be difficult, but she didn't deserve ice cream, right?

Then I looked over at Josh. He is sheepishly looking at me with sad eyes. I said, "She doesn't deserve ice cream." He said, "No. She doesn't. But when I told her we were going out to eat, I told her we could have ice cream afterwards."

Great. Now, do I be a liar (even though it wasn't ME lying, we are a united front, so to speak) and not give her the ice cream? Or do I be a hypocrite and give her the ice cream even though she definitely didn't deserve it? Well, Josh and I both had a long talk with her about behaving and not SCREAMING whenever she doesn't get her way. We then got her the strawberry shake.

Why doesn't parenting come with some sort of guidelines or something? I probably wouldn't follow them, but I would at least feel like I knew what was going on! Next time, Josh has agreed to let me know that he has bribed the child...

I kind of feel like a bad parent, but she won't be the worst kid in her class...

It was so much easier raising a child before the child came into the picture!

Spanish

When I first log-in to blogger, it is in Spanish. If I click on random people's profile pages, it is in Spanish.

Have I somehow done this? Or is Blogger going through a Spanish phase?

How do I fix this? I speak UN-POKITO Spanish...

Tricky

Know what is tricky? Trying to potty train a puppy and a kid at the same time. I never know who to yell at when I find pee on the floor...or on the couch. (You might not want to come visit us for a little while...)
Dash was supposedly potty-trained when he came to us, but I beg to differ!
Keira wasn't potty-trained when she came to us, but that is to be expected!

Kool-Aid Fun

For the first time in....a year(?), I've finally thought of a Works For Me Wednesday tip!! (and I'm home in time to post it!)

In an effort to be healthier and spend less money, we haven't been going out to eat as often as we used to, but when we do go out to eat, I take along Kool-Aid single packets. Sometimes kids' meals don't include a drink, so I just order them water and then pop out the singles. I don't let the kids have them any other time, so it is a special treat for them, and I don't have to pay an extra $2-5 bucks for the drinks (hey that can go toward the tip--take care of your servers-we have families too!). Sure, just plain water would be even more affordable, but lets be realistic-the kids have more fun with kool-aid! (Who doesn't, really?)

They have plenty of flavors (I usually have two kinds to chose from in my purse), in both sugar- free and full-hyper flavors. Try it! You'll like it!

I'm a Sucker

for a cute dog.

You may remember that we got Charlie from freecyle.org about a year ago when someone listed that the owner had died. Anyway, there are a lot of offers for dogs on freecycle. I usually read them, and Josh says, "YES! YES!" and I say, "Yeah right. As if we don't have enough going on in our little house."

Well, yesterday there was an offer for an AUSSIE MIX PUPPY. I don't know what that means, but I do know that I like dogs, and I like Aussie... So, the story started out the same but ended differently!!

Meet Dash. (probably Dash, what do you think of MAX?)

Apparently Aussie Mix means um... mutt. He looks nothing like an Australian Shepherd, does he? You can't really see his body type, but I really think he looks like a long haired daschund. I was kind of expecting a herder type dog, but this little guy won't be herding anything! Anyway, he is adorable, and we all love him. Well, Scully (lead dog in our house) is getting used to him. She is mildly amused by him...as long as he stays away from her food.

Speaking of Scully, she helped us clean out the fridge today.


What a great little helper!!