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!