Disgruntled Kids

I think the title of this post pretty much sums up my boys right now. They are learning some pretty harsh lessons that I would rather them learn now rather then later. They are not happy about this at all. You see I am tired of them mouthing off to me and not listening to anything I say. I am over Colin being sloppy on his homework just because he doesn't want to do it, and I am tired of Kiale being down right rude and hateful to me on a near constant basis. Colin has no excuse when I ask him about it, he knows I am right, but Kiale has one HUGE excuse that I am not going to put up with anymore. His excuse? "Because Daddy is gone." Well guess what, I get that and I understand that yes it sucks that Daddy had to leave for a year, but you know what... get over it. Every single time he does anything wrong or steps out of line he throws that excuse in my face. I will not put up with this behavior for the next year, "because Daddy left." It just isn't going to happen, all this does is show them that if they can give me a good enough excuse they can get away with anything. They were wrong. Take tonight for example, we decided yesterday that we were going to do dinner and a movie tonight. We finished homework and I told the boys to clean their rooms, that they did, but here is where it went downhill. I told Kiale to read 2 chapters from his book. He didn't do it. It wasn't until 30min later that I asked him if I needed to quiz him that he told me he couldn't find his book. This being the book he showed me 30min earlier.... he said he hid it from Cayleigh-Grace and now he couldn't find it, but amazingly enough with the threat of bed without dinner he found it right away. Isn't it funny how that happens? After finding the book it spiraled into the whole why do I have to read, I hate reading argument. I do not know how to get him to enjoy reading the way I do. Anyways, after lots of yelling at me I told him he was not allowed to watch the movie tonight. Then Colin shoved Cayleigh-Grace while she was standing on the stairs so he also lost his movie privilege tonight. I think I went back on threats too many times throughout the years and now they just don't care about my threats anymore. Now I get the lovely task of making them (Kiale in particular) respect me again. Which basically means that they hate life right now because I am following through on every single threat and punishment I make at them. Hopefully they get the point pretty soon... and if not, I just hope we are able to find a balance again. I miss balance.

Music Sunday Week 1

Here are the two songs that I have been loving this past week.

Realizations

*You never realize just how big your house is until your husband isn't in it anymore.
*You never know how you are going to handle a situation until you are finally faced with it. Sometimes you may even surprise yourself and that can be a good thing, or a bad thing. It all depends on your frame of mind when you are looking at it.
*Kids are rezelent but they still hurt and I need to remember that.
*I feel incredibly guilty for handling this so well... is there something wrong with me?  

Photo Fun

I was bored (imagine that) and messing around with some old pictures today when I got a crazy idea. Why not make some collages of the kids at the same ages. So here is what my boredom turned into. Left to Right,

Kiale, Colin, and Cayleigh-Grace

At Birth 

Six Months Old

One Year Old

 18 Months Old

 Two Years Old

What did I learn from this little exercise? Cayleigh-Grace looks so much older then her brothers at all of her different stages after the first year. I wonder why that is... its like my boys retained their baby faces longer and she developed more a little girl face at a very young age. I know one reason for that is she is so much bigger then the boys ever where at any of her ages. It was a running joke that my kids get their legs late, because that is exactly what happened. Their legs didn't start getting longer until they hit three. Did you notice how short Colin's legs were at 18 months? That right there proves my point. Then you have Cayleigh-Grace who goes and blows that theory clear to the moon. Obviously it didn't pertain to our girl only our boys. I remember when it came to buying clothes for Kiale it was super easy, whatever age he was was whatever size clothes you bought for him. For Colin his pants fit his age, but had to be rolled up, and his shirts where a year ahead of him. Cayleigh-Grace is another thing all together she already fits into size 3t pants. The boys couldn't wear that size pants until they were about three and a half. She will also be wearing size 4t shirts very soon and she will be two and a half in March. I have a feeling the girl is going to be at least as tall as my sister, and she just hit 5'11. I already have my fingers crossed that she will want to play volleyball when she is older, lets just hope she plays better then her Momma did!

Day 2, check.

Shortly after this morning began we hit the 24 hour mark since we watched his bus pull away. It was kind of nice knowing that we survived the first day and we will survive the rest of them as well. The kids went back to school today, and I managed to get fussed at for going down the school hallway by one of the teachers. I just needed to let Kiale's teacher know why he was absent yesterday since I forgot to put a note in his backpack and one of the teachers made me wait in the hallway and made Kiale's teacher walk all the way down just so I could talk to her. It wasn't a big deal, but it was just enough to annoy me.

I am already starting to plan R&R... crazy I know.. KS wants to go home to see our family while he is back so I figure we can have him fly into Orlando instead of here and we can hit Disney World for a couple of days then drive up to see our family. Then spend the last week or so here at home. I have to clear all of this by him though of course, and since he is not interested in Disney at all it might not work out that way, but we will see. Either way the kids and I will be going to Disney World this year. I want to take advantage of the 3 day park hopper passes I can get through the Army. I just have to decide how many days we want to take advantage of. I have a feeling I know exactly what he will say... "Disney? Yea, you have fun with that." Which translates into sure you can go, but I'm not in KS speak.

The kids seem to be handling everything pretty well today. Kiale is doing a little better, he is handling it the worst which I am not surprised about since he is the oldest. He understands time a lot better then Colin and Cayleigh-Grace does. It is very lonely with him gone, and very quiet... well as quiet as it can be with three crazy children in the house. The lack of near constant adult interaction is something that I already miss very much. I spent the day yesterday reading Twilight (again) I managed to get through 390 pages and I plan of finishing it today and starting New Moon. Whenever I need an escape and a distraction these are the books I go to. It is just so easy to get sucked into them. Cayleigh-Grace ended up playing playdoh ALL day today. I don't think I have ever seen a child play with it for so long. We also managed to watch all three of the Rainbow Brite DVD's that we have, two of which are the seasons. She loves those movies, they are by far her favorite thing to watch right now. I need to pull out my She'ra DVDs for her to watch next. Gotta love 80's cartoons, they were the best!