let's do the time warp again!

We've just gotten back from a week long vacation in Disney World. I was very apprehensive about this trip for many reasons.

I do not fly well
I have never flown with the kids
Maybe the kids don't fly well
I haven't spent significant time with my family in years
What if we all blew up at each other on day 2
It's hot in Florida in June
I thought the parks would be crowded
I was worried I wouldn't like the food
What if someone got sick while we were away from home?

See? See all those reasons to be worried? Well, phooey on them, because we had a great time. I actually flew really well, the best I have in years. All I can figure is that I was so focused on The Kiddos that I did not leave myself room to worry. The Kiddos flew well, too. They were very excited. The family concern was a non-issue. In fact, I wish I had seen them a bit more. We generally rode the bus to each park together in the mornings, but then we split up. We saw each other at a few prearranged functions, but mostly did not. There was one regrettable altercation, but that was it. Not too shabby. The weather was hot, no getting around that, but it wasn't unbearable (mostly). We drank lots of water and the hotel had a pool, so we managed. The parks were crowded, but it could have been a lot worse. Plus, the fastpass options on the rides means you hardly wait in line for most things these days. It's really nice, especially with small children. The food was fine. It took me a day or two to get over my phobia of different foods, but the food was good and there was plenty of it. No one got sick.

We had a great time. So much so that I am motivated to make a scrapbook, which is really not very much like something I would do... but I feel a need to commemorate the trip, to remember it always.

As we were on the shuttle bus leaving the hotel and going to the airport to fly home, The Babe said to me that she wished we could go home and start the week all over. *sigh* Me too. The one thing I hate about vacations is how they exist in a vacuum. There is so much anticipation and planning, so much fun during, and then you get home and it's like it never existed... everything just falls back into place and it's as though you never left. It's a bit depressing, and is a big part of why I want to make a scrapbook, I want to remember it while it's fresh.

I'm with The Babe on this one... let's have a time warp! We'll start vacation over and have all the fun again! Or at least be able to remember it always....

flashback? flashforward?

In December, 2003, while I was pregnant with The Boy, my husband and I signed all the paperwork and contracted to build a new house in a town about 40 minutes from where we were living at the time. We had done all the proper research on the new town: school districts, demographics, park district, taxes, etc... but we weren't very familiar with the town itself. The new house was slated to be ready in August 2004.

That spring and early summer, when we needed to get out of the old house so our realtor could have open houses or what-have-you, we very often drove to the new town. We checked on the progress being made on the construction of our new home, and we explored our new downtown area. The Babe was about 2.5 years old, and The Boy was about 2-5 months old.

Many, many, many times as we explored the downtown, The Boy would need to eat. I had found a little breezeway between two buildings that acted as a pathway between a parking lot and the main shopping section. This breezeway had a nice bench, was shaded from the sun, and was not very widely used. I sat there so many times nursing The Boy on countless different trips.

Flashforward 3 years. The Boy and I are downtown having a date today, just the two of us at the Starbucks while The Babe is in a class. We are just killing time until it is time to go pick her up. As we're sitting, bored, in the Starbucks, The Boy announces he wants to go sit outside. I say OK, there are benches just at the corner. We get to those benches, and they're right in the sun. It's super hot today and I was not interested in that. And then I had the lightbulb moment... and I took The Boy to our little breezeway bench in the shade.

He was tired. He laid on the bench with his head in my lap, sucking his thumb and clinging to his babies. I wished we had thought of it sooner, as we only had a few minutes to sit before we had to go for The Babe.

It was nice to sit there with him. It's kind of sweet that we have a little place of our own, our quiet little spot, right in the middle of the downtown shopping hustle. I know The Boy doesn't remember all the other times we've sat there, just the two of us, but I'll never be able to walk past it without feeling all mushy inside ever again.

acceptance

Recently, a friend of mine blogged about the need to be careful what we tell our little ones. They are so easily accepting of our explanations of the world. She could not be more right.

A long time ago, I told The Babe that if she was awakened by a nightmare in the middle of the night, the best thing for her to do was to go tinkle. I explained that when you tinkle, all the bad thoughts and scary monsters go away with the tinkle and get flushed down the potty. I figured that I had killed two birds with one stone there: 1.) She believes she got rid of the bad dream and will go back to sleep with very little fuss 2.) She has tinkled, thereby lessening the chance that she would have an accident during the night (we were potty training at the time).

I don't have an explanation for why I made up such a story, and I really have no idea where it came from. All I can say in my defense is that it is very likely I was in a 2:00am haze when I said it. But, however silly it seems, it has worked like a charm, and to this day The Babe believes that if she just tinkles, all the bad thoughts go away.

Tonight was a killer night at work (look at the time I am posting this!), and The Babe was up a couple of times as I was still working. The first time she woke up was around 1:00am. She came to my office to tell me that she had lost her covers during the night. On our way back to her room, I told her she should stop to tinkle. That's another rule of mine, not related to nightmares, that if you are up in the middle of the night, you tinkle (you can tell we had our fair share of night time accidents, can't you?). So, we stopped, she went, and I tucked her back in to bed. But, at around 1:30, she was up again; this time due to a nightmare. Uh-oh.

She had just tinkled the equivalent of Niagra Falls not 30 minutes before. As I am leading her back to her room to tuck her in, she stops me. "Wait mommy! I want to tinkle it out!" So, I'm scrambling... I warned her that she might not have any tinkle left, but never fear! If there is a lack of tinkle, I can tinkle for her! That still counts! OMG, I roped myself into the ridiculous 'tinkle eliminates monsters' theory. Lucky for me she was able to go a bit herself... but I bet she remembers that my tinkle can be called upon during some future midnight tinkle shortage.

*sigh* Yes, we do need to be careful what we tell them... quite careful.

lying

What do you do about the lying? He's just 3. He lies about stupid things, and he always gets caught. I want to punish him, I want him to know that it's wrong to lie, but I don't actually know what to *do*.

The Babe never lies. I swear. Even when she knows she's wrong, and she knows there will be some trouble, she'll look at the floor and very quietly tell you the truth. What this has meant is that she gets a small lecture on why what she did was wrong, but she is rarely actually punished, and she is so good that she listens to your lecture and takes it to heart. She almost never repeats the same offense. So, I am new to this whole lying thing.

The Boy, however, is a different story. He is defiant. He doesn't listen. And, he does lie. Today it was as silly as asking me if he could be excused from the table. I was in the laundry room at the time, and I asked him if he had eaten his whole sandwich, to which he answered "yes". So, I excused him from the table. I finished what I was doing and was distracted by something else, meanwhile The Kiddos are quite busy playing. It was probably a full 30-45 minutes later that I walked into the kitchen to see 2/3 of his sandwich still on the plate. So, I lost it. I know it's a small lie, but he lied just the same, and it's been so frequent and I am just sick of it. I yelled at him and I sent him to his room. He cried all the way up there and I told him he had better be quiet, too. I didn't want to hear it. I spent the next few minutes calming myself down and then I went in to speak with him.

I asked him why he lied to me, and his answer was that he didn't want to finish his sandwich. I told him if he had just told me the truth, that he was full, we could have worked out a deal; but that since he lied, he has made me very angry with him. I told him he can always tell me the truth, no matter what it is, and that we will always be able to work something out. He said OK.

But still... honestly, I am at a loss. What do you do? How do you stop a 3 year-old from lying? I know it's small stuff now, and it's easy to catch (I mean *come on*, if you're going to tell me you ate your whole sandwich, at least give it to the dog or something so I won't find it); but I don't want it to be a pattern. I don't want him to lie to me down the road about something that really matters... I want to nip it in the bud now.

ideas? advice? anyone, anyone? Buehler? Buehler?