Washable Workwear Wednesday: Everywhere Ponte Pencil Skirt

My somewhat judgmental MIL and VERY judgmental SIL are visiting in ten days. Clearly the correct way to deal with this is “free myself of the need to please them” but let’s imagine hypothetically I was instead dealing with it by “trying to make my house really nice.”

What do you do to spiff up your home? We have regular cleaners, so it’s relatively CLEAN, and we are pretty tidy people…I guess I’m thinking of small touches that I might not think of, or specialty cleaning that I might not remember (like cleaning our screens, which I did this morning and were horrifically dusty). They aren’t staying with us, so I’m mostly focused on the downstairs (living room/playroom/kitchen/half bath).

I am not patient and pretty direct and I am really struggling with parts of the toddler years. I LOVE babies and kids, but I feel like I’m too much of a hard@ss for toddlers.

Babies can’t misbehave and kids you can reason with, to an extent. They understand consequences (sometimes) and if they don’t you can explain them. They’re developed enough to (mostly) not have meltdowns over stupid stuff.

I’m an authoritative parent and I like the concept of true gentle parenting, but I am not a gentle parent. My whole philosophy is very clear boundaries with expectations and consequences, but a lot of room within those boundaries for choices and freedom. As long as it’s safe, I don’t care what my kids wear or play with and I’ll happily provide choices and 1-2 explanations to those choices. But, also when I say it’s time to get dressed it is time to get dressed. You can wear whatever, but you need to go start getting dressed (I’m actually working on having a little stricter boundaries on what my kid wears because I know that “If I say it’s cold wear a jacket” and you don’t it’s not appropriate for me to say I told you so…that will be okay in the future but not with toddlers). I care about bed time a lot – as my mom shared with me “tired children are cranky children” so that’s kind of my big line in the sand. I am much more “everything in moderation” for screen time and food and other stuff.

I feel like I do a lot to inject fun and whimsy into our day to day – it’s not like I’m a drill instructor. I’ll always make time to take a detour on the way home from daycare for the playground or go for ice cream because it’s the first day of summer even if they already had dessert at lunch or take the kids on a picnic and hike even if its a lot more work than dinner at home would be. But also, I have the ability to do the fun, whimsical stuff because we have a schedule and a routine and a way of doing things. If I know the “big” stuff is more or less taken care of, it’s much easier to make the little stuff special (like we eat lots of veggies which makes me feel okay that we also eat Doritos and Oreos). I also feel like without trying, I do a good job of this stuff. I know I”m okay with much more loud, messy, or kind of “wild” play than many other adults… but also when I tell you you’re too loud and need to quiet down or take it outside then I expect you to listen to that and do as I say. Or sure, go play in the mud. But, don’t give me a hard time when it’s bath time. I encourage a lot of independence, which I think is always great, but especially for little kids who really have so little say in their life.

My DH is pretty similar, but even more so. We met in the military. So, we’re used to adults doing things as they’re told when they’re told without whining or stalling or back talk and there being consequences for not… but also we have toddlers and not soldiers!

I try not to yell yell, but I do raise my voice. Raising my voice and/or consequences like losing a toy you can’t play nicely with or a timeout or losing a treat or privilege are happening more than I’d like. This is also a hard age, as I said above, because I tend towards natural consequences – you didn’t get out of bed when I went in to wake you up, so now you have to eat a granola bar in the car instead of having a fun breakfast. You didn’t do your HW last night so now you have last night’s HW and tonight’s HW to do and won’t have time to play before dinner. But, that’s not as feasible with this age. Also, DH and I were both raised in the 1990s in houses where spanking was very, very rare (like I can count on one hand how many times it happened). Obviously we’d never, ever spank but I sometimes find myself thinking that’s what my parents would have done and it would have cut out XYZ behavior. Or just the threat of one would have cut out the behavior.

This all kind of “hit home” to me on Monday with the post about bath time being a struggle for a poster’s 4 year old. At first I was like the work around here is options (bath before or after dinner? Do you want bubbles? Do you want mom or dad to give you a bath?) and if that didn’t work I’d have to break out a consequence. The poster who said she’d go all-in on the cuddles and the comfort made me be like wow, it’d truly never occur to me to do that! Instead of realizing that maybe more comfort is the answer, I know I’d be short and along the lines of you need to take a bath, so do it.

Also, having been in the military I feel like I get how hard it is to have such limited choices and/or big feelings! It’s hard!! It’s even harder for a toddler than it was for me as an adult! I really do feel for little kids who have such little freedom … but I also feel for the harried parents who are just trying to get it all done every day and a toddler having a meltdown in the grocery store is one more thing they have to deal with / makes grocery shopping take longer when they just want to get home and get dinner on the table.

And, toddlers are also great. It’s so amazing watching them discover the world and they’re funny and they’re cute and they’re sweet… but also I can’t wait for a little more logical reasoning and emotional restraint…