Ask Me Anything (part 2)

***Thanks for the questions, Jenny! Jenny wants to know if it gets easier, things like births, potty training, nap-time, and discipline. Are we "master" parents now?***

I can link you to a couple of blogs I’ve already written on births and potty training, but that main question is simple…it gets easier. When I was first having kids I was so worried about EVERYTHING!

When Bossy was about 8 months old I was playing in a softball tournament. We had moved back to our hometown to re-enroll in college there and I was really excited to join my original team. Sometime I’ll tell you about my softball days, but suffice for now that I was a pretty decent short-shop. So there I am, in the middle of the field and I stop the game (pretty presumptuous, huh?!) and yell across the field to my sweetie that he needed to stop letting the baby eat dirt. I was still the youngest player on my team even though I was married now with a kid of my own and all those older and wiser moms just laughed at me.


That’s one of my sweetie’s favorite stories to tell. Now we encourage them to eat dirt! Not really, but I think that I have mellowed over the years so I’m just not so uptight about everything. I used to be super-paranoid about germs…now I just figure if they get a few germs it helps them build immunities. My sweetie used to tease me about washing my hands all the time when we first got married. I think that came from having a food-handler’s permit when I worked fast food. Of course I still wash my hands often and regularly, but I’m not obsessed with it.

The birthing process has also changed for me. Bossy and the Gym Rat came on their own several weeks early. The Drama Queen would have hibernated all winter except the doc said two weeks over was enough. Teach came right on time but weighed over 10 pounds! The Dog Walker was over 9 pounds. That is when the doc said from now on we would induce them all. That worked great until we got to Curly. My water just randomly broke…three weeks early! I wasn’t even sure it had or what I was supposed to do. Then Baby Doll came 4 ½ weeks early! Someday soon I will write the rest of the Birth Stories for you, but every birth is different and when you get into double digits, maybe yours will take less than 9 months too.

Potty training has been easy with some, hard with others. Curly trained himself. My sister trained Teach. The Dog Walker took a little longer than the others. I don’t get hung up on milestones anymore. I figure they will eventually come around and why should I beat my brains against the wall for something that will naturally happen when it’s supposed to anyway?

I have never been a stickler for nap times. I think that when a child is tired they will take a nap. Some of my kids have wanted one and others not so much… Teach STILL needs a nap every day! I know you asked about discipline. That’s a touchy subject with parents but this is my basic philosophy. I HATE spanking or otherwise raising a hand to the kids. That said, I do have to spank on rare occasion depending on the offense. My favorite way to discipline is work. Hard jobs works well for just about everyone. I’ll write you a whole blog on that subject next week.

The third baby is definitely the hardest and having older kids to help with the younger ones makes life much easier. As far as feeling like a "master" parent, most days I feel like I can barely keep all the balls in the air. It feels like I run from fire to fire and never get anything accomplished. But I have always thrived on stress and chaos. I like being the "master" planner, the supervisor, the advocate with the father. And I don’t mean that disrespectfully. I am often the go-between for the kids and their dad.

Does parenting get easier? Yes, at least today I think so, but today has been relatively quiet…no one had to go to the emergency room, I only gave 2 kids medicine, 1 breathing treatment, I only sent 6 texts during school hours to school-age kids, talked to two teachers, and I didn’t deal with any blood. It was a good day and I love being a mom! Oh yeah, there is one thing that doesn't get any easier...laundry!