Little Angels

Well how’s this for inconsistency? Our last post was only 17 days from our previous one. This one is over 6 weeks since the last one. I can’t say that life got in the way b/c we haven’t done a whole lot outside of our routine life, which is part of the reason we (I) haven’t posted. The cold hard truth is…our daily lives are just that, routine.

Although thinking about it, I don’t think using the word routine is fair since Webster’s defines the adjective form of routine as, “following or agreeing with established form, custom, or rules”. HA! That is the furthest thing from what goes on in our household. Established form, customs and rules be damned! I think our kids are banding together to form a mutiny and try to over-throw the communist parenting dictatorship that we practice. I got my eyes on those little Nazis.

So our daily battle of good vs evil (you decide who is who) always starts with the evil dictators (I’ll gladly hold that title, you don’t have to decide) threatening the defiant insolents with solitary confinement--complete with only bread and water and no contact with the outside world for a week--just to get them out of bed and get their clothes on. Which has become another issue in and of itself. For some indescribable reason, Drew has a new found affection for clothes that are too small for him. HE WILL NOT PUT ON A NEW SHIRT WITHOUT A FIGHT (a perfectly good shirt that Corey spent hours upon end diligently scouring the aisles of Target, Kohls, TJ Maxx, Old Navy, The Children’s Place and any other store within a 200 mile radius of Texarkana just to find him the right shirt. And her the right shoes. And baylie the right dress. And Casey the right shorts. And…you get the picture). But give the little guy credit; he is stubborn like his momma. He will take a spanking like a champ before he puts on a new shirt. The ones from last year work just fine, thank you very much. I think, however, we have solved the problem.

Two Sundays ago, as we were getting ready for church, he threw one of the biggest tantrums he has ever thrown. All because his shirt was too big, his shorts were too big and his shoes hurt his feet (canvas boat shoes). After attempts at reasoning with the little Stalin clone, I had had enough! I snatched him up by his arm and spanked him as hard as I have ever spanked him. Sat him on the couch and walked away. He was wailing and hollering like I had just cut off his arm (little did he know, that was my next resolution tactic). Well Corey had heard all she wanted and she went in and told him to stop crying or she was going to spank him too and give him something to cry about!! (We do turn into our parents, scary) Well he didn’t stop, so she got the wooden spoon out and proceeded to give him an excuse to cry. She then informed him that he could sit on the couch crying and get another spanking or he could go put his clothes on. By this time, I think he realized he needed his left leg to walk correctly for the rest of his life and at the rate he was going, it was going to be beaten off by the time church started. He decided to put his clothes on. When we finished with Drew, we walked back into the bedroom and Casey was standing in the middle of the room, fully dressed. She looked up at me and said, “Daddy”. I snapped at her and said, “WHAT?!” She looked back at me with those big beautiful hazel eyes and said, “My shirt’s not too big.” Hallelujah! Let’s go to church. At that point I needed some Jesus.

So this past Sunday when Drew started whimpering about the clothes we picked out, I looked at him and calmly said, “Drew, do you remember what happened last Sunday? So I’m gonna give you a choice today, you can either put your clothes on like I asked you to, or you can get a spanking and I will put your clothes on for you.” Because after all, life is full of choices. And I was so proud he made the right choice that morning. He even ASKED for his boat shoes. I was going to let him wear his tennis shoes. Let’s keep that between you and me though.

But before you start singing Casey’s praises. Let me let you in on a little something about Casey. Sweet and innocent Casey. God bless her. She is so cute. She’s just adorable. She’s so precious. At least that is what you all tell us. I think the next person that says that, I am going to punch them right in the mouth then send that sweet, innocent, cute, adorable, precious little angel home with them and turn my phone off. She’s bad. Sometimes, in the hip hop culture, bad can mean bad or bad can mean good. Well, we live in the literal culture at our house and Casey is BAD. Meaning BAD. And when Mammy (grandma) tells Corey, after a morning fit, that she would have put her in the van and left her there while everyone else got ready to go. You know she is bad. She is the reason we only have 3 children. As stupid and inconsiderate and annoyingly retarded our society is becoming, I thought it may be our lot to try and populate the earth with as many God-fearing, respectful, intelligent children as we can to counteract the ignorance that is being produced on a daily basis. But somewhere along the way, we screwed it all up. God may have another in store for us, but I think he knows that if he added another element to our three-ring madhouse right now, they would commit Corey and me, take the kids and put them in protective custody. Although, if that happened, they would just bring them back and release us under the pretense that it takes a crazy person to care for our hoodlums.

If you haven’t already, before you call CPS, you should know we love our children. If we didn’t nobody else would. Just kidding. But seriously, they’re bad. For us, anyway. We always talk to them after we spank them, explain why we spanked them, tell them it hurts us more than it hurts them (We really are our parents!) and tell them we love them; and they are usually over it in about 27 seconds. I just don’t see the benefit of time out. I know it works for some parents but not us. I don’t think we got the right user’s manual on time out. If any of you have it…keep it. We’re gonna stick with this wooden spoon tactic for a while.

So everyday, by the time we have gotten the kids ready and into the car, it seems like it should be 5 or 6 in the evening. Only, it’s not. We still have to take them to preschool . You know, the place with the profanity-inducing construction that conveniently occurs between the hours of 7:30 to 5:30. Then we go to work, go back through construction hell to pick the kids up, feed them dinner (I’ll save that experience for another day), bathe the kids (another blog-worthy event, another time maybe), and put them to bed (again, everything is a process for us). Then, finally, Corey and I try to bring our blood pressure and heart rate down enough to talk to each other in a manner that would insist that we do, in fact, love each other before we both pass out from exhaution. So I’m sorry about the length of the post and the time between them. Hopefully, I will have more time in the present future. Being that it is summer and all.

Quick hits…We really enjoyed our visit to a church this past Sunday. It was our 3rd visit. We are going to visit some more and try to get into a Sunday School class to see how we connect with the people. We will keep you posted…The people who are occupying our house are moving out this weekend so we are going to start painting and getting it ready to move. Hopefully within 2 weeks we will be sleeping in our own bed. Not a moment too soon.

Deep Thought…Is it me, or does the popcorn button on the microwave ALWAYS burn your popcorn? I think the microwave companies are getting kick backs from the popcorn companies to burn the popcorn so we will have to buy more. I need to find out whom to talk to about this. It’s gone on long enough.

There's more, but I've got to run. Gonna go buy Drew a size 4 shirt and make him wear it to school so the other kids can laugh at him and call him names like: weird-boy-with-shirt-that-fits, or say things things like, "Hey look at that kid, he looks stupid with that right-size shirt on!

Take care and support your local high school football team.