The Best of: Confessions of a Sneaky Mom - Part 2

In my post last week I shared the best mealtime and chores confessions. Today I have bedtime, punishments, and just because confessions. What's your favorite?

Bedtime

• Sometimes I put them to bed really, really early. There are days when it's either put them in bed early or completely lose my mind. It works out great because a) I'm not yelling, b) they aren't that great at telling time yet, and c) they're happy as clams playing in their rooms, thinking they've tricked me into believing they're asleep. If I need to walk by their rooms, I just stomp my feet extra hard so they have time to jump in bed and pretend they're snoring. (It almost makes me proud, what good fake sleepers they are. They do the slow breathing and everything.)
• When they were too little to read, and I was too tired to read, I'd turn over the pages of the book two at a time. Somehow, they didn't seem to notice the disjointed plots.
• When they got older I'd say, "Hey! How about reading MOMMY a story? In my bed?" Then I'd keep telling them I was listening with my eyes closed.
• I got so annoyed when they started teaching A. to tell time in kindergarten. It works very much to my advantage that I can tell him, "It's bedtime! That's not the sun still in the sky...they're testing nuclear devices across the bay! G'night!"
• Back in the day, when our kids were little, we would let them watch one episode of RugRats before bath, stories and bed. My cunning husband videotaped several episodes so we could pop one in, say "Hey, RugRats is on!" and get them to bed at 5 p.m. if necessary.
• My children always thought they were pulling one over on me at bedtime. They knew they could stay up later if they got me talking about dating and marrying their father. It did work, but what they didn't realize is that I also got to bear my testimony about the importance of temple marriage and living the gospel. Ha!!! Now, that was sneaky.
• Second off... it is a family TRADITION to mess with the clocks and send your kids to bed early every now and again. My mom did it, and her mother before her, what the heck kind of ingrate would I be if I did not take the superior parenting tools I have been given and USE them?
• We always turn the clock forward on New Years Eve and when the first countdown happens in NYC, we tell them that is it and make them go to bed.]

Punishments

• I "punish" him by taking away or making him do things that we were going to do anyways, like "that's it! you know your not supposed to make your sister cry so now we can't go to Grandpa's to go swimming!" when really grandpa's not expecting us until the weekend.
• I might say something like "Well, since you didn't clean your room, I'm not taking you to the movies!" When I had no plans to take them there in the first place.
• I also confess to early bedtimes, mac & cheese or cereal for dinner on many occasion, going to long between baths, going to bed without brushing teeth, and turning the door handles so I can lock bedrooms from the outside, effectively locking my children in their rooms.
• Sometimes I'm just waiting for the offspring to do something naughty so I don't have to read them a bedtime story.
• Well I once handcuffed 2 of my boys together w/gb (garbage bag) ties. They were fighting terribly and it stopped them cold.

Just Because

• One time, we were really poor and my daughter (13 years old then) had a growth spurt. Needed all new clothes. And she was very fashion conscious. She would die before she'd step into a thrift store. So I gave my sister $20 and sent her to the thrift store and she bought a bunch of clothes, put them in big black bags and brought them over saying they were hand-me-downs from a cousin in another state. My daughter loved them and wore them happily. I waited until she was 20 before I told her the truth.
• K, I'm confessing. When I had 4 kids under 6 and the 1 pm church schedule, I used to give the 2 youngest a spoonful of Triaminic before heading off to church. Primary was first, so by the time they got to Sacrament meeting they were asleep after the Sacrament. All the other moms in the ward would comment on how lucky I was that those two kids slept through the meeting. Little did they know!
• I ate all the good candy from halloween and I still blame them for my gas.
• My kids were really old before they learned batteries can be replaced. The toy would die, and I would say, brightly, "Oh too bad! The batteries are dead." And they would be sad, and the obnoxious piano/crying doll/whatever it was would mercifully be quiet. I was soo annoyed when a well-meaning, childless man said, "But batteries can be replaced!" and ruined it for me.

The Best of: Confessions of a Sneaky Mom

Yesterday, Sue, at Navel Gazing at Its Finest, wrote a blog post about true mom confessions. You know, things that many moms do but don't usually admit to it. I thought a bunch of the confessions were shocking, funny, and good ideas. So I decided to gather together the best ones, categorize them, and post them here. For credit to the original moms I am just going to link back to the original post and comments. The examples below are not necessarily representative of this blog poster's opinion.

Meals

• Last week, everyone wanted pancakes for dinner. My response was, "Fine, but you'd better have vegetables too!" Which is how my family came to have broccoli and buttermilk pancakes for dinner.
• I will confess for a friend, though. She is an obsessively good parent (her kids eat every vegetable known to man and they like it!). However, one morning when her twins were toddlers and she couldn't fathom making breakfast for them, she just poured a pile of Cheerios on the floor under the dining room table and let them help themselves. (I should talk--typical scenario in the van: "Mommy, I'm hungry!" "Find some pretzels in the crevices of your car seat.")
• I used to give them bran muffins and tell them they were cookies.
• Oh, and, like all kids, my girls always want to have a bite of my food, sip of my drink, etc. So, I discovered the only way to keep them from siphoning all my food is to put hot sauce on it - so far so good.

Chores

• When my kids are irritable and bored and at each other's throats, I sometimes like to help them bond by pitting them against me. I tell them to go clean the playroom and not to come out 'til it's sparkling clean. They'll angrily trudge in there, but a few minutes later I'll hear whispering and the sweet sounds of plotting. Every so often I'll bellow out "You'd better be cleaning!" and I'll hear them giggle because they are SO not cleaning. They get along independently for hours because, hey, THEY SURE PUT ONE OVER ON MOM.
• My daughter saves everything too...Trash, candy wrappers, packaging from toys. It's disgusting! So every now and then, I "help" them clean their room. When I clean, I make "piles" of stuff to put elsewhere in the house. When it's about time to be done, I tell the girls, "Wow, you did such a great job helping mommy, why don't you go downstairs and play, and I'll finish the rest" They can't get out of there fast enough, and it gives me time to take the trash outside without them knowing!

That's it for today. I still have 3 more categories to share. As a teaser they are, Bedtime, Punishments, and Just Because. I'm now curious if my mom had any tricks she used on us kids.

Giant Block Letters or Typography for Kids

When our little family is on the road, we are always on the lookout for an exciting GIANT block letter inconspicuously painted on a mountainside. Ever since Andrew learned his letters at 2 years old it has been exciting to spot these letters. First it was the "Y". That is probably the easiest letter to find in Utah Valley. Last year he found the "P".



And then on a trip to the Salt Lake valley we noticed the harder to find "G". Last year he talked often of wanted to touch the "P". He would mention this to pretty much everyone and I had to qualify that it was the letter P not any other kind of P. Anyway on July 4th, 2007 Casey took Andrew and they found a trail that led to the P. So now it was, "I touched the P". I still had to do some qualifying for that one.Andrew at the P.

This last June we took both boys out to Provo and we hiked up to the Y. It was a much more difficult hike than it was to the P. I used the monkey backpack for Isaac so he didn't wander off a cliff, but I ended up carrying him on my back most of the way anyways. Andrew was very exciting about being able to touch the Y. His only comment afterwards was that it was cold.

Andrew at the Y.

We drove past the G the other day and he seriously asked if we could stop and hike to it. So now I think we have a tradition here. We drove past Nephi recently and there is a J there on the mountain. Why a J for Nephi? Does that make sense to anyone else? So now Andrew wants to hike to the J. He told his Grandma all about this recently and she suggested we visit the giant H that is near her house. How many more giant block letters can there be in Utah?

Duckies

So recently Isaac has ended up with his own little family of rubber ducks. He calls them his "duckies." The first ducks to join our family were the blue and the green one. I bought them for the boys for Easter this year since they needed something to play with in the tub other than the shark and the killer whale that doesn't swim anymore. Andrew thought his was okay and played with it, but Isaac stuck with his and soon adopted Andrew's blue one as well.

The next duck to join the little family was the larger yellow one. We were shopping at D.I. when I found the duck for Isaac to play with since he was getting bored. He was attached immediately and I couldn't bear to part him with the duck so we paid the $.50 and took him home.

Than, while we were in Hawaii, Grandma found out about his duck family and how important they were to him. (Even now he's upset because he saw the picture of his duckies and he can't find one.) While at Thanksgiving point Grandma bought him the tiny yellow baby duckie. That same week she brought the black duck which has sunglasses, horns, a puka shell necklace, and the word AXE on his chest. Uncle Rich had this at home and she figured he'd want Isaac to have it. He's on a mission and so doesn't have much say in the matter. Anyway his flock quickly grew in one week. This last week he added one more prize duckie. Grandma bought him a key chain duckie about the size of the baby yellow one. It's not a rubber duckie, but rather it is electronic and brought a big smile to Isaac's face. You press a button on it's side and a LED in it's mouth lights up and it says "Qua-Quack, Quack, Quack, Quack."

At least two duckies accompany him to bed every night. I let him take a ducky on car trips and even let him take the quieter small duckie to church today. His flock is so large that when he tries to carry them all, one inevitably falls and when he reaches to pick it up another falls and so on until he gets upset. So now we have a duckie bucket for him to carry them all together. What a cute little family.

I Won!

I actually won something for once. Actually it's my second time winning something in the last 5 years. The first time was at some crappy website where you click on crappy offers and every time you click you are entered to win a satellite radio. My purpose in subjecting myself to this was to win one for a Christmas present for my big brother. One day I clicked on at least 100 of these and actually won. COOL! I believe my brother enjoyed the present and I was glad I could get him something cool for Christmas.

So recently I did one of those, comment on this blog post and we'll draw a winner for such and such, comments on the Light Refreshments Served website. The blog is a group blog featuring 4 women bloggers talking about life with a LDS twist. The blog is sponsored by Excel Entertainment which has something to do with Deseret Book. So about every month they have a give away. I entered for the Baskin Robbins gift certificate, but didn't win that one. :-( Then I entered for the $50 movies gift card and YES I surprisingly won. We're exciting because the gift card will be for Cinemark theaters. There is a nice theater in Provo we can go to for new movies, but the coolest thing is that Cinemark also has a dollar theater in Provo, cha-ching!

So see ya at the movies this summer!