Do you want a spanking?

Don't ever ask your child this question. If they are anything like my daughter, they will say "yes" and stick out their butt for you to spank it. My guess is that I'm not spanking hard enough. Yes, I spank. I never thought I would, but I do. My blog last night seemed to hit home with a lot of Moms. I appreciate everyone's comments. It's nice to know I'm not alone. Today was a much better day, however, it started out as one of the worst mornings of my life. First off, my little Noah woke up at 4:20am. I went to bed at 1am. (it's hard work having TWO Tivos!) Brian got up with him, normally you can just go in there and soothe him a bit and that is that, but not this time. They sat out in the dark living room until 4:50am, at that point I rescued Daddy. I sat with him and sang one of my favorite songs to him called "Butterfly." And then I laid him down in his crib and I was staring down at him and telling him how much I loved him and he said "BYE!" I was dismissed. I crawled back into bed and laid awake until 6:05am. My mind raced and I couldn't slow it down. I was awakened twice after finally falling asleep, once at 7:10am by Brian saying goodbye and then at 7:30am his alarm went off. (I think he was confused when he set it the night before.) Then Noah was up at 8am. I was none too pleased because I was so tired and I knew he was too. So, I brought him to bed with me and he pretty much said "screw that, I've got stuff do to." One thing Noah does that is really frustrating is he wakes Anna up by going into her room. He's really slick about it. He'll wait until the phone rings, or until I have to use the bathroom and slithers off, throws open the door into her room and exclaims "hi morning!" And then she cries. Today I thought I was safe. He was sitting in his chair very quietly watching Teletubbies for about 10 minutes without moving, so I snuck into my bathroom to take my medications and I heard him through the monitors "hi morning."
Then it was time to try to feed the children and Noah cried AND screamed the entire time. I'm not going to go into the details, but trust me, it was miserable. At the time of these shenanigans, I decided to call Noah's doctor's office. I spoke with the nurse and we discussed symptoms and we both agreed he has a nasty virus. Then it hit me after talking to Brian, he's got a sore throat, that is why he won't eat! So, I got out a cold container of berry yogurt and the poor, little, beautiful boy at every bite. It warmed my heart. After that, he was pretty okay! And, honestly, so was Anna! I decided I would try to give him ibuprofen or tylenol to try to help his mood and his throat and it really helped!

We went to the store (and bought tons of yogurt), the bank and to McDonald's, we came home and they both ate. They ate cheeseburgers, fries, peaches and cookies! It was wonderful. We played and then they napped!
Success!

My niece Amber came over to watch the kids. Brian and I went to dinner, we went to the mall, Target, Circuit City, Pier One, Old Navy and Lowe's. (I went to Pier One, Brian hates that store so he went to Old Navy.) It was great. The best part was that Anna was still sleeping when I left so there were no dramatic departures! THANK YOU AMBER! I was away for almost 4 hours. HALLELUJAH! :-)

Back to spanking. One of my friends called after reading my blog and said "are you sure you were writing about Anna? I think you meant to use my daughter's name." She said her daughter is going through the same thing. We talked in great length about why they are acting this way and what disciplinary action we take to change their behavior. We talked about how much guilt is associated with spanking and how society now seems to frown upon it. My friend's biggest concern is what if something she is doing makes her daughter have low self esteem when she gets older. Are the disciplinary actions she is taking today directly impacting how her daughter feels about herself in the future? What pressure! I think if we can continue to nurture our children and show them love, structure, patience (ha!), and praise that is what will give our children the confidence they need as older children and as adolescents. (I hope!) Obviously I don't know. I will someday find out. Until then, I will love, tell stories, play, praise and quite dutifully spank!