Happy Thanksgiving

Island Life is good.  No complaints right now.  Husband is home for now.  The three of us just enjoy a nice meatloaf together.  Our dd does not like the "traditional" turkey dinner.

Speaking of E.  She can write her full first name.  She can read words like Oktoberfest and Mango.  Daddy is teaching her phonics.  Something of which I was never taught in school.

She is enjoying pre-K.  We did have a problem with bullying earlier this month.  We had to have one of her classmates removed from her class.  The boy kept hitting her in the face for no reason.  Three times in one month was overboard considering only one report was filed by the school.  Total neglect on their part.  We went to her school and by the second visit we climb their chain of command and had him removed from her environment.  The very first incident our daughter neglected to tell us about who hit her until the second occurrence.  Mind you I was livid that the school only saw one of these.  Three adults for 10 students?  Come on now.  What were they hiding?

Mother-in-law is coming for Christmas followed shortly thereafter by her friend for a long visit.  I'm looking forward to this visit.  I just hope that my husband can stand his month and that I don't have to stick my nose in again like I did last year.  Sure any parent that visits can drive their adult children nuts after a while but I hate being the bad guy.  He really needs to stand up for himself.  One of my friends caught him last year and he admitted to her that he was making me the bad guy in the situation with his mother.  I really hate.  I'm already sure she sees me as pushy enough but ugh really just tell her that you need a line and like duh I'm sure she is waiting to hear that her little boy has grown up!  What the heck is he afraid of?

My uncle is in the hospital with a broken hip.  Poor guy fell and broke it while trying to fill gas tanks of his snow blower and lawn mower before the snow hit.  Hopefully he'll be back home again soon.  Maybe before Christmas.

I guess I'll close this post for now.  I'm laundry load number two of six.  It might be a holiday but the laundry doesn't know that.  It still needs to be done.

Sending Warm Thoughts and Rainbows from Oahu.

New Tactic

Okay so some of what I tried on my daughter last month worked and some of it didn't.

Taking away television did work.

Time out on toys did work.

Smacking her butt when she hit me did work.

But she is continuing with her bad behavior when over tired.

She is still having troubles sleeping.  The melatonin did not work.

When over tired she acts out so bad that I have to put her into the approved hold where her back is to my belly and wrap my arms and legs around her.  She head buts me.  I took a head butt to the chin yesterday.  That hurt.

While trying to get her into pull ups for a naps she kicked me in the throat.  She was angry.  I had given her the option of wearing her pull ups for the nap or rubber pants over cotton training pants.  She wanted regular cotton panties.  I told her that wasn't an option.  She got violent.  She had a bar bottom and I didn't want her wetting the bed.  No nap.  She stayed up.  I had several hours before I got my voice back fully from the kick to my throat.

Last night I again tried the new tactic and this morning.  She is slowly getting the idea that she will be given only 2 options.  Like this morning for breakfast.  I gave her the options of waffles or cheerios.  She said she wanted french toast.  I said no that it wasn't an option.  She got upset.  I then told her she would have no breakfast if she didn't pick one of the two options.

I'm trying to be fair with her since she is so strong willed.  I really don't want to spank my child.  But I don't like being her punching bag either.  The smack I do occasionally give her is not bad.  It hurts her pride more than anything.

I told my mother about the kick to the throat I got and my mother said it is time to bring out the belt.  I had her on speaker.  My daughter didn't like hearing that while I was cooking her bacon and eggs that she had requested for dinner.  Mind you I can't eat bacon or eggs.

I'm trying the best that I can dear readers.

Toddler Tyranny

At wit's end I called in a life line.  My friend arrived.  She helped me control my toddler tyrant.  This time I'd had it with E.  After a week straight bout of her temper tantrums I just couldn't take a moment more.

So I cracked.  Yes. My friend brought over a bottle of wine and I cracked it open.  We tuned in the set to a channel E would detest and chatted it up over not one but two bottles of wine while discussing hair coloring and styles.

E still fought her bed time.  She fought the ritual of brushing and flossing.  She fought with door slamming, fake tears, screams and throwing things.  We won out.  She eventually did what she should and went to bed.

So the second month of the deployment hits the mid mark.  DH left me with his spoiled rotten princess to deal with.  The baby I once longed for, the child I would have died for, the one I thought about giving up for adopting at least once this past week when she drove me nuts.

I couldn't take one more kick to my chest, one more head butt to the face, one more bitting, or punch from her.

So the smacks to her butt didn't work.

The smack to her mouth didn't work when she bit me.

The soap in her mouth worked when she said, "Fuck you" to me when I said I wasn't going to get down on my knees to help with her puzzle after my knee popped out of socket.  I haven't heard a dirty word from her mouth since.  I say Farge not Fuck.

She is highly materialistic like her daddy.  So taking away toys after the count down worked.  If she behaves she gets a toy back.  However, her room is quite bare right now.  She has managed to earn two of her toys back.  She didn't lose the toys from the closet.

My child has way too much stuff.  She is spoiled rotten.  I refuse to raise a brat.  She is going to learn and learn now to not be an entitled, selfish person.  If this means I have to take things away from her, smack her butt, her mouth if needed (it is never a hard smack so don't even try to say I'm abusing her), and soap for her filthy mouth she is going to get it.  It worked on the children of my generation and we were the last generation to actually appreciate what we had.

We Americans have been coddling our children way too much.  If we continue to spoil them they won't want to work in those dirty jobs that actually pay well.  They won't give our generation respect like we gave our parents.  They won't do anything but continue to be a burden on society with their continued demands.

I'm going to raise a proper young lady not a brat!

While It Lasts...

Just a simple little post about the things I'm trying to cherish in my life.

While It Lasts...

• the genuine hugs from my daughter before she becomes the TEENAGER
• the giggles E has over the little things we often over look
• couple time, though there isn't much of it still, before a deployment
• the cool breezes here in Hawaii during the Winter season
• the newness of finding that "spot" you haven't traveled to yet on the Island
• enjoying a new craft before you find out the hard way it isn't for you after all
• the beautiful sunsets on the North Shore...oh my are they a sight to behold
• time with family before they get on your nerves...lol
• the favorite flavor bite of ice cream or savory snack you sneak into your gaping maw when your child isn't looking or begging your for a bite of it....I'm sure some of you know what I mean.  I did it to my parents with the big doe eyes of innocence too.
• sneaking into your child's room while they are sleeping to watch them sleep just because you can
• hearing my cat call me "maw-maw".  He just started to call me that this past week.  It is so heart warming.

Today it is Screaming and Crying

Grandma, Uncle and Girlfriend are all here visiting for the next week.  Grandma has been here since mid January.  Today Little E had had enough when the three of them wanted to go some place and she wasn't invited.

Yesterday Uncle and his girlfriend arrived on island.  Now that they are here Little E is now second fiddle and she detests it.  She was the spoiled one for a few weeks with Grandma.  She had all of Grandma's attention.  Of course the way in which Grandma told her know was not so nice either.  Heck even I would have had hurt feelings.  Come on now we all know there was room in the rental car for the car seat even Little E knows that.

They went to the BEACH.  You can't do that to a little kid.  NO not the BEACH.  That is the one place a 3.5 year old loves the most on an island.

So when it started to rain, and it came down hard I told Little E that it served them right to not take you.

See what happens when you piss off a little kid in Oahu!  Hopefully they don't piss of Pele next.  I'd rather not have a volcano erupt!

January in Hawaii

Island life is hard.  While the other people grew up with in my home town are freezing their butts off I'm here on the island of Oahu enjoying the rainy season.  It doesn't rain every day.  As a matter of fact we only had a light rain yesterday morning.

Currently I have my husband's family staying with us so we are trying to take a bit of a holiday around his daily work schedule.  This isn't easy with the Government pulling their shut down, now we are open but Let's schedule another shut down for February again; all while the family is here mind you.

We did visit the Dole plantation and watch the sunset on the North Shore yesterday.  All photos were taken on someone else's phone.  Sorry.

However, I do have one from the luau we went to two days before Christmas that I can share with you.

 I broke my L-4 vertebrae  in a fall from a step ladder.  I was about 4 feet up in the air on a 6 foot ladder hanging the Christmas lights when a gust of wind caught the ladder.  Down I landed.  I now wear a back brace until the surgeon tells me otherwise.  No surgery yet.  I hope to not have any on my spine.  I'll know more in a few days when the surgeon looks at the results of the MRI he requested.

Hard to believe that my little E will be starting Pre-K this year.  She'll be 4 in July.  She loves playing basketball, and with her Barbies too.  Her vocabulary is quite complicated and surprising.  There are days I never know what is going to come out of her mouth.  A week ago she used ridiculous in a compound sentence and it made complete sense.  Where did my baby go?  She doesn't like to be called a baby either.  Yikes!

As for that false alarm with the missile....Well I grew up next to a SAC base.  So ya know what?  It is not like I had much time back then to get anywhere before a missile would strike either.  Oh and the bomb shelters here on Oahu are not open.  They are considering re-opening them now that we are entering a new Cold War.  Okay You Think That Might Be A Good Idea?