Parenting Games

{Happy 500th Blog Post}

I am at the point now where I am coming to terms with the fact that parenting is balancing act.  Sometimes we are playing the game of taking two steps forward while the lil' ones push you two steps back.

For instance, sometimes I clean up one room at the same exact time they are destroying another room.  The kiddos aren't too bad when it comes to helping out. But really...it feels like we are always cleaning up a 1,000 toys, a ka-billion puzzle pieces or a plethora of cookie crumbs.

 

Or you are walking a fine line to keep the little temper-tantrums at bay...whether it is by letting them wear what they wanna, monitoring their toy-snatching and minimize the antagonizing.  This isn't too hard of a line to walk.  By giving the kids choices between two parent-approved options, it really helps reduce many tantrums.  Either they can wear this jacket or this.  They can have this toy or that.  They can do this or go to time out.  It is all about choices & giving the bity babies some power.

The game I find the hardest to play is the balancing game.  Being that it is still in the middle of the school year...we are struggling to balance time between school work, housework and the babies. I feel the worst that Cory always gets cheated when it comes to spending time together.  I do believe our last date was sometime this summer {as I don't count conference nights as dates}.  We really aught to work on that.   We've talked about actually using a real babysitter sometime, to help us escape.  You know...the kind you have to pay for.   

But as some of our friends posted in their blog recently, it is all about being a parenting trade-off.  These kiddos are such blessing and a true gift from God.  It is amazing we have been chosen to take care and raise these two.   While we have less sleep, less time together and a just a few less dollars...these kids are worth every bit of it. It is, by far, the best trade I could ever think of making.