Tiring Night!

My dad watched the kids yesterday. My parents watch them one day per week, and my sitter needed to switch, so my dad came up because he didn't have to teach (he and my mom are both college professors). Anyway, when I got home we loaded up the kids and went to Whole Foods. My dad is on this huge organic kick...he really believes it's better for the kids (and he eats it as well). I always used to protest (I'm the farthest thing from a hippy tree-hugger as you can get), but once I went to Whole Foods I was hooked! For those of you that have never been to one...it's awesome! A HUGE section of fresh produce and the largest meat counter that I've ever seen. They also have "normal" (un-organic) foods there so you can get an organic tomato or a conventional one. Their prices are pricey, but for the selection you can't beat it! Then I usually got to a regular grocery store to get everything else...like all the un-healthy food that we eat in our house!

Anyway, so we were there about 1 1/2 hours, and the kids hadn't had dinner yet, but thank goodness for all of the samples! My son ate apple after apple! Just for the record I did purchase quite a bit of apples, so the samples were not just wasted as my son's dinner. When we came out of the store it was pouring rain. So we pushed everything (including the kids!) into the car and headed over to the bookstore so I could run in and grab a book (you must take advantage of the opportunity to run into a store and leave the kids in the car with someone!). After two bookstore runs and no book (my dad said he'd order it for me...I have an awesome dad!) we headed home, very tired!

When we got home we unloaded everything. I separated his food and ours, and then he left on his 2 hour drive home. I packed the kids bag for today, and then drug myself upstairs into bed.

I was happily enjoying Studio 60 when my daughter came upstairs crying. I kept asking her what was wrong (my husband was behind her so I knew she was OK), but she was crying so hard she couldn't tell me. Finally she calmed down and told me that she had put a plastic bag on her head even though she knew she wasn't supposed to. (Side note...this is something she has been doing a lot - telling on herself. We're trying to be careful because I know there will be a day when she won't do it anymore, but at the same time, it's extremely annoying...I still have to punish her when she does something wrong, and most of the time I wish she wouldn't tell me so I wouldn't know). Anyway, she was very distraught over it, and luckily my sister was by her when she had attempted to put this bag on her head and quickly yelled at her. This had happened about 4 hours early, and all of a sudden she felt compelled to tell us about it, and she was obviously deeply bothered by it. However, my husband had already had a very serious talk with her about putting bags on her head just a week before. We were really torn...do we punish her? if so, how much? We loved the fact that she came and told us about it, and when we asked her why she did it she said because she was trying to be one of the fairies in Sleeping Beauty (they have those hat-things). We decided that she still needed a spanking (I don't want to hear anything about how spanking is bad...I was completely against it until I had my own kids, and now it's our punishment method and I have to say I'm very impressed with how well it works...we hardly ever spank her), this offense was too serious. So my husband gave her a spanking and then she came and laid in bed with us. I told her I was very proud that she told us what she had done, and if she hadn't have told us and we would have seen her, she would have gotten two spankings. I think she got it. Then we all fell asleep snuggling together.

Being a parent can be so hard sometimes...and I don't even mean physically!