Parenting

I am trying to become a "love and logic" parent (as Addie has started her temper tantrums and testing the limits), and the book has a really interesting point... this of course makes sense, but I never thought about it this way:

"The more we rescue our kids from everything they encounter, they more they end up hating us in the long run. Ironic... you treat your kids well- you do everything for them- and they end up treating you badly! Why? Because when we continually rescue our kids, they become dependent on us, which eventually fills them with resentment. This syndrome is called 'hostile dependency'. When kids are forced to be dependent on someone, they become resentful, because down deep, every human being yearns to be free, competent, and independent. Down deep they know their mother crippled them. Now they hate her for it."

This is not referring to keeping your kids captive and making them plead for food. He is talking about little things, like giving in when your child wants soda, getting between children while fighting, doing homework or projects for kids, etc. Its not big things. How interesting! A parent in this situation probably feels that they have done EVERYTHING for this child, and yet the child says, "You never did anything for me. You never cared!"

That's my thought on parenting for today... :)

Food Storage

The last batch of salsa!! Yahoo! Hopefully now my house will air out and stop smelling like peppers and onions. I am pretty proud of myself... I was able to can (all approximates) 45 jars salsa, 45 jars peaches, some grape juice, peach syrup/jam, raspberry cherry syrup, and apricot jam. I still need to work on getting more staples (wheat, oil, beans, etc) and household items like TP. I am starting to feel a little better about our situation, but we still have a long way to go. It is so nice that we were able to do all this canning at practically no cost (except jars). I love being productive.

Barnyard Boo

I am fortunate enough to live by a great group of girls. We all get together every Friday for lunch (or activities). This week Becky got free tickets to the Barnyard Boo, and it was so much fun! It was oriented towards younger kids and they got to do activities like pony rides, decorating cookies, face painting, tattoos, and wagon rides. Addie was so cute, I had to share pictures.

Addie LOVED the pony ride. She got on the pony and started pushing the saddle, like she wanted the pony to get going! She smiled and talked the whole time. It must remind her of grandma and grandpa's place.

We decorated cookies... and Addie ate the pumpkin that was supposed to go on top. She loves sugar.

Face painting... I asked the lady to paint whatever was fast... and this butterfly (well, half a butterfly) only took 15 seconds or less. It was adorable!

We tried to do tattoos... but it was a bust. Addie wouldn't let me hold her hand very long. This is how it turned out:

Here is a picture us (including Heidi, Jax, Becky, and Chase) on our wagon ride. We had so much fun. Thanks guys!

Snow!!!

On Sunday we woke up to snow! I couldn't believe it. What happened to fall? I am not ready for this weather yet. Although, it made us think of Christmas and every time I looked in our living room, I half expected our Christmas tree to be up.

Yes, those are our poor tomatoes that we attempted to cover... and yes, that is another house going up behind us. Sad :(.

Pumpkin Contest

Just down the street they do a pumpkin weigh-in every year to see who has the biggest pumpkin. Someone usually comes close to having a 1000lb pumpkin! We went last year and this year. Here are some pictures so you can see how much Addie has grown:

(Last year- 2007)

(This year- 2008)

This was not the biggest pumpkin... but it still weighed almost 900 pounds. The biggest pumpkin had not been weighed and labeled yet.

Privacy

In the past I have tried to be vague when posting on the blog. Mostly because I don't want random people to know where we live or when we are going on vacation. Well, I have decided that I want to be able to post more personal information so I am going to make the blog private. Hopefully this is not inconvenient for some of you. If you would like to be invited to read our blog, please email us at Scottnsarahmoss@msn.com.

Mmmmm...

Lately Addie has been saying "Mmmmmm" when she eats. It cracks me up!! She knows it is an attention getter. She has also started saying "Ad-die" and "me". She will nod when I tell her "no", and I can tell she understands a lot of the things I tell her (like "bath", "upstairs", "stand", "sit", "bye-bye", "go find dad" - I use this one when I need a break :)-, and more). She has really become a little girl. We love it.