Spoiled Rotten?

We’ve all heard this expression.  I know those adjectives were used to describe me – accurately, I suppose – on more than one occasion when I was a child.

Mini-me, circa 1980.

I recently read an article about so-called “spoiled” children.  It really got under my skin because it wasn’t about kids who have fifteen different Barbie dolls or mountains of toys. It was about kids…. whose parents console them when they cry and pay attention to them when they seek it.

That’s what it means to be spoiled?  I think not.

Imperfectly

“I'm okay, if you get me at a good angle
and you're okay, in the right sort of light
and we don't look like pages from a magazine
but that's all right - that's all right.”

--“Imperfectly,” Ani DiFranco

Single Dad Laughing (SDL) has done it again: he has shared a blog post that really challenged me and forced me to take a good hard look at things. I think you should too.

I have LOTS of imperfections!

He recently commemorated the one-year anniversary of one of his most important and most widely read posts, “The Disease Called Perfection.”  I had read it a long time ago but decided to do so again. I’m glad I did. And I recommend that you do the same. You can read the original post here, and then check out his anniversary follow-up here.

Photo of the Week: Hello!

For your rainy-day afternoon amusement.  It speaks for itself!

The Kingdom of "No"

Sounds like a fairy tale is getting ready to start, doesn’t it?  Hardly.

As I discussed yesterday, we’ve entered the “terrible 3s” with a vengeance.  When I picked Anna up from school yesterday, and she was SO happy to see me, I thought perhaps I’d overreacted in my “terrible 3s” post.

And then there was the Ord incident.

Ord flying with Max from "Dragon Tales"

Is It Really the Terrible 3s??

All my life I've heard the expression "the terrible 2s."  One associates total meltdowns, sobbing hysterics, and general misery with this phrase.

However, I found the age of 2 to be surprisingly easy with Anna. She's always been generally easygoing, and I thought either I had an angel or people are just way too melodramatic.

And that's when they told me that 2 is a picnic and it's actually the "terrible 3s."  Excuse me??

Uh-oh.....run!