I have two cats and I can’t keep both. Which one should I keep, which should I sell???
Car 1- a Kia Soul 2019, 110,000 miles BUT A NEW ENGINE
Car 2 - a Subaru Impreza 2015, 150,000 miles, stick shift, runs fine
Help!
I have two cats and I can’t keep both. Which one should I keep, which should I sell???
Car 1- a Kia Soul 2019, 110,000 miles BUT A NEW ENGINE
Car 2 - a Subaru Impreza 2015, 150,000 miles, stick shift, runs fine
Help!
Here are my top favorite books, all fiction, but a wide range of genres. I’ve read all of these multiple times! I’ve had such a hard time finding anything that comes close to any of these. Just looking for something that I can’t put down…something that will be a complete escape.
Memoirs of a Geisha
The Road
Stephen king (all)
Golden Compass series
Watership Down
Lonesome Dove
Handmaids Tale
Never Let me Go
Unwind
The Secret Garden
Tuck Everlasting
The Color Purple
A Song of Ice and Fire
The Book Thief
These are the things I did, or wish I did, before my kids were grown.
Keep this in mind: you have until 11 years old to really influence them. Kindness, patience, dental hygiene, good eating habits, good study habits, all that stuff. After 11 everything you do is just footnotes in who they become.
Go for it with all the foods. Let them eat avocados and tofu and chick peas, and curry and garlic, and serve them water when they are thirsty instead of sugary drinks or sodas. Right from the start. What you feed them growing up is how they will eat for life.
Take them for walks and have 1:1 time where they can tell you anything without risking punishment. Develop a relationship based on mutual trust and respect. Let them know that your love for them will outweigh any mistake they make.
If you get divorced, do not talk bad about your ex when they are around. There is a Children’s Bill of Rights. Google it and follow it.
Raise readers. Let them read what they want, and read along with them. Introduce them to Madeline L’Engle and CS Lewis and Tolkien so they have universes to explore.
Limit screen time. Severely. They have imaginations. Boredom can be an excellent motivator for exploration, creativity, and thoughtfulness. We didn’t even have a TV until they started elementary school. That was the best thing I ever did.
Every year in the spring take a day off from work and take them out of school to have a “special day”. Go to a museum or a historic site or bowling. Keep this up through adulthood.
Create traditions; go to the same place every year for vacation so that that experience becomes part of their history.
You won’t be able to be 100% present for them every day. Go easy on yourself.
Find a good way to have them learn to manage money. For me, the kids never got an allowance - instead I would give them opportunities to work for money.
Teach them to listen to their bodies so they can know when they are full, tired, need privacy, or whatever else - so that they can advocate for themselves and have healthy habits.
Volunteer with them.
If they ask you for something and you say “no” and they ask “why” tell them why; don’t just say “because I said so.” They are curious, intelligent little persons and even if they don’t like the answer, they should know why.
In the name of all things holy hold them, snuggle, fuss over them, and enjoy them.
I didn’t get everything right by ANY stretch of the imagination, but there was a lot that I did right. I got a lot of inspiration from my own parents who taught me not only what to do, but what NOT to do as well.
What are some of your best tips?
I am not sure if this is the right place for me. I’m the mom of grown children who is just grieving that they aren’t little anymore. It’s not empty nest- quite the opposite. My kids are still living at home while they attend college and we see each other all the time, and we have a healthy family.
But I could bring myself to tears when I think about how quickly the time went, and that I’ll never see the little boy and little girl version of them.
I look at the old movies and keep running over in my mind all the things I didn’t do, or didn’t do enough of, the times I was mentally and emotionally absent because I was just always so tired.
I keep saying - if I could go back, for each of them, for one day…and hold them again and ask “What do you want to do today? Your choice.” Even just an hour.
First some background:
DH and I have seven children between us. Five are his two are mine. They grew up together, we raised them as siblings (of course). He has triplets and my son is their age so we usually just call them “the quads”.
At this moment all but one of the kids live at home with us and commute to college (we live in a regular sized ranch house, not a mansion) and every one of them works so hard, most have jobs outside of school. DH is blue collar and works shifts and I personally have two jobs. We are just a hard working busy family.
Our first Christmas, my mom got my two kids (her blood grandchildren) each a huge gift and the five step grandchildren got smaller gifts. So I took her aside and explained that it’s better to get them all small gifts than to give unevenly. It was never an issue after that.
Different story on my mother in laws side. We would go to her house or she would come here and my kids would be ignored, criticized, etc. to the point where as they grew up the kids (who are now all between 19-23) came up with a BINGO game with squares like “Nana ignores (my daughter)” and “Nana says something homophobic to (my gay son)”. They made a joke about it but I couldn’t laugh.
Then About six months ago my MIL excluded my son (her step grandson) from a large gift that she gave to her “real” grandchildren. It was a last straw in many years of ignoring and mistreating my children in favor of my husbands children.
DH took her aside and explained that we treat all the kids the same and that you can’t give a big gift (it was a car actually) to us and say it is for my husbands 3 children and then go out of the way to say my son isnt included in the shared car. Mind you, at the time my son was the only one who had a license 🙄. In the end we ended up giving the car back.
Anyway it was a huge issue and it ended up in my husband and I not speaking or interacting with his parents. The rest of his family got involved, now his sister isn’t speaking with us, and his brother - while he hasn’t written us off- told DH that everyone blames me because obviously I’m the one in their minds who forced him to return the car to them. Not true, it was definitely a mutual decision.
Last month she turned around behind our backs and gave the car to his kids. Whatever. At least doing it that way forced his ex wife to put the car on her insurance, not ours. That’s something.
ANYWAY his mom’s birthday is coming up and we were invited to a party they are having for her. If I go it’s the opportunity either to mend some fences OR (more likely) my saying something I can’t take back. I do feel badly because this has caused a big rift between him and his family; his dad abandoned them when he was little and for better or worse his mom and step dad are all he has.
I already know the answer, just want to see what you think.