Well imagine my surprise this morning when I told M’khai that I think the scooters were stolen. He wasn’t convinced. He swore up and down he put it away.  I told him I saw them out there late last night and by morning, they were gone.

He turns to me and says “well it’s ok, my birthday is coming up soon and I will be getting something new to play with.” #FML

What is wrong with this kid? I went off. Could I possibly be spoiling him? This is no one’s fault but my own. Just a few weeks ago I told him to clean his room and he said “but isn’t Marta (the cleaning lady) coming this week.” WTF? Ok Richie Rich!

I have to do something so he gets it. I will be blogging about it because this will be a challenge. I have a few ideas but I would love some help. I welcome all suggestions! This has to be fixed!

Happy April Fool’s Day!

Secondly, after I have a talk with the school, I go to the child’s home so that all involved parties are aware of what is happening while my child is in school seeking an education. This is where accountability comes in. I am making you aware of what is happening in school so you can’t at any point say, you didn’t know. I don’t send my children to school to fight. While I get things may happen, that is my role, I am both the enforcer and the resolver and I make that very clear to the parents. It is at this very point that I know how the situation will be resolved. You see, right after I make that statement it could get either really ugly or remain cordial. It’s a tough situation to place yourself in unless you already know that you are willing to sit in a jail for your child.

The first time I had to go to a child’s house. The parents were not present in the child’s life. The young man lived with his grandmother and she was working two jobs to try and stay afloat. While she’s working, the young man is home with his sister with no supervision. She can’t afford to lose her job or have it jeopardized in anyway so coming up the school is a no-no. So after my schpeel, she turns to her grandson and says ” I told you if you have to fight, do it off of school grounds”

**PAUSE**

I obviously wasn’t clear in my message. You see when I said he’s not fighting, I did not mean I had an issue with the venue, I meant there will be a fight, but it will not involve my child-I will fight your kid. I told her just that. I turned to her grandson and told him that as well-just so we were all on the same page.

It broke my heart to read this story about this little girl who committed suicide due to fellow students bullying her. While I am happy to see the students being charged, why aren’t the parents being charged as well? I hear it all the time on the news “bullying today is far different from back in the day” and I know how mean kids could be! So imagine if it was bad back then, with the addition of social media sites and new outlets for bullying, the possibilities are endless and the damage far worse! 

Equally as baffling is the school’s involvement. ”The bullying of Phoebe was common knowledge to most of the student body and to certain faculty, staff and administrators, Scheibel said. At least four students and two faculty members had intervened during the harassment, but the school’s code of conduct was inconsistently enforced, she said.”

How did it come to this?

Let me show you something. I draw reference to wild animals because that is the only analogy I could use for how serious I am. I could never, go up to a lion or a bear in the wild (or in a damn zoo for that matter) and taunt a cub. Never. They protect on instinct and so do I. This is not about your child learning to deal with their own problems and conflict resolution. A conflict is such and such took my pencil and didn’t gave it back. A situation is you following my child in the hallway and/or home and harassing them. I deal with situations. There are some kids that keep to themselves and you could never know what’s going on inside. I am grateful my kids tell me about their day but just so that I stay on top of everything, I make surprise visits to the school. I hang out in the hallway-please believe it. It sounds crazy but I know why I am doing it. I visit the pages and check the statuses on Facebook of my child and his friends. I make a conscious effort to know what’s going on.

As a mom, I feel for Phoebe’s mom and family. That is a pain I never want to feel. I would rather sit in a jail than have to bury my child. When it comes to my little ones, I am like Malcom X, by ANY means necessary.

Parents should be held accountable for the actions of their kids. If you are a parent that is aware of your child bullying and you haven’t done something about it, shame on you. Be very glad that your children and mine are not in the same school district.

You know I am a fan of putting my kids in front the tv. I am a believer in educational shows having the ability to teach children. He isn’t glued to the tube watching MTV, but Sesame Street, Sprout and Nick Jr. are a must. I was so happy when he learned to count to ten in Spanish via his BFF Diego. Imagine my surprise when I called him down to dinner and told him to talk to Uncle Khalil like Kai Lan talks. He sad, “Ni Hao Uncle Khalil”. That didn’t floor me. I always push Kayden further. Not sure if it is the gloat in me or just out of sheer curiosity. I said “what else does Kai Lan say; how does she say ‘blow’?”

he said “tuey” lo and freaking behold:

chuî: 1. blow

That’s how you pronounce blow in Mandarin. I hear that children are like sponges and retain everything but to actually see it is to believe it. I am looking now for schools for him to start in September and one of the criteria is early language courses. I know kids his age (3) that speak two or more languages and I definitely want to be multi-lingual.

Until then, Diego and Kai Lan are doing great!

I just thought I would share with you what Kennedy has been up to in daycare. If you ask her for a kiss, or even try to hug her, she pushes you away. Nicholas is the exception. She gets so giddy when he is around. She literally almost jumped out of my hands when she saw that he was there.

The other day, I tried to get Kayden out the door by telling him Nicholas was waiting for him and he found it necessary to tell me that Kennedy was kissing Nicholas. I told him as her brother it is his job to tell her not to kiss. He told me “I can’t mommy, they’re friends” Such innocence.

P.S. Mr. Sowell has been complaining about his lack of “a voice” on here. So the web designer is creating a spot just for him to rant and reply to my posts. Stay tuned for his boring section. *insert roll of the eye* I mean really, what could he possibly have to say? I guess we’ll see.

Today was a good day. Everyday is a good day actually but today was a better day than the others. I normally relax on Sundays and do the manicure and pedicure thingy to get myself ready for the week. Saturday evening, Mr. Sowell and I went out to dinner and he suggested he cook on Sunday. That’s it, that made the day a good day! LOL. So what he only made the entree and I had to make the sides? It didn’t even matter that he always makes the same dish when he cooks-baked chicken wings. I was extremely grateful for the help and I felt like I could have the day off. Finally!

I woke up and he went to get his ingredients. The kids have been begging to go outside and I have reneged so many times on taking them sledding that I started to feel guilty. Every time it snows I say, “we’ll go this time definitely” and then the snow melts. This snow ain’t melting no time soon. So I finally gave in, got them dressed and let them loose in the back. Ms. Kennedy went to church with her Nana. It’s so funny how she acts like she doesn’t even know me when she gets with her grandmother. As I put her in the car, she never even looked my way. Hmmph.

The boys were having a good time in the back and at this point they were just running around the yard. The snow was stiff but not deadly so I didn’t worry about them falling down and cracking their heads on the ice. I stood by the kitchen window and snapped flicks of  them playing and interestingly enough, as tough as M’khai acts, he always helps Kayden.

He Loves Him!

He got right off his swing and started to push Kayden because he realized he couldn’t swing himself as he literally sat on the snow. That was such a special moment for me because M’khai acts like he can’t stand the little fella. Rashid hopped down on his crutches and suggested I let them use their Zipfy thingys.

Zipfy Fun

I bought these things at the last minute (surprise, surprise) on Christmas Eve and I never really thought we would use them. Bingo, Rashid’s idea was genius. I didn’t even really know how to use it but leave it to kids to figure things out. We have a mini hill back there and they were having a blast. Rashid had another idea, take them to the hill at the school. This kid is so smart, he just acts dumb. (if you are reading this Sheed, I kid, I kid) The hill was fantastic! I could’ve kicked myself for not doing this sooner! Here is the video of Pennsylvania Winter Olympics 9010 as Kayden called it. Enjoy!

After we returned from the hill, Kennedy came home and my MIL and I went to Crate & Barrel to pick up a few things. We never went anywhere prior to her moving out. It’s funny how things happen; now that she doesn’t live here anymore,  I talk to her more often and I genuinely miss her. When she was here I never really inquired about her day and we never did much. We stopped for a quick bite at Maggiano’s and talked about so many things. We had such a great time….finally.

Yesterday, the cool parent kept Kayden home again so they could have another father-son day. No big deal. It’s kind of funny how I am cool with being The Enforcer, this week and just last week I was complaining about not being fun. I see why I need to be.

When Mr. Sowell is home with the kids, Kayden is the only one allowed to roam while the two older ones are sectioned off in their respected chill spots. Imagine my surprise when I walked in lats night to see Kayden and my kitchen floor, covered with cleaning supplies!!! I was literally shocked. To answer your quick questions, no the cabinets are not locked. I know, who doesn’t lock the cabinets? I really figured since he was 3, he knew not to go in the cabinets. I mean he understands everything else and to be quite honest, I just thought he knew. I never told him not to, I just thought he got that part.

He sprayed everything, everywhere and his jeans were covered in Counter Magic. This could have gone terribly wrong. I could have walked in to him passed out on the floor. I am grateful it didn’t. I am writing about it in case you like me, think they are so advanced for their age that they would “get it”.

Mr. Sowell was naturally pissed and I am glad we didn’t do the blame thing but I will say that I think he should be more aware of Kayden’s whereabouts in the house. I am responsible for not putting  the locks on the cabinets but he can’t just be allowed to roam freely. I get it now, he is still a curious child and this time it may be the cleaning supplies, next time it could be something worse.

In addition to putting locks on the cabinet doors, I am thinking I may need to put a gate or lock at the top of the steps because right now, everything in the house is dangerous. I asked Kayden if he drank any of it and he said yes so I made sure to flush his system with water. I also contacted my Poison Control Center today to make sure I did everything correctly. The agent informed me that the products I use (I had to tell her what it was) are deemed safe-ish, in that, they aren’t the harshest chemicals. I suggested using the above Mr. Yuck stickers but she said kids tend to be more attracted to these stickers so locks work best. Oh and keeping an eye on your kids. Hmmppph. Can’t argue with that.

I learned about this today, Ipecac, which is in most First Aid kits. This syrup is a medicine that makes kids throw up and get the poison out of their stomachs.

If you were like me, change your method of thinking. Just because they talk smart, doesn’t mean they know it all. Shame on me.

This all came to the forefront the other day. Hubs is off from work and Kayden wanted to sleep in. No big deal, I asked hubs if he would take him to school and he assured me he would. Kennedy was ready to go so she was off to school without her brother. No sooner than around 9:30ish, I get a text, “we’re going to breakfast” I didn’t mind this because I figured, what’s the harm in going to breakfast with your son? Imagine my surprise at 11:30 when I got the net text “dude, call him out, we’re going home to chill”. I was shocked! He couldn’t miss school! In truth, it sounded so cool, I was jealous.

When did I become the jerk parent? I couldn’t believe it. I mean, the above described scenario sounds like something I would do. Why don’t I do it? To make matters worse, this evening we were chilling in the family room and hubs come downstairs and I see him fiddling with the doors. I thought he was opening it to fix something, but no, he scooped up two snowballs and hit Kayden and M’khai while they were watching their movie. The crowd.went.wild. It was awesome, genius and cool. Why didn’t I think of this? I mean I was sitting right there, tweeting of course, but nonetheless, right there!!! Why does he always have to be the fun one?

I plan on making some changes to see how I can start being the cool parent too. I wonder if this will work though, can two cool parents really exist? I am trying though, really making an effort. About 10 minutes ago, I told M’khai to come with me to have a bowl of cereal since he said he was hungry. The old, “uncool” me would have never done that. Cereal after breakfast? Never. LOL

Are you a cool parent? Can two cool parents exist?

• Kayden: “Mommy whaaaaaat you doing?” (slight stutter on the what, I am working on this)
• Me: “Peeing in the potty”
• Kayden: “Oh, you peeing in the potty, you a big boy? You gonna get a big treat?”

As invasive as the questions are to my quiet time on the potty, I can’t help but smile everytime because after all, he is only repeating what he learned. My friend in Trinidad asked me the other day how I got Kayden potty trained and I let him know that it is a struggle. If you don’t have the patience to do this, I reccomend that you wait because it is time consuming and frustrating. Kayden still will not poop on the potty at home. He will poop for Vanna, but not for me. He has the pee thing down but I don’t get the no poop thing. Vanna did tell me to buy him a big present, wrap it and tell him when he poops, he will get that. I like that idea alot and plan to try it out.

But the bottomline is this, I did what worked for me-my patience and my schedule. It was hard work.  I don’t really know what worked for me, but here are a few of the things I tried and some I didn’t.

• Monitor your child’s behavior and pamper schedule. This really isn’t as hard as it sounds. As I came in with the kids, Kayden would run to his room or the family room, and poop in his pamper. I missed that each and every time because when I came in, I allowed myself to get absorbed with something else. Try gettiing in and going right with your child to the potty.
• I used a belt as a threat. Yup, I am old school and I was terrified of a spanking. Sometimes it worked to get him to stay on the potty but he never went with me standing there hovering with a belt. I did pop him a few times if he peed in the pull-up but that got old real quick. One night I was picking him up from Vanna’s and she asked me “why is Kayden asking me if I am going to beat his but when I change his pamper?” Ummm, so that stopped. It clearly was not effective. In fact, sending him to his room yielded better results.
• We made a mess of quite a few underwear but this was my aha! moment. When you put the little one in undies (jockey shorts as I like to call them), do not revert back to pull ups. It became a huge deal for Kayden when he started wearing underwear, especially his cousin Diego’s brand. I realized that I was switching back and forth between underwear and pullups and you shouldn’t. Once they have reached “big-boy” status, let him stay there.
• Invest in a potty specifically for them.  When I first started training him, his potty made things a lot easier for him to sit there. Our toilet makes a weird noise and I will admit, at times, I am afraid to sit my own butt on there for fear that something wil grab me into the abyss.

This my potty of choice. Designed by Boon,  king of modern children’s goods at a reasonable price, the two-in-one potty bench is eye-catching and multifunctional.  Though large by potty standards (19.5″ x 12.8″ x 7.1″), it also doubles as a stool with the lid closed and has handy holders for toilet paper and an easily removable potty tray.

Now, I have always heard that girls potty train faster than boys do. Kennedy is proving this little rumor to be true. She, at 15 months, said “pee-pee” and peed on the potty. Of course, since that day 2 weeks ago, she hasn’t done it since but it’s a start. I suspect she will probably need the attention and time that I started talking about in the beginning of the post. I will check in with you guys on this topic a few weeks from now to update you on my progress.

How is potty training going for you? Did you invest in a separate potty for your child or did you go straight to the grown up toilet? Share your potty chronicles with me.

• The old me would have said: This year I am going to lose weight. 

• The new me says: This year I will run around the track or on the treadmill a few times a week so that I can try to lose some weight.

See the difference, the first thought had no meat behind it, nothing substantial. The second one however has substance. In order to lose the weight, I have to actually do something (other than eat combos and drink apple juice) that will serve as a catalyst to start the pounds to drop. So now here are a few of my strategies I plan on putting into effect this year.

I realize that I am absolutely no good to anyone if I am not 100%. Therefore, I will be renewing my mind, body and spirit once a month at the spa. I have already booked my treatments well into March and I can use this as an excuse to go on Spa Tours, where I visit different spas and try out treatments and report back to you. Who knows, I might ask one of you to join me one day for a spa treat, so look out for that news alert!

I am also going back to yoga and spinning classes. I thought I hired a babysitter for that purpose but clearly I just wanted someone to watch the kids while I tweet. That ends this week!! I am so excited about going back to yoga. I have been meaning to buy my yoga gear from Gaiam and today I am going to get all the essentials so I look  right in my asanas. Namaste.

I read once that a black woman should cut all her hair off to get a fresh start. I didn’t cut all mine off but I cut it noticeably shorter. Although it had length, it did not have any life. So I wanted to work on restoring life to my hair. I will start by taking a daily vitamin because I have also noticed my energy level is down. I will be taking pics of my hair and uploading it to Flickr (the gallery you see over to the left) so stop by occasionally and see what’s new in there.

Let’s talk about our eating habits.While we were getting the kitchen remodeled, we had to eat all over the place. We tried eating at mom’s house but my brood is wild. Plus, mom’s house is so comfortable…I hated having to leave right after we ate so the kids could get to bed. I can’t tell you how many times we ate pizza, Chinese, pizza again and McDonald’s. Now that we are all good again, (new pics are in the Flickr album) I am preparing more healthy meals. I have cut back our red meat intake to once a month. I will be posting more pictures of my dishes now that the kitchen is all fancy schmansy.

That’s about it for the changes I am making. Oh one more thing. I realized in 2009 that life is way too short, everytime I looked up, someone else passed away. Not just the elderly (you know the ones you expect) but really untimely passings. In 2010, I plan to live. We will travel more this year and have tons more events for friends and family to celebrate life and each other. Hop on board and live vicariously through me, it’s going to be a hell of a ride.

Love and all that,

Me

‘Twas the night before Christmas and if a mouse was stirring, he would been terrified by the amount of noise I was making. I swear, every Christmas Eve I do the same thing. I don’t know how to work ahead of schedule because I perform best under pressure. The way I run around, you would think that they change the date of Christmas annually and only tell you 3 days before. No…Christmas is the same day every year and every year I have the same routine-clean, shop, decorate, all happening the night before. I never have the cleaning lady Christmas week so I end up having some wacky schedule with her that only gets a small portion of the house cleaned.

On top of all of this, I also signed the house up for a major kitchen demo which started right after Thanksgiving. The goal was to finish by the eve of Christmas eve and by golly (get used to that phrase) they were done. So here, through pictures, I will show you how our holiday went. Let’s start with decor, this year the color palette was supposed to be blush and burgundy but seeing as though I started on Christmas eve, it was pretty hard to get those colors. So I settled for the reds, whites and the greens.

Here are the flowers. We host Christmas every year so I normally get huge arrangements from my flower shop but this year, I wanted to give the amazing florist in the farmer’s market a shot at it. I loved them.

The vase should have been wrapped with big banana leaves or something like that but I gave her my vases too late. I guess not everyone can function at the last minute like me. *sigh* I added cranberries to the vase thinking they would fill it up nicely but duh! cranberries float in water.

I spent the better half of the day getting the decor nailed down while mom did her thing in the kitchen. Here is what I did for the main centerpiece.

I didn’t want to focus on all floral centerpieces this year, so instead I ran to Crate & Barrel for inspiration. I thought this was so cute and since I was not dressing our usual big tree, I thought these ornaments would work lovely as a part of the decor.

Behold, this year’s tree. This is what you get on Christmas Eve from Walgreen’s. I walked right in and pointed to their tree ornaments and all. After I got in and set her up, 4 broken ornaments later, she was looking purrty in the corner. Now, this may seem like a waste but I am thinking ahead, because next year I can use this small tree downstairs in the family room and have it as the kids’ tree so they can partake in the decorating. Christmas is a big deal to me and while I like to showcase the kid’s ornaments on the tree, I really don’t. I have a theme, and the ornaments they make in school never seem to go with it. So now they can use this baby to have their own holiday.

So that was pretty much it for decor. Dinner started at 3pm and every year we eat at 3 but we really start at 4:30. Who knows perhaps I will take a hint and start next year’s dinner at 4:30? I purchased two new juice dispensers from Pottery Barn because these looked a lot more sturdy to me and for our summer shindigs, I need something that will not leak and look shnazzy on the food table. I like to use a lot of fruits in my drinks and while my previous ones are cute for display, the plastic spouts are very flimsy. On the new set, the lever is metal and when you dispense the juice you can feel the difference when you close it off.

So that’s it for the decor aspect. Browse the pictures, ask questions. I’ve included two videos for your perusal. I noticed something this year and I knew it was bound to happen. I said I was going to do things differently but I didn’t follow through. The kids are losing focus as to what Christmas is all about. M’khai got a coat and told Aunt Sandra he didn’t want it. He also complained a few times when Kayden got a gift. Next year, I will let them pick out a few gifts for under-priviliged kids so that they can start learning it is more important to give than to receive. Be sure to tell me how your Holiday was. Merry Christmas!