Battles

Battles. As parents we have to carefully choose which battles we determine are worth the fight...

Kyle's whitewater rafting season has started. Which consequently means that the almost three year old, the 19 month old, and the pregnant lady (26 weeks) are all hanging out together....alone, unsupervised! We are gauranteed one day a week of seeing Kyle, but we have seen him 2-3 the last couple of weeks. Let's just say the boys and I spend a lot of time outside. There are no outside toys up here (we are working on this), so they play with the sticks, mud, rocks, in the back of pick-up trucks, climb on everything, and turn every thing they pick up off the ground into a gun. (Ryker is especially accomplished at this, my sweet little 19 month old.)

Okay, back to battles. I used to try to fight the "gun" battle, but quickly learned that only defeat was in sight, and surrenedered. They boys know guns can hurt people and that we only shoot bears, deer, moose, and wild cats (oops, did I say wild cats?). I ignore the dirty looks I get from other moms at the park when my 19 month old picks up sticks and turns them into guns. I had a mom tell me a couple weeks ago that Ryker was "playing inappropriatly for a baby." Even the ladies in the church nursery have learned its not a battle worth fighting. Apparently they tried playing animal doctor with some of the stuffed animals in nursery one Sunday with my boys, but all Gunnar and Ryker wanted to do was get their guns (yes, they have pretend guns in our church nursery) and shot them.

The most recent battle that Kyle decided to take on was the issue of clothing. Gunnar is our little nudest. Mind you, I should clarify, he isn't completely nude, he almost always has on his underwear, but that is it. If you tell him we are going somewhere, the store, church, school, or even just outside, he will not put up a fight about having to put clothes on and he keeps them on. But as soon as we are back inside the closed door of our house, his clothes are off within 5 minutes.

So Monday on one of Kyle's days off he decided Gunnar is no longer allowed to only be in his underwear...he MUST wear clothes. So during breakfast Kyle got up and got clothes for Gunnar. Gunnar screamed, "Daddy I don't like clothes, no clothes!!!!" over and over again. Throwing a fit only made Kyle more determined, so he held him down and put clothes on the poor kid. Gunnar proceeded to cry off and on the remainder of the morning about wearing his clothes. But he is no dummy, so he proceeds to pee his pants. We won't make him wear wet pants....so he tells us he peed and then only gets a replacement pair of underwear to put on, no pants. At this point Kyle decided Gunnar didn't have to wear a shirt, but only pants. Not acceptable for Gunnar, he wanted only his underwear, so he pees in his pants again.

I'm not sure at what point Kyle held up his white flag, but all I know is that by the end of the day Gunnar was only in his underwear (and had peed a ridiculous number of times in his pants) and when I went in to check on him one final time before I went to bed, he had taken off his pajamas as was sleeping in only his undies.

I feel bad for Kyle knowing how it feels to be defeated when it comes to parenting. You can call us weak, but really I think it's okay to at times admit defeat....I just hope Gunnar decided that wearing clothes is cool before he becomes a teenager, I don't think I can handle my teenage boy(s) sitting around in their underwear all day.

One battle we recently took on and are winning is night time bed-wetting with Gunnar. We probably went all about potty training wrong as we didn't night train at the same time we did day training. We tried, but Gunnar never made it through the night, and would pee always more than 3 times a night (one night 7 times!!!!), so we decided to wait that part of potty training out. We valued our sleep and the amount of laundry that was piling up more than night training (priorities). I told Kyle before Gunnar was three, I wanted him to be COMPLETELY trained, not just during the day. Kyle had been bugging me for a long time about night training, saying that we should just try without a diaper, because Gunnar knows when he has one on and could care less about even trying to use the potty at that point...but I had alot of great excuses built up. However, recently I took the plundge. The first week went great, Gunnar only had one accident at night, which made Kyle feel awesome knowing he was right about the whole thing.. Now we are about 85-90%...which is better than I imagined. He wakes up at 2am like their is an alarm set and goes to the bathroom, if he happens to not get up at 2, he has an accident. Some nights when I notice he hasn't gotten up, I want to go wake him up so he doesn't pee the bed, but I figure that won't help in the long run, he needs to be the one learning to recongnize what his body needs. So I just suck it up and deal with the extra laundry.

I keep telling myself that parenting will get easier with time, but really I think the problems needing dealt with will just be different. All we can do is our best, pray for guidence and give them the encouragment and tools our children need to be successful....but boy, that sure is easier said than done. Until I get parenting all figured out I will just choose my battles VERY carefully.