My current challenge as a mother

Kids are smart. Smarter than I'd like them to be. I'm not talking about being academically smart - all parents want their kids to be geniuses. I'm talking about the street smarts that kids pick up from observing adults. Eventually (usually sooner than later), they figure everything out.

As a mother, I'm always constantly amazed at what comes out of my daughter's mouth. Her word choice and the way she expresses herself makes her almost seem like an adult at times. A part of me applauds her language development and another part of me is freaking out over the fact that she's growing up and soon - she won't be a little girl anymore. Notice I didn't say sweet - she stopped being sweet a long time ago when it came to following rules. If anything, she was born to break them.

Thankfully, I haven't seen her cuss yet - a huge blessing in comparison to other
parents who report that their children has started cussing at the age as early as 1. I guess I should credit my daughter's deafness to her non-cussing. There's a bunch of nasty things to be heard on television and thankfully, my daughter doesn't hear them. Now, if only I can shield my son from it....

A couple times a week (more times than I care to have), I get into a routine bedtime argument with my 6 year old daughter. It's always about the same thing. How her going to bed earlier than mommy and her brother isn't fair. Or even when her brother goes to bed at the same time as her, it isn't fair that Mommy gets to stay up.

"Fair?" I asked her. "How is it not fair?" She reported back that Logan has to wake up at the same time as her and Mommy has to wake up even earlier AND Mommy works. So it isn't fair that Mommy and Logan gets to stay up a little bit longer. I was certainly not in the mood to continue this argument so I settled it by saying "Just go to bed, because I said so!"

Oh, the horror. I turned into my mom. I hated hearing "because I said so" when I was growing up and swore up and down that I wouldn't use it with my kids. Now, I realize it's just a shortcut for parents to end arguments when they're at a loss for words.

As soon as I said those words, I knew it was a big mistake. My daughter screamed (yes, she screamed) at me and said "YOU'RE not the boss of me!" Funny - just the other day, when my son wasn't behaving, my daughter sat him down (yes, she did) and explained "You have to listen to Mommy, she's the boss."

Bedtime arguments aside, I marvel at the cuteness and cleverness of my daughter (when she's not challenging my authority). When she lost her third tooth, she told a friend that she was going to give the Tooth Fairy's money to Mommy to make her rich.

Sure enough, the next day, when she woke up with $2 under her pillow, she gave me $1 and said the other $1 was for Daddy and that the money was going to help us become rich. Wasn't that cute? Oh, how I wish $1 would solve all my problems.

My daughter has also learned the art of negotiating. She'll negotiate anything from eating vegetables, going to bed at a later time and basically, getting out of anything she doesn't want to do. Sometimes, I take the bait and proceed to negotiate with her. If she comes up with a fair trade (or a cute one), I'll let her have it. I imagine she'll grow up to be a businesswoman - only time will tell.

Speaking of language development - my son has got to be the cutest 2 year old on the planet. He's learning new words left and right and it's a thrill seeing him try to figure out how to sign it. It's pretty cool to see a little child light up and get really excited at seeing something familiar and knowing what it's called. When he lights up, I light up as well. I had never thought I'd get excited at the concept of signing "elephant". His newest word: ice cream. You can thank Grandma for that. Now, he asks for ice cream more often than I care to count.