This is what I woke up to this morning.

Carson crawled into my bed and asked me to hold him. I told him I would as long as he was quiet. Quiet! Yeah right!!! "Mom it is 7:01" Carson please be quiet. "Mom it is 7:02" Carson be quiet. "Mom it is 7:03, 7:04, 7:05 and so on until it was 7:11 then it was mom it is 7:11" Yes Carson please be quiet. "But mom I said it is 7:11" Yes buddy please, I just want to sleep for a few more minutes. If you can be quiet until 7:30 I would appreciate it.

He did not be quiet either so I finally gave up at 7:30 and got up.

 

Quynsie went to our new ward for the Young Women girls camp yard sale. We went and visited and it looked like she was having fun and making new friends. As it turns out one of her friends from school actually is in our new ward.

 

Joe and I don't do pictures together very often. It is always either just one of us or the kids, but not the two of us together. This was on our way to our nephew Trevor's birthday party.

   

Front row: Raven, Quynsie, Nadia, Aiden, Carson

Back row: Britt, Trevor, Nate, and Ryleigh

 

Heaven help me. I can't wait to get moved to the new house where I can put creams and lotions up in a locked closet. Carson just got into my tiger Balm for my ankle and then he touched his eye with his hand. Thankfully we quickly got it flushed out and he is fine but this kid finds anything and everything unless it is locked up he will find it. I could have hid it under my mattress and he'd have found it. He is sneaky. I'm to the point I'm not sure what to do with him. ...We have tried timeouts for 3 years (doesn't work he thinks it's funny) we have tried taking things away ( he doesn't care) we have had to call poision control before (that's the highlight of his day) I have cried in front of him (doesn't even faze him) he isn't allowed to play video games anyway so we can't take that away. He doesn't watch TV all that often so that won't work. You would think him getting hurt would teach him but it hasn't. I'm not talking about getting into lotions or creams here I'm talking about everything. I can hide gum/candy or whatever ands he finds it and claims it as his. He took us on a treasure hunt the other night for something he had taken and he thought it was the funniest game ever even though he was getting yelled at and had all of his stuffed pets taken. He would say haha I tricked you haha I tricked you again. Ugh ok vent over.

 

We had only been home for about 30 minutes when the above incident happened. I seriously do not know what to do. I don't want him growing up being so sneaky that he is breaking laws and getting away with it or worse ending up in the slammer.

 

To finish off the night, we are having a movie/late night with cousins, since we do not do sleep overs. My aunt and uncle don't do sleep overs either, so it works out. It is kind of interesting, but the cousins are actually my 1st cousins and our kids' 2nd cousins, but they are the same age as our kids, well Raven, Nadia and Carson's age anyway. My aunt and uncle have 2 older children that our my age, but then just before we adopted our kids, they adopted their 3 kids.

The kids don't get together often enough. Life just gets crazy and we run out of time.

 

Our take on sleepovers: We feel that things happen at sleepovers that can cause harm, so we just don't do them. It is a safety issue that we just do not want to deal with. We only do sleepovers at grandparents house if it is necessary. For ex: when Raven was transported to the hospital via ambulance, she was admitted to the hospital and Joe and I both stayed at the hospital over night with her so the other kids stayed at my parents.

I know that people have issues with our rule, but for the most part, the kids friends have been ok with it. They usually say, ok, well you can still come over and leave when your parents say you have to. The "No sleepovers" is more of a common thing anymore, so we are not alone. We feel that we were trusted with these kids to raise and protect and since we can't protect them from everything in their lives, we will protect them from the things we can control.