The Fernie Family : How to Break Your Mother's Heart

We are still working very hard at giving Rebecca lots of consistency with discipline in hopes that she will learn something and turn in to a decent human being. Sometimes, discipline is hard. I don't want to follow through with my threats. I want to give in to her because she's cute or because she says "sorry" even if it IS too late. But I'm trying not to. I would say I'm about 97% consistent with that stuff right now and working up to perfection.

The other night though, this little girl just about killed me with one of her responses. She seems to go nuts right around bed time and starts running around the house and acting like a fool. One of the things that's a big part of our nighttime routine is me telling her a made up, impromptu story while I'm rocking her for a few minutes. Because she LOVES this, and expects it, it also makes it a good bargaining chip for those times when she's losing her mind right before bed.

I don't even remember now what she was doing, but I said "if you don't stop _____, I'm not going to tell you a story". Normally, that will make her change her ways and she quickly complies. This time, she didn't. She kept on doing whatever it was and so I said, "ok - no story" and she started crying and wailing and the whole nine.

So then I'm still rocking her and snuggling her (just in silence), and she gets that sad, almost crying little turned out lower lip and says "Mommy...you still love me?".

I WANTED TO CRY SO HARD WHEN SHE SAID THAT!!! Oh my goodness!! It made me feel terrible. Like...is my discipline making her feel unloved? That is the last thing I want. Then I think...is she old enough to understand how to manipulate me with stuff like that? I don't think so.

Anyway, I told her of course I loved her. I would always and forever love her no matter what. But I still felt rotten for it. At what age does a child understand that discipline IS love? Maybe not until adulthood. Oh well.

In other news, for Father's Day, I took Rebecca out for a few hours. I had a whole thing planned and it did not work out quite so well, We were supposed to go on a mile long hike at a nature center not too far from our house. But, after we got about 10 minutes in to it, Rebecca had to go potty. These are the moments, when you want the diapers back. So, we cut the walk short and went to lunch. After that, we went to a splash fountain at our library. It was a stressful morning, but parts of it were fun. Here are some pics:

Sitting on a little seat carved out of a log on the nature walk.

At the nature center, playing with some logs and bug skeletons. Good times.

Pretending she's a monkey at the nature center.

Running around like crazy in the fountain. Not too long ago, she wouldn't go near this thing. The noise of the fountain scared her a little. She didn't hesitate for one second this time!

Also the night before Father's Day, I made a special dinner for Mike like I used to do before Rebecca's arrival. When we first started dating, I did these a couple times a year. I do a theme dinner. Basically, pick a country or region and make food from that area, have music, decorations, costumes, etc. It's a lot of work, but really fun. I've done Chinese, Hawaiian, Greek, German, French...maybe some others

This time I picked Polish partly because the woman in the office next to me at work grew up in Poland and could help me and partly because I have always wanted to try making pierogi from scratch.

So, I made pierogi (with some special ingredients my co-worker got me to make them authentic), kielbasa (store bought), a cucumber salad that is very popular at holidays and for dessert a Szarlotka - basically the Polish version of apple pie. The crust is more like a shortbread crust and the apples are cooked before you bake it. I do not actually like apple pie...the texture of cooked fruit kind of grosses me out. But I liked this...maybe it has something to do with the buttery goodness of a shortbread crust? Here are the results of my labors: