Today, I'm exhausted.

This blog has been kind of quiet lately. I choose to mostly blog about good, positive, and the funny. Generally, I enjoy writing about what Kenzie does that brings me (or us) joy. The past few days have been hard parenting days; I've felt like there's been a lot of naughty, a lot of one particular toddler telling me "NO!" (and promptly landing on the naughty step), and a lot of begging to be outside -- although we've been outside all -freaking- day long. It's hard to exist on a toddler's preferences. Really.
Especially when they can. not. have. ice. cream. for. breakfast. (I don't care what the neighbor mommy said about that!!)

As result, I haven't had that "I wanna blog this" feeling lately - but today, I'm going to force it.
Last night, Doug mowed the lawn. This is an every other day kind of experience as he's a bit fond of a nice neat lawn. Typically, Kenzie and I stay indoors so that she's not accosted by all the allergens...but we'd already had a long day of yelling so I gave in and took her outside, rather than hearing her stand at the window begging for Daddy. She took her toy mower out and "helped" mow the yard. Poor thing couldn't push it on the grass, so she stood on the concrete frothing at the mouth until he mowed a path next to the cement...and she could follow.




Kenzie's taken to giving me a really coy & cute look when she KNOWS she's being naughty. I try and pick my battles, so with this demonstration of the coy/cute look, I chose to ignore that she'd just gotten caught playing with Zoey (the dog)'s food. I just couldn't do another time-out so soon after the last one (for hitting the same dog with a magic wand). I just didn't have it in me.



Yesterday, we planted flowers and she helped break them into little tiny bits. Today, we went to the pool where she was not happy in the baby pool. She's a big girl after all (or so she tells me every few minutes) and big girls jump into the adult pool even. though. they. cannot. swim. My arms are shaking from so much lifting her up and out of the pool. There's been coloring on walls, jumping on furniture, saying "I'm not ready" to just about anything I ask her to do...and I'm tired.

And, even though it's been a rough few days. I'm still not ready to sell her to the highest bidder.