Growing Pains

I haven’t felt like the most amazing mom recently. Not that I’ve ever felt like I’m an amazing mom….But I think that I would like for Ryley to think that I am. :-)

Either way, we’ve been dealing with some behavioral issues, and we’ve had to crack the whip. Ryley’s got quite  a temper. She’s not a bad kid; she just struggles with self control.

So it’s been a bad week. She ended up in the principal’s office twice, Ryan has been working 10 straight closes, and I am stressed out of my skull with the balancing act of work, home, and freelance editing. Sometimes I wonder how working moms with more than one child manage to balance everything. Especially single working moms.

All I have to say is that God’s grace is sufficient for us.

• Ryan got a new job. The countdown until his last day at Panera is ON. Oh, we are grateful.
• God multiplied my time on Friday, and I miraculously got 12 hours of work done in the allotted 7-hour work day. No weekend hours for me. Yay!
• Ryley and I had a snuggly, rainy weekend where good behavior was rewarded and there were plenty of hugs, cuddly times, and sweet (needed!) mommy/daughter moments.
• We got the house pretty clean, AND I did five hours of editing, which is a weekend record.
• Jesus is responsible for all of the above.

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And now, pictures of our girl with accompanying Ryley Stories:

Ryley and I went to Payless to go boot shopping on Saturday. Oh my, she had fun in Mommy’s shoe aisle! She even had the clerks dropping by to comment on her shoe choices every few minutes.

We also autumnized our house with mini pumpkins and gourds from our local nursery. But it also happened to be the nursery’s pumpkin weigh-off contest day:

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So we are starting Ryley’s sticker chart again as an incentive for good behavior. We told her we were going to do it, but we had not yet filled it out. So she took it upon herself to add chores to the list, one of which was “I Closed My Closet Door.” And as a reward for the week she wrote, “An American Girl Doll or $2.00.” 

Hmmm, since American Girl Dolls are roughly $110, I wonder which one Mommy and Daddy will go with….

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Ryley loves to hear stories from our childhood. I don’t know how it came up, but Ryan was telling Ryley how her Aunt Rhonda used to believe that the moon was made of cheese. Ryley laughed out loud at the preposterousness of it all. After she had been genuinely laughing for a good 30 seconds, Ryan asked her, “Well, what do you think the moon is made of?”

Without missing a beat, Ryley answered, “The moon is made of moon!”

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Ryley came to me with this nice little bit of info:

“Mommy, it’s great. Everybody in the school office knows me so well because I’ve been late so many times. So every time I go to the office for a late pass, all I have to do is just stand there, and they know my name by the way I look, so they write my name, give me my late slip, and I’m off!”

Awesome. That’s just awesome.