Practicing with the new camera.

...messing with the shutter speed...


...in "P" mode...

... practicing indoors...

...getting a little artistic...

... catching a total crack-up...


what do you think?

Because sometimes delayed gratification can be much more satisfying.

The Cheese Eater has been asking for a Nintendo DS forever, but the last thing we needed in our house was another video game. Besides, he already had a Leapster, an educational handheld, and there was no need for another.

(I'll agree with my son's argument that he had outgrown the Leapster, but that wasn't enough to make me agree with the purchase of a new $129 system, not including all of the games and extras.)

But I felt for him. Telling him to put it on his Christmas list seemed a little silly, seeing that Christmas is months and months away. So I did what any parent in my situation would do: I told him that if he saved the money himself, he could buy his very own DS.

Being fully aware that it would take a 7-year-old forever to save that kind of money, I made a deal with him. Whatever he saved, I would match the amount. We sat down and figured out what it would all cost (the system plus a game or two.) I ended up telling him that--even though it was way under the total amount--if he saved $50, Mommy and Daddy would pay for the rest.

Because here's the deal. It wasn't about the amount of money he was saving. The lesson I was trying to teach my son was about instant gratification. We can't always have what we want the exact moment that we want it. Sometimes we have to wait and save, even if it takes a very long time.

We upped his allowance by a $1, bringing it to $4 a week. I've struggled a little with the whole allowance issue. Do you give your kids an allowance simply because they are a part of the family or do they have to earn it through chores and whatnot? We aren't big sticklers on chores, the boys still being so young, but I told the Cheese that if he didn't keep up with his responsibilities there would be no allowance.

Long story short, over the past several months, he saved $40 and I knew that the DS wasn't far away. Then I got a savings account statement in the mail that comes once a quarter.

{Sidenote: In kindergarten, there was a program through the school for the kids to have a savings account through a local bank. We would give him a few bucks each week that he would put into the account. It was supposed to be a great teachable moment about saving money, and I'm sure for older students that can learn how to keep a ledger it is a good one, but for our son it didn't amount to much.}

So he's had $60 just sitting in this account. It wasn't earning any interest so we had stopped putting money into it. Looking at the statement, I realized that he had saved enough money for his beloved DS without really knowing it.

I showed it to him. I reminded him that that was money that he had saved. I then had him add 60 and 40. You've never seen a smile so big as when he realized that he had saved $100.

"Does this mean...do I get to...?" He could hardly get the words out he was so excited.

After a quick trip to the bank to withdraw his money, we headed out to buy his DS. His body vibrated as he picked out the color that he wanted and the games he wanted to buy.

The morning after he bought it, he was hovering over my bed at 6:54 asking if he could play with it. I quickly realized that we would have to make some rules about the DS. So now, for every 30 minutes that he reads he gets 30 minutes on the DS. For every 30 minutes he's outside playing, he gets 30 minutes on the DS. It's not a perfect system, but it seems to be working.

But the financial lesson didn't end there. Now he's back to saving. Who knew those damn DS games were so expensive!

Weekly Column: At the end of my rope, all out of ideas, etc., etc.

©Stephenie Freeman

I'm afraid that I've been losing my cool a lot lately. Hot summer days will do that to you. So will living with small children.

The Cheese Eater, when hungry or tired or frustrated or sad or feeling any other emotion other than happy, whines. And when he whines, I can feel all the patience draining out of me like a
pool with a slow leak.

I know it’s going to be a bad day when I hear whining before I hear my alarm.

"Mommmeee, I wanna waffle for breakfast.”

I roll over asking the God of Patience to grant me a few extra doses.

(Louder) "Mommmeee, I said I’m hungry!"

My day hasn’t even started yet and I ready for it to be over.

Anytime that the Cheese Eater does not get his way the whining begins. When I use my authoritative mama voice to correct his behavior ("My ears can't hear you when you whine at me"), he starts to cry. And not fake crying either. Full out, crocodile tears, followed by the now famous line, "Why are you mad at me?"

"Buddy, I'm not mad at you. I'm frustrated with your behavior."

To a young child this sort of logical reasoning means nothing. I thought by this age I would be able to start having Oprah Moments with my son, those Ah-Ha moments that she’s always talking about, and sometimes on a good day it happens. But when this whining is accompanied by a flood of emotions, Oprah herself couldn’t talk my son down.

The Cheese Eater has a sensitive soul and I love that about him. It’s a strong part of my genetic code that, unfortunately for him, he’s stuck with.

But as a mama who prides herself on always finding a solution, I'm not sure how I'm going to handle this one. I don't want to crush his spirit, but I also don't want to raise a hyper-sensitive, sissy boy that one day a therapist is going to tell him is all because of me.

So, as Dr. Phil would say, I need to figure out his currency. I need to find what I can either say or do that will stop this behavior. All I’ve been doing is gritting my teeth and counting to 10.
For now, that's all I've got in my bag of tricks.

I’m beginning to realize that I'm gonna need a bigger bag.

The Cheese Eater has some new words to his vocabulary. New words like "forever," "never,” and "always" have become regulars. These words are so severe and absolute, filled with so much drama and anguish. If I didn’t know any better, I would think my son was getting his period.

I don't know if he really grasps the severity of what he's saying. For example, today when he was whining I told him that he needed to take a long nap.

"Forever?" he whined back at me.

"No, buddy. Taking a nap forever would be a bad thing. Do you even know what 'forever' means?" I asked him.

"Yeah."

"What does it mean?" I asked again.

He couldn’t give me an answer, only proving that he has no idea what he’s really saying. Such strong statements like, "You never play with me" or "You're always mad at me" are hard for any mama to hear. Not to mention how bad it makes me look when screamed in the middle of the grocery store.

First the whining, then crying, and now it’s quite obvious that he needs an "Extreme Vocabulary Makeover,” but simply throwing my hands up in defeat is no longer an option.

Usually I am the Mama who wants more, but right now all I want is less. Like a virus on a computer, I want to uninstall these horrible habits that my son has picked up somewhere. I’m just not sure where my son is hiding his “restart” button.

I just looked in my bag of tricks. There's a hole in the bottom.

Just a taste of the blog posts to come

don't you wish that snowcones still made you this happy?

taken with the new camera on
4th of July at Loews on Coronado Island

{mama's caption: frozen bliss}

"Hello, Lover."

Remember that scene in Sex in the City when Carrie is looking at a pair of shoes (Manolos I'm sure) that she covets? You can tell how badly she wants them and all you can think is, "Don't you have enough shoes already? I mean, how many designer shoes does a women--who by the way can't really afford them--need?"

Well, that simply doesn't matter. She loves what she loves and if another pair of Manolos makes her happy, who are we to judge?

I have two things that I love to spend money on: handbags and hobbies. I love purses. I'm a bag whore. I rarely allow myself to indulge, only splurging on a designer bag once a year, but oh how happy it makes me when I do. Silly? Perhaps. But for a stay-at-home mom of boys, purses are a girly indulgence that's all mine.

The other thing that I spend money on are my hobbies. As I have written before, I have several. I have a need to create, but I also have a need to learn which leads to new hobbies. For a while I was into scrapbooking (especially when the boys were babies) but that got to be really expensive. I mean, trying to explain to your husband why you spent $100 on paper and stickers gets old after a while.

Then I got into needlepoint. I've made several nice pieces (including a birthday stocking that I rarely remember to use) that I'm proud of. Not only is needlepoint an expensive hobby, it is also a long hobby. It's not a hobby for those who are in need of quick gratification.

So my latest hobby might be the most expensive yet: photography. Now, I don't fully classify this as only a hobby since it involves recording our family's history, but since I am taking it to the next level--learning more than just how to point-and-shoot--I guess that is what it is.

I've been wanting a new camera for a while now. It's hard to learn about shutter speed and f stops when you don't have all of the cool dials and buttons to mess with. The camera I had was a very nice one, it took great pictures and was easy to use, but...

So I started to research and learn about all of the fancy cameras out there. For months now, I've been standing in the window, just like Carrie Bradshaw, drooling over something that I just couldn't bring myself to buy.

Well yesterday I finally did it.

Hello, Lover.


So expect to see lots of pictures posted in the future. Let's hope I get the same milage out of this camera that Carrie did out of those shoes.

hot summer days indoors

when it's over 100 degrees outside, this bad mama allows her children to do just about whatever they want for as long as they want. For example,

allowing your children to rot their brains by spending endless hours on video games (which I know totally classifies me as bad, bad mama)

when the guilt becomes too much to bear, you start trying to act all educational.
"Count the sides for me. What shape is that?"



the guilt makes you agree to play board games that are good for them, but you happen to loath.

so you get tired of being so good and decide to go back to being bad by letting them watch entirely too much television.

but you don't feel too bad because at least one of your children has been busy
getting crafty with the legos.

she looks like she's trying to tell us something. perhaps something along the lines of "I don't want my picture taken."



and when nothing is left to do--when they are tired of video games and television (which is a pretty hard thing to do)--boys spend lots of time shooting at things, especially each other.



But at the very least, even though you've been a total slacker mama all day long, at least you get to practice some of your indoor photography skills.

{and please note, none of this was shot in auto mode. thank you very much.}

Weekly Column: Bedtime favorites

©Stephenie Freeman

After baths are taken and teeth are brushed, it’s time to read books before going to bed.

It’s such a nice calming bedtime routine that we all enjoy and leaves me feeling like I’m finishing the day parenting on a high note, minus all of the debating and begging over which books will be read tonight.

“No, pick a different one…we read that one last night…because it is too long…oh, please God, no…don’t make me read ‘Moo, Baa, La, La, La’ again. I promise to be good. Please. Choose. Something. Different.”

My boys often get into what I refer to as “favorite book ruts.” They want the same story read to them night after night after night. My begging and pleading for something new often falls on deaf ears. Once again I find myself reading “Fox in Sox” or some other equally mind-numbing book that I’ve read enough times to have completely memorized start to finish.

I’ve read about how this repetition is good for children. But has a study ever been done about what all of this repetition does to the parents? Because the truth is, if I have to read about Mrs. Bindergarten getting ready for kindergarten one more time, my brain might finally turn to Jell-O.

I’m not complaining. Not really. I might be reading “Goodnight Moon” for the millionth time, but having a small child in your lap, smelling of Johnson’s baby shampoo, listening to every last word that falls from your lips creates the kind of memory that I will revisit time and time again long after my boys are grown and gone.

Many of the books that we read that teach moral lessons. We’ve learned about strangers from the Berenstain Bears and about accepting people’s differences from Clifford the Big Red Dog. I’m not sure if there are any moral lessons to be gleaned from Dr. Seuss except that reading is fun when everything rhymes and there are lots of weird, made up words.

There are times, however, when I suddenly get a break from our regular reading repetition. It’s during these times that they request a Mommy Story.

“Do the ones when you say, ‘Once upon a time.’ I want one of those,” the Monkey will say.

Instead of feeling relief from not having to read “Good Night, Gorilla” yet again, I feel pressure to produce a bedtime story that is at par with my sons’ high bedtime story standards.

I mean, how can a simple, made up story by Mommy possibly compete with all-time favorites like “Sheep in a Jeep” and “Are You My Mother?”

In all honesty, it’s really not that difficult. Make your kid the main character—the star of his own show—and suddenly you become the greatest children’s author of all time.

There’s something enjoyable about telling a story that you’ve never told before. My boys give me a topic to start with that usually include their favorite things or a sport that they are currently interested in, and as long as they are the winner or the hero in the end, my new and unique bedtime story is always a hit.

Some of my made up stories have become bedtime favorites. For a week or so they will ask for “The Car Wash Story” or “The Golf Course Story” over and over again until a new favorite finds its way off of the shelf.

Which is fine with me. As Dr. Seuss put it so well, “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go.”