Naive, strict, old-fashioned, out of touch - what am I?

I liked how I was raised. I think my parents did a great job and I turned out pretty well. My parents weren't perfect & made plenty of mistakes, but they let me explore my surroundings & gave me a stable foundation in which to build my life. So, I learned from their mistakes, but I try to raise Trinity with the same values I was raised.

However, DH & I seem to be the only ones who subscribe to our parenting style. Not that this bothers me, but I'm wondering if I'm out of touch with how children are raised today. For example, we expect Trinity to have table manners, well actually, manners in general. We follow through with what we say, so if she is misbehaving and we tell her 'x' will happen if she doesn't stop, then 'x' happens. Not sometimes, but every time. We expect her to be quiet during church and not run in stores. She has to hold our hand to cross the street & she only watches age appropriate TV & movies.

It is the TV & movie rule that seems to be criticized the most. My SIL sees nothing wrong with letting her 3 1/2 year old watch Harry Potter & the Order of the Phoenix. My good friend lets her 7 year old watch Star Wars, Doctor Who, Harry Potter, Indiana Jones, etc. I won't even allow Trinity to watch Hannah Montana, because I think high school issues are meant for an older demographic than an almost 5 year old. I don't think the humor in shows like "Back in the Barnyard" & SpongeBob are appropriate for her age either.

So, am I just old-fashioned, out of touch or too strict? I know that I am comfortable with my parenting style & I have no plans to change anything, but I am interested in knowing if I am the only parent who feels this way.

I survived Vegas, pretty much.

Vegas was a blast, for the most part. The flights were fine. I met some new cool people & I got about a months worth of walking in. I slept very little & it caught up with me Saturday night. The rest of the girls went out clubbing Saturday evening, but I went back to the condo after dinner, because I knew I had overextended myself on Friday. Well, after everyone left I got ready for bed, and after lying down I started violently vomiting. I think in the end I slept less than the girls, because I was so unbelievably ill. I managed to get through the flight home without being sick, and I even slept a little. Once I got home, it was another story. I am so grateful for the PICC line, because I think it is the only thing that saved me from a hospital stay. I slept from 3pm on Sunday until 7am Monday waking for an hour to attempt dinner (& promptly throw it back up). I feel much better today and ate an apple for breakfast & some lunch. I can tell I'm still dehydrated, so I may do three bags of fluid today to get myself totally back to normal.

When I'm feeling a bit more normal, I will post some Vegas pictures. We had so much fun!

I'm going to Vegas

I've had this trip planned for several months, but it has always seemed so far away and now I'm leaving in less than a week. How did that happen? Where did the time go?

DH's cousin is getting married, so I sort of put the idea in her head that she needed a Vegas bachelorette party. Okay, maybe I just needed to go to a Vegas bachelorette party, but that was before I got knocked up. Obviously my initial plan of partying like a single girl in Vegas isn't going to happen now & I'm okay with that, but I'm still looking forward to the trip. I adore DH's cousin & her sister (who is also coming). DH's sister lives in a suburb of Vegas, so I get to see my niece (& my SIL & BIL) which I am excited about. I don't know the other girls going, but I'm sure they are tons of fun. We plan on going to the 'Thunder from Down Under' show on Friday night and one of my favorite Italian restaurants on Saturday. I know I will have to pull out of a couple of the activities, but hopefully everyone understands.

Of course I've been in a panic for two days because my SIL is one of the most stylish people I know & so is DH's cousin. I have no clothes that fit or are appropriate for Vegas nightlife. I guess I will survive or I'll just go naked. That's okay in Vegas right?

I will post all about it after the trip as I'm trying to get by without dragging the laptop with me. I really want to travel as light as possible.

Our daughter's first solo adventure

Sunday started as any other Sunday - up early, breakfast, church, Home Depot, lunch, nap, etc. Little did we know that our evening was going to be far from routine. First, we discovered our upper cabinets had to come out in one piece, so we had to call in favors for people to rush over and help us remove them. We are trying to reuse our cabinets, so we wanted to take them out gently. Second, I developed a clot in my PICC catheter so I had to run to the emergency room to have it de-clotted. Right before I headed to the ER Trinity asked if she could play outside, but since I was leaving and DH was in the kitchen, I said 'no'. DH then yells from the kitchen that he let her do it on Saturday while I was at work. *sigh* Okay, I caved and said fine assuming DH & Trinity had worked out some kind of arrangement. I'm waiting in the ER, which is pretty busy, when DH comes rushing in, looks around and runs out again. Uh, what the hell, I am thinking. So I have a friend of mine who is keeping me company when it dawns on me that Trinity must be missing. I can think of no other reason for his behavior. She leaves to help him search and I'm stuck in the stupid waiting room of the ER unable to do anything.

Turns out in the end that Trinity had asked if she could push her baby in her stroller on the sidewalk. DH had said yes, assuming she meant the sidewalk in front of our house. However, she decided to take her baby for a walk on the sidewalk on the busy street at the end of our block. Then, she apparently decided it would be fun to visit the park. The park is about 1/2 a mile from our house and involves crossing one of the top 5 busiest streets in our town. DH found her and she spent the rest of the evening sitting in the recliner. She is also unable to play outside for a few days at all and after that she must be supervised. She also had her TV priviledges taken away for last night and today until bed.

I'd love to be able to say 'I told you so.', but DH was so freaked by the whole incident I just don't have the heart. The bigger problem I see is that while she understood she was in trouble, she doesn't actually seem to think she did anything wrong. I have to admit that this worries me. We have always told her she cannot cross the street without an adult and we still enforce holding our hands when crossing streets, driveways & parking lots. When asked about why she thought it was okay to cross the street, her response was "But I thought I was old enough to cross by myself."

Call me crazy, but I see lots of gray hair in my future.