The Queen of No

This probably won't surprise any of my biological children or those I have been to girls camp with but last week when I was visiting Matt and Erin in St. Louis he told me that as a mom I was the "Queen of No."

The Queen of No in the making. Chris is 2 weeks old and Matt is 18 months old

There are as many different parenting styles as there are parents and as Matt so bluntly put it saying no was  my parenting style.  Part of this was due to budget restraints and part due to my basic child rearing instincts. I didn't start out by crowning myself Queen. But was saying no such a bad thing?  I think not.  Here are my top ten parenting nos in no particular order.

Queen of No's Top Ten Parenting Nos.

1. No hitting, biting, name calling or hair pulling. Chris tried to get around this one by just holding Annie's hair until she turned her head.  He claimed she pulled her own hair. Unfortunately this means I raised three boys who can't hold their own in a bar fight, it's a good thing they don't go to bars.
2. No bad mouthing anyone: mom, dad, or each other. "If you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all."  Thumper's mom was right.
3. No whining. Or "you can be happy out here with the family, or you can cry, whine, or throw a temper tantrum in your room." Or "everybody look at Thomas and smile." 
4. No coddling at dinner time. If you don't like it, there's always peanut butter. To this day, none of my kids like peanut butter.
5. No junk food or fast food. We didn't have chips, candy and soda (believe it or not, John and I didn't start drinking a lot of Coke until the kids were older) around the house. Thomas didn't go to McDonalds until he was invited to a birthday party when he was 5.)
6. No potty humor. Why do boys age 3 - 99 think this is funny? Chris just put a fart app on John's iphone.
7. No TV. Twice while the kids were growing up our TV broke and we didn't fix it for a while. When Chris and Matt were in junior high, they were the only kids in school who didn't know who Homer Simpson was.
8. No maid service. The kids had jobs to do around the house. Dishes, bathrooms, dusting, vacuuming. They didn't get paid to do these jobs, it was just part of being in the family. Our home wasn't spotless, but no one ever called to board of health. I tried, but did not spend a lot of effort making them keep their rooms clean. I figured my room was not always clean, why should theirs be?
9. No slacking in school. The kids were expected to do their best in school. A's were nice but weren't required if they tried hard, but we knew and they knew they could do better than C's and D's. 
10. No rescuing. The children had to learn their choices had consequences. As John put it,we live by "The Law of Unintended Consequences." 

I might be biased, but so far I think my children have turned out pretty well, nos and all.  So you may call me QueeneJeanne.

Live Long and Prosper

As Matt and Erin's family and I were driving from Nauvoo to Iowa for Mark and Bethany's reception we passed the Starship Enterprise! Even though it was pouring rain we had to stop. Turns out we were only six miles from the future birthplace of Captain James T. Kirk.  We didn't have time to make a pilgrimage to Riverside but we did take pictures.

Grandma Time

 

Ian and Lily



I went to St Louis last week to see Matt and Erin, attend a sealing in the Nauvoo Temple and go Ian's pre-school graduation.  All those things were great, but the real reason I went was to see some of the cutest grandkids in the world!

Stylin Molly at the Zoo



Molly decided she liked Grandma's drink cup! She didn't drink any, honest.



3 New Quilts

"Crazy for Thomas" Quilt

Mom has made "snuggly quilts" for a lot of the grand kids when they went off to college.  Most of them were variations of 8 inch squares.  She had cut out flannel squares for a quilt for Thomas but didn't have time to finish it before the big move.  I asked her if I could finish it when we found out Thomas would be moving to Steamboat Springs.  It gets really cold and snowy there and I thought he needed a "snuggly quilt" to stay warm.  I wanted to try something new with squares and found a pattern where you sewed 20 squares together into a 4 x 5 rectangles and then re-cut and re-sewed the rectangle back together into a "crazy" style rectangle. I then sewed 4 "crazy" rectangles to make the quilt.  I like it way it turned out, especially for a guy quilt.

Mark's quilt

Clay's quilt

I also ended making wedding quilts for two of John's nephews and their brides (with Annie and Rachel's help, thank heavens.) Mark (Paul's son) is getting married this week in the Nauvoo Temple.  (Hooray, I leave tomorrow to visit Matt and Erin and kids in St. Louis and then go to the sealing in Nauvoo.)  Clay (Eric's son) is getting married the end of this month. 

It isn't easy choosing fabrics for two quilts at the same time, but I love them both.  I love working with pretty fabrics. We tied the quilts on Saturday at Marianne's home. Mark's quilt is a funky bold quilt with pink and red roses on a brown background, light blue and red border, and then a red polka-dot.  I had Clay's fiancee choose her quilt since she was there to tie the quilts and she chose the classic red, white and black quilt because she "didn't like roses". . .  I hope Mark and his fiancee do.  But what do kids in their early twenties know? 

Leaving the Nest?????

When I first saw this bird's nest it was laying outside of our mechanic's office.  We took mom and dad's Trooper to have some work done before we sold it ($1400 thanks to KSL.com.) The nest was under the hood nestled around and between car parts so tight that the mechanic had to take it out in three or four pieces.

That poor bird mom, thinking she had found a safe place for her eggs, no one had driven the Trooper for weeks, and the next thing she knew her eggs were driving off without her. 

There are quite a few analogies I can think of about that bird's nest and moving mom and dad out of their home, but I don't think I will. You can make your own.