Mom of the Year

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Cowboy Quote of the Day:

"You can motivate by fear and you can motivate by reward. But both those are temporary. The only lasting thing is self motivation."
~Homer Rice


I used both fear and reward to motivate my children today. I am now preparing for the shiny "mom of the year" award that I am sure will follow this post.

Today was the dreaded "dentist day". It's a nasty word in this house. Of the five of us, this is the least favorite health professional we see. (No offence Dr. Simpson and staff, you all are great!) Our trip this morning entailed a four tooth extraction for Sparky, a check-up for Pecos and not one darn toy for BS. The tooth extraction was a bit rough. And I have to admit, I felt a bit terrible that I agreed to allow my nine-year-old to have four baby teeth yanked from his melon. The upside (hence: motivation) is that the pain would be a one-time deal (until he suffers the agony of braces in July.) If we took all those pearly whites out at once, he wouldn't have to repeat the process again in two months (and in the meantime feel lopsided until June. That's a plus, right?!

Pecos got off easy but not for long. He's got fillings that need to be replaced and a couple of lingering baby teeth that are going to be evicted as of June. They have the option to leave on their own....(encouragement AND motivation?!?!)

BS got off faily easy with the exception that she didn't get a single toy (*tears). However, she did score a cool new tooth brush, water bottle and pencil when she got her Kindergarten immunizations. Wow....lots of tears, and screaming there. I apologized to the sweet nurse and promised that she'd not see this child again until seveth grade.

Oh no, we're not done yet. Ol good buddy Pecos shed more than a few tears with his required seventh grade immunizations too. I figured since we were in already in town we might as well get as many things knocked of the to-do list as possible. In the eyes of my children that is translated as "let's see what else Mom can put us through today."

Long story short, all three walked out of WCDH bawling and lamenting about what a mean mom they have. They completely overlook the fact that most of the time they have clean socks and underwear and do not often go without food. They forget about the dollars good ol mother doles out for baseball gloves, pants and shoes, the rodeo entry fees and the occasional movie tickets. Nope none of that was remembered.

I did try to "soften" the pain buy doing what any uber-organized, caring mother would do....took them through the BK drive through. I know, I had a moment of extreme weakness. Ice cream for all, they got to choose the songs on the ipod (complete torture for me) and gradually the tears dried.

It's days like this that I smile. Most of the memories of my children are happy ones; I can't rightly recall a day when I got all three of them to bawl at the same time. Usually it's two against one, or one picking on the other, but ALL THREE?! Wow, I am TOTALLY MOTHER OF THE YEAR!

Now, where do I go to get that medal?!