Hello Readers,

Since switching sites I have been having some trouble transferring the RSS subscribers from the old site to this new one. Because of this I am going to have to set it up all over again.  If you have subscribed to receive Mommy Kudos (or previously, Kristin’s Review) by email or on a feed reader please stop by the site tomorrow and resubscribe.  The links are at the top of the page on the right to subscribe by email or feed reader.

For a little incentive, I will be having a giveaway for $50 eBay gift certificate in a few days.  If you sign up for emails or RSS you will be notified of when it starts. 

Thanks!!

Hello and welcome to Mommy Kudos!  I am so glad you are here!  Whether you are a previous Kristin’s Review reader or just came across Mommy Kudos I think you’ll like it here.  Pull up a comfy chair, grab a creamy latte and join in the fun!

Mommy Kudos is all about what moms love!  Moms love being great moms, meeting their kids needs, being creative, learning about great new products, finding unique gifts, and getting great deals!  Moms also love sharing and connecting.  Mommy Kudos is the place for all of those things.  I hope you will join me here. 

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The winner of the Fibers.com t-shirt giveaway is:

Congratulations Michelle!

The winner of the ADOPTIONcards Greeting Card is:

Congratulations Angel!

The winner of the pipe|up custom design announcement is:

Congratulations Discovering the Me in Mommy

The Winner of the simplewear onsie or t-shirt is:

Congratulations Diana!!

I have already contacted the winners.  Stay tuned for more giveaways to come!

First let me say that I have enjoyed Red Envelope for years.  They are an online store that has great gift suggestions when you don’t quite know what to get for a special someone.  Red Envelope has gifts for ages 0-99.  Today you can purchase a Groupon for only $15 for $30 worth of gifts from Red Envelope.  It is just in time for Christmas.  The $30 can be applied to shipping. Expires Feb 28, 201 and there is a limit of 1 per person.  If you don’t find the deal in your city try Dallas, San Jose, Tallahassee, or Knoxville.

If you haven’t signed up for Groupon it is a great site that has some amazing deals of up to 90% off.  Every day they will email you about the new deals for the day.

I remember when I used to be the best mom in the world.  Unfortunately it was before I had any children.  I knew exactly how I was going to parent and my kids were going to be amazing!  I would be firm with discipline but also very attentive and a such a fun mom!  I would spend hours a day doing crafts with my kids, baking with them and teaching them all they needed to know.  My kids would listen and obey the first time because I would see to it that I taught them to and stayed on them to be well behaved.  I wasn’t going to put up with tantrums and whining.  My kids would NOT be the ones who you hear screaming in the grocery store! My husband and I had even discussed all of this.  We decided which parents we knew that we did not want to be like and which ones we would learn from and copy in our own parenting. We knew which things we liked and disliked about our own upbringings that we would bring into our parenting.

Very soon after all of our parenting decisions had been made I got pregnant with our first child.  She went along with our ideals pretty well for a while.  She was very easy going and laid back.  She didn’t fuss much and made me feel like I had this parenting thing down.  I felt pretty confident that I could handle this.  Within a few months that dream started to fade.  She wouldn’t sleep in her own bed and cried and cried no matter how long I left her in there.  She wanted nothing to do with my plan for getting her on a perfect schedule.  I spent several months extremely frustrated because it wasn’t how it was supposed to be.  Not only that, but I had friends who swore up and down that their methods worked.  That only made me feel more guilty and more like a failure.  At least she didn’t scream in the grocery store!

When our oldest was not quite 16 months old I had twin girls.  We found out in week 12 of my pregnancy that there were twins and we were shocked!  I NEVER thought I would have twins.  This would be good though because it would be a second chance to test out this sleep schedule thing and with twins I had to get it right!  Can I just stop right here and say that having twins is hard?!  If you know someone who has twins (or more) please help them!  Okay, back to the story… Fortunately my twins didn’t seem to mind getting on a good sleeping and eating schedule but one of them decided to be very fussy in the early evening.  She would cry off and on and I had no idea how to calm her down.  We finally figured out what her issue was and resolved it when she was about 3 months old.  In spite of the work I was enjoying being a mom.  I was still a pretty good mom and my babies were pretty good.

I think it was when my twins were about 6 months that I had a major revelation.  I had all three of my girls with me at the grocery store and one of my twins just decided to start screaming.  She wouldn’t stop.  That hadn’t ever happened to me before and no matter how much I told her that MY kids weren’t supposed to do that she wouldn’t listen.  I was humiliated and so frustrated, but I got it.  It wasn’t always about how great you are as a mom.  Sometimes it just has to do with the kid. 

That same twin continued to embarrass me in grocery and other stores with temper tantrums and whining.  Sometimes the other two would join in for the fun of it.  As they got older, and we added to our family, sometimes they would just ignore my instructions or forget what I had asked them to do a mere 2 seconds before. Also, somehow when I was planning in the very beginning, all of the wonderful things I would do during the day with my children, I forgot to calculate everything in.  I had forgotten things like laundry, changing diapers, baths, house cleaning, errands, cooking dinner, and paying bills.  There went most of my play and teaching time with them.

So maybe I am not the best mom in the world anymore but I am still a great mom.  Not because I have it all together or my kids are perfect, but because I am the perfect mom for my family.  They need me and I need them.  I have learned that training their hearts is far more important than them just not embarrassing me.  I can stand some embarrassment in order to discover the heart issues that still need to be dealt with.  I still have pretty high standards for them but now I realize it is a process and doesn’t always happen overnight. Oh, yeah, and we do crafts and bake together every once in a while too.

How about you? Did your idea of how you would parent change once you actually had kids?