Paul found this when he emptied Ginger2’s lunchbox yesterday. She stores her “treasures” in a side pocket so I don’t find them and throw them away. This heart bottle opener, she says, was a special present from a friend from school. I wonder what they’re doing at lunchtime?!!!đ
Thank you to Jessica Fuhrman Sorosiak and her community of blogging friends at textingthetruth.com for asking me to share a little about my life as a mother to four funny gingers.
In one of our finer parenting moments, Paul answered a phone call as the Middle Gingers antagonized one another in the backseat of the car. Crying ensued, frustrations mounted, and Paul did what dads sometimes do– he pulled the car into an empty church parking lot to instill a healthy bit of fear about what will happen next. A lot of shushing and finally he was able to finish his conversation. As he hung up the phone, we all waited quietly for the direction Paulâs parenting would take us. What he said next caught us all by surprise… âIâm over this! From here on out, if someone antagonizes you, you have my permission to unleash on him/her.â I gasped, holding back the laughter (and wondering if the kids even know what âunleashâ means). The Littlest Ginger innocently leans forward in his seat and asks, âWhat does âIâm over this meanâ? Because if it means you donât love us anymore, that isnât what God would want.â While the gingers may have missed the point on Paulâs sarcastic suggestion on ways to resolve conflict (or not), Ginger4 struggled on a different level. His commentary made us all forget the tension and realigned us with the basic truth about God and parenting– love wins.
(On the list of things I never thought I’d hear)…
Ginger4 to Ginger3 : “Can you stop doing the Hokey Pokey and help me find the remote??!”
I am pretty sure my mom would have wrestled me to the ground and put a coat on me if I refused to wear a coat during the winter months, or at the very least she might have threatened a bar of soap when I talked back. Ginger4âs refusal to wear a coat (and even bring a coat to preschool) sparked either a fierce drive in me to become the next Mother-of-the-Year, or the next candidate for the looney bin.  Our routine doesnât change too much from day-to-day, and the expectation is always lined up for him before we leave for Ginger3âs bus departure: 1) put your shoes and coat on and 2) get your school bag ready.  When I arrived back at the house to find neither of these tasks were accomplished, I calmly reminded him what needed to happen for me to take him to school. Thatâs when the proverbial crap hit the fan… I donât like when kids try negotiating the non-negotiable. When he refused to get his coat on, I insisted he at least bring it to school. At this suggestion, he complained that if he had it with him, his teacher would make him wear it at playground time.  (Smart teacher, methinks!) Whatevs, kid… just get in the car. I brought that darn coat with me, put my seat warmer on, lowered all the windows and drove to school with the littlest ginger shivering in the backseat. He was so stubborn! It took him halfway to school to admit he was wrong and that he needed his coat. Satisfaction set in, Ginger4 admitted he needed his coat, and gosh darnit, he even zippered it on his own! #Parentwin
Using the same logic I use to get him to eat his vegetables, Ginger4 pleads his case to get his technology back: “Mom, God made technology. Technology is good. You shouldn’t always take away the good stuff.”
Paul has been looking for his razor, and when things go missing, we usually point our fingers at the youngest ginger.
Me: <Ginger4>, have you seen dad’s razor?
<Ginger4>: Dad has a laser?
Me: No, a ra-zor.
<Ginger4>: Ooooh, one of those things that trims his white whiskers??? No, don’t know where it is.
(But if you ask him where the butter knife is, he might say it’s under the chair in the living room where I found him whittling away at the chair’s legs).
After asking him several times to get his shoes on, I took <Ginger4>’s iPad away. To this he responded, “You’re not being patient. You only asked three times!!”
(Well, I outta….)
Trying to decide which stage of parenting I “enjoy” the most– changing diapers or plunging toilets. 
I guess I don’t have to ask her if she brushed her teeth.
Sprinkles of Ginger 