Tuesday, April 19, 2011

The rewards of parenting, appreciation is not one of them!









Sometimes the girls lack of appreciation is rather comical.





Like in January when we took them to Bob's friend's family farm the weekend of the town's Ice Fishing Jamboree, we thought, "Oh, they will love to see the people pulling fish out of the water. If not, they will get a kick out of his dad's cows!" They found no amusement seeing the ice or fish. Macy even complained she was cold. The cows were scary. Claire wouldn't even come in the barn. In the past they have loved seeing our old neighbor's calves, but I think the big cows are a bit intimidating. Macy liked this nasty old barn cat. The farmer even said she wasn't a very nice cat.




Do we learn? Not really. This weekend we headed about the same distance from home to a different friend's farmette to meet their lambs. Sheep are docile and small. Seemed more up the girls' alley...




What animal did Macy spend most of her time admiring? Their barn cats. She told me she didn't like their chickens because "they kept saying cock-a-doodle-doo" (she has a point, they were kinda loud).



What did Claire like about the trip? (Mind you, Claire's professed future-vocation is farming.) She liked the Family Restaurant we stopped at on the way home. She had pancakes for the second time that day to eat.

I think it's cute they get a kick out of the small things, like barn cats and silver dollar pancakes. Or this luggage cart when there all sorts of fancy dancy water slides in Wisconsin Dells...









I am less a fan of when we seem to raise their expectations by doing fun things with the girls. We spent a night at a hotel with a pool last week when we had no power. The next day Claire asked, err demanded, we go to a pool again. As if we go to pools everyday.




Last night we went to Shiocton to see the sturgeon roll. Granted we didn't spend any money, but it's pretty neat to take your kids to basically see dinosaurs. We weren't looking for a "gee, folks, thanks for exposing us to these cool old fish bigger than us," but we certainly could have done without Claire asking, errr demanding, we take her to a restaurant. She didn't care we went to one yesterday or that there was some food in the slowcooker. That was a time her lack of appreciation was not funny.



Plus, I don't remember anything from being three! She won't even remember how good she had it. Or will she? When Bob was preparing Claire to go see the sturgeon she asked if it was in Iowa. She actually remembered going to a trout fish hatchery there last Fall. That's as close as we get to appreciation at our house, a memory of having fun. We'll take it!




















2 comments:

  1. And it was freezing rain/snow while we there! We've given up on psyching the kids up for things. Rusty doesn't even tell them where we are going anymore.

    And Laney is also a big fan of barn cats.

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  2. Yeah, I have to not tell them we're going until I am available to zip their coats. If I had a dollar for everytime I said, "it's not the special time yet"...

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