Tuesday, April 12, 2016

Top Ten List - "Megow Parenting Pearls" ;)


10) It is scientifically proven that 63% of all children believe bread crusts count as vegetables and cannot be consumed under any circumstances. This brown edged monstrosity must be removed before any sandwich can be edible. Don’t fight them on it. They know.

“Dad, you know I’m not eating that crust. 
It looks ‘crusty'. Gross”
-  Actual quote from one of my children

9) When hoping to get a good family photo, have a game plan. Pretty much everyone (except the genius who thought family portraits would be a great idea) is dreading them. Some people schedule fun activities afterwards, others use threats, I actually prefer to bring a surprise prop to get a smile at the perfect time. My last portrait of the kids, I brought along their “fart gun”. Right before I snapped the pictures, I utilized the “power of the fart” smile technique. Works like a charm every time.

Disclaimer: The power of the prop will diminish remarkably; so use wisely.

8) Learn our children’s love languages. It not only helps connect with our kids, but will save a lot of time/resources. When we know how they prefer to receive love, it makes our job extremely easier. Also, it helps tremendously with discipline.

Take Titus for example. For so long I just thought he was just sad when he would go off to play by himself. Learning that his primary love language is Words of Encouragement, helped show me that he does have some introverted traits and is extremely content playing by himself at times. He enjoys his alone time more than I. He truly treasures when people tell him how proud they are of him and why they love him. That was never a thing for me, so I had to learn how to do that more.  Now that I know that’s what he craves, I can see his little eyes light up when I can pour directly into his “love tank”.

Also, I am cautious when it comes to verbally disciplining him. He’s extremely sensitive to harsh words. Not saying that I don’t do it, but I’m just extra mindful and really careful when explain things when he is in trouble.

7) I’ve learned to slow my roll with my kids’ left overs at mealtime. Yeah, that mac and cheese looks good, but trust me those kid food calories add up quick. :) 

Just say no!! hahaha

6) Kids will always make a mess; they (maybe just mine) seem to crave creating them. It’s a good idea to be proactive and have a supervised “good mess” than kid charged “bad mess”.  Go ahead and plan structured “mess time” like some art or some sort of hands on science experiment.

Good Mess Situation

Bad Mess Situation (thanks internet)
However, we have had a similar thing happen :)

5) Phenergan is worth its weight in gold. Seriously, keep that junk STOCKED.

4) Back to farts, babies make the perfect scapegoat. I loved having a little tiny. I could fart anytime/anywhere.

“Don’t look at me. It was the baby.”

3) I’ve learned to not be so rigid with my parenting philosophies. As long as the core things are covered, I allow for shift and flux in certain areas.

Before kids: “ I’m never just going to plop my kids down in front of the TV.”

After kids: “Ok guys, here’s some pop tarts and the remote. You can watch Wild Kratts while I go sit inside the empty bathtub with the door shut and eat my pop tart alone in the dark. Remember the rule, no hitting and your spit is exactly that, ‘your spit’. Please don’t give each other cat baths.”

2) Let’s go back to #9 (Family Photos). If all else fails, don’t be afraid of Photoshop that junk. The world will never know… Unless you tell them on your public blog. :D

The picture I posted on Facebook.

The Truth. :)
It was really a combination of my best two shots of the day. 
So in reality...
+

=

 photo output_8Qd8TQ_zps6jgsm3w9.gif
Sneaky Seth.

1) Remember, Fun can be Free!!! Don’t worry about buying all of these fancy things or spending an arm and a leg taking your kids to “fun places”. True that stuff is awesome! However, it’s also important to remember that with a little bit of planning and a few bucks, we can create the fun ourselves! Those little self-planned activities are the best and end up as the sweetest memories :)

 









Be Blessed and Be a Blessing,
Seth

Wednesday, April 6, 2016

Get to know Seth (second attempt)

Recently, I was thinking about a new blog post. One of my friends suggested I do one about myself. Immediately, I shuttered at the thought. Hahahaha.  (I love to talk and write, just not about myself).  But then I was thinking about all of the new friends I have made, especially within the past year. Many of my new friends have never actually met my family in person. At first it was kind of strange to me, but now I think it’s neat. Like internet penpals or something. Then I thought a little deeper, I love telling stories about and discussing my kids on the blog. It’s just so easy to do for me and probably why most people read this thing anyways :) So I feel that people know a lot about my kids, but I never really described myself. I did a post when I first started the blog titled “About Seth”. Secretly, I’ve always hated that post. It was mostly just something to post so I could get started talking about my kids. In that post, I think I just talked about “enjoying peeing outside, my first car, my afro in high school, and that I was a divorced single parent.” Nothing that descriptive.  So back to my point, I wanted to describe myself a little more in detail for friends who I never really physically met. Just a real “get to know me and my personality” post.

Disclaimer: Again. I really don’t like talking about myself like this. I find it awkward and uncomfortable.  Mostly, I just want to kind of introduce myself to all of my new friends. However, I’m really bad at this, so let’s see where it goes.

Well hello Seth. Nice to finally meet you.

Hmmm… where to start. I am a sibling of 4. We grew up in the country and had goats, cows, chickens, two gardens. My dad instilled work ethic is us at a young age. Which at the time I was not happy about, now though I’m extremely grateful. Whenever I’m having a bad day at work I just stop and think “At least I’m not scooping out 2 foot of compacted animal poop out of the goat shed in the middle of summer in South Georgia. Hahaha. That was a smell.


I was forced to wear that sweater by the way.
Or was I...

If I had to describe myself socially, I would say I’m kind of a “shy extrovert.” I pretty much recently discovered this. It’s definitely a unique combo. I love entertaining a crowd, being around people, doing impressions, etc. Internally though, I get super nervous just meeting someone for the first time. It’s one of the main things I don’t like about my personality. It’s weird. I would rather be given a mic in front of a big group of people and told “just talk” than to meet a new person for lunch at a restaurant. I don’t view it as a lack of confidence; I think I’m pretty confident in myself. For some reason, I just draw a complete blank in those situations. I’ve overcome a lot of it,  and while I have learned tricks to “fake it till I make it” with new people. It still is quite awkward a large percentage of the time. hahaha

I think I’m pretty perceptive of people and can read others fairly accurate. This combined with all of the God given empathy, I gained during the low times of my divorce I think has really opened my personality up for the better. On the flip side, I struggle with perceiving myself. I’m not really introspective at all. I like to think of myself like an open book; the first time you meet me, I think I’m pretty genuinely myself. I don’t really keep secrets about myself or bottle up a lot inside. It’s just pretty much out there. So when it comes to understanding why I do the things I do, I really can’t say. Or when people ask me to describe myself or my hobbies, I don’t really know what to say. Normally in those situations, I will just spurt out some random nonsense or send a funny joke I have on my phone if it’s a digital exchange.

This is kind of how it goes when I’m meeting a new person and they start asking those questions.

New Person - “So Seth, describe yourself a little.”
Me – “Um. I have a hairy stomach, my favorite day of the week is Thursday, and I enjoy breakfast foods?”
New Person – “Ok…Can you expand on that?”
Me – “I’m not wearing socks.”
New Person – “Huh?”
Me – “I brought a Santa hat. Want to wear it?”
New Person - *silence*
Me - *My brain starts to panic.*
My Brain - "Just say something normal about yourself dummy."
Me - Sometimes my tongue feels bumpy.

One thing I do enjoy talking about is humor. I absolutely love seeing people laugh. Ever since I was a little, little kid, I can remember loving the feeling of diffusing a tense or dull situation with laughter. Now, I don’t really view myself as super hilarious. I’m not super good at telling jokes or thinking of hilarious things on the fly. I have friends that are and I love being around them :) Mostly, I would describe my humor as a storyteller. I just love to tell stories. I enjoy milking every awkward detail of a particular event to make something absolutely hilarious. Plus, I’m not afraid to look like a complete idiot in public to get a laugh. A lot of times, it comes off as weird. I don’t really care though. 

Here’s my thoughts on being “weird”.

Again, a lot of this post is to give people I haven’t officially physically met a look at what makes “me” me. So let’s wrap up the humor theme with a pretty good example of Seth humor…hahahaha. This memory literally just came to me as I was thinking of a good way to describe what I think is “Seth humor”.  I have this shirt that I like to call my “wedding shirt”. I have worn it to countless wedding. It’s really not fancy at all. It’s a plaid pattern, and I am always extremely underdressed for the occasion when I wear it. But I like adorning it to weddings for a specific purpose. There are a lot of buttons, and they are snap buttons not the kind you have to tuck into the hole. Upon arrival at the wedding, I like to explain the purpose of the shirt to friends and just random people that I meet there. The purpose of the shirt is to measure the awesomeness of the wedding reception. I always start with the shirt completely button up. Like all the way to my neck, which looks completely ridiculous and absolutely hilarious. Everytime, I feel the reception getting a little more fun, I unbutton one button. I like to view the shirt as a party meter. It gives people a relative gauge on how fun the reception is actually getting. I’ve been to some and never unbuttoned once; others I’ve gotten down to about 3 or 4 (That’s stomach hair territory).  Hence the snap buttons. I love dramatically tearing apart each button when I feel the moment come.

However, one specific wedding I guess my gauge was off.  This is where my story begins. I remember it was an afternoon wedding/reception. The bride and groom were sitting at their little cute “newly married” table and people were walking up and congratulating them. I can’t remember it being a super crunk reception, more the opposite. Just a normal low key, yet formal reception. Although I was completely sober (I’m not a huge drinker btw), my memory is just fuzzy except for one clear vision. I recall winding up sitting with some random woman (probably in her 60’s and dressed to the nines), meanwhile I was completely shirtless by this point of the reception for some unknown reason. I remember egging her on to dare me random things to do. Thinking back, I probably explained my shirt and she probably dared me to unbutton it all the way, so I probably ended up just taking it completely off. Anyways, for some reason, she dared me to take the entire tray of petit four pastries and sneak the back to our seats. I didn’t want to upstage the wedding, but she seemed so sweet that if she thought it was funny then I figured most everyone else would. So I just got up, made my way through everyone seated at the tables eating, grabbed the tray, and calmly walked back to the back of the room where she was sitting there laughing hysterically. We just sat there eating them and laughing, when I noticed other guests walking back and forth of the food table looking for them. I felt bad, so I got up and start walking the tray back to the table for other people to enjoy. Suddenly, I hear her little sweet voice coming up from behind me saying “You should just walk around serving them to people. That would be funny.” So I did. I just walked around the reception for the next few minutes shirtless and serving little desserts to men (in shirt/ties) and women (in formal dresses) at the wedding. I remember I couldn’t even get out the words “Would you like a petit four?” each time I walked up to a person, because I kept looking at my friend who was kneeled over and laughing so hard she looked completely ridiculous. This in turn made me laugh even harder. So I was just kind of sticking the tray of food in people’s faces and hoping they would take one. I think I only made it around 2 tables before someone didn't think it was funny at all. So I just set the tray back on the food buffet and ran back to my chair laughing like a 7 year old. I have no clue who that lady was and but I’m 92% sure she was probably an angel.  

 To me, there is nothing funnier than taking off my shirt at random times in random places.
 
 This is our family portrait at our friends’ daughter’s 1st birthday party.
Browsing through my facebook pictures looking for this image, 
I actually found quite a few shirtless pictures of myself at random kids' birthday parties. 
"Seth. Showing skin since 1984".

Ok, this post is kind of long. I feel so accomplished actually writing things about myself :D But I want to touch on one more thing. I also love little tools to help me understand people. The main two that come to mind are the Myers-Briggs personality test and the Love Languages. I just find them so neat and a great way to get to know people and show them love in the way they desire it. In the Myers Briggs, I’m an ENTJ. I love being one. But I think everyone should love themselves, so I guess that’s healthy that I enjoy my own personality :)

Click on the picture of an explanation of my personality type and to find out yours!
It’s really so so interesting. If you don't know yours, I think you should try :D

My love languages are different when I am receiving or giving love. When I’m receiving love, I really enjoy physical touch, quality time, and words of encouragement. I like those things. However, when I’m showing love, I love the buckshot approach. There’s nothing better than showing up to a friend’s house to help them with a project and surprising them with a little gift and a note saying how awesome they are. Then after finishing the project, just hanging out for a bit together and ending with a solid high five or hug :) I like love blasting people on all fronts.

 
PS. Mr Rogers is my personal hero if you haven’t noticed, 
but I’m saving that topic for a different post ;)

Be Blessed and Be a Blessing,
Seth