Stages...

lately I have been getting really annoyed with the fazes that my children are in.  I know that I should express patience and understanding, but sometimes it is oh so hard!  I have to continue to remind myslef that each faze passes and once it's gone it's usually missed and would be traded for the current faze.  LOL!  Are we ever satisfied?  I have good kids, but they have their days!!  I look at Emily and remember when they were all that little and how much I miss them being that small and I have to take a step back, take a deep breath and realize that tomorrow we will be onto something else.  Skyler, who is in the 5th grade, is going through this whole lying faze...over things that are so unimportant.  I was struggling with how to get her to realize that there is NO point to lying.  That it only creates a bigger problem, but then I took a step back and realized that she was lying in an attempt to please me.  Her answers were not the truth, but were what she thought I wanted to hear.  I needed to reasses my reactions to her choices.  Find a way to make her comfortable with being her and making her own choices and being honest about them.  Let her know that she doesn't have to be just like me and make the choices I would make.  She is going to have to make her own choices and her own mistakes and grow into her own person.  Man that's hard!!  I want to save them from all the mistakes I made, but I can't save them from all mistakes!  And my lovely son Ryan, who is 6, just can't seem to stop talking.  Which lately has been driving me UP THE WALL.  At least until it hit me that one day he will be to caught up with his own life, friends and activities to even talk to me at all.  Now I stop whatever it is I am doing and give him my full attention even if it's 50 times in 1 minute because I don't want to miss a thing.  I am going to relish in being his main focus as long as I can and then maybe when I am no longer it won't hurt so bad.  Sigh...the life of a parent.  I choose to see what I will miss about all the stages of life and enjoy them while I can rather than allow them to drive me crazy! :)