Abigale is going to be moving into her new room soon (due August) and we have to move Hailey to the bigger room and get her and Abby’s rooms ready.  With that in mind, Hailey still doesn’t like going to bed at night.  With her being as rambunctious as she is, I can see her climbing out of a bed and trying to make an escape from her room.  She’ll be walking soon, she’s taking a few steps now, and I figured when she was old enough to walk she’d be old enough for a toddler bed with side rails.

What age did you take your kids out of the crib and put them into a bed?  Right now when I put Hailey to bed in the crib she’ll stand up as soon as I plop her in and shove her hands up at me that just screams ‘please daddy don’t make me go to bed’.  Breaks my heart every time, but anyway back to the point.  If she’s in a bed, she’ll be crawling out between my legs before I can get the bedroom door closed.  No really, she’s quick!  Haha, so when do you guys think is a good age to graduate to a bed?  Are we rushing a bit?

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Fellow parents and bloggers, we all love putting our kids pictures, videos and stories up for our friends, family and anyone who is interested to see our daily lives.  But in the world we live in we have to be cautious how we do it.  If you, like us put your child out for the world to see please be sure to be careful to still keep certain information private.  I know we put up pictures of ourselves and our kids and we use our names on our sites, but we still need to keep a certain amount of anonynimity for our families.  One way to do that is to go under false names.  Another, be cautious not to give out information like last names, schools your children attend or other information that could aide a potential predator in finding out to much about you.

While we hope nothing like that ever happens, we also don’t want to put ourselves in a situation where we or our kids are in any danger.  When you write on your websites or put your videos up on YouTube, just keep in mind that you don’t always know who may be watching.  If you run a blog or other site about your children, take care to make sure your personal details are secure on your domain name.  Someone with not much computer knowledge can find out who owns a domain and even where they live, so check with your hosting company right away and see what security they offer to keep you anonymous.  If your registrar or hosting company doesn’t offer this service, www.domainsbyproxy.com is a good company to check out. 

Keep putting up those cute stories!  Just keep you and your family safe at the same time!  God bless you all!

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Someone que up the ‘tense’ music.  This is a topic Jamie and I don’t necessarily agree on, who would have ever thought a mom wouldn’t want to spank her kids? (End Sarcasm) Now before you freak out on me, no we aren’t even considering disciplining Hailey right now.  First, she is much to cute, ya she’s at that age.  And while we’re on age she’s also way to young. 

Now maybe our opinions stem from how we were disciplined while we were kids.  Her dad had a bigger paddle than mine I guess.  I was spanked with hands, belts and this little old ping pong paddle.  They all hurt.  But it wasn’t so much they hurt that made me cry and made me fear the spanking.  The thing I remember making me cry is knowing I was in trouble and I was getting punished.  Dad definitely spanked harder than mom.  Mom would at the most do an open hand slap to my butt.  She would barely tap me but I’d cry as if she were holding a bull whip in her hands. 

When Hailey or Abby are old enough to understand that they are being punished for doing wrong, not just being beaten by an angry parent, I want to make sure Jamie and I are on the same page for punishment.  My vote?  A good spanking.  I don’t need anything but my palm to do the job, no paddles, belts, sticks or whips.  No thank you, just my hand.  To me it’s enough to get the point across of “don’t do that again”.  Whatever that was, I’m sure they’ll get the idea.

Maybe it’s just because Hailey is so cute and cuddly right now that Jamie doesn’t want to spank her at all.  I can understand that, a mother will always want to protect her daughter.  So do I, but in my opinion disclipine is a form of protection.  How?  Glad you asked, if a child has a sense of disclipline they are less likely to be one of those teenagers walking around in those clothes that you swear you’d never let your kid wear out of the house.  I see them all the time, teenager girls dressed like strippers and talking like sailors.  Never seen one?  Just go down to the mall or stand in line at your local movie theater.  They are there.  It’s my opinion a little discipline would have helped those kids out and gave them a little self respect.  Now, I’m not talking military school kind of discipline, but parents that didn’t just let them do whatever they wanted to do.

Every time you turn around there seems to be government rules tightening down on how parents can discipline their kids.  Now, if someone gets crazy and pulls out a baseball bat because little Johnny says something he shouldn’t, well that kind of thing shouldn’t happen.  But let’s not let it get to the point where you can’t even give your kids a good stern talking to.  Sometimes a spanking is just what a kid needs. 

Who’s with me?

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