Out of control toddler!

I know that when we have children there is no manual or book that can teach you everything there is to know about raising children. So far, I have been pretty lucky with my children. My oldest has always been well behaved and very intelligent. My twins for the most part, they are well behaved in public. My daughter is a drama queen which I have written about before. She just cries all the time and acts as if she were dying over the tiniest things. It does test my patience but no one tests my patience more than her twin brother!

He looks sweet and innocent and soo cute. He is very friendly and outgoing and isn't afraid to talk to strangers (which can be a bad thing in a way). He has been caught twice holding strangers' hands in public! LOL... At home, he is just a terror. He is very hyper active and he realllly knows how to push my buttons. When we ask him or tell him to do something he will just stare at us as if he is looking right through us. He does NOT want to be told to do ANYTHING. He gives us a look as if he is saying, "Who the Hell do you think you are telling me what to do?". Something as simple as telling him to "come here" turns into a big battle because he will just stare at us and NOT do anything he is told to do. If we tell him to stop doing something he will usually just stare at us and continue doing it or he will wait until we turn our back and then do it again and again and again. There are things he knows he is not supposed to do and I know that he knows because as soon as he notices us looking he will stop doing it. Im really worried that he is going to be our "trouble" child. He gives us so much difficulty and stresses me out to the point where sometimes I feel like I'm about to have a nervous breakdown! I know they say that no child is born a "bad seed" and that they are just testing their boundries, however, he knows what his boundries are! I'm not one of those parents who talk a lot of crap but then don't follow through with it. When I tell him, "if you do this again you are going to go in time out"..then he will go in time out! I've seen a lot of parents that just let their kids get away with everything with no punishment and I told myself I would not be like that. It still doesn't matter to him! He KNOWS he is going to get in trouble but he still insists on doing it over and over and over. I have tried every technique that I can think of. Spanking doesn't work. Most of the time he will just look at us with a dirty look and not even cry! Time out doesn't work. He will cry the fake cry (if you are a parent, you know what the fake cry is!..no tears, just wanting attention). I've tried taking things away from him. I've tried rewarding good behavior. I have tried sitting down with him face to face and talking to him nicely...NOTHING works!! I've tried giving him extra attention thinking maybe that's what he was trying to get, but that didn't change anything. I'm at my wits end and don't know what to do with him! At first I thought it was just me and my short fuse but I've realized it's not just me! My husband gets frustrated with him, my mother gets frustrated with him, my mother in law gets frustrated with him, even my 94 year old grandmother gets frustrated with him! When he was younger we thought maybe he had hearing problems and that's why he didn't listen to us, but he hears just fine!! I've often wondered if he has some sort of ADHD or something along those lines but from what I've read they don't test them for that until around 5 years of age.

It's been stressful for us enough over the past few years as we went from having no kids to having 3 within a year! My doctor gave me the wrong dosage of birth control and we ended up pregnant with twins when our oldest was only 3 months old. Our twins were born 4 days before our sons first birthday! It's already a stressful situation to be in and my son just makes it 20 times worse and I don't know what to do anymore. He's only two (will be 3 next month)! I'm the parent, I'm the one that should be in control but it's a constant battle for that control. He is extremely intelligent when he wants to be and he has me worried about what the future holds for us and his behavior! I thought at first it was just a phase but so far the phase hasn't ended. He has been this way ever since he has been old enough to be able to comprehend instructions. Any kind of advice would be appreciated! Like I've said, I have tried everything that I can think of and every strategy I have even heard of and so far nothing works! Right now I'm scared that we might even end up losing our family dog because of him. My son is always smacking him in the face, jumping on him, grabbing him and shaking him and he is always getting in his face while he is sleeping. The dog has snapped at him a few times as a warning but I'm afraid that one day he will get tired of it too and really go after him. I've told my son 4 million and 1 times to leave the dog alone. I've sat down and talked to him calmly about it, I've punished him for it, but the minute I turn around my son will be right there in the dogs face again. I do NOT want to have to get rid of our beloved dog because my son is too stubborn to listen!! I don't want to get in trouble if our dog snaps at him. I think my dog has been very good and patient putting up with our son because I would have bit him a long time ago, LOL! It wont be fair to our dog if he has to go to a new home because our son wont listen!

P.S. He is the blondie in the previous post!

My weekend fun and rant!

We had a very busy weekend! Saturday we went to a concert and slept at my moms house afterwards so that we didn't have to have the kids out that late driving back home (we live an hour away from my mother). Then Sunday morning we came back home to take care of the dog and headed to the Fort Wayne's Children Zoo. It was a little disappointing. I expected it to have more exhibits. My oldest son is obsessed with the Lion King and loves Lions. He was soo excited about seeing a Lion in their Afican Safari and they didn't even have it finished. The only animals in the safari was a Giraffe! Their website didnt say anything about it not being finished yet! Then we paid $2 a piece to take a train ride. It was $10 for all of us and all it did was go around a freakin circle! What a rip off! But, the kids still had fun and it was nice to have a family day together.

Now, for my rant! Most of the exhibits had a lot of people in them with everyone waiting their turn to see the animals. We would patiently wait in line only to have a bunch of kids, who should know better, running and pushing in front of our kids! What made it even worse was that the parents were right there and LET them do that and some of the parents did it themselves! That is so rude and disrespectful! Wait your turn like everyone else!

Then you have the people that just want to stand right there for like 15 minutes making everyone else wait and wait! Have sone respect for other people and get the Hell out of the way! Everyone else would like a chance to see, too! This one guy was video taping and standing right in the middle of the walk way so that no one could get through until my husband pushed his way through with the double stroller, lol. We got some dirty looks, but do you really think that everyone wants to stand their and wait for you to get out of the way since you want to stand right in the middle?

Towards the end of our zoo journey we were about to get on the train. Ofcourse it was a little train with small seats that could fit two adults in each seat. It was us and 3 kids so we needed to have two seats together. We were at the end of the line to get in and everyone else would pick seats in the middle of empty seats. So it would be like one empty seat, then two seats of people, then another empty seat. NO ONE would offer to move back a seat so that our family could sit together. Not one freakin person! Our kids were so excited to get on the train and we had to stand and wait until the next one came because no one would move for us.

You know what really aggravates me? Everyone looks at us weird and makes little comments about us because we have a lot of tattoos. Especially my husband. He just got a tattoo on the back of his head (I wasnt happy about it..but anyway...). I've heard all sorts of little comments and people pointing at my husband with disgusted looks on their faces. But you know what? WE are respectful to other people. We love to help people when we can and we care about other people. All of these "normal" looking people are the ones who are raising rude ass disrespectful kids because they act the same way as parents! It's the "normal" people who are pushing in front of everyone. It's the "rude" ass people who only think of their selves and don't care about anyone else around them. But yet you people judge us by the way we look and stereotype us because of what we choose to do with our OWN bodies. I know I have written about this before, but our kids are very well behaved in public and that's because we have taught them to be respectful of other people! No wonder this world is getting worse and worse by the second. It's because of immature, disrespectful parents raising immature disrespectful children..and the cycle is just going to keep continuing and growing!