If I don't put them in therapy, I'm not doing my job

Just now I was regaling Holly over IM with my "I'm Such a Great Mom" story of the day. It involves me lying to my daughter and convincing her that I really did see the entire assembly that her class sang in this morning when really I left as soon as her class was done. In my defense, I had just sat through the whole thing just before that when her sister's class did the exact same thing in the exact same assembly, so I really did see the entire thing, just not at the same time she saw it. (This also made it easier to supply information that only someone who had clearly been at the show could have known.)(Details are important when you're lying.)(But not too many; then you sound desperate.) An hour of watching other people's children perform entirely too long dances all while trying to keep my 2-year old both happy and quiet (you try it; it's worse that trying to both hula hoop and apply eyeliner) was more than enough for me.

So, to sum up: I rule. Thankfully my mother can give my kids free therapy.

I do have some good qualities as a mother though, so I going to share a few of the ways I think I'm succeeding in helping my kids be healthy.

Some of my prouder parenting moments:

My kids don't know that you can add sugar to cereal. I'm talking Corn Flakes here, people. The kids eat them completely plain and like it. When I was a kid, there was always an at least inch-thick layer of sugar silt at the bottom of the milk.

Last year, my oldest daughter came home from a church youth activity where the lesson had been about healthy eating. The woman who taught the class had a picture of Adam and Eve displayed, with a sign that said, "Adam and Eve didn't eat Ding-Dongs." After telling me about it, my daughter asked me, "Mom, what's a 'Ding-Dong?'"

My older son has started getting up at 6am completely on his own just so that he'll have time to play Wii Fit for 15 minutes before school and get all his morning stuff done, too. He's done it for almost 3 weeks now without missing a day. This is the boy that usually acts like I sacrificed his favorite animal in front of him whenever I say something like, "Time to wake up."

While they really do take after me (and I take after my mom, whose father once told her "You would rather read than run"), they are much more physically active than I ever was as a child--and they actually like it.

They have been known to turn down soda pop for water.

They stop eating when they're full. And usually don't want more than one serving of dessert. Whenever that happens I have to remind myself that the fact that they are little clones of my husband is proof that yes, they are actually the children I gave birth to, and no, they were not actually switched at the hospital.

My older son has become a smoothie-making whiz. He'll whip them up for anyone at the dropof a hat, and he loves to try different fruits and other flavor combinations. (I will neither confirm nor deny that I sometimes only pretend to drink them.)

This one isn't health-related, but it makes me laugh, so I'm including it: My kids accept it as completely normal that when someone is drinking too much or too quickly, you say, "Easy on the Pepsi, Fuller;" when you have to clear your throat in order to say something, you follow it up with, "Welcome to the Pit of Despair; don't even think about trying to escape;" and if you're in pain, you adopt a British accent and say, "And that really hurt, Charlie, and it's still hurting."* That's just to name a few.

My kids are just cool. Or seriously messed up. Either way works, because the bottom line is that they make me laugh, And as long as I'm entertained, it's all good.

What are some of the ways that you help your kids to be healthy? Are they more healthy than you were as a child? Also, tell me something funny they do or say. I love me some funny kid stories.

*If you don't know what I'm talking about, go here. My 2-year old was quoting it to himself in bed last night--"Chaw-wee eat me!" Hi-larity.