Showing posts with label Toddlerhood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Toddlerhood. Show all posts

Thursday, January 30, 2014

I Really Hate Yogurt!

 My teeny, tiny girl who somehow fit in her brother's vest. It's bit big for a newborn size, but still.


It's not about the taste or the calories or the cultures or the cruelty to the cows or anything like that.

It's about the fights.

I wish I could express how heated and how ridiculous the fights are in our house over yogurt!

Typically my issues with yogurt revolve around the two-year old crazy that ensues when she chooses yogurt for breakfast, and then refuses to eat it. The frequency that this event occurs in our home is border line ridiculous. There's screaming, yelling, time-outs, tears, and through-the-roof blood pressures. I intentionally do not buy yogurt for stints to avoid this decision-making insanity. No sane person could handle this situation well, and at 8 in the morning I consider myself to be pretty well put together. I'm a morning person.

However, to be fair, the stand off yesterday morning was not yogurt's fault necessarily. I was blow-drying my hair and I come out to find a mostly peeled orange with one bite out of it in the sink. Then I found an apple with no bites out of it, just a few bite marks...attempts at eating (nay, food-wasting). And she was sitting down at the table with a yogurt and spoon in hand. That all happened within like 10 minutes.

Admittedly I possibly overreacted, but all I asked her to do was eat some bites of her apple before we started in on the yogurt. So as to not relive the breakdown in my home and in my mind, I'll keep the recount of the subsequent events succinct.

Apples were thrown. Time outs were had. And the 45-minute showdown ended with me sitting on the floor of my daughter's room, crying, because I was out of ideas and I simply didn't want to yell at my baby girl.

I decided to throw in the towel. I let my side of the argument go, because I've made two decisions:

nothing is worth yelling at my daughter
and
nothing is more important than my relationship with my family.

Period.

But that doesn't mean I have to be on speaking terms with yogurt.

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

I Could Not Have Known

Two years ago I could not have known this morning would be so hard.


I could not have known that it would take every ounce of calm I had to keep from either screaming at her or crying in the corner.


I could not have known that my wonderful Mommy Plans of going to the library would be thwarted by a decision between milk and water.


But even though I could not know those things, I also could not have known that over two years, (with all the tantrums and fights, and screaming for hours) how much I would love her.



I could not have known how much of me I see in her, which is surprising, frustrating, but mostly exciting.


I could not have known how much I want to help her learn, grown, expose her to new and wonderful things, and simply be around her.


I could not have known how even though she brings out the worst in me, she also is able to refine me and makes me better everyday.


I could not have known how happy I am to have her in our eternal family...and how because of her I can better know how much I want James in that family too.

4 more days until an eternity of unknowns with James!!

Monday, October 7, 2013

Parenting Principles from Potty-Training

Last week I started trying to potty train Alexa...again. See, I tried back in May for a day and a half and promptly gave up deciding between James being 2 months old and our moving plans, diapers would just be easier for a while longer.

So I began again, really going at it Wednesday with a half day of work on Tuesday. So far I have decided/learned a few things as a parent through this whole experience:

1. Potty training is the WORST!!

2. It's going to take Alexa more than a half a day or a week to really get it down, no matter how much prep or research I do, but I really hope less than 2.5 years like I've heard of it taking other kiddos.

3. You get what you deserve as a parent, I suppose...so over breakfast I bestowed "A Mother's Curse" upon Alexa to have an extremely strong-willed child when she becomes a mom. I maybe a bad mom now, but it made me feel a lot better!

4. Sometimes you have to stick to your guns and really drive a point home, like no biting, even when potty-training.

5. And sometimes you have to let things go and at 5 o' clock, after cleaning up way too many accidents, put the kiddo in a diaper, really laugh with your girl, go on a walk as a family, and just begin fresh tomorrow.

6. How quickly your child toilet trains is not a reflection of your ability to parent said child...I just need to repeat this to myself 80 times a day.

7. There are far more important things than potty-training, like getting your son sealed to you on Saturday. In the big scheme of things, this little challenge really doesn't matter at all -- assuming that I use it to shape mine and my daughter's character in the best way possible.

8. It's far more important what comes out of my mouth than what comes out of Alexa's bum...and where whatever comes out ends up.

And just to inspire us all this week, a couple quotes I really like!









(All these are pinned, with sources, on my Wordy Pinterest Board -- the embed feature was not working)

Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Why My Daughter's Crying

Have you spent an inordinate amount of time on the site Reasons My Son is Crying?

I have.

If you ever thought you were a bad parent because your kid just threw the biggest fit and you have no idea why or how to fix the problem, you should check out this site.

I'd like to take this moment to point out that toddlers are deranged sociopaths bent on the destruction of their parent's sanity. Their best weapon to accomplish their psychopathic agenda is completely unreasonable, irrational, and over-the-top tantrums for absolutely random and nonsensical crises.

This was yesterday's:

She woke up from her nap.



Anyone else loving that her shirt says "Sweet"?




I love my daughter, I really do. And she is shamelessly ridiculous.

And just to add to it, this meltdown happened because I made Alexa stop sitting on his abdomen.


Yeah...

Friday, June 14, 2013

Alexa's REALLY Awesome Schedule

I did it! I've been wanting to do this for a long time now and I did it! YAY FOR ME!

Okay...what did I do?

Mothers of toddlers, I'm sure you've heard about all the benefits of having a schedule for your little one. Seriously, there are literally hundreds of articles, books, studies, opinions, etc. that you can find about how schedules improve behavior and make everyone's life easier. For me there was just one problem...

practically speaking I cannot do the same thing day after day in the same way 
at the same time!

I mean, whose life actually can be that way? Some days involve shopping, others involve trips to the library, others involve staying at home getting some cleaning done. Also, Alexa, being 2, is unpredictable from one day to the next. Last week she was a nightmare, this week she's like a totally different child. And some days she sleeps until 9am (rarely, but it happens), and other days she's up at 6:30am, which totally changes our plans for the morning. So sometimes breakfast is at 7am and sometimes it's at 9:30. And sometimes I need her to have nap at 12:00 and sometimes it can't happen until 2:30 (thank you 11:00 church)...you get the idea!

So, when I was reading all these articles, books, and studies, I'm thinking "uhhh, so how do I make a schedule for such an unpredictable creature?" It was very discouraging. After a while the thought occurred to me that "obviously, you need to have events and times in your schedule that can be moved around."

And so it became very clear what I needed to do: MAGNETS!
(poor lighting in the kitchen means you need to ignore the graininess of the pictures)






Everything from the times to each event to the day of the week and even the sun in the corner (I have varying weather pictures depending on what it looks like outside) are magnetic and rearranged daily. It's a great activity to do each morning with my 2-year old and a great resource for both of us to make sure we're not spending too much time in front of the TV or computer and that we're getting adequate amounts of play and work time each day.

Overall this project took me a few evenings, a couple hours at Kinko's, and about $15 for the laminating. Schedule events include the following items:

Blank Sheets for Writing in Special or Unpredictable Events
Bath Time                                Bedtime
Room Time                             Church
TV Time x2                             Swimming
James Time                             Potty Time x2
Playtime                                  Quiet Time
Lunch                                      Soccer
Shopping                                 Dance
Dinner                                     Crafts
Family Time                            Make Lunch
Breakfast                                 Make Dinner
Chores                                     Friends
Snack x2                                  Park
Reading                                   Outside
Clean-Up                                 Mom Time
Naptime                                   Library
Daddy Time

How exciting that we have this great tool and that it can grow with her. Here is a list (w/ links) to the Dingbat Fonts I used for the pictures (I also recently used them for a potty training chart I made, so I think they will continue to be very useful):

1. Pea Cookie’s Doodles, 2. Pea Delilah’s Doodles, 3. Pea Jokilyn Doodles, 4. Pea Shelley Belley’s Doodles, 5. Pea Stacy’s Doodles, 6. Pea Stacey’s New Doodles, 7. Pea The Bees in Love Doodles, 8. Pea Tisha’s Doodles, 9. Alfabilder, 10. Dingpartment Store, 11. ForKids, 12. Girl Characters, 13. Kawaii Food II, 14. LiveStyle, 15. PeaxWebdesignFreeIcons, 16. Scrapicons, 17. Tombats Three

Once again, yay for me (and you're welcome)! To see more things I plan on do-doing this summer, check out my list!

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Happy Birthday My Beautiful 2-Year Old!

Yesterday was Alexa's birthday and it was such a wonderful day! We started out opening a couple presents...

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Then we had birthday pancakes...

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Then we went to Barnes and Noble to find an interesting book...

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Then we had lunch at Panera Bread...

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Then we visited Daddy at work...

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Then we took a nap (while mommy made dinner and birthday cake-brownies-thing and stopped taking pictures)...

Then we played in the sink water and got soaking wet...

Then we had dinner with the missionaries consisting of some enchiladas, some beans, some rice, and A LOT of sour cream...

And then just before bed we finished off the party by video chatting with grandparents in our princess dress.

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BEST. 2ND. BIRTHDAY. EVER.
 
(You may notice she's wearing a few different shirts. We changed clothes a total of three times and wore four different outfits. Princesses are pretty high maintenance...what did you expect?)

Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Fashion Forward

Alexa has taken some very fashion forward risks recently which are both bold and challenging to the untrained eye...but there's genius here that may take time to see:

Wrapping Paper on Head
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Mom's Socks over Pants
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Mom's Tights over Face
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Snow Cap Inside
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Snow Cap Inside Coupled with Nakedness and a Sagging Diaper
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Arm through Neck-Hole
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Onesie on Legs
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Tuesday, December 4, 2012

Attaining Creative Vision

While putting on my makeup the other day, Alexa was intrigued, so I let her play with an extra makeup brush I have. She rubbed it on her face, and then ran off. No problem, she does that a lot. After a couple minutes of silence I thought I should check in on her. I found her in her room, using the brush in a very nontraditional manner.

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That's Alexa's humidifier water she's painting all over her legs. Yeah. It's like she was just waiting for the appropriate tool to help her attain the creative vision she seems to have had in mind for sometime.

Toddlers are crazy, and so clever, and even more fun!