On Raising Children

I have come to realize that those people that say that they "wouldn't trade anything in the world" for the experience they are having raising their children, have NOT had to raise a strong willed (Type 3/1) child.

Another common expression from doting mothers is "I live for these moments!"
When I say that, what I mean is: the only thing that keeps me going through those OTHER 6 days in the week is that one afternoon when we had an almost pleasant experience together where nothing was terribly destroyed, no one cried, and possibly both of us laughed and had fun.

The term "three-nager" has a more serious meaning at our house. It isn't just a cute occasional bit of sassy attitude. Oh no, it is a way of every day living. Seriously, I thought I had another 10 years. Everything is a battle. Every idea must be approved or screamed over. If her royal highness is actually well fed and rested, there is usually just a bit of screaming and stomping; however, if she is tired or hungry ( don't ever let it be both! ), you can very well expect much pain and anguish from all parties.

It's not a party.

I kind of thought that all parents were dealing with the same sort of "grumpiness." Then we started having more friends come over more often. And we had Chloe. Obviously, most kids do not behave the same for their parents as they do for strangers, but I still see so much more attitude from Claire than almost any other child her age.

Chloe has a completely different temperament than Claire. She is happy and content to sit and play alone as long as she has been fed and isn't tired. She is so much easier to please than Claire ever was.

But Claire's bad attitude is getting to even her.

Everyone at our house is a bit on edge lately. Claire always wants to play with friends and asking her to do anything else is criminal. Peter and I fear meal and bed times with her. And Chloe has started fussing so much at night any time she hears Claire scream. Ahhhh..... blessed sounds of bedtime.

So, there's the truth of it.

We've done time outs. We've done time ins. We've had plenty of one-on-one time. We've tried talking about our feelings. We have left her to work out her tantrums on her own. We've tried giving her more "real" consequences for her actions. We still have a "reward jar" going but it is really only working when she wants it to; if she is really in a bad mood, she just doesn't care if she earns or looses cotton balls.

So tell me, oh wise world wide web, what's a girl to do? 

 Do I just ignore it and hope that she one day grows out of it and all that wisdom and knowledge somehow seeps in?

And if so, what am I supposed to do until then? How do I find the motivation to keep going? This daily grind is really pushing me into dust.

The balancing act of my life is flawed.

Have you seen that triangle? There are 3 parts: Clean home, Happy kids, and Mom's Sanity. You are then instructed to choose only 2.
It's really not fair.
My sanity is very closely tied to our clean home. But if that isn't enough, our "grumpy" kids wear me down SO much that it just doesn't matter if our home is clean or not. I just never win.

So give me your best shot. How to discipline (or not) your strong willed child. Or how to manage to get through this incredibly trying time in a young growing girl's life.
Sympathies also welcomed.

Claire the 2 year old

Claire has really started talking and understanding and repeating a lot more. She not only repeats exact phrases, but also sentence structure and ideas, making them all her own.

Some of my favorite things that she says right now:

"Paw-pa-bly do dat"
or
 Probably Do That

"Oh! No, no. SA-wee" (capitalization=emphasis)
or
Oh! No, no. Sorry! Which is NOT an admission of guilt or sorrow, but rather an indication that something went wrong and you should be saying, "sorry."

"SISsy MAma!" said with much sass, a smile, and shaking her head.
or
Silly Mama!

She's also been spending time practicing saying "mommy" and "daddy" (as opposed to "mama" and "dada" which she has always said up until about a week ago despite our constant use of "mommy" and "daddy.") It is funny that she has finally made the switch because I had finally resigned myself to the idea that she was just always going to call us "mama" and "dada" and that was ok. We had started referring to ourselves that way too, and then one day she just starts singing "mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy" over and over again just to hear me say, "yes, Claire-bear?"

Claire also REALLY likes to make lists. I don't know if she would say so if you asked her, but if you ever ask her a question, it is almost always answered with a list. If she forgets what she is talking about or runs out of actual answers, she will just start naming things that she sees as she's looking around the room (ie. towel, cup of water, flowers).

She has started putting one hand on her hip sometimes. I can't say the exact situations, but she does it appropriately. It's really funny.

 Every day she gets up on her step stool and unloads the silverware for us.
And she cleans up her toys when asked--sometimes it takes a bit of encouragement.
She loves routines and will do almost everything better if it is part of the routine or at least expected.
I make her take a nap every day after lunch time. We both take naps after lunch time.
And I really need to buy a gate to put in her door way so that we can take the front railing off of her crib. She hasn't started crawling out, she just stands and whines at us when she's done sleeping, but I need to train her to sleep in a regular bed so we can use the crib for another little person in April!

Claire says she doesn't want a brother or a sister. She doesn't want to be a big sister. She just always wants to be a baby. That's what she thinks.

She also LOVES jumping. If we put a trampoline in our basement (like all smart people around her apparently do) she would be entertained for probably an hour every day without me!

She still loves tea parties. She will definitely bring you tea and any other "snack" for a good 30 minutes if you are accommodating.

And that's a bit about Claire right now.

BOO!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Here's a picture of my two loves heading out to trick-or-treat! Sofia the First and Steve Jobs.

 

Claire was SO excited to get dressed up and go trick-or-treating when daddy came home. I waited until after her nap to tell her that she would be going trick-or-treating. It was my incentive to get her to practice saying "trick-or-treat."

This picture is just adorable!

And here is the after trick-or-treating:

Claire's "smile"

 

Obviously, we've been pretty busy over here for the last couple of months with birthdays and parties and MOVING and now unpacking. We are finally at a place where I'm not compelled to unpack a box each day. So I can start blogging again--hopefully regularly.

So here's a virtual tour, through pictures, of the main living areas of our house--the downstairs.

Here's the front of our house--with grass!--all decorated for the big day! Until this afternoon there were only pumpkins on the front porch and a mummy door. Now there is caution tape, spiders and spider webs, and jack-o-lanterns! And a cute little girl ready to go trick-or-treating.

And would you look at that porch!

Would you like a close up of the carvings?

BOO!
Did you get it?
Are you surprised?

I'm already 15 weeks along. It hasn't been too terribly difficult keeping the secret because I don't really have good friends to talk to about that sort of thing here yet. But that has also been the hardest part, not joking about/complaining about the worst part of being pregnant. One friend said she liked waiting to tell people because then those people weren't bugging her so long about "how much longer" she would be pregnant. I dunno. I got bored of not telling people. I'm ready to be excited about having a baby!
Sometimes it's still unreal. Last time I was SO eager. This time, now that I'm feeling better, I've pretty much forgotten that I'm pregnant until I hear that little heartbeat at the doctor's office!

Another factor in us choosing to wait to tell people (mostly just me) was that we know at least 5 other people or more who are having babies early next year--a few of them in April. So I thought we could wait and try to be less white noise in the baby announcing frenzy.

But enough about that. Here's the rest of the house.

 The first room on the right as you enter the house. This is the music room and library. This is also where I'm storing all of our boxes of pictures.

Claire's window stickies in that room.

The stairs are next.

The door to the left of the stairs leads to the basement.

 On the wall opposite the stairs and basement are the coat closet and then powder bathroom.

Straight ahead is the living room.

 To the left is the tech center, dining area, and kitchen.

And the mess of toys in between the two areas.

Off of the kitchen is the mudroom/garage entrance.

And here is my kitchen. To the left of the fridge is my pantry door. It currently stays closed. :-/

I honestly haven't had much trouble keeping the counters "clean." Generally I like it clutter free, but I am also referring to crumbs and marks. I only wipe the whole thing down once a week or so (it's a lot of counter to wipe!). I do big spills as the come.

So there it is. All of the exciting things happening over here are all out now! Hooray! Yay for the holidays!

Claire's Second Birthday!

This year we planned a trip to visit my parents in Texas to coincide with my brother's wedding open house and Peter's overload time at work. Which left us in limbo with Claire's birthday. It was the very same day of the open  house.

We couldn't just NOT celebrate her birthday at home with Peter. That was completely out of the question. So instead we celebrated early, on Tuesday.

Claire woke up to balloons covering her floor and streamers on her door.

On her way up the stairs, Claire was greeted by her physically biggest gift, a kitchenette. She almost didn't want to come to breakfast because she was so excited to play in her "ti-tin."

For breakfast she had her choice of cereals--her very favorite thing to eat at any time of the day.

Then, I was feeling a little sad that Claire wasn't getting a party. (I guess I was sad to miss the opportunity to throw whatever kind of party I want and to the extent that I want for my little girl.) So I decided that the theme for the day would be the zoo. We got dressed and ready with sunscreen and lunch and headed to the zoo.

When we came home we made a quick batch of blue raspberry jello jigglers shaped like zoo animals. Then it was nap time.

After her nap daddy arrived as a special birthday surprise! Claire and I baked her birthday cake and cupcakes: devils food cake with strawberry frosting.

For dinner we had her favorite everything for dinner: hot dogs, french fries, green beans, and sprite.

We shared dinner and cake with Peter's dad and brother.

Claire got several new books and puzzles. I've been saving them for some time now, waiting for her birthday. Sometimes I find it really hard to save toys--especially books-- when we're practicing learning things like letters and numbers. So she had a rather large looking pile of gifts. Some were from grandparents. A lot were from us though. She wouldn't have noticed if it was a smaller pile, but I'm pretty sure she also won't remember being a bit spoiled on this occasion.

It was a fun-filled day! We ended up changing our zoo tickets into an annual zoo pass. I know we'll have lots of zoo days in our future, but this was the first to be remembered.