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.

Best Week Ever!

I'd just like to say that I have the best little family EVER!
My husband is amazing and spoils me as much as possible.
And our daughter is beyond cute! She says the darndest things and has such a fun and happy way of living!
This week was just perfect!

Today
Peter and I had to give talks in church today so several of my nights this past week were filled with reading, studying, and writing in bed. It actually felt kind of nice to be researching and writing again. I didn't realize how much I missed that part of college! (gross right?!) Seriously though, I fell right back into the swing of my paper writing routine, except that this time, I started early! I started on Tuesday and this paper wasn't due till Sunday! Go me! I'll have you know, everything was typed and printed a whole 30 minutes before church started this morning! Yeah...

Claire helping to write my talk.

But it seriously is a huge improvement from my last talk. My last talk was maybe 8 minutes long. I maybe could have stretched it to 10 if I didn't talk so fast because I was so nervous. This time I managed to speak an entire 20 minutes! And Peter said I got going too fast for a bit too. But I learned something from that 8 minute talk.

I cannot wing it.
I cannot just write down basic ideas and start talking about it freely.

So this time I wrote a whole 10 page paper. It was the easiest and quickest 10 pages I have ever written. Let's hear it for a lifetime of knowledge and the Holy Ghost bringing it all to my remembrance coming through for a win! So yes, I read my entire talk. But I wrote it exactly like I would say it--that's just how I roll. And I looked up at the audience frequently. And I tucked my hair behind my ear nervously in a tick-like fashion. : )  (I've picked up a few things from living with Peter ; -) )

But it was all heart-felt and honest. I talked about Living Prophets and Revelation and Peter talked about Personal Revelation. I loved my topic because all I had to do was remember everything awesome about General Conference. And how awesome is General Conference?!

Check out Pres. Uchtdorf! He's probably winking at his wife! :)

So that was today.

We'll just go backwards now.

Yesterday, Saturday
We bought appliances for our house!
Yeah, our house comes with appliances, but we didn't like what was offered through our builder, so we went with the standard included appliances and upgraded them separately. We'll have the appliances of our choosing delivered and installed once we have closed on the house--hopefully at the end of August! We bought them this weekend though because typically Memorial Day Weekend is the best time to get great deals on appliances.
And we did!
We bought a french door fridge, slide-in gas range, above the stove microwave, dishwasher, and washer and dryer for about $6,000 including taxes and some installation.
It is hard giving away so much money!
We have been saving a TON for so long now that I feel REALLY poor.
But it's an exchange, right? Money for appliances. Money for house.

For kitchen appliances we went with the Frigidaire Gallery line in stainless steel.

I found this picture on Amazon.

This isn't my kitchen, but it's almost exactly what my kitchen will look like. My floor will be wood and my counter top is a bit darker gray. My fridge is also the TEENIEST bit different, but I only know this because we almost bought this model. We actually decided on the newer one. Beautiful right?! Seriously, my husband spoils me.

For our washer and dryer we were torn between a Maytag (just like yours mom!) and LG set that were both on sale for great prices. We settled on the LG because, according to Consumer Reports (thanks for the help Dad!), they have a better repair rate and are less noisy than the Maytag. Our laundry room is on the second floor with the bedrooms so vibration and noise were a concern for us. We didn't get the pedestals.

LG TurboWash Series WM3070HWA--incase you're wondering.
Picture from http://www.ajmadison.com

Friday
Peter took the morning off from work to come to the last day of Baby Animal Days at This Is The Place Heritage Park with me and Claire.
What a PERFECT day!
It was cool outside, but the sun was warm. We got there just as the park opened so it wasn't crowded at all. Claire loved petting all of the animals and naming the ones she knew. She thought a lot of them were funny and said "uh oh!" a lot as they were pushing each other out of the way to eat their breakfasts at the stalls.

It's a good thing Peter was there because I do NOT catch baby chicks. I was definitely scared. Haha. I know. Lame.

The whole experience reminded Peter that he wants goats and a chicken coop. Not happening.
Claire really wanted to look closely at the ponies, but once she got close she wouldn't let go of my neck. Her "pony ride" was a little embarrassing. Thank goodness hardly anyone was there and no one was waiting in line after us.

This is her screaming "no" as I tried to get her to let go of my neck.

Claire really liked milking this "cow." It dripped a bit of water when you squeezed it, but I think it was mostly empty.

One of the streets had a little village of small children's houses. Claire loved opening and closing the doors and banging on the little windows to look at mommy and daddy. Peter is determined to design and build one for Claire.

All Week
Peter worked late and left early nearly every day this week to try and get a product working. He's had some successes and some set backs, but mostly progress. The hardest part about it is that his boss had no idea he'd been putting in so many hours. Downside of working remotely.

We also tried, once again, to potty train Claire.

Once again, it went well for the first two days until she started saying "no!"
I think she has a serious fear of pooping in the toilet. She doesn't say as much, but she always denies needing to go or having had an accident when it comes to number 2.
So I have once again given up and am officially waiting until after we move into our own house. Oh well.
I kind of feel like I wasted a lot of time and effort. But I'm trying to find a different way of looking at it.
Meh.

On the plus side, we found a way to get Claire to go to sleep without crying, again! For a few weeks she reverted back to melting down EVERY NIGHT when we left her room. She was also determined to only go to bed with Mommy. What usually happened was I would put her down to bed; 5-10 minutes later she would start crying, and Peter would go in and quickly tell her goodnight and lie her down again, and she would go to sleep. This graduated to a cycle of crying and soothing for 30 minutes and sometimes up to an hour. When the crying started carrying over into nap time, I decided something had to be done. (She usually is happy to take a nap and goes right down.)

First we tried going in to her room as quickly as we could. Then we tried a graduated crying method. Then one night when Peter was gone to work I ignored her for 15-20 minutes while she cried. She still cried.

Then one day she decided that the stuffed giraffe that Grandma Lieber had bought her at the zoo was the Best new toy ever. (That may have been influenced by her newly-found-favorite-cousin Taylar's love for the same toy when she got it.) She had trouble going to sleep at nap time that day, so I went and grabbed her newly appreciated giraffe (I've named him Fred for her) and placed it in her arms. She went right to sleep. We haven't had a bad night since! Except tonight because she woke up from her after-church nap at 5pm and wasn't really ready for her regular bedtime at 7:30. Oh well.

Claire has also been on a SERIOUS coloring spree! She colors EVERY day for at least 30 minutes straight! She loves naming the colors, writing her name, naming and coloring in shapes, and drawing mommy, daddy, and our house.

Writing her name. She says all the letters, just not in the right order.

So happy to get her picture taken.

After smiling for a while it turns into this "smile."

She's started coloring things in all of the way! Not always inside of  the lines, but she definitely tries to get them all colored. She is also very concerned with choosing the right color.

Coloring Daddy.

We also did bubbles and side walk chalk outside a lot this week. The weather has just been perfectly mild. Hooray for the beginnings of summer!

So I think that is just about everything that happened this week. So much fun!

Learning Things

Claire has been learning so many things lately!

Yesterday morning Claire watched me open a bag of mints using scissors that I pulled out of a drawer. Later we were downstairs playing when she found a new toy and decided to run upstairs. I didn't think anything of it because she hates to be away from me and usually runs right back down the stairs. When she came back she brought me the toy--which was still wrapped in plastic-- and a can opener. The can opener was in the same drawer as the scissors. She obviously couldn't tell the difference between the scissors and can opener--not that I want her to! But the message was clear. She wanted me to help her open the toy, and she knew what I needed in order to get the job done! Smart Girl!

Note: we have done lots of baby proofing here at Grandma's house, but did neglect a few drawers because she simply wasn't as interested in those as she was the cupboards. Obviously the cupboards have begun to loose their appeal!

Claire's vocabulary has also begun to blossom.
Though no one else would know what she's saying, heck, I don't even know what she's saying most of the time, she does have a LOT of "words." Her clearest words are "no," "mama," "dada," "byebye," "night night," "Gigi" and "poo poo." Everything else she says is context.

Last night she decided she wanted to learn to take her clothes off.

We mentioned that she was going to get a bath and she frantically started telling us she wanted to be naked. She started pulling on her shirt and managed to get one arm out all on her own. So we foolishly encouraged her in her continued efforts. She managed to get her shirt off fairly easily. She had a hard time separating her pants from her diaper and was REALLY eager to pull off her diaper. So instead of her tearing her diaper apart, I showed her how to pull off the tab. Yeah. Don't say it.

Let me say though, we dipped our toes into potty training over the last week or two and she did REALLY well. And then she started screaming at me every time she went into the bathroom. She has no problem holding it in or telling me when she needs to go. She just developed some sort of fear or just plain obstinance about sitting on the toilet. So I gave up and went back to diapers. It doesn't help that we never quite made it to the potty in time when she said "poo poo." Now she just yells at me every time she needs to go and expects me to take her to the potty so she can tell me, "no! no! no!" Sigh...

So right now I'm trying not to teach her things! :)