That's it, You're Going to Time Out

So, you know how they have that old saying "monkey see, monkey do".  And you know how they say this a lot when you have children, as they are great little mimikers...

We've reached that stage, you know the one.  The one where your nothing but sweet little child has decided that they need (or maybe "need" is too strong of a word, "want" might be more appropriate...) to find out exactly where the boundaries lie.  Just how far they can push until something, anything changes, and how bad will it actually be?  I know that this is in their tiny little heads, because I remember thinking the exact same thing.

So up until recently just the threat of some form of discipline was enough to stop our 2.5 year old right in her tracks.  And she is clever enough to have figured out that a pouty lip and an "I'm sorry, mommy" was enough to get her out of trouble. Until that routine was just too boring for her, or until it dawned on her that she didn't actually know what she was sorry for.  (example: I'm sorry mommy, as she is coloring directly on the table)  Either way, the time out chair has been brought out and she has become acquainted with it.

The Chair

I knew this day was coming.  I had bought a little chair at Goodwill with every intention of it being a time out chair.  I kept it out in the garage until the day we would need it (Or maybe I planned to paint it all pinterest like, and never got around to it.., potato, tomato).  I thought very carefully about how I wanted to handle discipline, so I came up with all these guidelines for myself, always with this perfect senario playing out in my head that involved a screaming defiant child, and a patient loving but firm parent.... where has my mom of the year award gotten off to?  But as children do, mine threw me for a loop.  Our first encounter with the chair went something like this...

Me:  Sarah, stop doing that or I'm going to put you in time out
Sarah:  looking at me I'm sorry momma pouty lip, continues doing thing
Me:  Sarah, I said stop, do you want to go in time out?
Sarah:  Yes!
Me:  Okay.... let me go get the chair brings in chair
Sarah:  Oooo!  I love my time out chair momma, it's just my size.
Me:  Hang on, let me clean it first.  Okay, sit in the chair and  be quiet for 2.5 minutes
Sarah: Still talking about how much she loves the chair.
Me:  You have to be quiet or I'll start the time over.
Sarah: Starts whispering about the lovely chair and how it's just her size, she loves the little cut out heart.
Me:  That's it.  I'm starting the time all over again, this time no talking.
Sarah:  Staring to realize it's meant to be punishment.  Shifts into pitful woe is me, child.  Reaches hand symbolically out to me.  Mommy hold my hand, I'm scared.
Me:  Trying to remain patient firm parent and not laugh at the rapid change of tatics. No, you're in time out.  
Sarah:  lip out, hand outstreched, knows she almost has mommy smiling, and if she can just get a smile out of me, knows it's not really a punishment
Me:  Just don't look at her, it's almost over.  This sets the precedent for all future time out sessions.
TIME OUT ENDS
Me:  Walks back to Sarah kneels down in front of Sarah, Sarah, Do you know why you're in time out?
Sarah:  I love my time out chair mommy.
Me:  Yes I know, but do you know why I made you sit in it and be quiet?
Sarah: Yes, I was doing that thing you told me not to.
Me:  Why did I tell you not to do that?
Sarah:  Because I made a mess, and you said "Stop doing that thing" and I kept doing it.
Me:  That's right.  So next time mommy tells you to stop are going to listen?
Sarah:  Yes
Me:  Okay, not tell me you're sorry and give me a hug
End.

So that's the set-up.  Here's the almost-comical antidote.

Fast forward, a few days and time outs...

Sarah still loves the time out chair.  I often hear her saying she's going to sit in the time out chair.  Like she wants to go in time out to get to sit in the chair.  (I may need to think of a more suitable teaching method).  Anyway, I'm playing with Sarah.  We're playing with her Minnie Mouse dolls, that have clip on dresses, bows, shoes, etc.  So I'm dressing a Minnie doll to go to a tea party, and I don't pick the right bow to go with dress.  So I explain, that I can dress her how I want, and that it's okay for our friends to have different idea's, etc. etc.  You know trying to mold her into a good friend and play buddy.  Well after the umteinth time of her correcting how I'm dressing these dolls, and me explaining that it's okay for me to have different ideas and we can both still play together.  She looks at me and says:

Sarah:  That's it mommy.  You're going to time out.
Me:  What did I do wrong?  Why do I have to go to time out? Decides to play along, see where it goes.  How does she view time out?
Sarah: pulling me toward the chair, or attempting as she does not have the kind of strength needed to actually physically move me. You need to go to time out.  You need to sit in the chair.
Me: playing along, sits on chair  Why am I in time out?
Sarah: Shhh. Mommy no talking, or hand holding while in time out. Sits down with pretend phone where I always sit when she's in time out
Me:  Reaches hand symbolically out
Sarah:  No mommy.  You need to think about what you did.
Me: What'd I do?  starting to laugh
Sarah:  I'm going to start your time over.
Me:  sits patiently
Sarah: gets up comes over and kneels in front of me, rubs my leg. Do you know what you did wrong?
Me:  No, what did I do?
Sarah: Are you going to do it again?
Me: No
Sarah:  Okay give me a hug and say you're sorry.
Me: Sorry gives hug
Sarah:  That's better mommy


So your opinion... Am I in trouble here with this whole time out thing?  Monkey see, monkey do.  Is she mocking my attempts at creating a well adjusted child?  What are alternatives (I'm not a spanking kind of mom).  My kid loves time out, loves the time out chair, loves to pretend to be in time out, has acted out a scene with me in time out.  (Which, by the way, will not happen again, as I've now realized it was a big mistake to even let her act as if she has that kind of control over me.  She does not. I am mom, she is child.  End of story.)  So let's hear it, how do you mold your child into a non-brat.  Because let's be honest, that's what all of our end goals really are right!?  To raise non-brats?

So Many Summer 1st's (2014)

Hi!  I wanted to do a quick summer wrap up, but as I was scrolling through my camera, I realized that even though Sarah is two and a half, she had quite a few "1st('s) this summer, so I think I'll focus on those and it'll naturally lend itself to a summer wrap up of sorts :D.

So starting back in May:

1st Backyard Water Fun (of the season) with Brayden 5/31/14

1st time all by herself at the "kiddy" table

1st Haircut!  (Sidenote: She got "fairy dust" in her hair and it smelled like a cupcake!) 6/11/14

1st Pedicure (Well getting her toes professionally painted) 6/13/14

1st time being in a wedding 6/14/14

1st night in a big girl bed 6/21/14

1st time bowling 6/29/14

1st face painting (It's a firework) 7/3/14

1st pony ride 7/4/14

1st time playing Candy Crush with Muncle Toddy

1st time helping mommy bake brownies and getting to lick the spoon and bowl 8/11/14

Fair Fun 2014 (Not a 1st, but fun none the less!) 8/23/14

So even though we didn't really get to travel this summer, because of the wedding, we sure did fill with it with lots of fun things to do around home!  

Oh-Two-dles, Only 6 Months Late...

Oi Ve!  I just realized after my last post, that I haven't blogged at all in 2014.  I'm such a slacker!

Sarah's 2nd birthday, what a struggle this little party was!  Back in February when Sarah was turning 2, we had the month of sickness in our house.  We literally postponed her party 3 times because Sarah was sick and we wanted her to be able to enjoy herself, and we didn't want to get any other kids sick.  It was so frustrating.  In the end, it ended up being just a tiny little family party because it just didn't work out any other way. 

The theme for her 2nd Birthday was Oh-Two-dles or Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.  I had so many idea's for her birthday party, and I went way overboard with all the craft projects.  I made a toodles, complete with mousketools that was supposed to be a game during the party.  My idea was that we would be calling for toodles throughout the party to bring us the things we needed to continue the party. I bought a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse CD and planned on using different songs from it throughout. But with Sarah being the only kid there, we didn't do this activity. Whomp whomp.

My other activity for the party was a bubble dance party.  (Toodles was going to bring us the bubbles). Our dance song was Party at Mickey's House from the CD.  We did do this at Sarah's little party.  I still feel so bad that her party didn't happen the way it was supposed to.  It was just really bad luck.  Sarah battled the stomach flu, croup, and a nasty cold, back to back.  Poor baby had it rough that month!  You can see the effects of all the sickness in her poor little face.  But anyways, after dancing in the bubbles it was time for presents.  She loved opening her presents herself this year, and it was fun to watch her do it.  Then we had her special ice cream cake.  It took me forever to find a local place that did ice cream cakes and had Mickey Mouse themed decorations.  But I worked it out, and luckily she wanted an ice cream cake, because it sat in our deep freeze for a month before we were able to eat any of it ~ haha!  

So let's go through her decorations really quickly.  I ordered some custom centerpieces for her party from a shop on etsy.  They came disassembled and I had to put them together.  They sent us multicolored tissue paper, but after doing one, I decided to just use the red and yellow.  We got these huge Mickey and Minnie balloon's that were bigger than Sarah, so she had a lot of fun playing with them for a few weeks.  They each received tons of hugs and were dragged around the house.  Let's see, what else?  I used a lot of Sarah's toys for decorations, she already had the Mickey Mouse figures around the Minnie centerpiece, as well as the Mickey and Minnie on the mantel.  We had a hot-diggity-dog bar with mini corndogs, bagel dogs, and pigs in a blankets to satisfy the food requirement.

Growing up in my family, whenever anyone has a birthday or has achieved something, they get to use the "red plate".  I have very fond memories of feeling really special when it was my turn.  We always sat down to dinner together and it was very obvious when the red plate was set out.  It just a little thing that goes so far in making you or anyone feel special.  So I wanted to start the same tradition in our family.  Sarah was the first one to get to use the red plate in our family.  My hope is that it will mean something to my kids as it did to me. 

The little hat was another purchase off of etsy.  What did we do before etsy and Pinterest?  She wasn't super fond of it (because of the elastic strap).  But it was really cute!

So yeah, that's Sarah's birthday in a nutshell.  Like I said (over and over) it didn't turn out the way I dreamed it up in my head, but I know she had a fantastic time, and she felt special, and that's all that really matters.  I can't believe my little girl is growing up so fast.  I mean she's nearly 2 1/2 at the time of this post.  Where does the time fly?  I'm so proud of my sweet little girl.  I couldn't ask for a better kid and wouldn't trade her for the world!

A Funny Little Story

It's been forever since I've blogged!  To be honest I kinda sort-of forgot about it... whoops!  But I wanted to do a quick little post about a incident lately with Sarah that I just want to document so I don't forget it.

So Sarah is now almost 2 1/2.  To go through a little background, we thought we had potty trained Sarah, but she regressed and is wildly inconsistent, so basically she's not potty trained and is going through a phase of near absolute refusal to use the potty.  She is knows what she is supposed to do, but I think that because it's our idea and not hers, she is just refusing to do so.  So that is where we are at for this story to make any kind of sense.

So the other day, she had to potty.  She is has very easy to read signs for impending accidents.  She was doing all of her signs so I made her go and sit on the potty.  Now usually once you get her to stop playing and in the bathroom she'll go ahead and do it.  Well on this particular day she decided she didn't want to do it.  Just straight up refused.  Now, I've always had the mindset of: you need to try.  If you try and it doesn't work, fine, you can get up and we'll try again later.  So I think you can see where this is headed.

Sarah likes distractions to help her go, a book, song, a little toy to play with, etc.  So, she asked for a book.  I got a book and read it to her, and she didn't go.  Then she asked for some toys, so I got them, and she didn't go.  Then she wanted to play Endless Alphabet on my phone.  At this point, I am getting frustrated, so I made a deal with her.  She could play it if she would go to potty.  She agreed.  I let her do three words before making her stop and try.  Well she wouldn't try.  So I took the phone away.  I told her we had a deal, and she needed to try to get it back.

Enter the dreaded i-am-two-you-have-no-power-over-me-tantrum.  So I did what I always do when faced with this type of reaction.  I very calmly put my phone away and told her that when she is finished we can talk and I looked away from her.  I corrected her when I needed to, like when she tried to kick me, I told her we don't kick, and if she did it again I was going to leave her. She stopped kicking.  But she still screamed, and when she started screaming mommy.  I looked at her and calmly said, "Yes honey?" but then she'd just scream again, so I said "You look really upset, when you're ready to calm down and talk I'm right here" and looked away.  This went on for a little while. She threw everything into her screaming and crying.  Every time she said my name, I did the same thing.  I never left her, I never yelled back.

I've been teaching Sarah to take a deep breath when she's upset for as long as I can remember.  So she gets to the point where she says "I need a deep breath" and bless her heart, she proceeds to try to calm herself down with her breathing.  At this point, my mommy heart, while frustrated, is so proud of her for remembering how to calm down.  But she looked really funny as she threw her head back and very dramatically sucked in these ragged breaths and tried to calm down.  At which point I helped her calm down by rubbing her leg and soothing her.  Then when she was calm I asked if she was ready to try to go potty.  She said yes and really tried.  So I let her down and cleaned her up from the potty and tantrum.  Then we went to sit down together.

So I firmly believe in talking to my children when stuff like this happens, so I can understand how they feel and she can understand why I wasn't doing what she wanted me to do.  So we are talking and she understood that I just wanted her to try, and that when we say we'll do something, we have to do it.  And all that stuff.  I asked her why she didn't want to go and how she felt.  (I didn't get much of answer, but she's two. I know she understood everything I was saying).  So she's cuddle up on my lap and I'm just holding her, she's still doing her deep breaths.  When she very timidly tells me...

"Mommy I need some chocolate"

Let that sink in for a minute.  "Mommy I need some chocolate".  Me: "You do?"  Sarah: "Yes, to make me feel better".  Me: "Oh".  Now what the heck am I supposed to do with that?  On one hand, I don't want to reward a tantrum.  On the other hand, she just threw a fit, but was able to calm herself down and did what I asked.  Hmm.... (Oh! and it should be mentioned, that I have NEVER said that I need chocolate when I'm upset - I don't think anyone has around her, so this is totally 100% her idea).

So we both had a bite a chocolate and let it all go.

At least I know what to have on hand as she grows up.  I think I have the girliest toddler, ever.


Oh, and here's a cute picture of her from this past weekend, just because ;)