A day in the life of me...

Today I am chronically my day with the kids. Yesterday was one of the worst days I've ever had as a parent and I know a huge part of it had to do with my own attitude. Timmy is so difficult to parent right now. He's THREE and being THREE is very different than being two. Today my goal is to not raise my voice with the kids at all and to use positive reinforcement with Timmy to see if it helps his attitude and behavior at all. So let's start our day!

8am-8:30am: I get up, shower, get dressed, and pick out clothes for the kids. Normally I pick their clothes out the night before so that if Chris gets them dressed he doesn't have to dig around. We were out last night, so I totally forgot.

8:30am: First battle of the day. I come downstairs and greet the kids as cheerfully as possible. I sit down on the sofa which is apparently not allowed with Timmy. He immediately throws himself on the floor in a tantrum, yelling at me that he wants to play cars RIGHT THERE. I take a deep breath and explain to him as gently as possible that the sofa and chairs are for everyone to sit in and if he would like to play cars there, he needs to ask me nicely. It takes about three minutes of trying to get him to say a full sentence with the word please, but eventually he does say, "Mommy could you move please? I want to play cars there." So I say, "Yes, I will move. Thank you for using your manners and asking me nicely."

8:35am: I get Natalie changed and dressed, managing to get poop all over my hands and the wipes box. TMI perhaps, but her poop smells a lot like vomit today. Speaking of vomit...will...not...vomit...I do love being pregnant!

8:38am: Battle number two. "I don't want to get dressed!" I tell Timmy, "You may play with your cars while I get Natalie dressed and when I am done, we'll get you dressed and then we can have cereal for breakfast." Which leads to battle number three. "I don't want cereal! I want Cinnamon Cheerios!" Oh yes, the literal age of THREE. "Yes, Timmy. You may have a bowl of Cheerios after you are dressed. Sound like a plan?" "Yes, Mommy. That sounds like a plan."

8:40am: Repeat the getting dressed argument.

8:41am: Timmy happily comes and lets me help him get dressed after I remind him that he can have Cinnamon Cheerios. Crisis averted. I praise him for listening and obeying and letting me help him get dressed. He beams.

8:45am-9am: Kids sit down for breakfast. Timmy asks very nicely for his cereal...erm...Cinnamon Cheerios...and Natalie says, "Bwayse!" They eat happily while I unload the dishwasher and put the dishes away. The "MINE" fight starts but I've decided to pick my battles today. It's already going to be a challenge for me to not instantly yell at them for every little thing they do. The funny thing about the "mine" fight is that Natalie starts it by saying, "MINE!" even though she has no idea what she's claiming is hers. Timmy has no idea either, but it's quite obvious that whatever Natalie thinks is hers is in fact his, so he needs to yell back, "MINE!" which Natalie thinks is absolutely hilarious, so while Timmy is getting upset, she is laughing her little head off and continues to yell, "MINE!" while Timmy cries and yells, "No, MINE!" even though he has no idea either what exactly is "his." Eventually they give up. Timmy very nicely asks for another bowl of cereal with no prompting to use manners, so I thank him for using his manners and get him another bowl of cereal. He gets up and eats the Cheerios on Natalie's tray. I remind him that they are not his Cheerios and that he needs to eat his own bowl of cereal. I thank him for sitting down.

9:00am: I make coffee. This is one of Timmy's favorite parts of the morning because he likes to "help" me make coffee. This involves him helping me pour a couple scoops of coffee into the filter. Then comes his favorite part - the cinnamon! This kid loves Cinnamon if you haven't caught on yet. He always holds his hand out and says, "Can I have some on my hand?" So I pour a little bit in his hand and he goes to town licking the spice. He does this for any spice - pepper, salt, cumin, chili powder, red pepper flakes...

9:05am: "Mommy, can I watch Boats Mighty Machines please?" We'll tackle the amount of TV we watch another day...Remember, I'm picking my battles today...

9:15am: Timmy pushes Natalie out of his way while playing with his cars. He then tries to take her dinosaur. I gently remind him that it is not nice to push his sister, etc, and that he needs to give back the dinosaur because she was playing with it. He starts to whine and argue, so I remind him that if he can't apologize to Natalie and give her back the dinosaur he will end up in a time out for misbehaving. He says he's sorry and I praise him for listening.

9:20am: He starts harrassing the dog. Repeat the conversation we just had.

9:30am: Suggest that he goes upstairs to go potty. Timmy claims he doesn't have to go. I will give him one more chance before I have to take him up there myself.

9:45am: Remind Timmy about the bathroom. Instead, he climbs under a sofa cushion and hides. Which leads me to the first moment that I pause and save this as a draft before I update again later.

9:50am-11am: Writing this ahead of time - hopefully there will be no major events. The kids will play and watch Boats Mighty Machines while I enjoy a cup of coffee and try to catch up on JM for a few minutes. So far Natalie has played on the Bouncy Brobee, tried to steal my coffee, and drew in my Canon book. Timmy has pushed Natalie once more and then asked me to tuck him in under the sofa cushion. Natalie now has the Jacks and is happily carrying them around the house.

UPDATE at 12:00pm: The rest of the morning went very well overall. Timmy had another accident like yesterday, but not a bad one. He waits too long to go to the bathroom now and short of me physically carrying him to the bathroom, which is not easy for me to do right now, all I can do is remind him constantly and try to take him up there myself. I did finally get him to go but by the time we got there he had already gone a little bit. He and Natalie played really well for awhile and did a lot of spinning and dancing in the dining room. Timmy obsessed over how Wriley poops in the yard and then tried to check Natalie's diaper for poop and in the process stripped her down to her onesie. She didn't mind. She was actually mad that she still had the onesie on.

We had hot dogs and peaches for lunch. I know, so healthy. They were happy though. I tucked Natalie in with her minions and got Timmy ready for rest time, where he is now. The camera battery was close to dead, so it is charging right now. My plan for after rest time is to do some crafts with them. I have an egg magnet project for them to do for Easter so I really hope they'll be into that. If I'm feeling daring, I may get some finger paints out. We shall see!

UPDATE: 6:00pm
This afternoon was awesome! The last two days Timmy and Natalie could not sync up their naps and today they slept at the same time and Natalie even slept til almost 4pm! This could be bad for tonight though. Timmy especially doesn't go to bed well if he's napped during the day.

While Timmy and I were waiting for Natalie to get up from her nap, I discovered that Timmy can open our windows. He opened them up and had a conversation with one of our neighbors, Mr. Dave. A few minutes later, Mr. Dave come to our door and brought Timmy a really neat wooden truck with a notepad on the back. Definitely old school and something we'll have to take very good care of.

After Natalie woke up, I set the kids up with some stickers. Natalie made some foam Easter eggs while Timmy played with his stickers from Aunt Dee. Then I got daring and let them finger paint. They fingered painted for about 15 minutes before they started painting on themselves so up to the tub we went. The kids had a blast in the tub and once again, I got daring and let them play with those Crayola color bubbles that supposedly leave stains. They do stain the skin if you don't scrub it off. I don't think we'll be using them any other time except in tub or maybe out in the grass under the sprinkler.

I let Timmy play in the tub for quite some time while Natalie watched a Babba and I put away a basket of laundry. By that time it was a little after 5 and Chris got home from work. Now Timmy is out in the back yard with Wriley, Chris is cooking dinner, Natalie is wandering around, and I am updating this blog!

LAST UPDATE: 9:00pm
Timmy tried to throw a fit during dinner and first refused to pray with us and then he refused to eat. We prayed without him and calmly went on eating. I finally explained to him that he could be a good boy, say his prayers, and eat with us or he could choose to be naughty and disobey and sit in time out. He thought for a moment, grabbed my hand and said his prayers. I explained the same thing to him, quietly while hugging him, to get him to eat. Then we had a noodle eating contest.

He was able to play outside for awhile after dinner too and did well going to bed until Chris came downstairs. We're actually still trying to get him to go to bed nicely, but I expected this since he did nap this afternoon.

So...overall...HUGE improvement over yesterday and I didn't raise my voice at all today! I did my very best to give him options when possible, I let him know that everything was HIS decision (he could choose to be a good boy or be naughty) and praised him as much as I could for doing really nice things like sharing, using his manners, and obeying.

Was today perfect? Not by any means. He's still THREE. But I must say that so far these changes have been for the better!