Tuesday, July 20, 2010

A Happy Tuesday

Last night I was up kind of late. This morning, Nick cried off and on until I got him out of bed. I put him in his seat for breakfast and milk, like always. He screamed his head off until he woke up Xander. I was groggy and tired and had no time for my coffee (!) until I could calm down Nick. I held him and gave him ibuprofen because he is acting like he's teething. He gradually calmed and had fun playing around his Daddy a little bit.

With this start to the day, it would have been easy to write the whole thing off, be discouraged, put the TV on, and look forward to nap time so I could sleep. But, as I told Erik, when my days start off this bad that usually means they will turn out pretty well, if only to defy my expectations.

So instead of the above attitude I decided to be uber-proactive. I gulped down my coffee(s), put Nick in independent playtime, did chores with Xander, started my chores, got Nick up, did Spanish time with the kids, gave Nick some potty sessions, did a reading lesson with Xander, went outside for chores and watering the garden, looked at clouds, found a green, yellow, black-lined spider with bright orange splotches on its abdomen, did learning activities together, and read aloud to both boys. The difference today was that I stayed very close by to both of them and didn't let them get away with one single thing. I stayed with Xander, repeating my expectations, until he decided to speak to me cheerfully about the help he wanted with his chores. Usually I would let him get away with one or two times using a borderline whiny voice as long as he did it the right way most of the time. Not today. He had to get it right each time. I did the same with Nick for sitting on the potty and coming to Mommy. I repeated all this as necessary for each activity, and we shortly began to have a breeze of a day. The push-and-pull ended! We were able to move on to what Mommy said was next without any argument, so that there was more time to just have fun.

I can see that if I keep this up, it won't take long before the push-and-pull situation is vastly improved.

By the way, I did the same thing in my head for myself. I did not allow thoughts like, "Oh no, I'm still in my bathrobe, poor me, I'm tired, I won't even be able to answer the door today," to remain. I said to myself, "What is stopping you from putting on clothing while Nick is in independent playtime, and brushing your hair and teeth?" Nothing. The same thing for thoughts of laundry sitting in the washing machine. What was stopping me from taking both kids outside while I hung the laundry on the line? Nothing! And we found a cool spider because of it and had fun playing as well.

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