Challenges and Victories

Challenges
Welp Frannie, you are now 3 1/2 years old and even though you are my darling sweetheart, it seems lately we've had a few challenges that I'm not sure yet how to handle.
1. You won't eat your breakfast. This drives me really crazy because 30 minutes after breakfast is over you are begging for pretzels. Ok. Actually this has started to make me mad! Because it takes time to prepare meals and when you don't eat them and are all slumped in your chair like a slime glob and complaining and telling me "I'm not starving!" and then shortly after tell me you're hungry, I'm pretty irritated. Yesterday I got mad and told you that you couldn't leave the table until your breakfast was finished. You continued to be a slime blob and fiddling with your food until I threatened a spanking and then you started to take it more seriously. Ugh.

2. Whenever I ask you to come upstairs and help to clean up your bedroom you, again, turn into a slime blob and collapse on the floor like you have no bones. Then you're lying on your back on the floor or slumped half-way on the couch and fiddling around because you won't just come upstairs and help pick up! Ugh. If I carry you upstairs and watch and direct you item by item, you put everything away SO SLOWLY. I've tried making clean up a game, but it just doesn't seem to work. Or else I haven't found the right way to make it a game. (The housefairy isn't really working anymore.)

3. Sometimes I feel that you can be quite demanding. I spend a lot of time reading to you stories and such, but if you decide you want to be read to, you demand "Read to me!!" and I don't always have the time. But you won't let it go. You proclaim "That's not fair!" and keep demanding that I read. I feel that you are now at an age where you need to understand that I cannot do all things right as you request them. And that it becomes rude to keep demanding and demanding after I've explained that I don't want to or can't right then.

I feel that recently you have matured and are doing things that you probably always did before, but now because you are older I see it as a problem that I need to work on w/ you. You've never been a great eater but now that you are 3 1/2 I see the after breakfast snacking as a problem especially considering how little you actually eat for breakfast. And I've tried to get you to help me pick up your toys and such before, but you've always done the stubborn thing about it and I probably just let it go because you were younger and I wanted it to get done faster. But now's the time to learn darnit!! My reasoning is that if you are a "big girl" who can go to ballet class and can ride a bicycle, then you can pick up toys and eat your breakfast properly!

Ok now on to Adam.
Yes you little guy have presented me with challenges to. You are 14 months and primarily the challenge is that when I say "Come here Adam!" you promptly run away. Ugh. Or when I say "JJ No!" you laugh and run away. You know I will chase you down, so in your mind it is a game. At the moment the big one is you not touching the TV button to turn it on/off on/off on/off. I'm trying to teach you that No is a big word that needs to be listened to. I've slapped the top of your hand to teach you No as you are trying to touch the TV button, and now everytime you touch it I put you on the couch for a 1 minute time out. Believe it or not you will stay there for the 1 minute and because I do it everytime and try to catch you the millisecond that you touch the tv, you are learning. But this is something I've been working on with you everyday all week. It's Thursday now, and I'm tired!

Victories
One of my biggest victories w/ you kiddos is that you both have become great sleepers. You go down for an afternoon nap at the exact same time so I get two quiet hours during the day, and you are both very easy to put down for bed. You both love to share a room together and Adam you love to have your Woofie dog w/ you in bed.

I think my other victory is that you both are very sweet children. I hope you stay that way forever. Frannie, you are very polite! I'm not sure if it is because you mimic me or what but you have a way of just saying Please and Thank You and "I Apologize" and "May I, Can I be excused?" "Mother, can I have some juice?" It is kind of silly the way you call me "Mother" all of the time.

Adam you are very cuddly and a sweet baby. As long as I keep snacks and a ball nearby, you are pretty easy going. You now say "Nose!" and snuff your nose at me and I ask you to "Show me your Teeth" and you do this silly thing where you pull your lips up and show me the top teeth. It's cute. You love back rubs. You laugh throughout the whole house.

Both you kids are tickle monsters.

So anyways, my days are filled with lots of good stuff, but I have lots of teaching teaching teaching to do throughout the day. Sometimes I get tired. Sometimes I get frustrated. Challenges are good though because it is part of your growing up. And it's good for me, lest I ever rest on my laurels thinking I have everything figured out.