oh Sam

Life with Sam is getting easier.

Sam is not an easy kid by anyone's definition of the word. But lately I have been seeing some glimpses of light at the end of the tunnel, or at least our current tunnel.

We use to battle over EVERYTHING. Now, she is learning to do more and more things herself, needs me a bit less and is surprising me with the good things that she does.

Our mornings -
On school days it use to be one fight after another to get her to eat breakfast, get dressed quickly, brush hair and teeth and get out the door. NOW she can dress herself! I simply pick out the clothes and lay them out for her. She can get dressed at her pace while I get Avery and myself dressed. This is huge! She is so proud of herself when she comes to find me and is fully clothed and neither one of us is mad at the other one.
Her hair. She HATES tangles, who doesn't. But she fights every tangle, pulling away from me, throwing things and screaming. SO, I instituted the "pause" rule. She is not allowed to scream, hit, throw things or pull away from me BUT she can say "pause" whenever she wants. I will then freeze and we will both count to five. She thinks this is great. Yes brushing her hair may take a few more seconds but we both leave happier and still have our patience with each other. Love the "pause"! And the more we do it the better she is getting about having less and less pauses. She is proud of herself when we only have two or three pauses per brushing. I love that.
I have figured out what she will eat for breakfast and stopped offering so many options. Toast, sausage, cheerios, banana, yogurt. These are the things she likes in the morning so everyday is some combination of these. Why bother with anything else?
Getting out the door use to be one of our biggest battles, she just never wanted to put her shoes or coat on. After a much needed conversation with our pastor I realized that what did it really matter? So she walked to the car (which is in the garage) in her socks and with no coat, big deal! By the time we get to school she is so excited to go to school that she is willing to do whatever it takes to get to class. It is much easier to deal with putting them on then!

I have learned to pick my battles and to not even think of them as battles any more. To get creative with my tactics and solutions. To try distraction more than yelling. To TRY to remember that she is still little but wants so badly right now to be big.

We are both learning, growing and getting better at this!

I can see different battles in our future (sharing, how we talk to friends, sister, ME, cleaning up, etc.) but for now I am thrilled that maybe, just maybe, life might be a little easier for a while.

giveaways

Hello my name is Abbie and I am addicted to blogging giveaways!

When I think back to all the time I had in my life before giveaways I wonder what I did with it. I mean now I spend HOURS in front of this computer commenting, tweeting, sharing, liking, linking and so on. But people this stuff is FREE! Just waiting for me to scarf it all up. And the random number generators seem to love me right now so I can't stop!!

SO, here are the latest in giveaways that I am trying to win...just to name a few!

Kids books at JDaniel4's Mom.

A Baby Food Recipe Book

Earth Balance stuff - who doesn't need butter?

Yoga tank top - I think it will be great for running

And many others that I do not want to divulge at this time!!! So I am spreading the word to get more entries to increase my chances to win but if all of you head over and enter then my chances decrease...so...maybe this wasn't such a good idea! Rats.

did you notice the changes?

If not you must be reading this in google reader or something...CLICK OVER AND CHECK IT OUT! HA!

So, what do you think? I am finally starting to get the hang of all this creative blogging stuff and am finally a fan of the way this looks. But I would still love to know other neat features I could add, ways to make it better or things you would change. Can't get better without evaluation from your peers!!

Too tired to write any more tonight. All this creativity has really zapped my energy!

Good night blog world.

Green Giveaway

A blogging friend of mine is having a great giveaway of a book that I cannot wait to read!

You should all go and check out the book and the giveaway!

Welcome to my Wonderland

playing with my camera

Okay, clearly I have a lot of work to do on my camera skills but is that not the cutest little pre-bath nudie you have ever seen?!

Loving this little teeth cutting, biting, ball of fussiness right now.

random thoughts with snow photos

I have a biter. Avery has learned that she can get Sam to drop anything by just biting her!

Uh oh.

What do I do to teach a one year old that it is NOT okay to bite?

Sam got invited by a mom in the neighborhood today (our neighbor from across the street) to come and play with some other girls at house, they were playing barbies. She was super excited so we sent her on over. We knew they were older but when I went just a little while later to get her I realized that these girls were 4th grade, 6th grade and 8th grade. Doesn't that seem a bit old to still be playing with barbies? Hmmm.... maybe they were all just playing with them because of Sam. This mom really wants her girls to learn how to babysit so I think she "borrowed" our daughter for some practice babysitting time.

I think we need a snow mobile! HA! No, not really. But we did see several of these on the roads this morning before any cars or trucks were out and about. Took the plows until late this afternoon before they made it to our neighborhood.

Avery decided today that she knows how to go up and DOWN stairs. She has never shown an interest in the down part until today when she went down the whole thing all on her own without us knowing until she wasn't with us anymore. Good grief.

Sam loves eating snow.

Chris and I are going downhill skiing on Saturday and I could not be more excited. Haven't been downhill in years but know that we will both pick it right back up.

And check out this great series of shots. No the girls were not with us at this point. Chris made sure they weren't watching!




Do you see that his head is barely visible above the snow? The picture doesn't do it justice as to how deep that snow pile was. The last picture is not as clear as I had hoped but that's his "I'm okay! Can I do it again?" smile!

Yes, we clearly had too much time on our hands today while one daughter was napping and one daughter was playing barbies!