Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Little Blessings from Today

Here are a few nice moments from today. I wish I had photos except stopping for the mama paparazzi probably would have ruined the moment.

1. The girls and I were playing in Vivi's room this morning. Vivi has a fascination with jumping. I was sitting on the floor and she jumped over my leg without hitting it which was delightful for both of us. Then I laid down and she wanted to jump over my stomach. I was a little nervous about this and couldn't help but react with fear of her hitting my stomach. However, I let her go ahead and like I thought she hit my side. I cried out in a little pain. Valentina's reaction was precious. She had this sad, compassionate look on her face. She walked over, laid down on top of me, and just hugged me. So cute!

2. I am working on being more patient with Vivi. Sometimes at bedtime, I just want to put Vivi in bed, say goodnight, and walk out for "Jen's time". This evening before she went to bed I spent about 30 minutes with her in her room singing and talking. She seems so much older now with her facial expressions and the things she says. I cannot really pinpoint an exact moment or thing she said but those 30 minutes were a treasure and well worth the patience.

3. I read a blog post today about the direct correlation between responsibility and privilege when raising kids. It went like this, “Too many privileges, too little responsibility produces a very snitty attitude. Too many responsibilities with no privileges produces resentment. [Children] are much happier when they see how they are an integral part of [a] household and family.”

So I applied it today with Vivi. We’ve been working on using the potty, however, Vivi is still using diapers and is not close to being potty trained yet. I decided today we would start trying harder. I haven’t read any books on potty training (which is kind of unusual for me), but my idea is just to put panties on her while we are in the house and continually take her to the toilet throughout the day. If she has an accident, fine…we just change clothes. Her responsibility is to use the toilet. Her privilege…I showed her the laundry chute and what it is used for. Up until today, I’ve specifically avoided using the laundry chute in front of the girls for fear of having all kinds of knick-knacks thrown down it to the basement. Now Vivi has the privilege of using it and helping gather dirty laundry. And she loves it.

As for the potty training bit…after a few accidents in the morning, she did a beautiful job in the afternoon. We’ll see how things progress.

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