the child whisperer vs. the terrible twos

The Child Whisperer is available TODAY on Amazon! And this week ONLY, if you purchase the book on Amazon, you get an extra $317 in bonuses!

As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve loved getting to know Emily better.  Just tonight, I was watching her dance along as we watched Dancing With The Stars and we spent a long time on the floor playing airplane and doing ‘yoga’, and I realized that I often ask her to go play by herself because I have important things to do, and she comes right back to me asking me to play with her or to sit on my lap and ‘help’ me.  Why am I fighting the fact that she wants to spend time with me? And more importantly, why am I passing on the message that having fun isn’t appropriate all the time, when I hated hearing that myself growing up?

But I digress.  Back to that terrible twos part!  Maybe the reason she sometimes screams and throws things around when she’s mad isn’t just because she’s ‘that age’, but more because although she has a lot of words now, she still can’t completely express her needs when she’s getting frustrated? Wouldn’t it be neat if in the mean time I had a way to understand the reasoning behind the way she wants to play, or potty train (or not!), and why she seems to HATE the grocery store, so I can maybe know what the answer to her problem is, even if she doesn’t?

This book is totally it guys. My life has gotten 10 times easier since I’ve acknowledged the fact that she just wants to be happy and having fun all the time.  Most of the time I’m making an extra effort to make even the mundane parts of our day fun, and the rest of the time I’m extending her a little extra patience when I know she’s frustrated that what we’re doing isn’t fun enough (or we’ve been doing it too long and it’s gotten boring – I TOTALLY get it!).

We do a dance when she needs to pee, and another one after she’s been successful (and often, we’re dancing even if she hasn’t!).  We make up games to get in more bites of dinner, we cover everything in glittery stickers, and start up crafts randomly in the middle of the afternoon.

And life is better, even with a little more mess!

So that’s been our so-far cure for our little Type 1 jumping bean, but what about some of the other Types?

Type 2’s just seem to need comfort, so maybe you’ve been pushing them too much to be more outgoing, or you’re saying ‘Come on! This is so fun!’ when they really need you to be saying ‘I just want you to be comfortable, is there anything I can do to make you feel safer?’.

Type 3’s? I was having a conversation with a friend a few weeks ago about when little kids start being bossy and pushing or telling other kids what to do.  Obviously hitting and pushing isn’t ok, but more often than not, parents probably try and discipline the bossiness right out of their kids, instead of seeing it for what it truly is. Maybe your child has a natural gift for leading people and working in groups, and they need your help in positively developing it instead of wounding them by telling them it’s not OK!

Here’s the links to the videos again, which have a bit more description of each of the Types!

1: The Fun-Loving Child!
2: The Sensitive Child
3: The Determined Child
4: The More Serious Child

So what type do you think your kids are?  Make sure you get a copy of the book so you can find out everything there is to know about them!

why don’t babies come with a manual?

Recently, I had the opportunity to read the book The Child Whisperer by Carol Tuttle.  In her book, she describes four energy types that kids will fall into line with (to varying degrees) with regards to their movement.

1: The Fun-Loving Child!
2: The Sensitive Child
3: The Determined Child
4: The More Serious Child

The idea that we need to be parenting each of our children in different ways based on their natural tendencies (and based on our natural tendencies too!), instead of following some cookie cutter approach was enlightening!  Carol actually says in the book that children are their own parenting manual because they will tell us they way they need to be parented (even if it’s in unspoken ways!).

People will always compare the ways their individual children sleep, potty train, nurse/eat, and play with others, and they notice how their kids all seem to be different, but they want to put them all on the exact same routine their older sibling was on, and use the same phrasing when speaking to them. Why?!?

I am a Type 1 mom.  It means that being fun!, random, and flexible comes easily to me, but there are other things I struggle with. Being organized for one. I love the idea of systems and structure, and enjoy putting them into practice, but I cannot for the life of me seem to stick to them. Mostly because it gets boring! I’ve been working on staying on top of things better and finishing a project when we start one, because I know once we are lucky enough to have 2 (or more!) kids here at home with us, it’s only going to get harder and harder to stay on task for things around the house.

Many of you know that Craig was deployed in Afghanistan for most of my pregnancy with Emily and for her first four months of life.  What you probably don’t know is that I SUCK at accepting help (or even admitting that I would possibly need help in the first place), and so I spent 8 months doing everything myself, including parenting a newborn.

And I loved it. {The newborn stage, not C being in Afghanistan!}

Reading this book I’ve come to realize that the reason it all seemed to come so easily to Emily and I is that she’s a Type 1 too!  So when she wanted to nurse randomly around the clock, I was cool with that.  When I wanted to spend time with our friends in the evening, she would just chill right along with us.

Type 1’s have lots of circles and an upward movement with their features!

I think our first big hiccups came about when I started trying to schedule her going down at the exact same time every night, after performing the same ritual night after night.  She hated it! Instead of it being of comfort to her to know that bedtime was coming, she would start crying when you started the bath or you took her into her room.  The girl just wanted to be out and social, and when she was ready for bed, she would let you know!

These days, we’re in the midst of potty training and nursery school, and I’m seeing more than ever how much her natural movement is displayed in everything she says and does.

She LOVES her friends. She can be grumpy and in desperate need for a nap, and the second she hears them coming, she’ll snap right out of it, happy as ever, and will be fine until her normal bedtime.  She feeds off of being social.  If people are upset, she’ll come and pat their back or she’ll try and do something for them because she just wants everyone around her to be happy and having fun!

I noticed that a lot in the weeks after Griffin died (who, for the record, I think was a type 2).  She would always notice when we were sad or crying, and she would immediately start trying to get us to play with her. I can be the same way sometimes in tense situations (between other people); I’ll get silly and start making lots of jokes because a heavy mood makes me uncomfortable.  Emily was definitely making sure that hope and joy were being kept alive in our house those first weeks.

At nursery school, she’ll sometimes try and lead me by hand around her classroom to show me toys and her friends, but generally, she happily wanders away from me to go play with everyone else.  If she’s feeling insecure or overwhelmed (she’s the youngest and smallest there), they’ve told me that she just goes to one of the teachers and asks to be picked up and she’ll just talk/play with them for a little while.

By far, the biggest comment I get about Emily is how ‘cute’ she is, or how ‘adorable’.  Her voice is pretty high pitched (but LOUD), and she skip-bounces around a lot, so people are always drawn to watch her.  It’s a good thing she enjoys the attention!

So do you have a child that you just don’t quite get?  The Child Whisperer book can probably help you figure out what they’re really asking of you!

The book launches October 23rd, and everyone orders in the first week will get $317 worth of bonuses, so it’s a great time to buy a copy and even pick some up for family members for Christmas (you could include the special password for the bonus materials in the gift!).

Check it out here on Amazon:

The Child Whisperer, The Ultimate Handbook for Raising Happy, Successful, and Cooperative Children

Or visit The Child Whisperer website!

griffin’s story

 

just Emily

The past few months we’ve been in Operation: Enjoy Big Sister, and we’ve gotten out to quite a few fun things with her. Tomorrow-ish (no guarantees as we’ve got a busy weekend coming up and we’re seeing Craig again!) I’ll post some pics from those adventures, and explain why my husband is away when I’m only a week or so from my due date. God love the military.

For today, here are just some more photos of our (still) only child and all of the laid back fun we’ve been glad to have with her since the fall.

Playing in the leaves at her cousin’s birthday party.  She doesn’t normally look this enthused at the situation.

Picking a pumpkin at Halloween.  With our handsome daddy.

 

Moving from our first home together as a family.  Bittersweet.  And there’s four of us in this picture! (not that we knew it at ALL yet).

Our first time peeing on the potty.  In January.  Still seems just about as (un)interested in making it a lifestyle change.

More hair = bigger bed head.

Putting hair in piggies just adds to a little girls sweetness, doesn’t it?

And clearly, putting it up with a clip makes them looking about ready to start kindergarten. Wah!

And here’s how we’d prefer to eat our breakfast every morning.  At least she’s good with a spoon!

Beating the Heat

The last few days it has been HOT around here (as in the hottest place in the province, and that rarely ever happens since we have the bay so close by to moderate things).  Yesterday the weather topped 35 degrees at one point, and since I’m pretty stingy when it comes to the air conditioning (who wants $200 power bills when they’re a one income family?), I decided Emily and I needed to spend some time outside in the shade.

Our setup looked a little something like this, with Emily spending more time playing in that bucket of water than she did in the pool. 

We actually went outside twice, once in the afternoon and then again after dinner, and most of these shots are from later in the evening, as our afternoon jaunt was quickly thrown together when Emily got the afternoon crabbies and I was feeling ‘OMGwhyareyoulyingonme!’.

And internet?  This is what I went outside in in the afternoon.  With a little swim skirt on the bottom as well.

Maybe consider this my 30 week belly update shot, who knows if I’ll post an official one! 

Emily is at such a super fun age now.  She’s still super petite (only 30” tall), but so into seeing and experiencing everything outside, even if it’s too big for her.  We live about 2 blocks from the local hospital and seem to be on the flight path for ambulance helicopters from the city, so a few times this evening she was screaming ‘hel-e-cop-er!’ and chasing it down the yard. 

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has been snapping and setting aside photos to use during her wedding slideshow one day.  Just those super cute baby/kid poses that get a little embarassing later in life.  Like this one of Em’s bathing suit wedgie.  Also cute was the number of times she stopped to try and remove it to no avail.

I had dreams of starting a vegetable garden this summer, but it never really happened (despite some very healthy little plants I grew from seeds) because Craig never got any raised beds in the ground by the time the plants were ready to go in.  In his defence, he was waiting until we got a fence put up, which has taken longer to figure out than both of use expected. 

In the mean time, I’m so grateful that the previous owner seemed to have a green thumb and we’ve got flower gardens all over that have come up beautifully (as have the weeds, which I’ve tried to stay on top of).  Now that the tulips and daffodils have stopped blooming, I’ve had to do some research about what the heck to do with them, but I have NO IDEA what the rest of the plants are and how to deal with them….so the gardens might not look so nice next year.  Lol.  We’ll see.

In case you were afraid for the neighbourhood, I did put some more clothes on later:

    

They’ve been forecasting rain for days now, but I haven’t seen a single drop in over 2 weeks (although Craig’s been getting rained out where he is up north right now, and there is severe flooding in some parts up there!); hopefully we get a little something soon to help break this heat and to help my lawn. Things are starting to feel a little crunchy!

Messy Mom Monday Vlog

guess who’s back. back again.

I know I’ve popped back in a couple of times saying that I’m going to start posting more regularly again (even once a week would be an accomplishment at this point), and I’m sorry I haven’t kept that promise.

Things in our personal life have gotten pretty busy between moving to a new house, taking care of two little boys at home for some extra income, and some other ‘projects’ I’ve been working on (more on that tomorrow), all with a husband who is away a lot for work.

The other reason I’ve been missing around here is a bit harder to explain.    Blogging seemed to lose some of it’s lustre for a while and it took some soul searching to figure out where (and if) I wanted this blog to go in the future.  Mostly, it was because of the following reasons:

One, some of the bigger bloggers seem to think that just because people regularly visit their blog they want to hear them judging other people, and criticizing the way others do things.  I’m not saying that I don’t sometimes have the judgies pop up when I see people doing things a certain way, but to put it on your blog or twitter is another thing.  My first instinct was to step away from blogging because I don’t want to be part of a community that does that, but as I’ve thought about it more over the past few months, I’ve come to realize that it shouldn’t matter what others do.  I should blog for me and be happy knowing that I behave differently. 

Another reason is that I took a job doing corporate blogging for a company, and besides the stress of posting three times a day over there, posting according to someone else’s editorial calendar and topics can make blogging pretty blah.  Preparing to get the house on the market and then packing it up for the move ended up being overwhelming with Craig away so much, so (to much relief) that job had to go, but it still took a little while to get my blogging mojo back.

All of that to say that I’ve been working through some problems with my attitude about blogging, and I’m back with hopefully more authenticity, more real-life, every day posts, and of course lots of new projects as we make this new house our home.

See you tomorrow with some updates about our first big project!

road trippin’: the deets

Ok, I have returned.

The reason we were travelling down to the US in the first place was because of our friends, Cale and Victoria.  They were getting married in Cedar Falls, IA, and since flights were pretty pricey, we decided that we’d borrow a trailer (from my MIL’s friends) and make a road trip out of it.

On the first leg our our journey, we travelled down through Michigan and visited our friend Chris.  He was one of Craig’s groomsmen at our wedding and lives about 40 minutes north of Grand Rapids.

After a few days there, we travelled on to Iowa, with an overnight stop in Utica, IL so we weren’t driving too long of stretches for Emily.  Friday to Sunday we were celebrating with the Robinson family and enjoyed a delicious Mexican fiesta for the rehearsal dinner.

Next, we travelled back to Illinois so we could spend some time in Chicago.  We stayed in a RV park near Yorkville, IL, and when we were driving in there both Craig and I had the first impression of “this is where horror movies take place”.  It was seriously creepy.  Luckily we were spending as little time in/at the trailer as possible already at this point, so we just made sure we were locked up tight at night and Craig kept a knife by the bed (he couldn’t bring a gun across the border…lol).  We tried deep dish pizza for the first time (meh.) and visited our first Trader Joe’s (amazing.) our first night out.

In Chicago we visited the Shedd Aquarium then walked along the waterfront to the Navy Pier.  Emily LOVED the fish and dolphins at the aquarium and we even dressed her up as a penguin at one point.  At the pier, we ate dinner, enjoyed some Starbucks (I think we stopped there about 10 times over the course of the trip…it was vacation, right?) and took a ride on the ferris wheel, where I took a bunch of great photos of my family and the Chicago skyline.

Once we were done in Chicago, we travelled straight through Indiana and Iowa to Grove City, PA.  We’d heard there was some tax free shopping in that state, so we visited the outlets and bought a bunch of Christmas presents and part of a new wardrobe for myself (I’ve lost 15lbs, woot woot!).

After 2 nights in PA, we made the relatively short (after 10 days of driving) trip home to Collingwood.  At this point Emily is a veteran road tripper and on the 7-8 hour drive home, I think we only ever heard her cry once; that was after 8pm when she was needing bedtime.  The rest of the time she naps or plays with her toys and books, or I sit in the back and we play games. 

Originally, we were planning to travel on from PA to New York City for a few days, then on up the East Coast through Massachusetts and then back through Vermont and New York.

BUT.

Our first evening in Chicago (our second night in the trailer) we were getting Emily ready for bed and noticed all sorts of red splotches around her belly button and under her arms.  She had been playing on the ground at the campsite so I wondered at first if there were bug bites or something, so I rubbed some cream on them and finished getting her ready.

The next morning the splotches around her belly button had gone away, but her chest and under her arms were almost solid red.  I bought some hydrocortisone cream at Target and tried that, but the next morning it was even worse, so we decided to take her to a doctor at the local clinic.  After lots of head scratching the doctor thought she had hives and we answered all sorts of questions about any new things Emily had been in contact with.  We told her about Em crawling around at the campsite, and the doctor agreed it could be something there. We had bathed her that night after she was crawling around, but it still could have irritated her or she breathed something in. Thank God for Craig’s Blue Cross coverage through the military, because all we had to pay for was the $13 prescription for Prednisilone, which we’ll submit for our money back.

That day, we travelled on to Utica, and while we were there, we washed all of our clothing and the sheets with her detergent (soap nuts), and that day (Friday) she had her best day yet, with freshly cleaned clothing and on the prednisilone.  We thought we had figured it out and she would get better over a couple of days, but still, every morning when we woke up she would be covered with hives, and over the course of the day while we were away from the trailer she would get better.  If she wore clothing that hadn’t been in the trailer, she had her best days.  We soon realized that something about the trailer was making her sick and made the decision to come home early as subjecting her to 10 extra days in the trailer (and constant ‘allergic’ reactions) would have been a bad idea.

Our best guess is that there is mold or something growing in the trailer, as part of the linoleum floor against one wall is buckled from water leaking in at some point and who knows what is growing under there.

All in all we had a great trip together as a family, and I’m excited for future vacations because Craig has promised me a trip to New York City just the two of us!

road trippin’

I know you’re surprised I’m posting.  I’m kind of surprised I found the motivation to post myself, but I do want to get back here more regularly.  At some point…

Anyway, we had planned to road trip through the US from the 13th to the 30th of September, but had to come back 10 days early.  Here are some of my favourite photos from the trip, and I’ll be back tomorrow with some writings about why we were there in the first place and why we came home early.

ch-ch-ch-changes

Around these parts, we’ve got lots of new things happening, and I’ve been bad about updating the blog with what’s going on.

For the past 2 months or so, we’ve been working on getting our condo ready to go on the market as we’re feeling ready to upgrade into something bigger.  Two bedrooms is all fine and dandy for our small family of three, but with almost no storage beyond average sized closets for our clothes, a really small kitchen and sharing 2 walls and the ceiling with neighbours, we’re ready to stretch out a little bit in our own space.

Craig and I have been going over the budget lately and have decided that while we will have no problems carrying a bigger mortgage on his income alone, it wouldn’t leave much room for saving for vacations, upgrades to the home, and other fun stuff like that.  With that in mind, I’ve started looking for something part time that will bring in a little money every month and we have some prospects both around town and online that we’re excited about.

I’m a little apprehensive about Emily starting daycare a couple of days a week (if needed), but I also know that more socialization with kids her own age and older can only be beneficial.  As long as I’m not paying someone else to practically raise my kid, you know?

Anyways, all this to say, job hunting (and job keeping) have been on my mind a lot lately and I wanted to share some of my experiences in making yourself an indispensible employee.

Starting tomorrow!

one

Today, my sweet, beautiful girl, you turn one.

And I know you don’t know what that means just yet, but to your mama it means the world.  I have had you as mine for 365 days (plus 285 days in my belly) and I can’t believe I have been so completely and utterly blessed.

You bring such joy and meaning to your Daddy and I’s life, and EVERY time you smile it is sure to improve a bad day.  Your Daddy can’t wait to come home every night to see you and is extra happy that you’ve started standing at the front door at that time of day.

Today we celebrated all of the wonderful things you have brought to our life and at your party yesterday, we welcomed all of our family and friends to celebrate with us.

You did so well at your birthday party, even though you didn’t have ANY naps until 4pm, and you were cuddled and loved by a million and one people.  You were a rock star.

You’re still content to crawl everywhere instead of walking, and in fact you no prefer crawling to cruising along the couch and standing to play with things.  Mama’s going to have to start going for walks with you just to encourage you to continue to strengthen those muscles!

I’ll share more about all of the special details of your birthday soon, but today I just want to sit and remember you.

You were born at 9:49 pm and you came into the world with your fist by your head, ready to stick it out and conquer the world.  Your first sounds (more like yelling at us for removing you from your warm cocoon actually) were blissful to our ears, and signalled to us that you were as perfect as could be physically.

We were blessed with a petite little 6lb 10z girl, even though you were 5 days over due, but for someone so small, you’ve always captured a lot of attention.

The newborn stage seemed to pass by quickly for you, as you were packing on 2.5lbs a month and had reached 12lbs by your 2 month shots.  It’s no surprise you were such a little porker when you were eating every 2-3 hours for the first 6 months of life.

You’ve always been a little ahead of the curve in your understanding of concepts, linguistically, and in understanding how those important toys work, but my girl?  You’ve taken your sweet time with those physical developments. 

Rolling? Not til 4 months and even after that you were never a ‘roller’. 
Crawling? This one came even later at 10 months.

Your mama knows you well though.  I know you love to watch people and understand how things work, and you’ve been content to sit and watch the world go by your whole life thus far. 

Even as a newborn you refused to do much napping in favour of watching sunshine on walls and watching your mama work on her domesticity.  Soon enough you were six months old and refusing naps in favour of sitting and playing with your toys.  My guess would be that for the past 6 months you’ve averaged about 1.5 hours a day napping and that’s if I’m lucky!

We decided to do the baby led solids route with you and boy are we glad that we did!  Not only did I not have to worry about all of that steaming/baking and pureeing, but we also saved money on all of those jars and baby cereals.  We waited until you started showing interest and reaching for food and allowed you to have large soft chunks that you could hold in your fist and gnaw on.  You got your first two teeth at 6 months which helped you get bites of the food off and into your belly.

It wasn’t too soon before you started eating everything you could get your hands on, and since then there are few things that you have refused (sweet potatoes in any form unless disguised in something else, comes to mind). Sometime soon we will introduce things like honey (waited until now because of the botulism risk) and maybe even seafood.

You love to clap and wave at everyone, and have an ever expanding vocabulary.  Your favourite words lately have been puppy, bye bye and yesh (although I’m not sure if the last one is actually any sort of acknowledgement, though to your credit you say it after I ask you questions!).

In the coming months I know we are going to have a walking, talking drama queen on our hands and I am looking forward to every minute of it.

Thank you for coming into our lives 12 months ago today and for making us parents.

We love you,

Mama.

beach bum

We travelled to Southampton today to go sailing with my Dad and Brother, but the lake was too flat to push the sails, so we made the decision to go to Sauble for a beach day instead.

Emily LOVES the water, so going to beach is a natural (albeit chillier) extension of her bath time, only at the beach she is surrounded by other kiddies. 

I think we tuckered the poor girl out with all of that swimming as she slept the whole way home!

 

Oh! And here’s a glimpse at Emily’s newest ‘trick’.  Blowing kisses (and typical little girl chatter!).