Ah peace and quiet, well kind of.....
We added 5 extra people to our household this past weekend with the visit of one of my sister's her hubby and 3 boys. It was a nice visit, but loud. By yesterday hubby was thinking we don't want any more kids, I was thinking I'd like more then the one more we are planning. Personally I loved the chaos. All of us we're getting ready to have our own space again, but for hubby it was because of the children, for me it was because of blending the parenting styles. That is, in my opinion, the hardest part of staying with family weather I'm the host or guest, well as much as anyone in our family is a "guest".
See while I had more to do keeping up with dishes/laundry etc this weekend. I didn't have to entertain my children at all. The most I had to do was break up the occasional fight, or put a movie on for the ones that were tired and hot from playing outside. DH just sees 5boys 6 and under jumping on him instead of 2. Oh well he hasn't made an appointment to get snipped yet this morning so I guess it didn't scare him too badly.
I am so proud of #1, he is growing up so fast. Instead of a tantrum when his cousin's left today, which I was fully expecting, he was able to sit down with me and tell me he was feeling sad. Then we were able to go look at his "feeling pictures" and see what behavior is appropriate for when you're feeling sad. We've really been working with him on distinguishing between feelings and not just striking out at someone when he's upset. Hence the "feeling pictures" We drew faces of different feelings and pictures of appropriate activities next to them. Non of the activities includes pushing your brother or biting your mom...Two of his normal favorites. This is the second time we've been able to apply what we've been learning to a situation where he was having one of the feelings.
#2 on the other hand had a meltdown because he wanted to go in the car with them, and then about an hour later when I think he finally figured out they weren't coming back. Oh well guess it's the age, and in another 3 years maybe he'll make progress, I hope DH is able to work with him on it since I expect to be in the loony bin by then...Why did I want more again?
So why is it that I haven't lived in my mother's house in years and yet her voice is still in my head? DH has a co-worker that we're friends with and swap babysitting with occasionally. They are going out of town and wondered if we wanted to take care of their puppy, and they'll pay us kennel rates. Now we could really use the money right now (you may refer back to the sewer postings if you are in the dark as to why) and I'm feeling guilty about them paying us for it. See growing up we always did things for the neighbor's like check on their pets, get mail etc, and my mom wouldn't let us take money for it. She always said we should help people without having to be paid to do so. I agree with that, but now as an adult it's really much easier to rationalize out the other side of it (i.e. we'll be doing them a favor since they don't like kennel's, We're charging less then the kennel we put our dog in, etc). But on the other hand I mean really we're getting paid to do nothing. It's #1's responsibility to feed our dog, so he'd probably feed their dog, and he also gets up to let the dog out when needed.....So what exactly are we doing to deserve the money?
Ok, I probably am just sleep deprived from the weekend. So I'm going to go and do something that doesn't require thought now....I've already hung 4 loads of laundry out, but still need to put the extra mattresses away and get super started. Welcome to my exciting life!
See while I had more to do keeping up with dishes/laundry etc this weekend. I didn't have to entertain my children at all. The most I had to do was break up the occasional fight, or put a movie on for the ones that were tired and hot from playing outside. DH just sees 5boys 6 and under jumping on him instead of 2. Oh well he hasn't made an appointment to get snipped yet this morning so I guess it didn't scare him too badly.
I am so proud of #1, he is growing up so fast. Instead of a tantrum when his cousin's left today, which I was fully expecting, he was able to sit down with me and tell me he was feeling sad. Then we were able to go look at his "feeling pictures" and see what behavior is appropriate for when you're feeling sad. We've really been working with him on distinguishing between feelings and not just striking out at someone when he's upset. Hence the "feeling pictures" We drew faces of different feelings and pictures of appropriate activities next to them. Non of the activities includes pushing your brother or biting your mom...Two of his normal favorites. This is the second time we've been able to apply what we've been learning to a situation where he was having one of the feelings.
#2 on the other hand had a meltdown because he wanted to go in the car with them, and then about an hour later when I think he finally figured out they weren't coming back. Oh well guess it's the age, and in another 3 years maybe he'll make progress, I hope DH is able to work with him on it since I expect to be in the loony bin by then...Why did I want more again?
So why is it that I haven't lived in my mother's house in years and yet her voice is still in my head? DH has a co-worker that we're friends with and swap babysitting with occasionally. They are going out of town and wondered if we wanted to take care of their puppy, and they'll pay us kennel rates. Now we could really use the money right now (you may refer back to the sewer postings if you are in the dark as to why) and I'm feeling guilty about them paying us for it. See growing up we always did things for the neighbor's like check on their pets, get mail etc, and my mom wouldn't let us take money for it. She always said we should help people without having to be paid to do so. I agree with that, but now as an adult it's really much easier to rationalize out the other side of it (i.e. we'll be doing them a favor since they don't like kennel's, We're charging less then the kennel we put our dog in, etc). But on the other hand I mean really we're getting paid to do nothing. It's #1's responsibility to feed our dog, so he'd probably feed their dog, and he also gets up to let the dog out when needed.....So what exactly are we doing to deserve the money?
Ok, I probably am just sleep deprived from the weekend. So I'm going to go and do something that doesn't require thought now....I've already hung 4 loads of laundry out, but still need to put the extra mattresses away and get super started. Welcome to my exciting life!
posted by Beth @ 1:20 PM
2 Comments:
At 3:47 PM,
Lucky Lum said…
I like the idea of the feelings pictures. What a great way to teach them about expressing feelings! Did you come up with that by yourself or can you buy it somewhere?
Oh yeah, take the money!
At 4:08 PM,
Beth said…
No we thought of it and drew them ourselves. He learned his bedtime routine by us making a list of pictures, so we decided he's more of a visual learner.We wanted to try to come up with a visual way of teaching him to handle his feelings without tantrums. Punishing the tantrums was having very little effect for him.
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