Random Thoughts

I have tried on this pair of pants in the past couple months a handful of times and they have never fit. I could not even pull them up all the way over my hips. I have not tried them on for about 2 weeks and pulled them out tonight to try them for my tap class. THEY FIT! I was/am so excited. They were not even so tight that I could not pull the material from my leg. I could actually pull material and not pinch my skin. This makes me so happy and so much more motivated than before.
Another good thing I did today…drove all the way home from dance with a chocolate cupcake, with frosting, in my hand and did not eat it at all. I brought it home for my daughter instead.

Today was a good day!

Terrible two’s is so not a correct statement. My daughter was an Angel at 2, seriously. 3 ½ hit and BAM whiny tantrum girl that constantly tells me know has come out full force.

I seriously feel like I am yelling at her all the time and I hate it. I try and try to reason with her and explain all the time why not to do things etc. and she just does not give me a break and listen. I am finding myself punishing her for the same fight every day.

I have made a discipline chain out of paper and every time she gets really bad a paper is added and something is lost. Like her rocking horse and remote control car. She has not had them back in days and she cries when I take them away but obviously it is not doing its job.

I tried for months to take away the TV, computer, candy etc. and that has not worked either.

She really is a nice child but I am not really sure how to handle these tantrums and undermining actions right now. Those of you that have gone through this with your girls please give me some advice.

Please leave the comments on my blog and not on my face book as they will get lost as my status changes and I would like to be able to find them quickly.

Thanks!

Today was the shoveling snow, TWICE work-out! I am so sore it is ridiculous. We have had weeks of snow here and I shoveled about 8-10 inches today and I decided that was the work-out for the day. Tired now and going to bed.

So my work-outs on the total gym are getting more intense and I am loving it! I still am doing 20-30 minutes but I am doing twice as many reps of everything. I could feel my heart rate go right up today and I was sweating twice as much. I felt so good when I was done today it is awesome! This means I am getting more of an aerobic work-out now too which is going to enhance my weight loss even more. Yay!

Men, you don’t need to have money to give your wife a great gift for any occasion. It is funny because my husband feels that he has let me down because we can’t afford nice gifts right now well I am staying home with our kids. Here is the thing, there are many gift options that mean more than an expensive gift…RECOGNITION being a big one. Here are some ideas that I feel would be great gifts and would make me feel that my husband recognizes all I do in a day.
• Take the kids out for about 3 hours one evening and buy me some bubble bath and a candle. Set the CD player and the candle up in the bathroom. Leave me a note that says “Thanks for all the hard work you do around here for me and the kids. Please take some time out for you and relax.”

• Wake up in the morning and make me breakfast and after was the dishes without being asked or huffing and puffing while you do it. Then tell me, I did this gesture because I love you and wanted to do something nice.

• Do the laundry one day. This means folding it and putting it away.

• Give me a 20-30 minute massage and don’t expect sex afterwards. Give me a good book to read and a candle afterwards to relax and have some Mom time.

See, this is not hard to do and not expensive. The sad thing is that most men will never think of this and it is not fun to ask for a gift to get one. So I guess I will have to wait until we are rich.

Now back to the laundry and dishes!

So Wed. I was so tired that my throat was killing me and I was achy. It really felt like the flu but I know it was from lack of sleep my 5 month old give me. I guess we can’t expect to get 2 kids to sleep through the night from 3 ½ months old right?

So I did not work out Wed at all, I just felt horrible. I woke up Thursday and felt much better so I did the total gym at 6 am and later that day I jogged in front of the TV for 15 min. I would have jogged longer but I was getting really tired. I must have still needed some recovery time I guess.

Friday we got our taxes so I was running around like a mad woman buying plane tickets for the summer, opening a savings account, buying clearance clothes for my kids for next winter, etc. I did not get home until after 7pm and I stared at 6am so I did not work out yesterday either but ran around so much I am counting it as a work-out day.

I am heading downstairs to the total gym right now (Saturday).

OK if you do not know what I am talking about got to my previous posts (about 2-3 posts ago) and read about the chain I made for my daughters thumb sucking. It is totally working! I am so excited about this. She literally has not sucked her thumb since the day I put it up. The skin on her lip has healed as well as the sores on the thumb. This will so be worth the $50 I will spend on build a bear in about 4 more days as this will save us a lot m ore than that on dental work in the future. Yay!

I did have to quit putting on the “bad” blue paper to the thumb chain as it did not seem fair to add it to that one. So now we have 2 chains. The thumb sucking chain and another blue paper “bad things” chain. When she has more than 3 pieces of blue paper she will lose something for a day or two. She is allowed to rip of the blue pieces when she has been good for a certain amount of time (depends on the situation really). Right now she only has 2 blue pieces so not so bad.

So the stop the thumb sucking chain has worked really well like I posted earlier but after tonight it has turned into another tool.
So my daughter decided to pitch the biggest fit I have ever seen her thro tonight and it lasted over an hour. It got to the point that every parent is all too familiar with, the point to where I knew I was going to beat her if I did not do something drastic.

I went downstairs and grabbed the paper chain and a piece of blue paper, scissors and the stapler. I cut the blue paper into strips and headed upstairs to my screaming child. I told her that if she did not stop I was going to start adding pieces to the chain. I tried to explain to her that this would mean that it would take longer for her to achieve her Build a Bear trip. She started to totally freak out “no mommy don’t do it, don’t put it on there!” I tried to reason for a few more minutes and after a lot of drama I added a blue paper. She cried even more and by the end of the tantrum there were a total of 2 blue pieces of paper added.

She did finally calm down and the chain is back downstairs. It was hard to go through but I am hoping that now that she saw me follow through with my threat of adding the blue paper that she will remember this next time I threaten and not let it get that far.

So now I am implementing something new. She can take a yellow piece of paper off the chain as a reward for not thumb sucking. She can also take a blue piece of paper off on the days that are “good” days and there is not fighting.

I am hoping that this will turn into a learning tool and be a better option than spanking her. Now we will see how this goes!

So we have tried just about everything to get my daughter, who is almost for years old, to stop sucking her thumb.
Some of the things we have tried:

• “Only suck your thumb when it is dark outside, not sunny outside.” Well this one worked for about 3-4 works and then she was back to all day thumb sucking.

• I have put nail polish remover all over her thumb because I think that it tastes nasty. She did not even flinch the first time and sucked it anyway. I still tried another 3-4 times and nothing, she still sucked it.

• I have painted her fingernails with a fast dry nail polish right before bed. One night she did not suck her thumb, the first night, and I though “YES” this will work. Well it only worked one time, gggrrr….

• We have also said “only babies suck their thumbs.” She did not care and said she could be a baby while sucking her thumb.

So this is my NEW attempt and it has worked for 3 days and 2 nights so far. What I did:

• I got 2 colors of paper, yellow and pink. I made a paper chain of 8 yellow pieces on the bottom and 1 pink piece on the top (pink is one of her favorite colors). I have hung this chain in plain view so she sees it all day long. Every morning that she wakes up and successfully DID NOT suck her thumb the day or night before she gets to pull off one of the yellow links. When she gets to the pink link then she gets rewarded with a trip to Build a Bear and gets to build whichever bear she wants. She has never had a chance to build a bear and has always wanted to so now we will see if this works. So far so good, she is very excited and is doing a really good job not sucking her thumb so far.

OK so this morning I woke up and came downstairs and there was a wonderful gift waiting for me from my husband….a sink full of dishes.

I got sick last night and took some sleeping pills to put me to sleep very early and when I went to bed I made sure the kitchen was clean so I did not have to wake up to dishes. Well, he knew I was not feeling well and still left me half a dozen dishes to clean anyway. I am so frustrated AND I still don’t feel well so this is not sitting well with me right now.

He knows the my pet peeve is having dirty dishes sitting in the sink so why did he just not do them, it would have taken him maybe 4-5 minutes. I did not leave a mess on purpose and I still had to wake up to one. GGGRRRRR… this happens all the time