The Charmed Life

Have you ever had a day where you had to bathe the kids half a dozen times? Changed your outfit more times than a teen in a mall dressing room? Done 3 loads of laundry per person in one day? Wanted to step outside and have a good scream? Well in the interest of full disclosure I thought I'd confess that I'm not always joyful and life at my house is not always charmed.
In fact, today was one of those non-charmed days. I won't bore you with all the details but it was a rough morning after a night of little sleep. I was so tired and grouchy that I was trying to nap on the couch with the kids playing on the floor in front of the couch, but for some odd reason they kept using me as a jungle gym under the guise of cuddling, and asking me to feed them and refill sippy cups. I mean, how dare they, right? ;) So the nap didn't happen. The closest I got was when Bug went down for his morning nap I put Chicklet (who does not nap) down on one couch and let her watch Dora. I know, I know, so much for No TV. I was desperate. And I lay on the other couch trying to sleep. Through the sounds of Dora and Boots and Chicklet all jabbering away. My daughter cannot ever stop talking while awake for longer than about 30 seconds. She's constantly running her mouth. I think that's a 3 year old thing though... haven't met any 3 year olds who didn't talk nonstop. *shrug* Anyway I kept almost falling asleep before she would start asking me a bazillion questions about why is Boots a monkey and where is the blue sippy cup and is baby brother takin' a nap and can she please have yogurt in her milk and does baby brother have yogurt milk too and mama I haveta pee... So when it was time to get the baby up I gave up altogether on the idea of a nap. I emptied the potty but forgot to put it back in the other room and set the kids to playing before deciding I was going to fall out of my desk chair if I tried to do anything computer related so I'd better do something standing up. So I started unloading the dishwasher and kept almost falling over. Knowing my clumsy self I decided it was safer to do something sitting before I landed in the dishwasher and broke it or myself. As soon as I sat however, I was no longer doing anything noisy. I heard splashing coming from the middle of the living room. I ran to look over the couch and there was Bug with a fish figurine of Dorie from Finding Nemo- swimming her around the potty full of pee. And there were an assortment of other wet toys laying around the potty including Nemo himself. Chicklet had put a stuffed frog on the potty to pee and was holding it in her hands looking at me with a look that said she knew she was in trouble. The frog's behind was dripping pee. I think I channeled some Incredible Hulk because I picked both kids up, Chicklet weighing in at about 36 pounds and Bug at about 25, one kid's shirt in each hand, and carried them dripping across the house and deposited them in the bathtub. All the while biting my tongue HARD so I would not say anything I would regret.
After getting them undressed and drawing the bathwater, I took the pee clothes to the hamper and proceeded to clean up the pee mess. A whopping 3-5 minutes later, having cleaned up the bulk of the mess, I stuck my head in to see what the maniacal laughter was about. The kids were up to their necks in bubbles. I had not put any soap in there... I fished around until I found my NOW EMPTY bottle of bodywash. I should have known by how nice the bubbles smelled. I didn't know Chicklet could unscrew lids. Now I know.
There were so many suds in the bath that I couldn't rinse the kids off in there. I had to turn on the shower to rinse them and then pick them up and hold them over the sea of suds in the shower stream and when it was Chicklet's turn to be showered off, she FREAKED OUT. She is afraid (read nightmare terrified) of the shower for reasons I can only imagine (She's terrified to put her head in the water, period), so she was kicking and screaming like I was killing her. I had to de-soap her though so it had to be done - which I'm sure didn't help the phobia any. :( And I wound up drenched chest to ankles.
Since my kids could obviously not control their driving need to make a mess, I put them to bed so I could finish the pee cleanup and start on the sea of suds in my bathtub. Well it was just one thing after another (one kid after another hollering for me to refill their drinks, etc.) and I finally gave up. I told the kids they'd better stay in bed (meaning Chicklet better stay in her bed since Bug can't get out of the crib), closed the door, and collapsed into bed for a 20 minute nap. After that I felt a bit more equipped to deal with life.

So there you have it, a day gone wrong! Lol! So glad it's almost over...

Bug is 13 months old!

Little Buggie is officially 13 months old! Awwww! He's getting a bit spoiled though... He woke up for a diaper change and I changed it and put him back to bed with a bottle of water. He was fine for a minute and then began crying again. I was in the kitchen making him a milk bottle. Well when I got in there with the milk bottle he had thrown the water across the room. When he saw the milk bottle in my hand his cries turned into a maniacal laugh that reminded me a little bit of Gollum off of LOTR! Mmmhmmm. I think I've been played. :-/

Terrible-Twos (Project No-TV!!)

My Chicklet, who as you know by now is 2 years and 11 months old, has been going through one of those phases which most parents cringe at the mere mention of... The Terrible-Twos!! I always swore I would never be THAT mom with THAT child throwing a fit in WalMart. Well I'm sure you're sitting there snickering at that comment... Yes, I was THAT mom with my dear girl turned into a raving lunatic in the middle of a shopping expedition. And I cried too as soon as I got in the car.


My dear darling Chicklet has always been very strong willed. She can tantrum with the best of them! She has even tried beating her own head against the wall once or twice. We tried everything to stop the bad behavior. She was just getting worse and worse and nothing I was doing was helping. I remember a time when she was only like this when she was tired, but more recently it got to be a constant thing. It was horrible. I cried, where is my sweet girl who was always smiling? Always trying to help me? Always eager to learn and wanting to please me? Where did she go?! 

I started thinking back to when the behavior issues started. I mean, there were naughty episodes as young as when she was a tiny baby, but we dealt with it and moved on. When the real nastiness, the real stubborn willfullness came on, was I think when I was pregnant with Bug. I have terribly rough pregnancies. When I was pregnant with Bug I remember bawling and praying because I was unable to do anything but be miserable. I took good care of Chicklet physically, but I was so sick and in so much pain that I was not there for her in other ways. I didn't play with her. I had a hard time interacting with her if it required moving from my chair. I started having Dora DVD's on all the time so she wouldn't start crying when I would lurch out of my chair and stagger to the bathroom to empty my stomach. She learned alot of good stuff from Dora, but it wasn't a good substitute for mother-daughter time.
When Bug was born, it was a while before I felt more myself and was playing with the kids again. Actually with both kids it took until they were about 10 months old before I started being able to keep up with basic housework and do fun things with them again. Before that I was so dead on my feet exhausted I didn't do much beyond changing diapers and feeding them. I know it sounds horrible. I took good care of them physically, I just wasn't able to play with them or converse with them like they need.
As soon as I could I started playing with the kids again. Including them and narrating to them as I went on about my day. I was teaching them things and singing with them all the time. I started noticing that Chicklet's behavior problems changed. She was tantruming less. But it didn't stop. In fact after a while she started getting worse again. I was paying close attention and noticed something.
She was constantly quoting movie lines. ALL the time. She'd be playing with her toys and start going on, "Oh no Boots, we can't ride on the brown leaves! They're falling apart! We have to ride on the GREEN leaves! Say Verde!" She would be coloring and say, "This is your badness level... unlooloolee high for someone your size." She would zoom around the house yelling, "Abort! Abort! Disengage! There are children aboard! I repeat, there are children aboard!" She would be eating lunch and say, "I'm not happy, Bob. NOT HAPPY." One day in the car she was mumbling to herself and I was listening. I heard, "...mumblemumble...Nemo you get back here RIGHT now you hear me! I'm going to count...mumblemumble...ahhh! ahhh! Nemo! Nemo! No no! Has anyone seen a boat?!...mumblemumble...OOF! ...mumblemumble...A boat? I saw a boat! It passed by not too long ago. mumble...follow me!..mumblemumble...'Ello! My name's Bruce! ...mumblemumble...Doing? We're not doing anything. In fact we're not even here... mumblemumble... trust a shark...mumblemumble...a little get-together I'm having. Whaddaya say?..."

It was at this point I decided that letting her watch one thing a day was obviously too much television. When the child's mind is that good that she can see Finding Nemo all of 6 times over the coarse of 6 months and then quote half the movie off the top of her head, I need to be finding a better use for that amazing memory.

The real eye-opener came about a month ago though, when she started quoting to me when she was having a bad attitude. Instead of falling on the floor screaming and crying like before, now she would fall on the floor and viciously kick, hit, throw, and beat anything within reach. Then she would curl up and bawl, "Weemememememememememememeeeee!" It was so annoying! It was like babytalk while tantruming. And then it clicked. She was being Lilo having her tantrum and then mumbling incoherently while Nani was trying to talk to her. She was being Stitch destroying things. She was being Mr. Incredible throwing his boss through the wall. She was being Nemo doing what his dad said not to. She was being Marlin yelling and grouching. She was doing exactly what kids do; being what she saw.

I talked to my husband about my observations. We had already cut the kid tv down to 3 movies or Doras a week plus Saturday morning toons with Daddy, but it obviously wasn't enough. We decided to cut out all tv and movies.

I think the problems started when I was sooo tired from my pregnancy with Bug that I was not able to give Chicklet the quality interaction she needed. The TV became her friend to replace Mommy while Mommy was too busy hunched over the toilet throwing up. And as long as that TV-friend was still holding that place in her life, I was at war with it for her heart. So I decided a good start to winning back my place as her best friend was to get rid of the competition.

One week later it was like she was a different child. Instead of quoting Nemo, I caught her repeating things I'd told her. She asked me what does N say. I told her N says nnnnnn and the rest of the day she kept repeating in a singsong voice, "N say nnnnn!"

I continued to notice positive changes. Less tantrums. Shorter tantrums. BOTH kids were happier in general, calmer. She had been boycotting naps before but now she would take one once in a while.

Then I decided it was okay to let them watch DVDs that have no talking, like Baby Einstein. Chicklet's naps went out the window again. And worse, that little bit of give for Baby Einstein was enough to make Mama backslide. I slipped. I gave in. I let her watch a "real" movie - one with talking. And it all unravelled. Tantrums galore. Attitude in bulk. Speaking in movie quotes.

Mama messed up.

So I'm getting back on the horse as of about a week ago. Here's what I've noticed since I cut out the TV again:
Chicklet's taking naps again most of the time. Even when she does not take one she still seems more refreshed than back in TV days.
Again less and shorter tantrums from both kids.
Less movie quoting.

Ah but then today Daddy slipped up and let me sleep in while he watched a movie with the kids. Uh-oh...

Chicklet cried and screamed and acted out all day.

Tomorrow is a new day! Gotta get back off the TV wagon- again.


So there you have it. Part 1 of the no-tv project. I will keep you updated as to how it goes! :) So far I'm loving the results!

Update HERE.