Quick Takes #27

1.

Ms Action insisted on vacuuming all by herself when we were cleaning the living room. She vacuumed the whole room, she even picked up the rug and vacuumed under it. And despite the missed crumbs in front of the couch, and the fact that she forgot to vacuum the top of the rug, I let it be good enough. I didn’t re-touch, I didn’t point out what she had missed, I thanked her and helped her put the rug back in the center of the room. And my reward was watching her almost burst with pride when she got to tell her daddy that she vacuumed “all by herself”.

Ms Drama slapped her older sister and was put into the chill-out chair with the timer set for 2 minutes. She was screeching her unhappiness, so I went in and sat down in the chair and pulled her into my lap and started talking about how hitting hurts people. I explained that Mom doesn’t hit Dad, and Dad doesn’t hit Mom, and Mom doesn’t the kids, and I saw a little light go on in her eyes and she said loudly “I no hit her!” pointing at her sister. Ms Action giggled and said “and we don’t hit grandma and grandpa!” They were both giggling by that time, and when the timer went off Ms Drama got off my lap looked up at me and said “and noooo hit!” Of course that didn’t stop her from pinching her sister later in the day.

3.

Ms Pooky is starting to show interest in food. She is a year old so it’s about time! She has steadfastly refused to eat anything other than fruit and cookies, preferring nursing instead. But yesterday she actually ate a whole bowl of baby cereal mixed with applesauce. This morning she refused to even taste it, but I’m not giving up hope yet.

4.
This week I wrote about the myths that I had always believed about homeschooling, and I was surprised by how emotionally invested I felt reading all the comments. I decided early on that I wasn’t going to reply to the comments on that post because it’s just too much for me to deal with right now. I still don’t know what I will decide, I really struggle with this decision. I consider myself my children’s first teacher, and I love to be with my children and watch them learn, but I am still not sure that homeschooling is the right choice for me. Only time will tell I suppose.

Here I thought I’d link to Hillary Macfarlane’s blog Quivering Daughter’s. I have found her blog very healing for me to read in the last few months. In fact I just realized that I linked 3 posts from her blog in the note I posted yesterday. I highly recommend her blog to anyone who is sorting through questions about God, or healing from spiritual abuses of some kind.

While staying at a friends cabin for the night I realized just how close to being potty trained Ms Drama was. She has been pooping on the toilet for months, but she’s barely 2 ½ so I was letting her take her time. On this trip when she decided to use the toilet, the water in the toilet bowl was blue. This was terrifying for some reason, she flushed the toilet over and over, trying to get rid of the blue water. But it kept coming back (horrors!) I tried to explain that it was OK and that everyone else had no problem peeing in the blue water, and to be fair she did try to be courageous a few times where she would insist that she was going to do it! She was going to pee in the blue water! But once we were in the bathroom terror would set in again and she would refuse. We couldn’t get her to pee in the bathroom sink either. Poor thing, I hadn’t realize she was so used to using the toilet. She was tortured the whole 24 hours we were at the cabin, wailing in frustration every time she was “forced” to go in her diaper and then telling me to “get it off! get it off!” needless to say, the next day when we got home she was graduated to big girl underwear with much success.

Speaking of underwear, this morning the 2 older girls came out of my bedroom each wearing a pair of my underwear, which are apparently much larger (or much stretchier) than I thought, since they had pulled the tops of the leg openings up to their shoulder’s. They insisted that they were wearing bathing suits and that they were going out to find a pool and go swimming. Weirdly enough they did kind of look like bathing suits, just really revealing open sided bathing suits. So I’ll leave you with that scary image!

 I’m linking up with Quick Takes over at Conversion Diary today. Hop over to read more Quick Takes and maybe share your own