Christmas 2008 Video

Halloween Party Toddler Style

I love living on base. There are so many fun things to do around the holidays and most of them I can walk to! Lilah and I go to a Mom and Tots playgroup every Tuesday and today was the Halloween party. It was so cute! Lilah was a kitty and didn't hesitate to let me know every time I called her Lilah. "NO! I KITTY CAT!!"

Pumpkin Party

The girls and I just got back from an awesome pumpkin party. Isn't that a great idea? A friend of mine hosts this fabulous party in the fall. Everyone brings their pumpkins and we all have a great big carve fest!

The kids had so much fun! Harmony carved a schizophrenic pumpkin with three different faces.
Autumn's pumpkin looked like it was painted by a professional and Lilah, well, she just loved slathering on layer after layer of paint onto her pumpkin.

It was a great party...now if I can just get the smell of pumpkin guts out of my nose!

Thank you B.F. Skinner

I've spanked (not many times) and hated it more than my kids. I've doled out punishments, I've raised my voice. Has any of it been effective....CONSISTENTLY effective? Nope. Well, for my oldest, Harmony, punishments have been and still are effective. For example, the other week she was giving me a hard time about doing a chore...then she flipped me an attitude about something. Punishment = no gymnastics. Next time I asked her to do something she did it with a smile. With Harmony, I could probably get away with this type of parenting. She likes to please, she is very responsible and a very emotionally well adjusted kid.

If you have a (for lack of better word) challenging child I highly recommend you read up on B.F. Skinner.

Burrhus Frederic Skinner (for those who were wondering) conducted pioneering work in psychology and is known as the inventor of operant conditioning. Positive reinforcement is a component of operant conditioning and has saved my sanity. Quick psychology 101 review...The main idea is that reinforcers can control behavior by presenting a reward after a desired behavior. This does sound a lot like bribary but there is a big difference between bribing (I'll give you a lollipop if you'll just put on your darn shoes!") and a positive reinforcer.."if you can get dressed in the next 5 minutes, I'll let you ride your bike to school". The latter works like a charm with my 6 year old.

Autumn can be very difficult at times and positive reinforcement works immediately..almost every time. The key to this technique is to never tell your kids what is going to be happening. For instance, with the riding her bike to school example. I had already planned to let her ride her bike to school (which she LOVES doing). If I had told her first thing in the morning that I was going to let her ride her bike to school I probably would have had to resort to NEGATIVE reinforcement. Out of frustration I would have said, "Thats it, we are running late because you won't get dressed so you can't ride your bike to school." The scene would have turned ugly and I would still have a pajama clad 6 year old, hiding in her closet, mad at the world because she can't ride her bike to school.

So a must to this technique is having an arsenal of positive motivators waiting in the wings. If you know little things that your children like to do, just try to incorporate these things into the positive reinforcement. Sticker charts work great for motivation but I am, as they say, "so over sticker charts".

I'll give you a hypothetical situation. You are in a department store and your child insists on spraying all of the perfume sample bottles. When you tell her it is time to go, she refuses and proceeds to cling to the counter with a monkey like grip. Do you pry her off screaming and yelling and drag her by the arm out of the store. No! You quietly say to her, "I was going to let you be in charge of putting the items on the counter at check out (something she loves doing) if you can get yourself under control and come with me by the time I count to 10, I'll still let you do it. O.K., you got me, this isn't hypothetical, it happened yesterday.

Probably the best thing about this parenting technique is that it is scientifically proven to be the most effective method of behavior modification! More effective than punishment AND negative consequences! So if any other parent tries to talk smack about the way you are handling a situation you can throw that at them. Obviously some situations warrant the use of negative consequences like fighting or talking back. In those instances I don't hesitate to dole out the punishments no matter how ugly it gets.

So, thank you B.F. Skinner. You have made me a more confident parent. You have given me a SCIENTIFICALLY proven secret weapon. In your honor, I name my unborn, never to be baby boy in your honor...Burrhus Frederic Pierce.

Fun on the Farm

What an awesome weekend so far!! With Jamieson being gone we are trying to keep extra busy. O.K., well I guess I am trying to keep us extra busy because of this little thing called Mommy guilt. When it is just us I feel like I need to make up for Jamieson being gone by packing our day with fun filled activities.

So yesterday we went to this place called Davis Farmland. If you have animal loving kids then this is the place to go. If you have goat loving kids, take them to this place and they will be happier than on Christmas morning. I even found myself cooing over the baby goats, they really are cute. The staff that work on the farm are great too. I made the comment that baby goats are so cute....adult goats, not so cute and one of the teenage staff members looked at me like I had just punched an old person in the face. "Adult goats ARE just as cute!" she said to me.

Ummm, no they're not.

The heart attack moment of the day had to be when my middle daughter stepped on a bearded dragon. In my daughters defense, the dragon was out on the ground and it camouflaged nicely with the wood floor. She only stepped on it's leg and I jumped up and grabbed her just in time for her next step surely would have landed square on the dragons back. Afterwards all I could think of is how gross it would have been to see a bearded dragon pop like a water balloon. That would have been ugly.

We did a corn maze that my sister and I were convinced there is no actual way to solve. Not once did we hear someone scream out "yeah! we did it!!" Just a whole lot of people wandering around looking tired and lost! The kids wanted to stay in the maze but my sister and I were POOPED!

It was a fantastic day spend outside with my sister, my niece, nephew and my girls. Only thing missing was Daddy!

Childhood Rites of Passage

There are some things that happen when you are a kid that can be considered rites of passage through the voyage of childhood. Some fun, others not. Some funny, others not so much. Yesterday all three of my girls experienced, to some degree, a rite of passage in their own childhood.

I'll start with Harmony. Have you ever seen a kid whose teeth look like they might belong in a different size mouth? That is Harmony...they say she has "spacing issues" and will need braces. Of course she is all excited and can't stop thinking about what color braces she wants. Harmony is my question asker so ever since she found out she has to go to the orthodontist she has been asking NON STOP seemingly irrelevant (well to me, not to her) questions.

"When are you going to call my new dentist?"

"What time will you call?"

"Will you tell me when you call?"

"Is my new dentist a man or a woman?"

"Do clear braces match with everything?" and so on and so on and so on

I guess it is a very exciting thing for her. I remember when my sister got glasses and I wanted glasses too.

Next there is Autumn. She experienced a rite of passage as well although I don't think she understands. She has TWO cavities! The dentist told me this and my jaw dropped to the ground. I have never had a cavity and pride myself in the fact that my kids always brush twice a day and they don't eat a lot of candy or stuff that can stick in their teeth....fruit roll ups, gummies and all of that stuff. The cavities are in her two back molars that just came in in the past 6 months so the dentist reassured me that it probably has nothing to do with inadequate brushing and more to do with a defect in her teeth. The crappy part about her having cavities is that she has to get them filled..which means the area has to be numbed...which means a needle in her mouth. Let me tell ya, that ain't happening. Can you believe most dental insurance companies don't cover nitrous oxide for kids during procedures like this! Obviously these guys don't have kids. I'm writing an appeal to see if I can get it covered cuz I'm cheap and if I can get insurance to pay for it that means I don't have to. We are going to "splurge" on the white fillings instead of the silver (my friends insisted that I NOT put silver in my daughters mouth!) so I've gotta save a buck somewhere (-"

And Lilah, well she experienced not 1 but 2 rites of passage....she went to the dentist for the first time AND pooped in the tub....laughed hysterically when she saw it!

I Love Old Navy so much...YES I think I'll marry it!

So much great stuff to write about ...where do I begin?!

This weekend was grrrrrrreat! My sister and her husband came down to visit and friends of ours (John and Hallie) who also live in Maine. Words can't even describe how much fun we are all hanging out together. The kids have a blast together too and little Lilah keeps right up with them. John and Hallie showed up with a case of ring pops so you know they had the kids at hello! When Hallie started doing the human flying platform with the kids I made a mental note to go have my will changed. Sorry Kim, you may have to fight the Twomeys for custody of our children (-:

We drank, ate, danced, wrestled and put our husbands in time-out. O.K., I think my husband is the only one who had to go sit on the naughty chair but my sister's husband was close behind! Mr. La La loves to cook and cook he did! We feasted on bacon wrapped chicken (chicken, the poor mans scallop), meatball sandwiches, Oreo balls and pizza rolls mmmmm. My waistline is glad that weekends only come along once a week.

I had some birthday money to spend so headed to Old Navy on Sunday. Yesterday will go down in history as the day Leah found a pair of jeans that fits properly. I'm only 5ft 1 and I have a strangely shaped rear end. It isn't big, just flat. So even when a pair of jeans will fit everywhere else, the butt will have all kinds of extra material. For those of you who aren't rear end challenged let me explain what happens when you have a flat rear. Basically, you lose your drawers. I suspect it is the same for people with no hips. Well, my hips aren't much to speak of, I've got no junk in my trunk add to that these new stretchy kind of jeans and you've got yourself a recipe for dis"ass"ter. Either my crotch ends up down by my knees and I look like M.C. Hammer or I just have all of this empty jean space where the butt should be...we'll call it ghost butt.

So if any of you suffer from flat butt syndrome, get yourself down to Old Navy and get a pair of The Flirt boot cut style jeans. Now this part is very important...buy them 1 size smaller than you normally would because remember ingredient number 3 in the recipe for dis"ass"ter (stretchy jeans). So while they might feel snug, they'll loosen up in no time! The best part about these jeans is that they rung up as ONLY $9.99!!!! Old Navy, have you been reading my diary???

When I saw the price on the register a single tear ran down my face.