When I have days like today, I sometimes question myself. Is every toddler like this? Am I not giving her enough attention? Is she too tired? Bored? Am I not disciplining her appropriately? We don't really do time-outs per se... basically if she's getting too upset or starts throwing things/misbehaving/not listening, we remove her and we go into her room and we sit on her pink rug until she calms down (or 1 minute, whichever comes first). We don't just stick her in a corner and leave her alone, we sit with her and she usually calms down quite quickly and just wants a big cuddle, and then we talk about what she did wrong or why she had to come into her room. Well, today, after one of her many incidents of misbehaving, I turned to her and said "Riley that is NOT the way we blah blah blah" and she let out a big scream, and went running down the hall and into her room, sat on her pink rug (without me telling her to), and came back out when she was calm and totally happy. It was awesome. Exactly what we've been trying to achieve with our version of "time out." She was getting too overwhelmed, and she gave herself a little break, time to calm down, and came back out totally happy. It's things like that that make me think, yeah, maybe I do know what I'm doing (sometimes) after all.
On Sunday, Mark took Riley to soccer, despite the fairly cold weather. He always gets a little excited when he gets to dress her for the day, and here's what he came up with: