Life lately has been... interesting. Riley is 2 years and 9 months, Jack is 13 months (approximately). Jackson has sort of turned into a crazy obsessed mama's boy... if I am anywhere in the vicinity, he wants to be with me... Or he wants me down on the floor sitting right next to him and playing with him. I can't even go get a drink or snack or use the bathroom without him crying and chasing after me. He gets in to EVERYTHING. He hates sitting in his high chair (unless being fed sausages). He throws big tantrums when he doesn't get what he wants. But the hardest thing is that when I'm home with him, he just does not want me out of his sight. I love that he loves me so much, but it makes the day pretty challenging!
While I do like sharing cute stories and pictures on this blog, one of the main reasons for this blog is to document my kids' lives, and to record things I probably won't remember 10 years down the road. Things my kids might wonder, things I might want to look back and read about, and lately I have not done a very good job of that! Life lately has been... interesting. Riley is 2 years and 9 months, Jack is 13 months (approximately). Jackson has sort of turned into a crazy obsessed mama's boy... if I am anywhere in the vicinity, he wants to be with me... Or he wants me down on the floor sitting right next to him and playing with him. I can't even go get a drink or snack or use the bathroom without him crying and chasing after me. He gets in to EVERYTHING. He hates sitting in his high chair (unless being fed sausages). He throws big tantrums when he doesn't get what he wants. But the hardest thing is that when I'm home with him, he just does not want me out of his sight. I love that he loves me so much, but it makes the day pretty challenging! And Riley? Well, I'm not sure what's happening with her, but she has been OFF the past week or so. She has had more meltdowns than ever before. She has started being MEAN to her brother. Hitting him, pushing him, kicking him, throwing toys at him. It's like all of a sudden she snapped and her patience with him ran out. I'm pretty sure this new aggression of hers and Jackson's super needy behavior are directly related. Jackson wants me with him constantly, and Riley has definitely noticed. Is this an excuse for her to hurt him? No. Of course not. But it's clear to me she's pretty unsettled lately. The crazy thing is, she will be so nice to him and give him hugs and kisses and share her toys and play right with him, and then all of sudden she will snap and lash out at him. At the moment I feel like I can't leave the two of them unattended even for a minute because she may really hurt him! This has NEVER been a problem up until now, so something funny is going on in that little mind of hers. Take this toy computer, for example.... most of the time Riley lets Jackson pay along with her... smash they keys, crawl on top of it, do whatever he wants. And then all of sudden she will just snap and shove him over and keep shoving him until I rescue him. No forms of discipline have really been working, there have only been two things that I've found to work... it seems that Riley needs to just let off some aggression sometimes, and her outlet happens to be her brother. One day I told her that if she felt mad, that she should take some of her foam blocks and smash them into the ground and yell "I'm soo mad!" instead of hitting or pushing. And she did it all day long! And then she was calm after she did it! I don't know if it's going to be a good long term solution, but we shall see! Jackson is a crazy little monkey lately. With a temper! He LOVES to be outside. And he loves to climb up the stairs. If he can't do those things, he will throw a big old tantrum. He also loves putting things in and out of containers, and will do this for quite some time! And he ADORES swimming. He would live in the swimming pool if he could! But boy should you hear him scream when he has to get out! We've started doing a few things with Riley lately that I'm really liking! I rearranged her drawers in her room so that her bottom drawer is full of options for her clothes for the day. She picks out her own undies, pants, skirts, tops, everything, and gets dressed by herself. She needs help getting her t-shirt on, but everything else she does by herself (including taking PJs off). She LOVES being able to go upstairs and get dressed all by herself! She has also decided she needs privacy when she's using the toilet. If I linger, she promptly tells me to leave her alone. :) One downside of her getting easily undressed by herself... she is frequently naked... I am so so excited for this fabulous spring/summer weather that we've been getting. We could spend hours and hours outside. We're in the process of getting the backyard perfectly baby friendly... we've got a trampoline, slide, sandpit, Riley's veggie garden, a little kiddie table/bench, water table, outdoor rug for kids to play on, and pretty soon we're going to get a big shade. And Aunt Jennie may have bought Riley something huge and ridiculous (of the water toy/pool variety) so that will be making an appearance out there shortly! Not sure if this moments before Jacky Boy got the big shove... I'm hoping not... Gosh I look at this picture and her cute little fake cheesy smiley angel face and I just want to go and snuggle with her in bed. And I think how can she go from the most fun, silly, smart and happy little monkey to the screaming crying mess of tears that won't listen to me? The DRAMA of an almost 3 year old, I tell you. We've got a lot on our plates at the moment in the Bartlett house, trying to balance new jobs, sick babies, crazy babies, and lack of sleep. But man there are some fun times!!! Can't wait until Aunt Jennie gets into town next weekend, and then.... DISNEYLAND soon after that!!! Riley's mind is going to be blown when we get to Disneyland. This guy will like it too, I'm sure. :) The end of long jumbled post!
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Not the terrible twos, nothing about Riley is terrible. BUT. Ohhhh boy is she learning how to test boundaries and exert her independence. Let me give you some examples. We'll start with her newest developments: hitting and biting. I will say, this doesn't happen very frequently, and it is clear the reason she does it is either out of frustration, or to get a reaction out of us. We have started doing a version of "time-out" with her as a consequence for this action... basically we remove her from the situation, and sit her in her room. Mark and I have slightly different ideas of what a time-out should look like, but we both agree it does not involve just sitting her in a corner and leaving her there. Mark usually sits her down and makes her stay on a certain spot, but sits with her. I usually do something similar, but give her the option of cuddling me... both version end with an apology, kiss and cuddle. Another new development? Just flat out screaming her head off. Not for no reason, but if something doesn't go her way? She either flops to the floor, or just starts shrieking. Now, I say "something doesn't go her way" but I don't mean this happens all that frequently. She responds well MOST of the time when she doesn't get something she wants, but every so often she completely loses her cool. When this happens, she cannot be reasoned with, and any attempts to talk to her or distract her are useless, so she gets picked up and carried to her room. In this instance, she's not on time-out per se, and I give her two options. She can come out of her room when either (1) she wants a cuddle or (2) she's ready to calm down and stop crying. Most of the time she chooses the first one right away, and she jumps into my arms and stops crying. Every once in a while she keeps screaming, so I tell her that when she's ready and all calm, she can come out and give me a cuddle. She usually carries on for another minute, then trots out and tells me she's "all calm now." Then we carry on with our activities. Toddler emotions are wild, I tell you. Other recent issues? SLEEP. Holy. cow. Riley has become a master procrastinator. Bedtime has become absolutely ridiculous this past week. As in, there have been multiple nights where I haven't gotten her to sleep until almost 9pm. We've entered the phase of "want a snack, want milk, wanna pee pee on the potty, want a story, want tickles, want more mama snuggles, etc..." And she mostly only wants me to do everything for her, not daddy. And she all of a sudden doesn't want to go to sleep on her own... now, she has just recently told me she's "a little bit scared of the dark," as well as "a little bit scared of spiders and crocodiles coming through the door," so maybe that could have something to do with it, but mostly she just wants me to snuggle her and tickle her and stay in her room with her until she falls asleep. If she was our only child, I would totally do this every night and have no problem with it. BUT. Often times Jackson needs my attention too, especially with Mark working overtime trying to write his thesis. So we've had a bit of a battle lately. I'm hoping it's just a phase and things will settle back into normal... probably right about the time we move out of our house, into temporary housing, and then across the world back to the US. "I'm TWO!" and calling daddy. And as long as we're on the topic of sleep: Someone seems to want to stop taking naps. This one is not a battle I'm willing to lose quite yet. I KNOW she still needs a nap, and she's not dropping it without a serious fight from me!!! BUT, it is hard work getting her to sleep. And she knows that the "need to do poo poo on the potty" is the trump card that will almost always get her out of bed. The other day I took her EIGHT times to the potty. EIGHT. Now you might think I'm a sucker, but on that eighth time she did actually poop, soo I knew she wasn't totally full of it. :) Today I spent two hours trying to get her to nap, and in the end I gave her a bunch of books, told her to sit quietly for a few more minutes and then she could get out of bed. No nap. I think part of the problem is we've been fairly inactive in the mornings this past week. The weather is not awesome, Jackson takes a morning nap so we're a little bit stuck her, and she has become even more obsessed with books than usual, so we've been spending HOURS each morning reading stories. Don't get me wrong, I love reading with her, but I think we need to get out and run around and wear her down a bit if she's going to take a nap!! Now of course, in all this ridiculousness, there are so many amazing and hilarious things developing with her that I sometimes just sit and look at her in awe. How she can have a story read to her a few times and then she's got it memorized. How she can recite books without even looking at them. How she knows and remembers songs I've only sang to her a few times. How her imagination is taking off. How I make up stories for her before bed each night, and she remembers them and requests them days later. How all of a a sudden today she caught me totally off guard by saying, "Hey mama, what's up? Wanna raisin?" And then after Jackson woke up and was crying, she looked at me and said "Oh no, baby is so sad! Probably needs to feed some booby mama, he's hungry." The girl is sharp as a tack, and could not possibly be any funnier. What happens when Riley goes to "get Jack Jack" after he wakes up from his nap. He was totally pumped that that thing just magically appeared in his hands. :) What an adventure this whole parenthood thing is!
This precious face? Throws tantrums? Noooooo..... About 6 or 8 weeks ago, Riley all of a sudden started throwing some craaaaazy tantrums. She didn't get what she wanted? Tantrum. She had to leave a favorite activity? Tantrum. You gave her the wrong snack? Tantrum. Like, throw herself on the floor, crying and kicking kind of tantrum. Even biting. And I was like ooohhhh crap, we're in for some serious terrible twos... And Mark and I had some discussions about how we were going to deal with these tantrums, what we thought was appropriate for her age, and what would work best to help her express her displeasure or disappointment in a more, umm, manageable way. Now, I used to be a behavior therapist for little munchkins with autism, so I've actually got quite a few tricks up my sleeve when it comes to dealing with and decreasing less than desirable behavior. But not every trick works for every child, and it was a bit of trial and error to see what was best for Riley. First, we tried a little bit of the "ignore" approach. Bad behavior? Ignore it. But that was totally ineffective. She wasn't throwing a tantrum to manipulate us, she was throwing a tantrum because she was truly upset and didn't know how to express it other than get mad and cry. And ignoring her outbursts just isolates her and doesn't help her deal with how she's feeling. She is, after all, only 18 months old. If she were a 5 year old whining and whining about who knows what, the ignore approach might be more appropriate. But in our case, at this point, it's not the right thing to do. Time outs are also currently not an option for us, because I think she's way too young for this kind of discipline. And she doesn't do a whole lot of "time out worthy" things, so I'm not sure when we'd even use them... We'll see if that changes once there's another tiny human in our house, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there. So for now, here's what's been working for us: (1) Lots of advanced warnings when we're transitioning towards something new, or away from something she loves. Say for example, we need to leave the playground. She LOVES the playground. We give her a 5 minute warning, and a 1 minute warning. Does she understand the concept of time, and what's 5 minutes vs. 1 minute? Probably not. But she does get that we're telling her in a little bit we will be leaving, so it's not a total shock when it's time to go. In addition, we give her a choice of what she wants to do before we leave. So, we might say, "Riley we're leaving in a few minutes, you can do one more thing, would you like to go down the slide or on the swings?" and she gets to choose. Then once we're there, we remind her it's the last activity, and that she has X number of swings or slides, left before we go. We count them down until it's time to go. Then we say "bye bye slide" or swing, or whatever, and we're off. Usually, there's no tantrum. It's awesome. if she does start to get upset, we remind her of all the fun things we can do wherever we're going next, and that pretty much always works. This little routine has made transitioning away from her most favorite activities and toys (including the ipad), pretty easy. And that was not always the case. Trust me. (2) Using "IF ____ THEN ______" sentences. Oh my gosh the day it became clear that she understood this concept was AWESOME. Things changed for the better, for sure. For example: She asks for fruit snacks for lunch. I don't mind her eating fruit snacks, but I don't want her to have them for lunch. So I tell her "IF you eat your sandwich for lunch, THEN you can have the fruit snacks". And she does! Or sometimes she wants to go outside, but we're not done with dinner. "IF you eat 4 more bites, THEN you can go outside." It seriously works every time. No tantrums. We both win. Now obviously this won't work for every situation, even if she asks for ice cream for breakfast, I'm not giving it to her just because she eats her cereal first. No way. Or if she wants to go outside but it's freezing and pouring. I those situations you just explain why she can't have what she wants, and you know it's sad/frustrating/disappointing to her, but let's do THIS fun thing instead! (3) Rewards (also known as bribes). This will not work if your child doesn't really understand the concept of delayed gratification, but luckily Riley seems to get it, so we go with it. Basically, if we're about to do an activity I know is no fun for Riley (let's take grocery shopping for example), I need to be prepared to offer her something in exchange for good behavior. This does NOT mean I have to buy her something or spoil her rotten. In our case, right outside our grocery store there's this little fire truck ride on toy... you can put money in it for a "ride", but she's happy to just sit in there and turn the wheel. So as we enter the store, I show her the fire truck, tell her if she sits nicely in the cart while we shop, that she can ride the fire truck when we're all done. If during the shopping trip she starts to get mad or try and get out of the cart, I remind her of the fire truck, and she pulls it together. The at the end, she gets to ride the fire truck, I got my groceries with a happy baby, everyone is happy! Of course occasionally, I do splurge and buy her things. But this is NOT one of those "my kid is going to throw a fit if she doesn't get this toy so I'll just buy it" kind of things. This is a spontaneous, "wow Riley, you've been a total trooper on all these totally boring errands, look what you get to have for being so good." Our latest purchase like that? A $12 "puppa" from Kmart. This little one LOVES dogs. Seriously she goes crazy for doggies. And I saw this one while shopping, and had to get it for her. She calls it her "puppa" and she literally carried it around with her all day. This next photo was after she took a huge tumble and smacked her little head on the floor. I scooped her right up and she cried and cried, and asked me to get her blankie and her paci. I sat her down on the couch so I could go find her things, and I came back to her snuggling her "puppa." Notice how there is an ipad right by her head, and yet she's just chilling with her new BFF. Best $12 I ever spent. Anyway, back to my tantrum prevention strategies... (4) Redirection/Distraction. Sometimes, none of the above apply. And maybe sometimes you will see the beginnings of a tantrum, but you have NO IDEA why it's happening. If you're quick about it, you can cut off the tantrum before it really gets going with a little redirection. Like, "Riley let's go read (insert favorite story here), hurry I'll race you to your room!! And off she runs as if we're playing a game of chase. Or, "look Riley! There's a birdie over there, let's see if we can catch it!" You know, anything to get her mind off whatever she was just about to throw a fit over. At this age they are so easily redirected, it usually works like a charm. (5) When all else fails... No matter what you do, how on top of it you are, and how hard you try, your little one is going to have tantrums. Sometimes you know exactly why, as they will make it very clear what they are upset about. In this case, it's best to try and provide her with the words that she can't express. A recent example: Riley likes to carry ALL her blankets with her from room to room. That's two large blankets and 2 small ones. And unless she grabs them all juuuuuust right, it's tough for her to get them all in one go. And she does NOT want to carry them one at a time, she wants them ALL in her arms together. I know this, and I can see her try to gather them all and I know exactly what she wants. I don't intervene unless she asks, or when she starts to get visibly upset and about to have a meltdown. But sometimes I'm in the other room when this is happening, and my only indication is her crying in frustration... in that case, I ask what's wrong, and usually the extent of her vocab is to tell me "gray grays!" I say something about how I know she's frustrated because it's tough to try and carry all the blankies at the same time, maybe she could carry two and I can carry two, or she can ask for help. She usually then asks for help, and we carry them together. And once we get to where she wanted to go, I get this face: Ad lastly- sometimes Riley wants to do something I just cannot allow. Most of our dangerous things are baby-proofed, but you can't baby proof everything. For example. In our front/side yard, we have a bunch of little rocks. Riley LOVES to play in the rocks. Most of the time, she does really well with them. Piles them up, shovels them, throws them, stomps on them, etc. And then all of a sudden she will give me this little side eye, and stick a few in her mouth. I will give her a warning, telling her (1) to spit them out and (2) that if she puts another rock in her mouth, she's going to have to be done playing in the rocks. I tell her it's not safe to put rocks in her mouth, she could choke or hurt her teeth, so if she does it again she is all done playing with them. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. If she puts rocks in her mouth again, I remove her from them and she's generally NOT pleased. I tell her again why it's not okay to put the rocks in her mouth, and we go to a different activity. She's not in time out, she's not in trouble, she just doesn't get to keep playing with the rocks. Oh, and don't believe me about the little side eye she gives me? It looks a little like this: So that's where we stand with tantrums lately. She's been pretty awesome lately, and I am really loving this age! We'll see how this changes as we get closer to the big T-W-O, but for now, I'd say we're doing just fine. :)
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