Our Kids

Well Piper and Lela are growing up fast but at least I will have the blog to remind me about it later;) Lately they have been chatting up a storm, they are right in that place where they have verbal skills and cognitive skills but neither one of them works as fast as they would like, this leads to……..frustration:) Yes that is right, the tantrum is coming, the tantrum is coming lock up your dogs and batten down the hatches. Lately the trantums have come from Lela, she seems to feel things much more intensely than Piper which leads to more frustration. Piper is more the one that holds her finger right over Lela’s arm and says, “I am not touching her” until Lela is in tears. From what I have heard this is a lot like JJ and Jason as tots so it is kind of like cosmic karma. Jason swears it was always JJ tormenting him but I suspect it was the other way around since Piper is so much like her dad, LOL!

The other day Piper was on the potty and she called out to Jason that she was finished. We knew she was finished because she declared, “I saw a little poo sticking out.” Apparently she had been watching herself poop through her legs and saw it sticking out. When she bounded off the potty there was indeed a little poo in there and she was quite excited that she had actually seen it exit. Maybe she is British since they are so fond of toilet humor:)

On the Lela front our parenting coach encouraged us to have the girls (all small kids) do more for themselves. I let them do a lot but I still do most things for them because it is easier on me, waiting for them to put on their shoes is like Chinese water torture. So I have been making a major effort to see what they can, can’t, will and won’t do for themselves. One thing she pointed out is that right now they want to help and if we don’t cultivate that want to help it will be gone and they won’t help. Makes sense. They have been going potty by themselves and pulling up and down their pants, cleaning off their own dishes, setting the table and a few other things. They have been picking out their clothes and shoes, helping with the dishes and laundry, cleaning up their toys and other things for quite some time. Now because of all the extra doing Lela has come up with her favorite phrase, “I can’t.” Now she says that all the time for any activity that she does not want to do, crikies that can get old really quick. I end up in a 10 minute long conversation with her about why she “can’t” and more often than not we decide to do the task together.

Piper’s latest trick is to purposely dump things on the ground for no apparent reason (other than to torment me of course). She took all the moss out of my budding paperwhites and dropped it to the floor, just a minute ago she turned her sippy cup upside down and let it all drip out (while I was writing this post), the took things off the counter today and just dropped them one by one onto the floor. I know that she is testing me, maybe she likes to hear me sigh really heavily (that is fodder for another post) I just pray I have the strength to get through the twin 3’s with some sense of accomplishment and happy well rounded tots (is that too much to ask:-P).