week ending mar 4, 2007

Week ending March 4, 2007: This week I’ve noticed the kids wanting to help with everything even more than usual. I was cleaning out the humidifier in the bathtub and Chloe asked if she could help and said she wanted to try it too. Alex has similarly volunteered to try routine and boring chores. The kids have learned the word “boring”. They say “what are we going to do today Mom?” and I say “play with our toys” and they say “no, that BORING!”. When we have to run an errand and they say they don’t want to go, I remind them that I helped them get to the fun places, and now they have to help me get the work done by going to places like the grocery store or the K-Mart. Chloe has decided that this means that each day a “Mommy part” and a “fun part”. She’ll ask “what are we going to do today, Mom?” and I’ll say “go to the grocery store” and she’ll say “No! What are we going to do for the FUN part?” She definitely believes that she deserves time every day to enjoy the things that she likes, but she does concede that the whole day doesn’t have to be about her. Most pre-schoolers believe that world revolves around them, so I guess this is some progress. We’re making very little progress with Alex’s potty training. He wets himself roughly once a day. He had a few days when he would actually decide that he needed to use the potty and he’d get there on time, so I started asking him if he had to use the potty rather than telling him he had to sit on the potty. I got myself in trouble again with my language around the kids. After the 100th time that I had to remind them that we didn’t have time to play around because we had to get to a party on time, I lost my temper and raised my voice at Chloe and said “we don’t have time for farting around, we have to GO!” and she said, “OK, OK, Mommy. I will stop farting around. When we get to the party will we have time fart around?”. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. In the pictures this week, Alex and Chloe are eating popsicles in the bathtub because they are too messy to eat clothed and it is too cold to be naked at any time other than the bath.