Discipline

"Spare the rod, and spoil the child". I have heard this many times in my lifetime, and I do truly believe in it. Yes, you heard me right. We spank. However, I also believe that some children need to be spanked, while others are fine with just a harsher tone of voice and a disapproving look. We are so very lucky in our house to have one of each of those children.

Riley is the spanker. Harsher voices do nothing for her. She giggles at the disapproving look. Timeouts are a joke to her (but we still do them). She sings in timeout, as if it were karoake time. So for her, we do three strikes and you're out. She gets two timeouts for the same offense and the third time she gets a spanking and has to go to her room. There are days when I think it is working, but then there are days (like today) that make me question my parenting.

Riley uses reverse psychology on us. I swear. Her new thing is when we spank her, she thanks us. It never fails, spank Riley and "Thank you Mommy" or "Thank you Daddy" comes out of her little mouth. It has us baffled. We're not sure how to react. We just tell her "You're welcome, but you must now stay in your room as punishment." She either says "Okay!" or starts crying. She is a mystery.

Bree is our harsh voice/nasty look child. Works everytime. I love it. I wish Riley were more like her.

Please...

Bree signed please today to her therapist! Woo hoo!

You gotta celebrate the small things in life. :)

A breakthrough

I hope I am not jinxing ourselves but I think we are on the edge of a breakthrough with Bree. She is starting to communicate more. I have been praying and hoping that she would start to express more with us, and lately in the past three days she's made improvements.

She shakes her head "no" to express herself appropriately. We are working on "yes" and she can do it when prompted, but not yet as an expression.

She does the signs for "all done", "more" and "milk" as she wants or needs to use them. We are working on "please" and "thank you".

She has started to sign along with "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and "Twinkle twinkle little star". She can only do one movement, but she is expressing interest in doing the moves with us.

I hope that this trend continues and I have more to report back to you later in the week!

Happy weekend...

This is one of those relax at home weekends. Sometimes those are the best.

Riley has taken a liking to baby dolls, and has even named her ladybug cabbage patch doll "Lily Lee". I am sure the baby's name will change again, but I am impressed with her choice of name. It is an actual name, and not something silly. She carries her babies around, shooshing them and telling them "It's okay.". She puts them in timeout, pushes them in their strollers, and disappears for a while into her room every so often only for me to find her tucking her baby into bed when I check on her.

Bree has been getting around so quickly lately. She is a crawling pro! She crawls to Riley's room, to her room, the play kitchen, the real kitchen and anywhere else she can get to. Her and Riley are starting to play more together which is sweet to hear when they are getting along. Right now at this moment Riley is telling to Bree to "Shoo shoo get out" of where she is playing at and Bree is whining about it. Bree continues to improve with her length of time she can stand unassisted, and we are working on her walking. She will really only take one step before collapsing down on her knees to start crawling. She is not quite comfortable with the walking. Her physical therapist says her core muscles are not strong enough to allow her to feel stable so she can walk with confidence. We do daily exercises on the exercise ball to help strengthen the muscles for her.

I am almost done with all my observations at school. Next week is the last week of school and I will only be going in on Tuesday. (Thursday Bree has an evaluation to see where she is at with her development). I am excited to complete this portion of my schooling because it brings me one step closer to my student teaching in August, which is one step closer to graduation and completion of college. I am in one class right now, and when that class is complete I only have one left. Woo hoo!

Adam is working hard on working out and getting into shape for his physical test he has on June 3rd. Since I am almost done with school he (and myself) are looking forward to him switching to day shift so that he can be home to help me out with the girls at night. It will be great to have someone home at night to talk to, eat dinner with, and go to bed with. It's lonely going to bed by myself every night.

That's us in a nut shell right now. Life is good, and we plan on enjoying the rest of our weekend...together.