Here We Grow Again Sale

Eau Claire has a semi annual child consignment sale, one in the spring and in the fall. The fall sale is this weekend and I headed over there with some friends to find winter clothes for Ella and some toys to keep her busy once it is too cold to spend much time outside. I was pretty disappointed with the clothing selection, although I did find a really nice snowsuit and a few other clothing items. I was pretty excited to find some fun toys though. I got a swimming pool and put balls in it for an at home ball pit, and I also found a tunnel for her to crawl through.

As soon as we put the balls in the pool Ella jumped in and started playing. She loved it!

She also enjoyed crawling in her tunnel and throwing toys in there

Apparently Kyle likes my make shift ball pit too!

These toys will end up in the basement this winter. I am hoping to find a big carpet remnant to fill up part of the basement so Ella can have a play area down there, which will help me keep our living room a bit cleaner!

What To Do?

What is a mother to do on a weekend free of her child? I am thrilled to have to ask myself that question this weekend. Don't get me wrong, I love Ella and I miss her, but when Kyle's mom offered to take her up north to their lake home for the weekend, I was very excited! I have never been Ella free for more than 36 hours, and both the times she stayed with her 2 sets of grandparents we had something going on (moving and a wedding) and couldn't fully appreciate all the freedom. This morning I slept in about an hour later than normal and had a very leisurely morning. I drank a cup of tea while reading my bible, then I showered and had breakfast. I spent a lot of time working on a new counted cross stitch project I got recently and did some cleaning. I didn't want to spend all my free time cleaning but there are some things that just have to get done. Kyle spent most of the day working on his new truck. Then we had dinner and went for a walk. Tomorrow after church we are going to the MN State Fair and staying in Woodbury until Loretta and Ella get back on Monday. On Monday while we wait for Ella we will probably go to a movie and Kyle will most likely need to do some work.

I called Loretta today just to check in and it sounds like Ella is having a great time. She has been sleeping well and played in the lake for awhile. I really wasn't concerned that she would have fun though! I am sure she is getting all the attention she can handle and playing all day long. It is good for her to have some time where she doesn't have to run errands with me or play by herself while I get things done. I think it is also important for her to spend time away from me. She is very used to having her mama around all time and can be a bit clingy, so this time away will be good for us both.

Thank goodness for grandparents!

A Girl After My Own Heart

We are in the throes of teething once again, but this time Ella isn't just crying more, she is throwing tantrums. Every time we say no to her or take something away she freaks out. It is quite stressful for me, so I decided I needed some chocolate when we were at the store the other day. Normally I don't give Ella treats unless it is something special, but I thought she deserved something sweet since she is suffering right now too. Well, she loved it! Ahhh... like mother like daughter!! I wish I had a picture of her with her chocolate mustache, but I didn't think to run inside to get it. I guess I will just have to buy more chocolate and give her some, just for the photo opportunity of course. Not because I want it or anything! I am always self-controlled when it comes to sweets!!



But seriously, we are having a hard time dealing with her tantrums. She is having them often, even when she isn't teething. We feel like she needs to be disciplined somehow so that she knows it is not ok to react that way when we say no, but we aren't sure what to do. We have decided that we will be spanking her as part of discipline. I didn't want to spank our kids but Ella is particularly stubborn and willfully disobedient, and nothing else has worked so far. Plus, we talked to some adult couples at our church and they were talking about spanking as a teaching mechanism and doing it out of love. My experience with spanking was always that parents did it when they were mad and wanted to punish their child (I wasn't spanked, so my only experience is witnessing strangers spanking their kids or what we talked about in my child development classes). I had never seen or heard of it done in a way that positively changed their child's behavior. Our pastor's daughter actually thanked her parent's for spanking her because she felt like it made her a better person! She is in high school now and gets pretty disgusted with her classmates poor attitudes. She had some attitude issues when she was younger. Her parents spanked her when she acted up and slowly she changed for the better.



The problem with spanking her when she has a tantrum is that she freaks out even more. I don't know if that will slowly change as she learns that she will get a spank if she acts that way, or if she will continue to tantrum even harder when she gets spanked. I have also thought of simply ignoring her when she has a tantrum, because she is really just looking for attention, so if I ignore her maybe she will figure out that it is a poor way of getting attention. I know we need to be teaching her positive ways of expressing her frustration, but she can't talk yet, so how else could she express it? So many questions, so few answers. Does anyone have any advice?