the quest for fun & a better today

at the end of today with both sweet babes in their beds i find myself weary, exhausted, frustrated and feeling a bit like a failure.  it seems i spent the entire day correcting and keeping big brother from breaking his little sister (not an exaggeration, his new favorite activity is finding exciting new ways to push her around) and keeping little sister out of ALL the things she is adamant about touching and eating that are just not allowed (trash, china cabinet, desk drawers, etc). it feels like i spent a lot of energy keeping my emotions in check and trying to guide and correct in a loving respectful way instead of screaming out orders and screeching that they listen to me...i promise you despite my efforts, some of those emotions still came spilling out, i'll have to try again tomorrow for a "no yelling" day.  but then i think about our day, outside of the way i am feeling, outside of this exhausted momma haze that fills my head when i finally get to stop after bedtime, and i wonder if maybe we had a better, more productive, more fun-filled day than i am giving myself credit for.  maybe all that i am doing is just part of the job description and its supposed to be that way and will continue to be this way until they are old and moved out of my house.  maybe i'm so exhausted because i tried my best to be creative and loving and productive to two babies somehow all at once; its an impossible quest but i did really give it my best shot.  this morning was full of frustrations and i started to wonder if maybe its because my littles have grown and their needs and interests have changed and perhaps i've been so in the midst of this first-trimester-energy-sucking-phase that i've forgotten to engage myself in keeping the environment around them new and exciting and stimulating. yes, that happened.  so at naptime i regrouped.  i fixed a broken child's chair and created a desk environment for peter because he is so infatuated with momma's desk, surely he'd like his own-with a writing station to boot. i had hesitated because the desk is at betsy's level and she is not ready for a free-for-all with writing utensils and the like but decided it was time to just buck up and teach her that "no, she may not write with the markers on the wall" and keep them available to peter if the interest strikes and see what happens. and yes betsy tried with all her might to get into those things today but even more exciting, my boy pete sat and colored and came and went and colored some more, all in his notebook he got out on his own and all with markers he opened (and closed!!!!!) on his own.  little tiny changes make all the difference.  he wants to be his own man and he wants to follow his own agenda. most of the whining and fighting and resisting momma's itinerary comes when i am imposing the day on him instead of including him in the plans. we've still be struggling with some potty training things; particularly frustrating after having an accident free month (day AND night) and then suddenly little bouts, 2-3 days of wet all the time (day AND night). still struggling with momma managing the potty schedule instead of him telling me when it was time. so i wondered, what if i encouraged him to do it all on his own and took myself out of the equation. so i tried it: here's the stool so you can turn on the light all by yourself. then you already know how to pull down your pants and big boy underwear, right? and then you already know how to put the toilet seats up and stand really close to the potty right? yes! you know just what to do and you can do it all by yourself without momma, can't you?  and just like that his eyes lit up and the rest of the day, a casual reminder that whenever he needed to go potty he could go and do it all by himself without momma was all it took to send him scampering off to the bathroom to take care of it.  how wonderful!  this afternoon i changed my tone to see if it would alter the way the morning had gone. lots of "can you please help momma with this?" and lots of "would you like to help momma with that?" and wow he was all over it with lots of manners to boot.  and so i realized. once again, perhaps it was me that was creating all this chaos and all this toddler-nastiness and all this resistance to order.  perhaps it was my exhaustion and my frustration and my lack of patience and my lack of respect and my lack of manners that was causing him to push back at any request (demand?) i sent his way. and now here i am, knowing, remembering once again, that i have so much more control over all of this than i sometimes want to accept. its so much easier to blame toddlers and their terrible two's for all the reasons the day is going awry.  perhaps that this boy loves attention and i was giving him so much negative attention he just kept raising the bar to make sure the attention kept coming. when he was given lots of praise for all the good things he was doing and minimal commenting/correcting took place for the bad things, a lot of the yucky actions ceased to happen.  with one exception....poor little sister is taking the brunt of something. i'm not sure if he is testing her or testing me or testing his place in the order of our home but he is still really rough with her. sometimes its giggling and tickling (in the face?) and hugging her (around the neck while laying on top of her?) and they are both having fun until he gets out of hand and takes it too far and she ends up hurt. and sometimes its almost unprovoked malicious stuff like walking right up and dropping a giant metal tractor on her head or attempting to bite through her arm. i'm not sure how to handle that one.  the momma bear in me wants to ROAR it to a halt because my littlest is getting hurt, but then i remember he is one of my littles too and my roaring causes him a different kind of pain. at the same time, you can't let it go unnoticed.  its a struggle, one i hope he gets bored of quickly as she becomes more and more able to play with him. on the note of playing, we pulled out some toys that had been put away as they were not age appropriate for anyone when the putting away happened. and my goodness, these two were fully immersed in the playing for the rest of the evening. another sign i had sort of let my creative involvement with their environment slip during the last 13 weeks of growing their new littlest sibling....when they can concentrate on one activity for  a long period of time, its a good sign we've hit the jackpot and found a perfectly age-appropriate, skill level appropriate activity for them.  wouldn't you know he sat there for 35 minutes on that chair, un-moving today while holding a little beetle on a dustpan, just watching its antennae twitch.  there is no better feeling than seeing both of your kids totally involved in what is right before them.  so after reflecting on all of this, the weariness is not lifted (nor will it be until I am fast asleep) but the frustration and the feelings of failure have faded into a smile as i remember the parts of day worth remembering and look forward to creating more of the same tomorrow. blogs have a way of sharing only the beautiful, rainbow colored moments of our lives....but its important to be honest and share the real life parts of our life too.  makes those special shiny moments all the more wonderful.

matching and sorting

this 2 year old man of ours is very much into sorting and pouring and matching. and he took to this spur-of-the-moment activity with very little instruction, i was so pleased he picked up what i wanted him to do immediately. we have color stacking toy but it seemed like it wasn't age appropriate yet - but then had the idea of making 6 mason jars into color sorting devices by taping a strip of paper around the body of the jar. the idea was for him to sort the colored wooden rings into the matching colored jar. he was a whiz at the project!  after he sorted them all correctly, he'd purposely put a ring in the incorrect jar and then say "nooo!" and then pour it out into the right jar. pretty fun and simple little color practicing game that he seemed to enjoy.

i am finding in my quest to learn what makes a 2 year old tick that it is activities and not "toy's" per se that get him excited. its not fair for me to say "go play" because he wants to be busy with tasks and the toys our culture gives our children just don't cut the mustard. continuing to learn from several books and my e-course and hands-on-experimenting and slowly implementing what works for us at this stage.

the e-learning course this week is talking about the impermanence of the play space - create a good base and then continually you'll be changing out the activities/toys/concepts based on what your child is into and excited about at the time. its fascinating, really. am in love with waldorf and montessori and anything that points me in the right direction of further understanding how to create an environment for our children to thrive from an early age.