Home for the day

Emmy's not feeling well--just a cold, I think--but we're staying in for the day. Maddy's a little bummed because she wanted to play with her friends later, but she perked up a little when I told her we could play some of her board games when Emmy's sleeping.

Too bad it's so cold outside or else we could spend some time hunting roly-polies, Maddy's new hobby. It's one of those days that looks very deceiving. It's sunny, not a cloud in the sky, but you get a chill to the bone when you walk out.

Tomorrow we've got some errands to run and then a friend's birthday party to go to in the afternoon. It's going to be at a local park where there are buried plastic dinosaur bones for the kids to dig up in the sand.

And a note to myself--whenever I ask Maddy to pick up her toys, she used to always complain about how it was too much and she couldn't do it. (Not like I'm asking her to pick up the entire playroom, just her box of princesses or her babydoll stuff) I used to try to validate how she was feeling and would say something like, "I know it's a lot and it can seem like you can't do it. You can, you're a big girl, blah, blah, blah..." And I would usually end up helping her because that wouldn't work.

Then one day last week I asked her to pick up her little princesses from the coffee table. She started in on how it was too much stuff. I just said, "I know, but you took it out and you have to pick it up."

And she did.

I nearly fell over. No whining, no complaining, just silently and quickly picked it up and brought the box to me to put the lid on it. So now I've learned something new to say to her. I don't know how long it will last (probably will stop working today since I'm posting about it), but I just wonder now how much time and complaining I would have saved if I had just said that from the beginning. :)