mother's day

i meant to post yesterday but didn't get the chance... even though it's a day late, happy mother's day to all the mommies out there!!

we had a nice day yesterday- everyone was reasonably happy (and by everyone i mean the kiddos) which made for an excellent day! i got a sweet mother's day card and then after meeting we went out to eat at half nelson's. yummy as always!! we ran into levi, kayla, ruth, chris and alicia there so it was fun to chat with them (as always... fun bunch!). cole fell asleep about 10 minutes from home, which meant we still had our normal sunday routine- teeny weeny nap in the car and a flat-out refusal to nap in bed. if he hadn't needed his diaper changed, i think he would've taken one, but he slept all the way through the change (i even left his pants off so he wouldn't get woken up by having them put back on) and then was wide awake as soon as he was changed. go figure. we let him play by himself in his room for a few hours- we were hoping that he'd eventually fall asleep, maybe just out of boredom, but no such luck. as long as he wasn't crying, we figured he'd be fine by himself. and he was. anyway, with a tiny little nap comes a big case of the crankies, usually. we were surprised that it wasn't nearly as bad as usual, although cole did get a few time-outs after pushing it to "three".

this was his time-out temper tantrum... taken AFTER he fell off the chair and landed on his face while doing the exact same thing. usually he learns pretty quick; guess the urge to throw a fit overtook his common sense.

daddy felt sorry for cole, having to bend down and crawl to push his lego train car thingy on the floor; he stacked lots of legos on top of it so cole could push it without bending over. all i had to say was "wow", while thinking that pushing those things on your hands and knees is pretty much the NORMAL way to do it, but whatever...! yup, those are my boys!

a little update on the 1,2,3 magic deal: it's going a lot better than i expected! we started this in the late afternoon on friday and considering that cole is barely 21 months, he's really getting the hang of it. the hardest part of the system is the "no talking, no emotion" part. that means that once you start counting, you ONLY count, you don't give them any more warnings, discussions, whatever. and when it's all over, whether or not there was a time out, you just leave the issue alone instead of bringing it up again (unless it's a very serious thing, like chasing the cat with a steak knife, for example). even things like "are you going to be good now?" or "i hope you learned your lesson" are discouraged... it's pretty interesting. i have to really bite my tongue because it's first instinct to tell cole that he's got to be good (after his time out). i know that this probably seems really strange to some people, and that's fine- everyone has their own way of raising kids! this seems to be working for us, because cole has started listening just a little bit better, which makes us super-happy!!