Violent
Posted: February 4, 2013 Filed under: Little Women, War and Peace 4 CommentsJune has entered an unpleasant phase – she hits and punches Evan whenever she gets upset. It’s obvious that she does it to hurt him. Of course she goes straight into time out for hitting, punching, kicking, slapping, and so on, and we always have a talk afterwards about why those things are bad – and she can demonstrate what “soft” or “nice” behavior would be. But she’s so impulsive that it seems she can’t resist responding with violence when she thinks Evan has wronged her.
I know she’ll eventually get the message that what she’s doing isn’t ok, so for now I plan to stick with the time outs and discussion – June is smart enough that she understands the concept, it’s just hard to apply. Because she’s 2.
Evan went through a similar phase at a similar age, and he grew out of it. But it started when Jarom was in Korea for an internship while I was pregnant with June, so I had a hard time dealing with it. Fortunately it seems that a lot of things are easier the second time around, and I’m not as worried about June turning into a violent criminal. (At all, really. Can you imagine?) I don’t mean that I let her bad behavior slide or that I act unconcerned – I just don’t spend extra time fretting that I’m not doing a good job of parenting. For that reason, at least.
If your kids skipped this phase, please don’t tell me. I’d like to assume it’s standard.
Hard to believe this ball of cuteness could ever be mean-spirited.
Warmer
Posted: February 1, 2013 Filed under: All's Well That Ends Well 4 CommentsHooray February! January always seems so long, monotonous, and cold. It’s been a struggle, but we made it through!
A few days ago it briefly warmed up. The snow melted enough that I could see some of our lawn. This was followed by approximately a foot of snow over the course of two days. Added to the snow that was left from before…everything was covered. Jarom is really consistent about clearing the walk and driveway before he leaves for work (right now he carpools so that I still have a car), but it snowed so much after he left on Wednesday that I had a lot of shoveling to do when I wanted to go up to campus. It was the first out-of-the-house thing I’d done in quite a while, so of course it was snowing desperately. Of course the kids had misplaced their snow boots and ended up with canvas shoes. Of course they jumped in every huge pile of slush we encountered on our long walk around BYU.
Fortunately we also had things to go do yesterday, when the weather was in the high 30s. I never would have fathomed that this could feel warm, but I skipped a coat and just wore a cardigan. The snow was melting, the driveway cleared itself, it was sunny and pleasant (if not beautiful. Utah in partly-melted snow is truly ugly). I figured this meant that as soon as we’d enjoyed a day or two of tempting sunshine, another foot or snow would fall.
But it looks like we just get warm (well . . . relatively warm) days for almost a week! February is definitely better than January, if you ask me.
What’s the weather like where you are? What do you consider “cold” and “warm” temperatures?
Jarom
Mika
hilleries 