Tuesday, November 22, 2005

Bad, Bad, Bad Girl

It was eerily quiet when I stepped out of the shower this morning. That is never a good sign when there's a toddler in the house. My fears were confirmed when the Little Miss came running into the bathroom covered in powder with the most wicked grin on her cute little face.

I, like most, came to parenthood with some pretty definite ideas on the important topic of discipline. My folks believed in spanking and so did J's folks. We both turned out okay so we both figured that's what we would use on the Little Miss. Well, I'm here to tell you that not all discipline approaches work for all children. A swift palm applied to a bare butt will actually get her attention. Layers of clothes and a thick, fat cloth diaper seem to soften the blow enough that all I get is an expression that begs "is that the best you can do?!".

So I've reluctantly entered the world of "timeouts". I say "relucantly" for a variety of reasons. For one, my preconceived notions on this topic were that timeouts were the wimps way out. The reality, I've learned, is that taking attention away from my attention-loving toddler speaks more volumes than physical pain ever could.

Not feeling up to a timeout this morning myself, I tried the other tactic that seems to work remarkably well with her. I got down at eye level, held her chin, and calmly proceeded to tell her how bad it is to pour the entire bottle of baby powder into the bath tub. I wish I had a picture of the Little Miss when I uttered the word "bad". I don't know where she figured out that it has such, well, bad connotations, but her little lip went out and tears filled her eyes and she went running off to find solace in her stuffed animals.

No doubt to tell them how bad it is to pour an entire bottle of baby powder into the bath tub.




I've finally managed to enter single digits in the countdown phase. And, yes, I broke down and counted how many days past ovulation I am: 7 as of today. Which means that it's technically only 7 days till the POAS party. So I changed my ticker to make myself feel better. No, it's not really working. korisiri (cellsgonewild ) said that she likes to delay testing so that she can live that much longer with the hope that this might be the month. This is the first month that I haven't planned to start testing at 10DPO and I really see the wisdom in that outlook. At this point I need all the hope I can get. Having said that, like her, I will be hard pressed not to start testing on Friday.

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