Bethington and Doggie Dreams

I have decided to take a short break from my 4 shorter papers, one annotated bibliography and one 9-page paper that are due this week and post on here.

I think it's Beth's turn in the spotlight. She came over to Rob and I on Sunday night with hair all over the front of her dress. We thought at first that it was cat hair, but no. It was her bangs. She had gotten a hold of a pair of children's scissors and happily hacked away for quite a while. I don't know if she had recently seen a picture of an 80's redneck with a ducktail, but she did a bang-up (haha) job of imitating the front of that hair style. On the plus side, the section of hair Rob hacked out of the top of her head when she somehow got gum stuck up there fits in much better now! Fortunately she left enough that I could sort of layer her bangs and although they are pretty short, they aren't as short as they could have ended up :) I'm really hoping it grows out in 5 weeks for Molly's wedding. Do you thing Rogaine foam would help???

Beth is such a character! Yesterday she found the top six inches or so of a bread bag (no, I don't know how we ended up with just that - I'm assuming Megan cut it off or something) and decided it would make a good hat. She stretched it around her head and must have moved it up and down to adjust it because she ended up with quite a bit of hair sticking straight up out of the top with the bag stuck like saran wrap around her head. It was quite the interesting look and she apparently was very pleased with it as she wore it for several hours. When she got tired of that, she pulled the bag down and wore it as a necklace until she fell asleep on my lap and I ripped it and took it off.

Beth has entered the terrible threes with a vengeance. Anyone who tells you that the twos are the hardest never had a three year old, or at least never had one of mine. She has started throwing tantrums about EVERYTHING. Whining and crying are one of the hardest things for me to put up with from my children, so this stage is always one of my least favorites. We have decided to deal with it by giving her to the count of three to stop or she gets to go finish her tantrum in the library or her bedroom. I think she's attempting to break the world record for the longest continual tantrum. She has to be close. At least they've only been at home though. She's very well behaved in public :)

We have also had some difficulty figuring out how to motivate Beth to help out. We use a positive reinforcement chart where the kids can earn or lose squares along a line and when they get to the end of the line, they get something special like a Mommy or Daddy date. Meg and Kylie are both well on their way to earning their second since we implemented the program. Beth has yet to earn her first. She, at the age of three, has apparently already figured out that there are only a limited number of possible punishments and we really can't make her do anything. Example from last night. We were all working on cleaning up the playroom and library. Meg and Kylie were helping out and Beth was sitting on the floor in the middle of it all, building a castle with her blocks.
Me: Beth, we need you to clean up your blocks please.
Beth (not even looking up): Me building a castle.
Me: Beth, if you don't clean up your blocks, you're going to lose a square.
Beth (still not looking up): Me building a castle.
Me: Ok, Beth, you lost a square. Please clean up your blocks.
Beth (continuing to keep her eye on her blocks): Me building a castle.
Me: Beth, if you don't start cleaning up your blocks, you're going to get spanked.
Beth (completely uninterested in what I'm saying): Me building a castle.
Beth gets spanked and then returns to building her castle. I give up and tell Rob to handle his daughter :)

We've decided that the kids need to be responsible for cleaning up their toys. The playroom is organized in such a way that it's very simple to clean - we use bins and shelves and boxes and when they are cleaning without help, we aren't picky as to which container the toys end up in. The kids are pretty good at getting it cleaned up, especially when we give them a time table with frequent updates (i.e. "15 mins left!") Whatever toys they don't clean up (we always give them plenty of time), we pick up and donate. We use a garbage bag to pick them up, so the warning is that if they don't want something to end up in the garbage bag, they need to get it picked up. Beth has thoroughly embraced this concept, although not quite in the way we were hoping. She gets very excited when time is up and finds a bag and enthusiastically picks up everything she can get her hands on to "throw away". Rob managed to stop her from throwing a huge bag of toys away last night only because she had so many toys in the bag, it wouldn't fit in the garbage can.

I love my little button baby though and wouldn't trade her for the world! :)

In more general news, the kids, spearheaded by Megan, have decided they need a puppy. There is a lady I talk to when I pick up Megan from school who has been dog-sitting a chihuahua and Megan fell in love with him. She has launched quite the comprehensive battle. She googles (yes, my 6 year old has figured out how to perform internet searches by herself) dog names, writes stories about dogs at school, writes lists of what a dog needs, and writes letters asking us to get her one, even listing what she will do to take care of it, drawing a picture of the dog she wants (she has imagined what he will look like) and including the name she has picked (Oreo). She loves going over to the Footes house as they have two dogs (one of which is a bit hyper and so she stays behind a baby gate when we are there to prevent her from ploughing the kids down in her enthusiasm) and Meg now spends much of her time there scratching the dogs bellies and rubbing their heads. Jack is Meg's strongest supporter. Every time Megan mentioned the word dog, he runs over to me or Rob and says "dog? dog? dog?" I find myself caving in. Rob is still standing pretty firm, but it remains to be seen how long he will be able to last against such an overwhelming barrage.