Behavior Challenges with Samantha, Changing Car Seats, and a Trip to the Aquarium

Samantha: 56 Months, Week 3

Aedan: 21 Months, Week 1 (Week 93)

Tuesday morning we decided it would be a good day to get out, play, and get some energy out, so after hanging out at home for a little while and getting everyone ready, we went to open gym at the TRI first. Do you see Samantha's outfit? She has been on a big dress kick lately, wearing one most days even though it's cold outside and she has to wear pants and sweaters with them. I also let her wear a headband that day (even though I figured it would not stay on her head very well and probably end up being taken off). I try to give her freedom in how she wants to wear her hair except for on preschool days when I want to make sure it stays out of her face. Aedan wanted to put a headband on as well, since he saw Sissy do it. He was very proud of his headband and left it on for quite awhile. It was just too cute not to take a picture of them in their matching headbands.

The kids had a fun time at the gym that morning. There were a lot of friends to play with, and Samantha even found Jacob from church to run around with. She was running and hiding and playing games most of the time, which is a change from the last time when she just wanted to sit down and eat her snack. We planned to go to the library for story time after playing in the gym for awhile, and I actually asked her if she'd rather stay so that she could play more with Jacob since she was having such a good time. Aedan enjoyed rocking back and forth on the seesaw animal and taking turns going down the slide. I even got the chance to sit down and talk with some other moms while we were there.

Even though we were having fun, Samantha decided she still wanted to go to story time at the library. She really enjoyed it even though I could see her tiredness setting in and she was zoning out a bit. Aedan wandered around just like he normally does, paying attention only when there is singing and dancing involved. I love this little video that I took of the kids dancing along to the music played on the guitar.

After story time, I always let the kids play in the children's area for awhile. Aedan enjoys trying to play games on the computer, and Samantha even found her old classmate, Ali, and played some imaginary game with him. After awhile, both kids were getting tired and I wanted to get home at a decent time to make lunch and get the kids down for naps, so I told Samantha that she could choose one more activity before it was time to leave. She chose playing with Ali, so after giving her plenty of time to do that, she started to move on and sat down at the computer to play a game. I went up to her to remind her that it was time to leave because she finished the last activity she wanted to do. Well, of course she resisted that, did not get out of the chair, and continued to play on the computer. I was frustrated, but I tried to stay as calm as possible in getting her to listen and obey my directions. Nothing I was doing was working, so I eventually had to physically remove her from the chair and exit out of the game, which then began a battle between Samantha and me that lasted much of the rest of the afternoon. I took Aedan over to start checking out the books, handed Samantha her coat, and asked her to put it on. She had some books and movies that she wanted to check out, but she was refusing to listen and get her coat on, so I told her I wasn't going to check out her movies until she obeyed what I told her to do. She still did not do it, so I followed through and did not check out her movies, one of which was Rapunzel that she wanted for a long time. That made her throw an even bigger fit, and she started crying and screaming as we walked out of the library. I was so embarrassed, and it was extremely difficult for me not to lose my cool at my 4 1/2 year old who was throwing a fit like a 2 year old in the middle of the library. As I buckled Samantha into her car seat, I told her that she lost out on the privilege to go to the library after open gym next time because she was not respectful when it was time to leave. It's difficult dealing with her behavior when she acts like this, but I know it is just a phase, it's just a hard phase.

Getting ready for nap time was just as hard that afternoon. She was clearly tired, based on the way she was acting, but she was just flat out refusing to do what I asked her to do, not getting up off the floor or stopping playing to go to the bathroom, not getting in her bed, really whatever it was that I asked her to do. Some days I just feel so tired of her testing and pushing every boundary. Sometimes I feel like I try everything but it doesn't help, even offering her a ball for our "Good Choices Jar" didn't make much difference in her behavior. She looked half dead all morning, acting like she was really tired even though she took a two hour nap the day before and seemed to have a good night sleep. It's just exhausting dealing with this all day long and not feeling like there is much of a solution except waiting until she grows out of this phase.

Samantha had a big day on Wednesday as her preschool class was going on a field trip to Kroger. I wanted to chaperone their last field trip to the Hefner Museum, but Aedan was sick that morning I felt it was best not to bring him along around the other kids. So I asked Samantha if she would like me to come on this field trip with her, and she was pretty excited about that. I made plans for Stephanie to watch Aedan for me so that I didn't have to worry about keeping him amused while in Kroger. I met Samantha back at her preschool room at 9:30, and she was so excited to see me that she yelled, "Mommy!" and came up to hold my hand, wanting to walk next to me and hold my hand for most of the field trip. We walked over to Kroger, and then an employee took us around the store to the various tables set up celebrating Black History month. They learned about Martin Luther King Jr., Nelson Mandela, Rosa Parks, Barrack Obama, and many other famous and historical African-Americans. The lady did a pretty good job explaining what each person did and why they were so important in terms that the preschoolers could understand. Samantha did a very nice job listening and being attentive. I was worried that my presence might distract her or make her act silly, but she was genuinely listening and learning. I was impressed by Samantha's attentiveness in comparison to some of the other kids in her class who were too busy pushing and shoving to be the first person at the table or sitting on the floor playing rather than listening. I am glad that Samantha is respectful and attentive when others are talking. When I asked her some questions later about the various African-Americans, she remembered quite a bit about them. We see a lot of Ben in her that way for she seems to be an auditory learner, hearing something one time and being able to remember it. Here is Samantha sitting and eating snack with her preschool class on their field trip.

Wednesdays are always long days because Ben teaching until 5:20, getting home later, and then leaves for Bible study at 6:45. That evening after dinner Samantha wanted to put on a dance show for me, so she put on a little ballerina dress that was too short on her because all her dress-up clothes are a couple sizes too small, her Elsa slippers, and her pink crown. She played music for herself and danced around. Aedan and I were her audience, and he even got in on the dancing action for awhile.

It was a challenging few days with Samantha acting disrespectful towards us, especially Ben, for she always wants me to put her to bed, and she talks back to him a lot when he just trying to interact with her in a pleasant way. We know that she doesn't mean it, but it's really hard to not take it personal. Even Wednesday night she was fighting me with every little thing in getting ready for bed, making her get to bed much later than I would have liked. In fact, when I was praying with her before bed, she laughed at me when I misspoke a word, and it was hard for me to not become angry at her. When kids are disrespectful and talk back, whether my own or in the classroom , I have a hard time not letting it get under my skin. Sometimes it seems like she purposefully acts up around us and not for others. I have been trying to be as positive as I can with giving her cotton balls for her jar any time she makes good decisions, especially during transition times. I try not to be overly mean or yell at her or give her a lot of time outs, but nevertheless, I was exhausted when she was finally in bed on Wednesday night.

We decided to take it easy on Thursday morning as we had been out the last couple of days. Samantha has been in a dress-up mood lately, so you can see her donning her Snow White dress that day. In this video you can see them playing one of their favorite games lately, which is putting on their fire hats and running around the house pretending to put out fires. I love how Samantha pretends like a bell is ringing and how Aedan joins right in, using the Do-a-Dot Markers as pretend hoses to spray on the fire.

I got some housework and laundry done that morning while the kids played, and I also began my task on uninstalling the kids' car seats. We decided to switch Samantha out of the five point harness and into the highback booster seat with the seatbelt. Since I was taking her car seat out, we decided to switch Aedan's car seat around to forward facing as well. He is 21 months old now, so not quite two, but I feel like we are close enough to the recommended age, and it has been increasingly difficult getting him into his car seat rear-facing. I even washed their car seat covers and vacuumed up all the crumbs under their car seat. I figured since I was going through the trouble of taking them out and putting them back in, that I should clean them while I was at it.

On Friday morning Ben took Samantha to preschool since Aedan and I had plans to go to a Peppa Pig birthday party but didn't have to be there until 10:00. It was so strange strapping him into his car seat facing forwards, but he was definitely excited about the new perspective and being able to see and interact with me more instead of just staring at the back of a seat. I had to take a couple pictures of our little guy who is getting so big these days. :)

Aedan had a good morning at the birthday party, eating yummy snacks, cake and ice cream, kicking balloons around, and playing with toy vacuum cleaners while I got a chance to talk with some moms. I was glad to be invited to the party, and we kept it on the down low so Samantha didn't get too upset about missing out on a birthday party and cake. Then, the rest of the day went by like normal with meeting up with Ben so that I could go to Zumba before taking the kids back home for nap time.

Aedan was definitely sleepy and ready for nap time, although when is he not? He enjoys going down for his naps and when I tell him it's nap time he will head up the stairs saying "paci" and "nigh-nigh." I know he won't always be this easy to get down for a nap, so I will take it while I can. Samantha was pretty tired on Friday as well, but it's always hard for her to settle down on days when we get back home from having lunch with Daddy and have to go straight to nap time. She was resisting her nap again, which has been happening more frequently lately. In fact, I was about to go up to her room to tell her she could just get up and play quietly for awhile, but then I didn't hear any more noise from her, estimating that she probably fell asleep at 3:30, later than we would have liked, but I guess it's better than nothing. Once it reached about 5:00, we decided to go in and wake her up because we didn't want her to sleep for too long and then not go to bed well that night. Aedan had already woken up from his nap, so I had him go in Sissy's room with me to help wake her up. The whole time up the stairs he kept saying, "Sissy, shhh," putting his finger up next to his nose in an attempt to copy what people do where they put their index finger to their lips when saying, "Shhh." Samantha didn't even move when we came into her room to wake her up, not waking up until we came up to give her a kiss. I hoped that seeing Aedan would make her happy about being woken up rather than grumpy, and I think my plan worked. She was happy for Aedan to climb up on her bed and cuddle with her for awhile.

As Samantha watched her show that evening and I was making dinner, Aedan got out this baby doll and was changing it's diaper and feeding it with a spoon. It was so cute to see him role playing in this way. I don't know if I've ever seen him play in this way before, especially on his own without just copying what Samantha is doing. I got this sweet little picture and video of Aedan taking care of his baby, saying "baby" and "mmm" while feeding it.

That night Samantha somehow talked us into making hot chocolate with marshmallows after dinner. Again, here she is in a purple dress-up dress, with a chocolate mustache and marshmallow stuck to her teeth. She certainly enjoys her hot chocolate from Aunt Jeni! We even gave Aedan some hot chocolate in a sippy cup and some marshmallows to eat on the side.

What a silly, cute couple of kids we have. I love them, and I love our family time together on the weekends. :)

The Newport Aquarium has a deal going on where you can get two children in for the price of one adult, so we figured it would be fun to take a family trip there on Saturday. We have only been to this aquarium one time before when I was pregnant with Aedan, and we came to Cincinnati on a weekend trip together. We figured Samantha would enjoy it a lot more now that she's older, and Aedan particularly enjoys watching fish in tanks, so we thought he would like it as well. So we got up, ready, and headed out that morning. Since I took a picture of Aedan in his forward facing car seat, I wanted to take a picture of Samantha in her seat with the seat belt. She definitely liked the new feeling and kept making comments about how she felt like such a big girl and not a baby anymore. She did a great job of wearing the seat belt correctly, especially after I took the time to show her how the seat belt works to keep her safe if we were to ever get in a car accident. I just love this picture of her with her pink heart sunglasses on and her purple sweater with the heart. We often say that purple must be her color because she looks beautiful in purple. She looks so grown-up, sometimes I just can't believe that she is almost five and will be entering kindergarten in the fall. Time goes by so quickly.

When buying our tickets for the aquarium, you had to purchase a certain entry time so that they could space people out throughout the day. They were expecting record crowds that day, so we weren't allowed to bring our stroller in  which we really thought would be fine. We were okay with carrying Aedan around and letting him walk some as well. Both kids were super excited as we went to the escalator into the aquarium, although Samantha got a little afraid when an employee mentioned that there were real sharks there and that she could even pet them. She was concerned that they might bite her, but we assured her that they wouldn't let kids pet them if there was any chance of the animals biting them.

We took our time as we walked around, looking at each tank and pointing out different colored fish and underwater sea creatures.

Samantha really enjoyed this area with turtles. The turtles were very active swimming back and forth in the water right in front of the glass so that we could see their shells and webbed feet up close. Aedan enjoyed watching the turtles, but I think he was a little thrown off by the glass separating the turtles from us. He wanted to reach his hand to touch the glass in front of them, but then would pull his hand back at the last minute, almost like he was afraid that he would actually touch one of the turtles. He was happier just watching them swim from a distance.

Another exciting exhibit was the area where you could pet starfish and other fish/animals that I don't know the technical names for. Samantha was not afraid at all to push her sleeve up and reach into the water to pet the starfish. She was very gentle, using two fingers, and thought they felt very squishy. Aedan, on the other hand, was very unsure. He wanted to touch the starfish because he saw Sissy doing it, but he was not brave enough to reach into the water. He preferred to stand on the ledge and watch the creatures move around in the water below.

They have huge tanks at the aquarium, and one of the largest houses the sharks and shark rays. Both kids wanted to go right up to the glass so they could sit on the little platform to get a birds eye view of these large, sometimes scary looking creatures.

As this one shark swam toward the window, the kids would pretend to scream like the shark was going to get them. Samantha joined in as well, which is what she is doing in this picture below.

Aedan joined her on the ledge for a little while, but again was a little nervous when the animals would swim right by the glass, almost like he didn't understand the barrier that protected them from the sharks.

At this point the aquarium was getting much busier, and Aedan was becoming less happy with being carried around. He wanted to walk on his own, but then he would try to run away or go in the opposite direction from the rest of us. We knew that you could check out a backpack carrier for older kids, so I decided to head upstairs to get one of those to carry Aedan in, hoping that would make it easier and make him fight us less. He thought it was pretty cool to ride around on my back, and he was able to play with my hair as we walked around and looked at fish.

There is an area of the aquarium called Frog's Bog with a playground structure for kids. Samantha was very excited to go climb around, and of course Aedan wanted to join her as well. However, there were lots of kids climbing around and some of the platforms were too tall for Aedan to climb without help, so he ended up getting overwhelmed and wanted to come back out. Shortly after that Samantha got elbowed in the face because there were just too many kids in a small space. Instead, the kids climbed on the croaking frogs before we moved on to the next area.

We still had quite a bit of the aquarium to see, and it was getting close to lunch time, so we decided to leave and eat lunch at Tom & Chee instead of feeling like we had to rush through the rest of the aquarium because we had two hungry kids on our hands. We had never been to Tom & Chee before but heard many good things about it and were excited to try it out. I got a mac and cheese grilled cheese with a tomato basil soup dipper, and I must say that it was pretty tasty. The kids ate their grilled cheese, fruit, crackers, and milk pretty well even though they were distracted by the TV that played cartoons near us. Then, we were ready to go back and explore the rest of the aquarium with full and happy tummies.

We got to see lots more fish, jellyfish, and penguins before waiting our turn to walk across the shark bridge. The shark bridge was a new feature and was basically a large rope bridge across the tank of sharks. Everyone that went on the bridge had to walk on their own two feet, so I had Aedan walk in front of me so that I could hold his hand and make sure he didn't trip and fall. Neither of our kids acted scared at all. We have pretty brave kiddos who are willing to try almost anything.

We decided that we had our fill of the aquarium, and little man was getting pretty sleepy, so we got back in the car to head home. At first we weren't so sure if Aedan was going to nap because sitting forward in his car seat was just too much fun. He kept looking over at Sissy and trying to play. Plus, we forgot his paci, so I'm sure that didn't help either. However, once we got going on the highway, we told both kids that it was nap time and they needed to go to sleep. After that, Aedan fell asleep pretty quickly. Samantha tried really hard and closed her eyes for most of the ride, but didn't end up falling asleep at all, which really was okay with us as long as she tried and was quiet so that Aedan could sleep.

After having a long, full day at the aquarium, we spent the evening just hanging out and relaxing. Aedan took a little bit longer of a nap once we arrived back home, and we let Samantha watch a show as a way to relax and unwind even though she didn't end up napping in the car.

Sunday was a somewhat busy day because we switched volunteer weekends with another family so that we could go to Upland next weekend. Therefore, we went to church during first service and taught in our respective rooms during second service. Aedan woke up earlier than normal that morning and was pretty tired at church. In fact, he got really upset when he saw Daddy and Sissy outside the door of the toddler room. So much so, that Ben had to go in and get him, letting Aedan hang out with him in the elementary room during the shift change between services. Even when I got Ben to bring him over to the toddler room, and even though I was staying in the room with him since I was the leader, he still was very upset and focused on Daddy. Aedan kept going up to the door, crying, and saying "Da-ee, da-ee." Eventually I was able to distract him well enough with playing, and I felt like my morning leading the toddler class went pretty well. Here is our handsome guy all dressed up in his little suit.

Sunday night was the Super Bowl game, and we invited friends from our small group over to our house to watch the game and let the kids play with each other. Everyone brought an appetizer to share, and it was a lot of fun to taste new recipes from other people like mac and cheese bites, meatballs, sausage dip, and our own buffalo chicken dip. The kids weren't too sure about the food, but we definitely enjoyed it. There were many people who couldn't make it, but we did have the Kidd family, Stephanie, and John over. Daniel, Olivia, and Samantha went up to play in her room, while I tried to amuse Aedan downstairs. He wanted to play with the big kids, but they were playing with little things that he would destroy, so I enticed him to stay downstairs by building a marble run for him. Aedan got pretty tired around 8:00, so I put him down to bed while everyone else continued to hang out and watch the game. Once halftime was over, most people headed back home, except for John who stayed until it was over. It was fun to have friends over, and Samantha really enjoyed being able to stay up later than normal to watch football with Daddy.

Monday was back to our normal week, but we were all a little tired from staying up too late the night before. It's fun to let Samantha stay up late and do special things; however, she always wakes up at the same time regardless, making her feel pretty sleepy for much of the morning.

While Samantha was at preschool, Aedan and I went grocery shopping, our pretty typical Monday routine. Once back home after lunch, I was able to get a picture and video of Samantha reading her mummy book to Aedan. He loves to sit next to her and listen as she reads books to him. They are so cute together most of the time. :)

(Blog about February 2-8, 2015)