Tag Out

{love my little man!}

Tagging out is how I tell CT3 that I need a break. 

I am a stay at home mom and today was just one of those days and I needed to tag out. I love my kids more than life itself but mercy oh my soul, today I needed a breather. 

Anne Margaret is in the throws of being two and a half and she is one smart cookie. She is busy, exploratory, busy, energetic and is learning to test and push the limits. And she is busy...did I already say that!? She understands a lot and has full conversations with you about what she is doing and why and it is amazing to me how much she comprehends and is able to dialogue with you about. While she is super smart, she is also full of the emotions and feelings of a two year old and trying to combine that and new found freedoms and working it all together has been challenging. 

{this week at story time making a picture frame!}

On top of me attempting to teach her and help her grow, redirect when necessary and train her, Brother Bear has been a bit fussy. He is completely off schedule {not that he ever had one} and today and yesterday he cried for the majority of the day. I was up til almost 2:30 last night holding him while he fussed as well. He has a slight cold - that we have all shared and so I am attributing it to that for now. 

Why was today so crazy? Lets see, with in a few hours this morning AM had filled her shoes with dirt and buried her feet, pulled k-cups out of the trash, poked her finger in them and dumped the coffee grinds on the kitchen floor, pulled off an entire roll of toilet paper and flushed it, wouldn't leave the {finally} sleeping baby alone and when she did, she grabbed the iPad and I told her no ma'am {it was nap time} and she threw it on the floor and then colored on a wooden cupcake {which she is allowed to do - it was made for that} and then put it in her mouth - resulting in blue lips. 

This was the part that did not get tracked all over the house by bare little feet! 

It was crazy and frustrating and we went from time out to time out to time out. Then we talked about it, she apologized and we moved on...until the next time out. Eventually, I got her down for a nap and sat down to breathe and drink my coffee. I then managed to spill my coffee and to drop an entire piece of turkey - which I let the clean up crew {a.k.a. Champ} handle.

I must say that while it was QUITE frustrating today, when I look back on it all, I know how smart AM is and I know that some of it she was not being malicious in her doing. She genuinely wanted to play in the dirt. I think she saw Daddy digging in the dirt and she processed it as playing. As for the coffee on the floor? Gigi accidentally knocked over a bag this weekend while we were in Atlanta and G-Diddy cleaned it up with the vacuum. After she dumped it today, she turned to me and said, "Mommy can clean up with the vacuum."

That got my goat as she purposefully made a mess then told me to clean it up, but she was reenacting what Gigi and G-Diddy had done - not realizing that theirs was not done by choice.

As for playing in the toilet? She was taking small pieces of paper and wiping the potty - just like we do in a public bathroom before we let her go. She would then take those few squares she had just cleaned with and flush them. She did the for the rest of the roll. One time she did get a bit more wild as she sloshed water all over the floor and herself but when I asked about it she told me she was cleaning the inside of the potty...right idea, wrong execution and just gross. When asked about it, she even reiterated the fact that she "only flushed a little toilet paper, Mommy."

The wooden cupcake? She used the correct markers to decorate it - just like the directions said. It seemed like a good thing to do to pretend to eat it - she just got blue all over her face in the meantime. We are having a slight problem with putting EVERY thing in our mouth again. I thought we were through with that but now she finds it funny to put bottle caps in her mouth and other random small, scary to Mommy objects. She will tell you that "only food goes in your mouth" though we are still working on keeping the rest OUT!

It will be a few more days before I get a real break but we are making due and I am doing my best and trying to stay patient. One of our recent sermons at church talked about Nehemiah and building the wall and how he told the people who requested his time that, "he was doing a good work, and would not come down."

On these long days, I just remind myself that I am doing a good work and will not come down. I will invest in my kiddos and I will cherish every day...even the trying ones.

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