Fun Night

Here are some pictures from Fun Night at preschool on Sunday night. It was just for the preschoolers (3, 4, and 5 year olds) and families/siblings, so there weren't a ton of people there. They had a lot of age-appropriate games, like bowling, face painting, hopscotch, fishing, bingo, musical chairs and ball throwing. The kids had a blast going from game to game and getting a bag full of prizes. The boys got their hands painted, instead of their face. Grace is the only one who got her face painted. We made an evening of it and ate dinner at Valentino's afterwards. The kids were well-behaved that night, which was a change from what we've been experiencing for the last week or two.........

So, the kids have been in a phase lately. I'd love to say that they have spring fever, or they're tired or sick or some other excuse, but the truth is, there's no excuse for how bad they've been acting lately. And, I have to qualify this, for the most part, they've been acting fine in public. We've had the occassional problem, but for the most part they're good everywhere but at home. At home we have major backtalking and non-listening issues. They are becoming pros at "selective listening" meaning, they pretend to ignore what we say and keep going on with what they were doing, even though they totally heard what we said. The other thing they're getting good at is back talking and a little bit of lying. Grace says NO! when you ask her to do the simplest things lately. Xander will do a couple of things, he'll either say NO or he'll start backtalking and yell about how he's not going to do it. Will pretends he's going to do what you've said, but then gets "distracted" and never actually ends up doing it. We've even caught them in little lies lately. We will ask if they've washed their hands before meals and they'll say yes when they actually haven't. They'll also lie about going potty. All this leads to either 1) me yelling 2) counting to three or 3) threatening time out or confiscation of toys/things. This is making for some very unhappy parents and even more unhappy children. It seems that we've been butting heads a lot lately and no one is very happy with each other. We've been trying to give positive reinforcement whenever we can, but it's just so hard when you're so exasperated saying anything nice is a huge chore. We're also not quite sure what we can do to solve this problem. I am hoping that if we just "stay our course" (I hate that phrase) that things will get better. I am hoping that they're just testing us, testing their world and developing their personalities, I'm hoping......... I'll let you know what we do to solve this, I am thinking of some sort of incentive chart. It's in the works.

Our other news is pretty much the same. Xander is in the middle of a cold, which is probably turning into a sinus infection. He may get a trip to the doctor next week, which is fine because it's spring break! Thankfully the others are not sick, except Brian who is a little sick. We also spent some time last weekend at Brian's boss' house, who is our age and whose wife teaches with my mom at Pyrtle. They also have a 4 year old son. The kids enjoyed playing together and we had a nice evening chatting with Brian's co-workers.

Our daylight savings time transition has been the smoothest one we've ever had. Sunday Brian had to be at church early, so I stayed home with the kids and let them sleep. They slept until their regular time 8:00 (felt like 7). They took a shorter nap because of Fun Night at preschool and went to bed at the same time as normal. They have been sleeping slightly later in the mornings the last 2 days, but that could have as much to do with the fact that it's still dark as anything else. The clock experiment is working fine. They walked into our room on Saturday at 7:00 on the dot. I think they were just waiting for the clock to say 7.

Best quotes of the week:

Just to preface, if you don't know, SpongeBob SquarePants has a friend named Patrick.

When Daddy was telling the kids about St. Patrick's Day, for whatever reason.....

Will: Daddy, when's SpongeBob day?

Brian: What?

Will: When's SpongeBob day? There's a Patrick day, so when's SpongeBob day?

(They don't even watch SpongeBob at all, although we occassionally check out a SpongeBob book from the library. Will always cracks me up.)

Will: Mommy, Mrs. Thimijan gave you a word.

Me: What?

Will: Here's a word from Mrs. Thimijan.

(Hands me a piece of paper.)

Me: Oh, you mean Mrs. Thimijan wrote me a letter?

Will: Whatever.

OK, so that's about all for now. Let's hope having spring break next week and spending a little more time with the kids will help our behavior problems. We'll see. Thanks for checking up on us!