Terrible What....???

How can this little cute and sweet face be in the same sentence as "Terrible"??? Well on most occasions she lives up to the picture and is exactly that sweet, funny, smart, and loving little girl....until she remembers that she is two years old now and is suppose to have major temper tantrum. Most of the tantrum are related to getting dress in the mornings. She only wants to wear dresses, with this shirt not that one, and these shoes not those ones. I have got her several dresses, because little girls in little dresses are just so darn cute...but now it is this dress not this one, oh no this one again, oh no this not this one...this can go on for almost 1 hour. I have tried giving her two choices, I have tried telling her that that is what she is wearing and we can't go out until we put it on, I have tried putting it on her forcefully... I can't find a way that seems to work on most days.

We have been reading books on parenting to try to get ideas on different manners on how to deal with this. Of course having been raised differently we, the parents, have differences on opinions on some of these ways. We do know one thing...we hope not to end up on the Super Nanny show in a couple of years! Not that we didn't think it would be, but parenthood can be challenging at times.

Take tonight... I send Emma "thinking" for a while on the bench in the hallway during dinner because she would not listen to our directions (seat at the table to eat). This was the first time we used the bench for time out. It took me putting her back on there 3 times, and after she was "thinking" for 2 minutes (they say 1 minutes per age) I took her down and invited back at the table to join us for dinner. Well a couple of minutes later, all she wanted to do is go back and seat on the bench. She thought it was cool! Kind of defeats the purpose....

We also have been working on potty training. I thought she was sooooo ready, but it seemed that we cannot pressure it. We tried for two weekends now, thinking it would just happen and BAM!...she would get it! I took her to pick out her little underwear (thinking that would get her excited about it), she of course picked out the Elmo underwear and I got stickers to bribe her into peeing on the potty. We had some success with all this but there is a long way to go before we go out in the world diaper free. And you can only imagine that if every time she has an accident we need to change her clothes and go through the getting dress tantrum all over again it makes for a very stressful day.

On the other hand, we have been working on sharing. She will bring an extra baby at the park to share with her friend Alexandre (so she tells me). She will take an extra apple for snack to share with her friend Charles-Antoine (so she tells me). We also have been "sharing" the swings with all the kids at the park. We have been working on counting. She can count to 10 in English and French, except for number "seven" that she only says in English...she loves that number! She is so nice to her little brother and continues to kiss him on the head. It has been so fun watching their relationship grow. It has been so much fun to communicate with her. She has so much to say. She wakes up from her nap and can stay in her bed for 20-30 minutes talking and babbling away. And it amazes me how fast she is learning things and how smart she is.