Lately, only with us, Ella has been fake crying when she doesn’t get her way. Sometimes this fake crying leads to real crying and sometimes it just goes away. Tonight, we were getting ready to go to dinner and Ella had one of her fake crying fits because I told her that it was cold out and she needed to wear a jacket. She wanted to wear a “cape” – really just a jacket tied around her neck. She did her fake crying thing and then calmed down when we told her that she could wear a jacket and then a “cape” too. This led to a conversation about things we need to work on. I told Ella that she needed to work on finding other ways to express herself when she didn’t get her way. I told her that crying just wasn’t working. Then I said that I would work on getting less frustrated with Ella when she was reacting to not getting her way. Sunny said that she would work on being more patient and that she would work on not grabbing things from Ella. Ella also said that she would try to share better (she actually has been doing a great job with sharing). That was the end of the conversation and then we went to dinner. We had a great dinner at Nama and then went to Blush for some yogurt and baseball watching. It was great hanging out there. Ella was having fun with one of the people who worked there. Ella was showing her movies on my iTouch – movies of Ella when she was much younger. It was getting late and we needed to head home. Ella wasn’t very happy about leaving. She kept putting on more movies to watch – even after we gave her a one more movie warning. She didn’t listen so I took the iTouch away from her and we headed home. As we were walking out, Ella was trying to walk and watch movies. I told her to turn the iTouch off and she wouldn’t listen so I took it from her. She became pretty pissed at me but I just put it in my pocket and kept walking. She kept asking me for the iTouch and I wouldn’t give it to her. When we got home, I told Ella that if she came up with me, brushed her teeth and got into her pajamas that I would give her the iTouch and she could watch 2 movies. She was giving me a hard time about going upstairs and finally said, “You grabbed the iTouch from me and that made me angry”. I then said, “I wouldn’t have grabbed it if you would have stopped watching it. Watching and walking is dangerous.” Then she said, “Well…I think that you are going to have to work on not grabbing.” It was so funny. I told her that I would work hard on not grabbing and I thanked her for pointing that out to me. Little Ella is growing up! No pictures today – just a ballet video.
Wonderful lessons learned by all. Missed seeing the blog; just came home from Boston. Will try to talk to you tomorrow. Love you. Mom