I wish I could be more like Daniel Tiger's mom all the time

 'I wish I could be more like Daniel Tiger's mom with my kids' , sighed my best friend. You knowww always knowing the perfect thing to say and never letting a stressful interaction get to you.
 
             
 I wish that too especially when my 3 year old is trying her best to test my patience. All those past judgemental speculations like 'I would never do thaattt no matter what' come swooping to laugh in my face.I now fully appreciate the fact that parenting is no walk in the park. Its tough to keep up her (DTM's) attitude especially when your toddler is having a difficult day.At least that's my experience. 


Soo occasional proud moments call for a showing off right? Hence this post.I am kidding, I am merely sharing incase it might benefit you in one of your stressful moments with your child.So here goes 

This morning I was giving my three year old daughter and 1 year old son their baths. After I cleaned them, I grabbed the last two swim diapers at home and  put one on my son. Then I grabbed the second diaper for my daughter when I heard   'NOOOOO I want Pooh bear diaper too.' I look down and ofcourse just my luck that my son has a pooh bear diaper while the one in my hand has Nemo on it. Bless the variety character diaper pack.



 Then the crying started. We kept going back and forth for good 15 minutes that hey we are out of Pooh diapers, you have a choice of either sitting diaperless or take Nemo or you can wait till we hit the store later. Which was of course followed by more tearful screaming 'Noooooo I want poooh bear right now' . It was a headlock, we weren't getting anywhere. 


I bitterly thought that Daniel Tiger's mom would have calmed down her kid by now without so much as lifting an eyebrow. Come to think of it, I should have a bracelet saying 'What would Daniel Tiger's Mom do or short WWDTMD.

What was fueling my annoyance further was that my one year old son was observing his sister and imitating her tantrum. I was telling my 3 year that look what are you role modeling now for your baby brother. Then it hit me, OK what exactly AM I role modeling by getting all frustrated? Light bulb goes on in my head . My mom's words rang in my ears 'listen beyond the words to spot the actual problem and address that '.  By the way I did discover later that the problem was that she needed her inhaler (asthma)and her nose was all stuffy. I could probably have avoided this if I had taken care of those two things before plopping her in bathtub! Note to self for future.

             
Anywhoos back to my proud moment, I swallowed all my pride and anger, took a deep breath and used all my energy to say in a calm friendly voice ( Seriously the amount of energy it takes, it should show on the weighing scale but nooo thats totally another story) Anywhoos

Me: "are you sad? "
Her "YESSSSS!!!!!"
Me: " You want a Pooh Bear Diaper like your baby brother?"
HER " YESSSS!!"
ME " You like Pooh Bear ?"
HER " YESS!"
Me " I like Pooh Bear too. Do you know where Pooh Bear lives?"
Her curiosity got the better of her , She goes " Where?"
Me " In a Forest. You live in a forest too right?"
Her giggling " No I dont live in a forest , I live in a house."
Me " Whaaaattt? Are you sure? I always thought you lived in a forest. Don't you have a bear and a kangaroo for a neighbor?'
Her giggling ' Noooo haha my neighbor is _____'
Me " Whaaaaaaattt ? Imagine that, Do you know the neighbours Pooh bear had? What other neighbours do you have? "

 I dont think I will bore you with the entire conversation where we listed all the people in her neighborhood and compared her friends to Pooh's friends. And how amazed she was that her neighbors were my neighbors too. The point was that in this particular case acknowledging her feelings, invoking her curiosity by story telling and humor distracted her well enough from her tantrum. Tadaa


We finished our bath time with giggles and a little education, took the inhaler and lived happily for 20 more minutes before the one year old and 3 year old picked a heated fight over Dora the explorer doll! The End

DIY staircase makeover in $25

Soo I did this for a wedding , my wedding to be precise. 

It was in an unfinished basement.  I needed to dress it up on a budget. Hence carpeting was out of the question.

This is what it looked like:

 

 I got Rock Wall Patterned Flat paper from stumpsparty.com for $19 plus shipping. 1 roll was enough for that staircase.

Next I got the flat head thumb tacks :  .

Thats all the material I used.

There was nothing to it. I really stretched out the paper and pressed it flat on to the stairs with thumb tacks . To avoid hurting my thumb from pressing all those thumb tacks, I used a hammer. And I made sure not to leave any crease or loose paper to prevent falling accidents or rip and tear.And I use thumb tacks on the top of each step as well as the sides of it to avoid falling hazard. I can't stress that enough. This is what it turned out to be

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Girls walked in on it throughout the event with high heels and I was impressed that it didn't tear. And the color of it gave the benefit that it didn't look dirty with all that traffic..normal weather traffic..I haven't tried wet muddy boots on it, I didn't have the heart to test it out over my hard work. But anywhoos Tadaaa 

Woww I didn't even remember I had blogged here

I used to be a regular blogger at OpenDiary.com but then I got married. Didn't feel like writing for 4 years with all the major adjustments and growing up :) Imagine my dismay when I tried signing in on it after all these years only to find out that the site had been shut down. I was so heartbroken. A notification would have been nice from the admin. 6 years of blogs down the drain. I was a chirpy happy blogger in those writings. 

So I decided to blog again and I came here. I was shocked to find I had three entries here and few nice people had  even left me comments . Reading the posts made me feel so wierd. I don't recognize the person in those writings. I sound so depressed, boring and dry.  I can't even decide if I have changed for the better or worse . But I suppose who cares, what difference does it make. 
Hah this a very non productive and useless entry but I needed to write it anyways