Papa's Birthday

Happy Birthday, Papa!! I'm so mixed up on my days. I keep waking up thinking, Ah! Saturday! Then I remember it's a school day, and I now have 30min to get Max and Mattie up, fed, dressed, and out the door. It's a little bit easier now, we have a new system: the pocket-chart. Max wakes up, and item by item, goes through the chart. 1) get dressed 2) eat breakfast 3) get shoes on 4) brush teeth 5) play . So now I don't have to keep on him about every little thing getting ready. We have been doing it for about 2 weeks and now have extended it to after school, too. Snack, chores, play, and homework. He likes doing it because he slides the card over to "done" when he is through with that step. I expect that to wear off after a while. We also created the Job Jar. Instead of time-outs, he now has to pick a chore out of the job jar. It's been a few days, and no jobs so far. Max has been camera shy lately, that's why there have been no pictures of him for a few days. This is the only one I could get.

Mattie had her first time-out today. This picture isn't her in time-out though, no books in time-out! We were playing together in her room, and she kept hitting and throwing things. Not in anger, we're just trying to stop all hitting and throwing. So I warned her once (or twice), then told her she had to go to time-out. She started crying, and I thought, this is your first time-out, how do you know to cry? So I put her on the time-out spot, and told her she had to sit here until the timer says ding. I set the timer for one minute, and moved a little way away. She sat there, I was shocked. The timer went off, she came off, said sorry, and that was it. Crazy. She also told me when she was "doing her business" in her diaper today. This sounds weird, but it's really exciting. She'll be ready to potty train soon. Good because we won't have to pay for diapers, but bad because now I'll have to take her to the bathroom at every store we stop at from now on. Gross.