Nice Words

After being in the preschool world for so long where the emphasis is on social emotional skills I think we finally made a breakthrough with Madison. We have worked a long time on how to use her "words" to navigate difficult situations instead of having a melt down, hitting, or tattling. One day we were sitting at the dinner table and Madison was concentrating on chipping away at some slush that she wanted to eat. Curtis started teasing her and used his classic line of "look whats over there" and then when she looked the other way he stole the slush. Madison managed to get the slush back once and then Curtis got it away again. I could tell Madison was getting a little agitated when she said, "Daddy please give back the slush" and then when that didn't work she repeated "I want my slush back please daddy". After that attempt didn't get results, she looked at me and with exasperation said "Mommy, I am saying my nice words and he still won't listen to me!"

I didn't mean it!

I talked to a few friends and told them how boring my life was . . . and now I take it all back! I didn't mean that my lack of exciting events in my life should spark new found adventures. As we were headed home from a relaxing holiday weekend, we were discussing when we could get the car in for some much needed work. I was on the phone to my Dad trying to set up a time to be able to use their car for a few days when to our horror the clutch went out on the car. We were now stranded in the canyon. Through the tears I was cursing the need to pay for a tow truck and trying to be grateful that at least Curtis was with me and we had his cell phone. That was my biggest fear was that I would be stranded on the side of the freeway with no way to call for help. A tow truck eventually came and started hooking us up. Even though it was way past the girl's bedtime Madison was shooting off a million questions a minute. I opted not to ride on top of the tow truck in our car so I buckled the girls in the back seat and after a twelve point turn in the middle of the canyon we headed back into town. It was a good thing we had Madison. She kept good track of making sure the car stayed on the truck. Every once in a while she would gasp and say the car was falling off. After unloading the car and packing up my mother-in-laws car, I squished my self into the backseat between two car seats for the dreaded ride home. Once again going through the canyon, Curtis was pointing out the road that led to the other side of the mountain where he had proposed to me. Trying to make the best out of a bad situation I continued on into a much dramatized version of how we got engaged. I must have been quite entertaining because I had a captive audience who was hanging on my every word. We made it through the canyon when I had an epiphany. I had needed one of the keys on our key ring so we only took off the car key to leave at the mechanics. I realized that finally luck was on our side because if I would have done what I originally thought and only took the one key off that I needed, then we would not have a key or a car opener to get into our house. We managed to make it home . . . FINALLY, just to turn around a couple days later to get our car. I was dreading being stuck in the car for an extended period of time with my girls who were already sick of being in the car. Being prepared with the Ipod we continued our journey singing our favorite songs at the top of our lungs. I guess in retrospect, the experience could have been much worse!