Avrie Appreciation Day

Overall Morgan and I have been pretty lucky to have such good kids. From birth they have both been laid back, calm and easy to get along with.  Most of the time...all kids have fits here and there but I think compared to most kids, my girls are way below the norm. When I was pregnant with Piper everyone kept telling me that she was going to be super difficult because there was just no way that I would get two easy kids in a row. Well,  I did!  Up until about two weeks ago...

About two weeks ago Avrie started to get a major attitude and in my opinion a bad behavior problem.  She went from getting one time out a month to about 5 a day.  Yes, 5 in a day - and they weren't the easy, sit her in the time out chair and wait 3 minutes kind of time outs. These were the ones where a 3 minute time out lasted about an hour.  Not fun.  She started kicking, hitting, throwing things, and even screamed the dreaded "I hate you" to me several times.  This behavior concerned me because it just wasn't like her.  I've watched enough Nanny 911 to know that kids usually act this way for a reason.

I started thinking about our daily routines, the daily conversations, everything that could give me a clue to why she could possibly be acting so badly.  It didn't take too long to figure it out.  Almost every time Avrie would ask for something, for me to color with her, for a snack, whatever - my usual response was something along the lines of "In a minute",  "After I...", "Let me finish this.."  You can see where I'm going.  Piper is at an age where she needs alot of attention, I think I might have forgotten about the part where Avrie needs alot of attention too.  Of course she's going to act up, its the only time she gets direct, uninterrupted attention from me.

Obviously this is not okay.  I need Avrie to know that she is as important to us as Piper is.  She needs our attention in an equal way, period.  So,  today we made arrangements to take Piper to the babysitter so Morgan and I could spend the day alone with Avrie.  We took her to see the new Kung Fu Panda movie - where she got to pick whatever snacks she wanted.  We went to the pet store so she could pet all the kitties, look at all the fish and tweet at all the birds.  We took her to the goat farm to see her new pet goats, went for Pizza and then grocery shopping.  She was allowed to pick a special treat at the grocery and she picked a 2 lb container of fresh blueberries.  Sort of reminded me of myself as a kid where I always wanted a head of cauliflower.  It was a fun day.

During the movie Avrie leaned over and whispered to me that the last time we went to a movie together Pipey was in my tummy.  Scary that she remembered that but even scarier - that day at the movies when I was prego with Piper was the last time Morgan and I had done anything with just Avrie.  That's sad to me and I am definitely going to make an effort to have more alone time with the kids.  Its important to do no matter how busy we are, and lets face it - we're never that busy. 

Having fun on the way to drop Piper off

With one of the full sized dwarf goats - just the right size for Avrie

Me holding one of our new goats.  It was like holding a puppy so cuddly

Tuckered out after a day of fun with mommy and daddy