Boundries

Nathan is really pushing boundaries these last few weeks and it is really pushing my buttons as well. Daniel has never been comfortable with spanking and even though I am a proponent of it I agreed to try a time out only method of discipline. Nathan responds to time out so I didn't feel that I was harming our child by agreeing to this change. I still insist on spanking for biting because that needs instant negative feedback. I think that he smelled the change in the air and decided it was time to test parental resolve on all issues. All the things we learned not to do when we were two, lets try them all again for good measure, just to see if the rules really are the same. And so it began.

We are about six weeks into the trial and I am about to lose it. I don't think that the time out isn't working I just feel that I need something in place to enforce time out. Poor Daniel has gotten a call every week saying are you sure this is what you want to do? I have stuck with it and I believe that Daniel and I are more on the same page and that things are very consistent in terms of our response to misbehavior and that is very much a good thing. But I am spending over an hour a day doing time out with my son and it is having a toll physically. I can't hold him in time out as well as I once could and when he fights being in time out it actually does hurt me quite a bit. Daniel has seen improvement and feels that things are getting better. I don't know if I disagree entirely or if I am just so close to it that realistic perspective is hard for me.

My solution: at first Daniel thought I was just trying to prove him wrong and that hurt my feeling a bit, really I am just trying to get concrete date to either encourage me or make known in a clear way what is happening at home. I started a time out log. I record the total time that the episode took, how many times he got out, how many times he was held in, and did he kick, hit, pinch or whatever at anytime during the episode. So far the results have not been promising, but it is only been 2 days so we will see where this goes.

Keep us in your prayers this will be a long road no matter what we decide. I still think in general that we have a very sweet, well behaved child, it is just that we also have a strong-willed almost three year old and that in its self includes a bit of trouble.

Hitting my Stride?

So after months of struggling Daniel and I decided to up our grocery budget and now I am in hog heaven. It is like just as we gave up on making it on less something clicked, meaning that instead of being $20 short every month, and scraping by to only make it that much, I have $30-50 seemingly extra dollars at the end of the month. I have three theories on how this is happening...

1. I am less reserved about take risks, buying in bulk and such, since I don't feel like we will be scraping at the end of the month.

2. The holiday and summer sales have made getting more for less increasingly possible and/or since gas prices have gone down slightly so have food prices.

3. I have hit my stride and have discovered more of the ins and outs of the cycle of sales and where the bargains are to be found.

I am wary of becoming over confident and blowing the budget frivolously because I think I am ahead of the game but on the other hand how great would it be to have some grounded confidence in myself in this area once again. It seems like a lot of agonizing over something that is relatively minor but I look at my ability to save us money as my job. The whole "penny saved is a penny earned" idea. If July continues to go as well as it has, and August is also a success, I think I will feel like I am in a position to relax some. It would be really nice to relax.