This book is by Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish.

IT ROCKS!!! I can not recommend it highly enough. If you have kids, no matter what age, you *must* read this at least once! It has concrete examples of how to handle situations with your kids, without blame or punishment, and while keeping your kids' respect and sense of worth intact.

I am so grateful I found this now. I think I mentioned we've been having some trouble with Rhiannon's behavior lately (all in time for my mother to witness), and while we've vowed never to spank, we do use time-outs. It doesn't seem to be helping, and this doesn't seem like one of her "phases", where she tests the limits for a while and then reverts back to our little sweetheart. For one thing, it's been going on since Christmas, while her other testing phases generally only lasted a week or two. So I knew it was time to try something different, and I'm so excited I found this book! I started using some of the techniques over the last couple of days, and lo and behold, this WORKS!!

Today was great, too. She woke up in a bear of a mood (probably because she woke up at 6:30, which is way too early - although she's been on a 6am streak lately too, but I digress). All day there were ample opportunities to try my "new skills" - whining, fussing, clinging, and one beast of a tantrum. I did not lose my patience once, I did not yell a single time, she did not get a single minute of "Rhia time", and each and every time the new methods worked! I am so pumped. I feel like Super Mom instead of Frazzled and Frustrated Screaming Mom. Yay!!

Get the book!!!

I make milk!
What's your super power?

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Smart mamas - breastfeeding advocates are damn clever!

Another pregnant woman is murdered by the father of her child. And, for good measure, he killed her 7-year-old son as well.

I can't even think of a term to describe such a despicable human being. These bastards think they can just screw around with women all the time, but then they don't want to take responsibility for any consequences that come from it. Oh, and he did it because he didn't want his *other* girlfriend to find out he was cheating on her. Um, I think she might know now, and I'll bet she's REALLY impressed with how you took care of the situation, loser.

Gawd, it just makes me so sad!!

I'm pregnant!! I found out about a month ago, but I've been keeping it quiet - I wanted to tell my mom in person, when she came for a visit from the 8th-15th, and I would have felt bad telling *everybody* else first. LOL So, that's the main reason I've been so quiet lately. It's hard to write about other stuff when you can't write about the main thing going on in your life. :) Also, I've been really, really tired as a result. I've also started getting some "evening sickness", and begun feeling nauseous as the evening progresses. So it's kept me off the computer for a while. I'm nearly 9 weeks now, so hopefully this exhaustion will pass with the first trimester.

Some other things have been going on as well, but they're more negative, and I just don't have the energy to go into everything yet. My mom's visit didn't go as well as I'd hoped, so I'm still recovering from that. I felt she was critical of me and the way we parent Rhiannon, so it was draining having her here, feeling she was watching me and I wasn't measuring up. So I'm recovering from that. It brought me down a bit. She left on Tuesday (after commenting that she should have made her ticket to return home two days earlier on Sunday *sigh*), and we've just been trying to get our happy vibes back.
Rhiannon got sick with a cold while Mom was here, which made Rhia miserable, which made her cranky, which contributed a lot to the problems. I am moody and tired and grumpy anyway, which didn't help anything. Add the stress of having my mom watch us all go downhill, and it was not fun times over here.

Anyway, I had a bunch of friends over today for a great workshop on essential oils given by a very lovely, knowledgeable woman. It turns out that she and I have a lot in common - she's a Pagan (although she didn't use that label before today! I think we converted her. LOL), she does attachment parenting, and she homeschools! So I think we'll be getting along fabulously. She will probably even come to the next Cacklfest on Saturday. So that's cool. I had a great time, got some great products, including an awesome hand-carved native-looking goddess charm, with a beautiful pregnant belly, for a necklace (and she said she wasn't Pagan. ha!). I had a blast with everyone here, and I think everyone else had a good time too. I love hosting little parties like that! :)

I'll try to post a little more regularly from now on, but no promises until my energy levels return to normal (like when this baby is five years old or so LOL).

Blessings to all!

Just got this forwarded to me, and I giggled:

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It's amazing that the State of the Union Address and Groundhog Day come on the same day. Both are cultural events deep in tradition.

One is a farcical ritual based on the random actions of a demented creature that really has no idea where he is or what he's doing, pulled out for show and then sent back to the bowels of the earth...

and the other one involves a Groundhog.

This is great. It just shows the intelligence level of those losers.

The cold-hearted bastards even put poor Cody's own plastic gun to his head. Will the atrocities never end??

"Release Iraqis from US custody, or we will behead this... action figure!"

Um, go ahead.

I really hope this becomes a trend, and they start using dolls as hostage victims. I like that much better than real people. Oh, and I'd love to see Barbie looking a bit tortured; maybe they would add a bit of smudged mascara for a teary-eyed look.