Stop Complaining!

Easier said than done.

I help in the K-6 Sunday school class at church. All of the kids are together in one class for the summer. The lesson yesterday was all about how powerful our words are. We were all given little rubber bracelets and we all promised to try to not complain and argue for 21 days. Every time we catch ourselves complaining or arguing, we move the bracelet to the other wrist. If you have to move your bracelet, then you start counting the days over.

Chris thinks I'm silly for doing this and hates the trendy bracelet thing, but I think it'll be good for me. To be honest, I've never liked the gimmicky trendy bracelet thing either, but if we ask the kids to do it, then it shouldn't be beneath me to do it either.

I really don't argue at all, so that's not the tough one. I am seeing that I tend to complain quite often, but it doesn't even register that I'm complaining. Now that I'm thinking before I speak, I can already see an improvement in my attitude. I'm pretty lazy, and usually have a plethora of excuses for not doing something, but yesterday, I ventured outside and mowed and edged the front yard, even though I had a headache. Last night, I just about drove to Wal-Mart at 3:00am for some medicine for Chris, which I would normally whine about first. (I found one last dose here, so I got out of that one.) And today I didn't complain about the rain, I just went and ran some errands that I'd normally put off until it stopped raining.

So, I'm a fan. I haven't had to switch my bracelet in almost 24 hours! Of course, I won't have as much to blog about since I tend to complain a lot in my posts, but I'll live. I guess I'll just have to post more about my genius baby. Sorry.

In this past week or so, she's had an explosion of words. She says chalk, chair, potty (bobby), diaper (bopper), water (wawa), bread (bwa), frog (bwah), applesauce and Becky finally got her to say "PEASE" for please instead of the previous, completely uninteligible sound she made. She also just put together two words on her own for the first time. She says "Hi Deedee" (Dingle). She says it over and over and over to her. The funny thing is, she can't say "Hi Max" or "Hi Zoe." A few of the words she's said for awhile are now sounding like the real thing. She used to say "bee" for bird, but now it comes out as "burr". And book used to be "beak", but sounds more like book now.

She's trying really hard to jump, but can't seem to get more than one foot off the ground at once. I'm gonna get flack for this next one, but so far it's really not been much harder than training the dogs when it comes to teaching her rules. It's all about consistency. Just like the dogs, the rules that we're kind of wishy washy on, she hasn't gotten down, but the ones that we put our foot down on, every single time, she's learned no problem. She's not allowed to take her drink out of the kitchen, so she leaves her cup on a kitchen chair before leaving the kitchen. And she does it without prompting now!

This next picture is in response to the picture of Clara's friend "Bubbles" that her mother posted on her blog. In the spirit of making fun of our children, I'm putting up this picture that a friend made for us of.... hmmm, we'll call her Clartopher. Isn't she sweet?

Now where do I get a bracelet to remind me to be nice?