novice

"In spite of the six thousand manuals on child raising in the bookstores, child raising is still a dark continent and no one really knows anything. You just need a lot of love and luck - and, of course, courage."
-- Bill Cosby

I hijacked this off someone else's blog because it perfectly fits this post--


This whole parenting thing didn’t really come with a manual, so it’s a little bit trial and error. Recently it’s been a little error heavy.

If you read my friend Laura’s blog then you might have seen her post about the sad mat. {Side note: Her twins are hilarious and adorable and she is an amazing woman to manage two toddlers. One is about to kill me.}

We {and by we I mean me} decided to try and implement a sad mat in our house.

The plan was for me to introduce Reese to the sad mat when he was not in trouble. I put the mat on the floor, away from his toys, but where he could still be visible to us. I sat him on it and began my serious talk, in my serious teacher voice.

“Reese, this is the sad mat. This is where you are going to have to sit when you make mama and daddy sad. This is a very bad mat. You do NOT want to sit on the sad mat.”

I even “spanked” the sad mad for added effect. {Lofton was in the other room laughing his tail off, I might add.}

After I finished my serious talk, I was pretty impressed with myself. This sad mat was going to be our ticket to discipline city.

I let Reese up to go play. He toddled off, only to turn around and dive onto the sad mat, laughing hysterically. Then he picked it up and ran around the room superman style like it was a cape.