Does your child throw tantrums in public places? Okay, I know, dumb question....of course they do. Well just recently, we arrived in the cute little bay side town of Benica, CA, to walk in the Portuguese Holy Ghost procession, where Paige represents Petaluma walking as 'Little Queen'.
So what's a parent to do when 'Little Queen' sees older cousin who is also Junior Queen, walk into the room an hour before the procession is to begin already wearing her cape? 'Little Queen' looks up to her cousin Morgan, Junior Queen, and wants to be just like her and wear her own cape an hour before the procession begins.
As parent, I make the command decision and tell Little Queen "no" and proceed to take in the sights and activity happening around the room. I begin snapping pictures, trying to capture our Benicia moments, but 'Little Queen' is ticked and wants nothing to do with photos.
I recently had the pleasure of attending 'Mom's Day' at Paige's preschool. Very exciting to see what this four year old does during the days she spends there. She took me by the hand, straight to the playdough table. At the school, fresh playdough is made weekly {recipe below}. Always with a different color and this week the color was baby blue. Tons of fun to roll out the dough and use the cookie cutters. I was told the playdough table is one of Paige's favorites.
Then as a suprise to us moms, we were given an assignment to draw a family portrait with our child. WHAT! Stick figures are my forte. I don't draw and I was not amused with this idea. But I showed no signs of uncomfortableness.....at least not to Paige anyway. I pulled up my big girl's pants, took a deep breath and sat in a kiddie chair next to Paige and preceeded to help Paige draw our family portrait.
Basically, Paige told me what clothes she thought everyone should wear in the picture and picked out all the colors for me. Even down to the pink bow in her portrait. I drew myself, Paige, Bryce and Chloe and Paige drew her daddy and I think she attempted to draw herself as well.
Masterpiece. It now hangs in Paige's room. {I think I'll stick with the playdough and cookie cutters}
Homemade Playdough Recipe
Ingredients:
1 cup water
1 T vegetable oil
1/2 cup salt
1 T cream of tartar
Food coloring
1 cup flour
Directions:
Combine the water, oil, salt, cream of tartar and food coloring of your choosing in a saucepan and heat until warm. Remove from the heat and add the flour. Stir and knead until smooth. Store in an airtight container or Ziploc bag. Do not refrigerate.
Tip: save your containers from store bought cake frosting {or something similar}- perfect for storing playdough!
Happy Thursday!
This is a fun project to make with your kids during the upcoming holidays! If you would like to share this recipe, feel free to click the 'Like' button for your facebook friends, or copy and paste the link to this post and share it:)
A while back after I started following blogs that I was interested in, I came across Caitlin's blog. This morning, Caitlin was featured on the Today Show to talk about as her new book release, "Operation Beautiful." The mission of Operation Beautiful is to anonymously hang post-it notes in public places for strangers to come across and by reading the little note they find.."You are beautiful, just the way you are" will help combat negative feelings they may have of themselves.
Gosh, we've all experienced negative talk in our lives and know how hurtful it can be. As a child in elementary school, I wasn't as stick thin as many of the other girls in my class and I definitely heard about it from my peers. I think at one point I had the nick name of 'Chubby Checkers'. I just laughed about it at the time on the outside, but it was truly hurtful on the inside and when you're a shy kid growing up as I was, you don't talk about your feelings....not even with your own parents in my case. This nickname was actually very short lived, but look, 33 years later I can easily remember and re-live the feelings I felt back then.
I vowed if I ever became a mother, I would do everything in my power to give my children as much of a positive outlook about themselves and on life and to try and lead by example by showing them beauty comes from the inside. To teach and show that being an authentic, confident, and to be a kind person is very important in life and if you can remain true to yourself , you can achieve anything you set out to accomplish.
In our society, so often women are compared to the images that are seen in magazines and on TV and even video games. I think it's important for all our kids, but especially for our girls; our daughters, grand daughters, nieces, cousins, friends to do everything in our power to instill confidence in their self esteem so they can grow into intelligent, confident women in life.
This photo was taken after I read the note and explained to Paige what it meant.
{Then she wanted to get dressed with her clothes inside out} True story!
How will you tell the girl in your life today how beautiful she is - just the way she is?
