HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY

Today was Daddy's birthday. Emily looked forward to that day for weeks. She is definately a party girl. I bought daddy's present over a week ago, and I showed it to her before I hid it. She even knew where I hid it. She did not tell. She is a good secret keeper!!! I also told her weeks ago that we were going to surprise daddy and make cupcakes. She managed to keep that secret until this morning. We called daddy at work to wish him a happy birthday and he asked what we were going to do today, and she said, "make cupcakes!" She had lots of fun making the cupcakes. Her job was to put the paper liners in the muffin pan while I mixed everything up. I then divided the batter into 2 bowls and let her scoop, then eat whatever she wanted. I did the same with the icing. It is funny, she called the icing butter. She buttered the cupcakes!! She wanted to play games at Daddy's party. It was just the 3 of us, so we asked her what game she thought we should play. "Hide and Go Seek." So that's what we did!!

I have been having some severe behavoir problems with Emily. Sometimes she is down right rude to me. She will scream and yell at me sometimes for no reason. Or she will demand that I get her something to eat or drink. She also loves to make me mad. There seems to be nothing I can do to break her of this when she gets in this mood. One day this week, she took the scissors to my bed sheets!! When I found it she just laughed. I spanked her and put her in the corner. I asked her why she did it, and her answer was to make Mommy mad. Daddy and I talked about how we were going to break her of this disobedience and rudeness. He talked to her and wasn't making much progress. She would just blame it on me. Finally, he hit a button with her. He told her he was going to take all her "Babies" (her baby blankets, she has them named, ie Pink Baby, Polka Baby...) and take them to his shed and shred them. She put on a great poker face like this didn't bother her a bit. After about 20 minutes the wailing began. "I miss my babies!!" Finally, she cracked. We told her she had to stop being ugly to Mommy, no more rudeness and demanding and plain screaming at Mommy. We are now seeing some turnaround in her behavior. We are going to give her back her babies one at a time over the next couple of weeks. We have also had to pick up a bunch of her toys because it has become such a battle to get her to pick them up. Sunday we asked her for 3 hours to pick up her toys. We spanked and put her in the corner, and she still would not pick them up. Last resort, I put her in the corner, and I picked up her toys and put them up. She of course cried. I told her she had to earn her toys back. She asked me what that meant. I said you have to work to get them back. She wailed even louder and said, "I have to get a job??" It was so hard not to laugh. OH, life with a strong willed child!!!