The Truth About Rainbows

So you may have read my previous post with our rainbow promises that included "to be nice to my sister" and "to not hit my sister" as well as my own promise to "be patient with the girls"......ahhh, the silly pipe dreams I have sometimes.  How does the saying go......if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain (pretty sure that gem can be credited to the often underestimated Dolly Parton?)  In my house, the rainstorm doesn't always come BEFORE the rainbow.  We cleaned up our mess from craft time (read: I cleaned up 99% of it while The Bear hid under the table and covered Buddy-the-friendly-dog in Hello Kitty stickers, and Tinkerbell s l o o o o w l y picked up 4 scraps of paper and made individual trips to the garbage can to dispose of them.)  Our calm land-of-rainbows serenity lasted a few hours and then entered the Afternoon That Would Not End.

I'll spare you the gory details but I can disclose that we have officially welcomed a new standing addition to our household and that is The Time Out Chair.  I remembered reading in my pediatrician's How to Raise a Child According to A Medical Doctor Who May or May Not Have Actually Had Children Himself* handbook that the time out chair should be in a separate room, facing a corner, and preferably should have arms to make the child feel enclosed, and should follow the one-minute-per-age rule. 

We had the opportunity to run tests of The Time Out Chair for both the 4 year old subject as well as repeated tests for the 2 year old subject.  2 year old subject was found to require multiple placements in The Time Out Chair to make it to the recommended two minute mark, and on this inaugural day of testing The Chair was found to be ineffective in behavior modification. 

Our research concluded that The Time Out Chair is most effective when Mommy sits in The Chair herself with Ear Buds, the latest issue of Redbook magazine, and a cup of coffee.  Further testing is required to support the hypothesis that The Chair could be even more effective with a glass of wine in place of the cup of coffee.  Feel free to test this one yourselves and report back to me.


*possibly not the technical title of said handbook


And as a funny addendum to this post, I will leave with you a picture that Tinkerbell drew the next morning.  This picture captures one of the moments that sent The Bear to The Time Out Chair on the Afternoon That Would Not End.

This is an illustration of little sister pulling out a literal, non-exaggerated FISTFUL of big sister's hair, and big sister's subsequent and self-described "mad face."  (It could be argued that Mommy was the one who had the mad face while Tinkerbell herself had a red, tear-streamed face.....)







In closing, a special shout-out to my girlfriends for a much-needed night out last night.....thanks for all the laughs and for the reminder of the coping mechanism that IS storytelling. 

TGIF!