a quiet moment

With Ellie's recent obsession with yelling, we haven't had many quiet moments around here lately.

The other day, Ellie came around the corner into the kitchen where I was, 
saw me there, 
put her fists in the air and screamed until her face was red,
then dropped her arms, drooped her shoulders, stuck out her bottom lip,
and walked away.

So yeah, that's about how things have been going around here.
I feel bad for the poor girl, she's obviously very frustrated, but there's not much more I can do to help her until she figures it out and gets through this phase.

I read this fantastic blog post about the power of the words "You can" when directing a child, so I practice it with Ellie.
"You can use a soft voice to tell Mommy what you need."
"You can come over here to talk to me."
"You can say 'help' when you need something."
and so on.  
I can't tell if it is helping Ellie yet, but it sure does help me remember how to react to her meltdowns.

Thankfully, I had a lot of practice with Nicholas's angry phase and after a lot of work on my part, I'm actually incredibly proud of my ability to stay calm, keep my own voice quiet, and not let the children's emotional turmoil affect my own emotions.  I'm not completely immune to the occasional "mommy tantrum" but I'm far better than I was two years ago.

But that doesn't mean I don't long for some peace and quiet every minute of every day.

So when the children were quiet for a solid ten minutes the other day, I pulled out my camera to document it.

Ellie and I were at the sink,

and Nicholas was playing with his marble game in the living room.

When he plays marbles (or almost anything), the marbles "talk" to each other--he's always got some pretend storyline going on, and I love to watch it.

Even just looking at these pictures reminds me of how nice those ten minutes were.  Ahhh, peace.