Heat Wave

This past week some records were set-

#1 It was the hottest it's ever been since we moved here 4 years ago (but we were gone for 2 of those summers)! Monday morning I got up extra early to get a good run in, but when I opened the door and felt the wave of humidity at 5:30am I knew it wasn't gonna be the greatest run. Each day it got hotter and hotter- reaching a heat index of 111 degrees. One day it was 90 degrees by 9am and of course the nights don't cool off either. Thursday night I checked the temp before hitting the sack at 10pm and it was 91 degrees! I took the girls to the pool only twice this past week, hoping to get some relief, but even the pool was too warm for my liking. On Friday the girls and I hit up the splash park at 10am. I was beyond excited to get out, hang out with friends, and have a "cool" outing for the week! Madi had a complete blast for about 30 minutes while Elle was a little unsure about all the water shooting up everywhere. They lasted until 11:30 and then were begging to go home. What a bummer! Which leads me to the next record set . . .

#2 Number of time-outs in one day.

This record was set on Friday by Madi. Something about the heat and being inside has made my girls absolutely crazy! Or maybe it's just the age- but everything on Friday was a battle. Manners were thrown out the window and I was getting a lot of "NO" and "I don't want to!" Instead of completely loosing my patience, I'd just pick Madi up and go put her in time-out. . . over and over and over again. Elle had her own share of time-outs too, mostly cause she'd fight back with Madi.

I've decided to implement a new chart/reward system. I've been telling Madi about it, but still have to make it and come up with the point system. We'll be introducing it for FHE this Monday night. Big thanks to Becky for the fabulous idea!

#3 Since we were stuck inside, surviving the heat, I tried extra hard to make it a fun week for the girls (and myself). This past week we set a record for the number of crafts made at our house in just one week (5 days). We made turtles, kites, puppets, foam necklaces, storyboards, modeling clay figures, mosaics, and thank you cards, as well as buying new coloring books and checking out 2 dozen new books from the library. But the hardest thing about it was that even though I had all these fun things planned, my girls didn't seem to appreciate it. They'd fight over the supplies, scream that the other was touching their stuff, tease, pester, pull hair and even hit each other. By the end of the week I was completely at my wits' end!

Needless to say, it was a rough week for me. I'm just hoping this new reward system gets things changed around (charts like this usually do wonders for Madi- we'll see how Elle responds to it). Crossing my fingers that this week is a little easier than last!