Focusing on my role & the magic maker.

Hello everyone, happy Winey Palooza Wednesday!

Girls, we don't need to whine, it's Winey Palooza Wednesday! Have some wine and join us on the Winey Palooza Wednesday with the Green Family!

Okay girls, if you want to sing together, you have to actually sit next to each other. Good times! So Um, last Wednesday by 9 o'clock the girls and I were falling asleep, so I decided to try 8 o'clock, and I am so much more wide awake. So my question for you is, what do you think about 8 o'clock? And I welcome suggestions for a time on Wednesday that works for you. I don't think 9 o'clock is working for us. Um, especially since I'd like to put Lily to bed at 9 o'clock. So I'm gonna start with a little bit of business. We got sent the most adorable shoes, and I only wish that I had a little baby. No, that could wear these. No, look at these shoes! I'm gonna show you all of them.

I was gonna— no, I was being Vanna White.

Get out, get out!

So that you could show the other baby shoes.

Look at these adorable shoes. I'm gonna show them all. Okay, take those.

You gotta give them to me. That's what I was trying to tell you.

And here's the other one. Oh my goodness, this is a leopard print baby shoe!

Oh my gosh, you get home with Savannah.

Okay, so, um, what I'm gonna tell you is—

where did you get these fabulous—

I'm gonna tell you. Stop and be patient. Here's the yellow adorable girl shoes. These are from Adipis, and you can buy them at Adipiz, adipizkids.com. Look at these shoes! If I had babies, I would be using these. So if you might get the pink ones, if your child— I would get pink. If your child is girl, foot size 5.5, um, I imagine these are for girls, um, girl leopard or boy leopard, size 3.5 kids. Or these look like a boy or a girl, probably a boy. Um, but doesn't matter. Size 6.5. If you have a baby and you would like these shoes, I would love to give them to you.

If you're local, come and get them because I don't have to tell us you're coming.

I don't have a baby, and so I can't enjoy these beautiful shoes that were sent to us. So thank you, Adipis, um, shout out to you, and I hope that I can find some parents who can enjoy these. So moving on to my topics today. Cheers to Stacy for the Riesling, we love it. So topic from last week was focusing on my role. You did not get to enjoy that topic at 9 o'clock when we fell asleep on the couch. I don't have my little Zoom lensy thing on, so you can't see my family. That's all right, we're gonna do without it. There's my family. Oh my gosh, okay, so Lily wants to talk about school. School because the week before I talked about Lily in school and she pooped out, which is part of why I changed the time. Hello, Joette and Jodi. So I decided to take the lens off of Lily and put the lens on myself. It was Friday, November 20th, and I said, okay, I'm not— I'm gonna focus on myself and I'm gonna focus on my role and I'm gonna focus on how I'm contributing to the problem. And, you know, Lily at that point was doing independent work on Thursdays and Fridays, and it wasn't going very smoothly. And so I noticed that when things start to go south with her, I tend to follow right away, and it's very hard. I'm not staying patient and calm and nurturing with her, and I'm getting, you know, I'm getting angry, I'm getting impatient, I'm getting stressed out, and in my mind I'm like, I don't understand, you have this work to do, just go do it. But I'm having such a good time doing my podcast. I just interviewed two psychologists and I got to talk about my fabulous daughter, and you know, we were talking about the fact that kids are having a hard time. They're not trying to give us a hard time. They're having a hard time and we need to help them. So when Lily is struggling and melting down, I have to think to keep myself calm. I need to think things like, Lily is struggling. Lily is having a hard time. Lily needs a break. I have to be aware of what is actually going on and not think, oh, she's just trying to be difficult. Right, Lily?

She's never trying to drive you crazy.

Right?

I'm just difficult to like.

Why do you think that?

Here, why don't you have a mic?

Lily, why do you think that sometimes I would label you difficult? Why do you think that?

Because sometimes—

hold the mic up—

because sometimes when we're doing school, it kind of stresses me out. It stresses me out too.

Why does it stress you out?

Because I look at my list and I see the millions of things I have to get done in a certain time.

I think one of the things that worked out better for you was when we spaced it out and did some on the weekend. Lily, would you agree with that? Spacing it out and not doing it all in one day, does that help? Um, so things have changed in New York State. I don't know what's going on where you live, but where we live, the children are no longer going to school right now.

They're remote.

They're— he doesn't let me finish my sentences. The kids are doing school at home online, and Lily and Ella would say it's very, very hard to be online all day. Um, so we have shifted from independent work to doing Zooms all day. So what do you ladies think about the Zooms all day?

I don't like them. Never have, never will.

Bam!

I, I like them better. It's just being brutally honest.

Okay, let Lily finish and then we'll talk to you.

I like doing Independent, but I like doing Zooms better than doing independent work because the teacher can do it with me if I'm stuck.

That's wonderful.

I did not know that.

I think that Zooms all day work better for you.

Yes.

Yes. And Ella, how come you don't like the Zooms?

They just feel super controlling and restricting and isolating. If those were the three words I had to use to describe it.

Any ideas on how we could either change your perspective or make it more manageable for you?

I don't know.

What about it feels controlling or whatever else you said?

The fact that they're still assigning work but not treating it like it actually is work.

So I think that the teachers would all say that they are trying so hard, and I have told you from the beginning that the teachers are Aside from doctors and nurses, the teachers are the superheroes in this whole scenario and have had to adapt and constantly have to adapt. And we are so thankful to all the teachers. And I would say that, um, if I could tell the teachers one thing, which they know, especially if they have their own kids, that this is not traditional school, that proceeding as normal is not gonna work. And I just want everyone— parent, teacher, student— to remember that we're in difficult times right now, and this is not normal school. And I think that when Ella feels like the teachers are proceeding like normal and forgetting how challenging it is for the kids, I think she gets frustrated. Is that accurate?

Yeah, I guess.

Um, so I will say that I'm doing my best to support my kids. I'm doing my best to make them good lunches and nice snacks and reminding them to walk around and doing my best to support them. And in doing that, I really spend a great deal of time analyzing myself and what my role is in the scenario because when things do go south in our house, I am not innocent. And as much as I think that our kids need to be taught proper behaviors from us, I also think that they need to be taught more, especially right now, is coping and problem-solving skills. And the biggest thing, the biggest thing for my girls is coping skills. Lily said to me yesterday, she said, what am I supposed to do when I'm really mad? What am I supposed to do? Do you remember saying that to me? And I loved that you asked that question. Do you remember saying, what am I supposed to do when I'm really mad?

Yes, I remember. I was very angry at you and I said, "What am I supposed to do when I'm mad like this?" And what did I suggest?

You said, "Well, take deep breaths." I said, "Walk away." Walk away instead of screaming. Walk away, take some deep breaths, get away from the situation, calm yourself down. And I ordered some stress balls.

So I swear that while I was working upstairs, at one point today the door opened and people were screaming in our backyard. Did you guys go outside and scream? I thought that's what you were talking about.

Oh yeah, we went outside and screamed too.

Mom, Mom, Lily? Can I explain it? Yeah.

So I saw this thing where if you screamed it can get all your frustration out. So I said to Mommy, I said, "Can we go scream outside? Get our frustration out?" And she said, "Sure, just get your coat and socks on." So me and Alarina outside and screamed to the top of our lungs.

That's what that was.

Yeah.

I was a little confused.

Okay.

Nobody told me.

So what is so hysterical is that because it's winter, all of the green shrubs have fallen off. So it's the— all the trees are bare, so our neighbors right behind us can see us. There's no like privacy.

Our green privacy fence disappeared.

It's the privacy fence is gone, and we didn't realize that until we went outside and the three of us screamed a few times, and our neighbors were like, what is going on? And we were like, hi! And Lily was like, that was so awkward.

I wondered what the heck is— I was in the middle of a podcast.

I couldn't come down.

No, no, no, it's fine. I was unable to come find out what was going on.

So Seth was upstairs.

10 minutes later there was no more screaming, so I figured nobody was dying and no one ran upstairs and said you have to come stop the blood or anything.

I'm sorry. So Seth was attempting to work among all the noise today.

Yeah, attempting.

So, um, okay, so as I told you, I focused on myself and what I can do to help my girls in the scenario. I focused on how I was contributing to it negatively. I started to think about what I could do more positive, looking at situations differently, realizing that they're struggling and they need my help. I think my mindset and what I'm thinking has totally to do with how I react to a situation. And then this week I wrote about being the magic maker. And what I mean by that is that, um, what I'm realizing as all of the holidays go by, I am realizing that when my girls— well, and Max. Max doesn't, Max doesn't really care this year. He cares if he gets some good presents, I would guess. But when my kids think about their childhood I think they're going to think about the holidays and the birthdays and what I worked hard to create for them. And I started to think about myself as a magic maker, and I started to think about how I spent the entire day transforming the house into Hanukkah. And you understand because a lot of you have a lot of Christmas decorations or whatever holiday that you celebrate. And so I spent an entire day just going through decorations and making our house Hanukkah magic. And at the end of the day, when we all sat down for dinner, Ella was looking around and she was like, oh my God, this is amazing! Thank you so much for doing all of this. And I just got that whole like, yes, this is what I'm doing for my family. And I just wanted all of you mothers and fathers to realize that you may not realize how special it is when you spend all night wrapping presents, and you may not realize how special it is when you spend all day decorating your tree and making gingerbread houses or baking cookies or whatever your traditions are. We're going to— Hanukkah is how many, how many days away is Hanukkah? 8! Oh my God, I don't like when it's early. So when it's early, it's a lot more pressure. So I have to get wrapping. I said I was gonna wrap. I did no wrapping today, so the presents won't get wrapped.

We're back.

I think Facebook thinks I'm taking too much time, so this is part 2, Magic Maker. So I just want to encourage everyone that um, all of the special traditions that you've been doing every year, that we can still do them this year, and we can still stay home and do most of our traditions. My family is going to light the menorah every night, and we're gonna say the blessings, and the girls already worked on a Hanukkah house, which is like a gingerbread house, and we're going to make latkes and and maybe we'll make some homemade donuts. And there's so many things that we can still do. And I just wanted you all to know that you are making magic for your family and that when your kids look back on their childhood, they are going to see how, how wonderful you made all of these holidays for them, even during a 2020 pandemic. So for us, we may or we may not get to celebrate with family this year. We totally are accustomed to FaceTimes and Zooms, and we realize we can still make it special. So as much as I loved sending my kids to school and transforming the house when they were away and watching them walk in the door and be like, oh my god, you did this all day. Um, I had to do it while they were home, and I have to change some things, and some things are different this year, but different doesn't mean that it's bad. And I can hopefully still do some old traditions, and I'm hoping to come up with some new traditions. And would love to hear how your family is, um, going to do the holiday this year and any new ideas that you may have come up with. And anything you ladies want to say about school or the holidays or Dad? What would you like to say, Lil?

I would like to say that I am very appreciative that Mommy spent her whole day making us honeycomb magic. Yeah, me too.

Okay, anything else that you guys want to add? Seth? I'm good. Okay.

I'm just very thankful.

We're all very thankful. Very, very thankful. So everybody, Have a wonderful rest of your evening and let us know if 8 o'clock is gonna work for you. We hope so. Um, thank you for watching and tune in to my podcast this Friday. It's the Peace and Parenting Lady and I had a wonderful conversation with her about how important it is to, um, get the behaviors that we want through the connection with our children. So I hope that you will listen and subscribe. Ella Bella.

Thank you for watching Winey Blues on Wednesday with the Green Family.

Cha-cha chicken.

Cheers, have a wonderful week. See you next week.