Meltdown At The Duck Pond

It wasn’t too hot this afternoon and I needed to get out of the house to divert my mind off some things.  So, I took Autumn on a walk around the duck pond.  She loved to do that, and we just haven’t done it in a while.  She had fun running far ahead of me and chasing after the ducks.  She’s a fast little runner.

After about 10 minutes out there, she decided she wanted to have a little meltdown.  She thought an ant was in her shoe and insisted on taking it off.   I looked and there were no ants in her shoes, but she REFUSED to put her shoe back on (hence the reason she only has one shoe on in this picture).  She didn’t want to walk around the pond anymore, so I started walking back towards home and as you can tell from this picture, she didn’t want that either.  She sat down in the middle of the sidewalk and refused to move.  She finally came running when I started acting like I was going to walk across the street.  I finally got her home (still w/ one shoe off) and tried giving her a bath…OH.MY.GOODNESS!  She threw the biggest fit I’ve ever witnessed from her.  I tried being nice and getting down on her level and talking to her.  I tried threatening her w/ not getting to play w/ her toy in the tub.  I tried giving her a little swat on the butt.  NOTHING WORKED!  It was awful!

After I gave her the fastest bath ever, I finally got her calmed down and Nick came home from work, so I decided we would try and have a small family home evening (FHE).  We sang a song, said a prayer, and then I gave a small lesson on not picking our noses.  LOL!  I used her baby doll to act it out and at one point told the baby in a stern tone, “No, no, no.  We don’t pick our noses.”  Autumn thought I was talking to her and started crying!  So, that didn’t go over very well.  But after our 3 minute lesson on not picking noses went south, we ended FHE and had our treat…MOO COW (that’s what she calls ice cream).  Then we watched 20 minutes of Pocahontas and called it a night.

I really need to be better about having FHE w/ her since she’s getting to the age she can understand.  I am going to subscribe to get the Ensign and New Era and Friend.  That way I can use the Friend for our FHE lessons.  And to get all of those magazines for a year it was only $26!!!  Gotta love that!