Day 1 of No TV!

I read an article last night.  A mom wrote about the techniques she used to help harness the behavior of her almost 2 year old!  I wouldn't classify Anastasia as a "bad kid"... but she is definitely strong-willed and she is starting to test her boundaries.  Before completely losing control of her and myself, I want to reign things in.

Here are the things she outlined:

1. Go Low on the Sugar
2. Minimize screen time (I'm still gonna allow her Yo Gabba Gabba and Strawberry Shortcake and animated movies... she just won't get all 3 everyday, nor will she have the TV on all day long.)
3. Eye to eye (When redirecting her, I'll get down to her level and make contact with her)
4. Keep it quiet (Try not to raise my voice)
5. Distract and elaborate (Get her to stop doing what she is doing by giving her something else to do but still explaining why we don't do the first thing.)
6. Foster your relationship 
7. Save the 'no' for extremes
8. Offer two choices 
9. One page (This refers to the parents... it'll backfire on us otherwise.)
10. Be firm

All of these things may not be practical for OUR family, but how will I know unless I try putting them into practice first? 

So... day 1.  TV is off... well, off of "regular" TV.  I turned it to a music channel.  Ana so far seems to prefer this.  She is playing independently and dancing around the room to the music.  Her blocks came out and she intently built with them for a longer time period than normal, she did an art project (of course she ended up putting the stickers on her and the table more than the foam butterfly she had in front of her... but she was being creative nonetheless), she "cooked" in her pot with her veggies and fed the concoction to Donner, she played with her dollies, and she and I counted and learned the letter "A" on her doodler.  All of this was just this morning! 

Now she is down for her nap, and she went down without a fuss!  I even worked on not using "No" and not raising my voice.  Of course, this proved difficult as she seems set on testing limits while I'm nursing Titus and can't actually go over to her.  So while she noisily banged the new coaster on the coffee table, I raised my voice over the racket and said, "Ana! No! We don't do that!"  Did it work?  Nope!  I had to put TJ down and go get the coaster.  But hey... we're working on it! :) 

After nap, we'll have lunch.  Maybe she'll get to watch Strawberry Shortcake while eating.  She needs a distraction from Donner sitting right next to her begging for food so that she doesn't feed her whole lunch to the dog.