Finding our Calm and Creating a Calm Down Jar

I love my daughter, I love her smile her laugh and the way she sings off key, I look at her and I see me. It is often remarked that she is a mini me in looks but she is also a mini me in temperament as well.  The two of us butt heads often and she is the only one of my kids that can bring me from calm and collected to lunatic crazy in 60 seconds,  she is also the only one of my kids that will with no qualms look at me and say no, she doesn't even bat an eye when she talks back and on more occasions then I would like to admit I have not only heard my own words said back to me but it has been done in my tone of voice standing hand on hip toe tapping.  Yes she is me, stubborn, strong willed and always wanting the last word.  But she also is emotional, extra sensitive and has a strong need to feel secure even while arguing, she like myself has very strong emotional responses to situations.

This leads to difficulties in discipline as we are so similar that it is like well talking to myself. :)  so I have been working on keeping my cool, and remaining calm, a very difficult thing to do when faced with a strong willed little girl.   I was on Pinterest ( 0ne of my favourite time wasting sites) and saw the calm down jars. Well now this might just work for both of us it gives her time to calm down and gives mommy a few minutes to get cool calm and collected.  So we grabbed a mason jar and raided our crafting stash and here is the awesome calm down jar we created together,

 We had to pretty it up a bit because well Lady Grace and I love all things pretty and sparkly.
So here is how we did it, really really easy,  grab a clean mason jar, and some sparkle paint ( ours came from the dollar store in a pack of 8 for $3 ) we choose 3 colours, purple, pink and silver, mixed them together with warm water and shook the jar like crazy, at first you may see a few chunks as the sparkles and paint settle and separate, but the more times you shake the jar the nicer it looks, the colouring from the sparkle paint tints the water a pretty colour so it looks nice even when just sitting there, and of course to make it even more pretty and girly we choose a pretty fabric scrap, trimmed it down and tied it with a pretty piece of lace then i added a little tag and voila a beautiful and functional calm down jar.

We used it this morning after a mild meltdown over some buttons not perfect on her sweater and it worked like a charm.  My only other suggestion would be to try to find a plastic jar for safety reasons of course.

Thats me for today just trying to live life one puzzle piece at a time.
J