All about emotions

Last week, emotions ran high and low ALL WEEK.

Amahli particularly swung from giggles and smiles to horns and screams to tears and hugs and back again in the space of 5 minutes and the days continued like this for most of the week. I dont really know why, I know shes not happy being dragged around all day but I think probably she was tired and it was hot.
Through this emotional crap she dealt out to me, I tried to help her through it by talking about how she felt. If she was sad, I pointed out she was sad and cuddles would help, if she was happy, we danced a jig ( not too many jigs last week, hopefully more to come this week). If the horns appeared with the sound of screaming, I gave her wide berth until the steam stopped pouring from her ears.
By doing this, I began to show her about emotions and how they make you feel.

This week, I went a bit further and we looked through some books to find happy and sad faces, cranky and laughing faces, and with Jared, we talked about the faces. Why were they sad? What would make them happy? What makes them happy?

I dug through the cupboard to find our own stampers of faces so they could make their own faces and also found our emotions teddy match game so she could do the same thing.

Amahli was totally enthralled in the emotions teddy and had different voices for the happy teddy, sad teddy, and cranky teddy.

Stamping was good although she wasnt really into the concept of making a face, just more interested in the stamping. Jared was keen to make happy faces and he talked about the things they were happy with.

"This one is happy cos he has a hug today. He loves hugs" ( yep hes my boy alright :)) He wasnt keen on making sad faces, so most of his had smiles.

We then played around with our own faces, making them surprised, happy and cranky.

Surprised

Happy

Cranky
We talked for quite awhile about what makes them happy, and then I shared with them what makes me happy.

Happy kids. smiles. hugs. singing. dancing. the beach. daddy. hearing them giggle. rain.

Talking to them about what makes me happy gives them an insight into me, makes me a an actual person with feelings too, not just "mummy". And it opens up the idea that whilst they are ultra important, so are other people too, especially me.

When we got in the car this afternoon, it was raining. Jared turns to Jumeirah and says " Rain is mums happy, does it Mum? I love it too!"

My work here is done :) for today :)