And Baby Makes Three

Dependence and Independence: My Daughter at 56 Months of Age

It is difficult to get through a day with my daughter without clashing about something.  She wants (or thinks she wants) complete freedom to do and eat and wear whatever she desires, whenever she desires.  But, and here's the kicker, she also wants us to be her devoted servants and do her royal bidding.  (Four year olds would make such great princesses.)

So, for example, her parent is supposed to let her get food and drinks out of the fridge on her own, but must be available at a moment's notice to pick up a toy or book that has slipped to the floor.  After all, we can't expect Her Royal Highness to move her body to pick it up herself!

Yeah.  So, I let her get food and drinks out sometimes, but I usually pour them or portion them out.  And I will sometimes do things for her, but not always, because she is very capable and shouldn't expect to be completely catered to. 

Sometimes we argue and sometimes we hug and kiss like we've been separated for months.  Sometimes I crave some alone time, when my every movement isn't monitored and commented upon, but other times when she is sleeping, I miss her. 

Her Favorite Things

• Books: Right now she seems to enjoy a variety of things, possibly because she got new things for Christmas.  But Dr. Seuss is a big favorite: Green Eggs and Ham, The Lorax, The Foot Book, etc.
• Audio books: Angelina Ballerina stories, the original Winnie the Pooh stories
• TV: My Friends Tigger & Pooh, Little Einsteins, Zoboomafoo, Zula Patrol
• Music: Angels We Have Heard on High, Go Tell It On the Mountain were her favorite carols at Christmas.  She likes making up her own songs.  She'll boogie to almost anything upbeat.  I got home from grocery shopping to find husband playing the maraca and G. playing an assortment of drums. 
• Toys: Her new dollhouse, Bob the Builder figurines (made a recent comeback in popularity), the wooden make-your-own pizza set, Candyland game, dolls and stuffed animals
• Activities: Drawing, coloring, painting, pretending to write in small notebooks, looking at books, goofing around with Daddy, sledding, watching the birds at the bird feeder, jumping around the living room

Funny description of trying to wash a four-year-old's hair

One lesson at a time | dooce ®.

Last night I sent Jon on a walk with the dogs while I gave Leta a warm bath, and after successfully washing and rinsing her hair, a feat on par with giving a manicure to a bucking bronco

My favorite, favorite, favorite thing. . .

When I was leaving for work this morning, and while eyeballing all her "outside toys" in the garage, my daughter said, "Being outside is my favorite thing!"  Then she said, "But my favorite, favorite, favorite thing is when you are home." 

Oh, baby girl, how do I manage to elude the gravitational pull of my love for you long enough to go to work? 

Talking in the Dark

Last night, after another summer evening wherein my darling girl didn't want to go to bed, we lay side by side on her twin bed and talked.  The things she tells me are often a conglomeration of fact and fiction.  I have to take a moment to sift through what she says for the nugget of gold -- her true feelings and thoughts.  It's a relief to be able to calm down after arguing and articulate our age-old conflict: she doesn't want to go to bed but I want her to do so.  I can't blame her -- it's hot, it's still light out, and there are a million things she'd like to stay up and do.  But she really does need sufficient sleep.  When she doesn't get it, she's crabby and impatient.  When she does, she wakes up a sweet, snuggly, smiling child.  Hence my motivation to enforce a reasonable bedtime. 

I truly hope we'll always be able to communicate with each other and "make up" even when we don't agree.  In G's frustrated comments of, "I'm not going to be your best friend," usually when I've put her in a time out, I can almost hear her as a teenager saying, "I hate you!" before slamming her bedroom door.

Beautiful girl at 42 months of age

Favorite books: It used to be that certain books had to be read almost every day (Curious George anthology, Angelina Ballerina anthology), but currently we are going for variety.  G. brings home books from preschool and we borrow books from the local public library.  When she chooses her own, she gravitates toward books about her favorite characters such as Pooh, Clifford, the Little Mermaid, so I have fun finding interesting, beautifully illustrated books to read to her that don't include tv characters. 

Favorite activities: Playing on the playground, running around the house with Daddy, doing websites with Mommy, riding her tricycle, coloring, dancing, playing baseball or soccer, opening the refrigerator and/or freezer multiple times a day (just because she can)

Favorite tv shows/videos: Loves Angelina Ballerina, Bob the Builder, Little Einsteins, Zula Patrol. Blues Clues is a new favorite.  (And on the flip side is less interested now in Dragon Tales, Caillou, Thomas the Tank Engine, Zoboomafoo than she was, say, six months ago.)

Favorite toys:  Her dollies, who can be found sitting in lines in the hall (waiting for the school bus, of course), lying around the living room on makeshift beds, etc.; her Bob the Builder diecast machines (Scoop, Muck, Dizzy, Rollie, Lofty, Benny); her various wooden Thomas trains and track (Thomas, Percy, James, Bertie the Bus, Annie, Clarabelle, Mavis, Rosie, the new one I can't recall, the freight car, the caboose, the circus cars, plus Cranky the Crane); her various Little People items

Favorite foods: Loves sweets, of course, which she has in limited quantities, such as ice cream and cookies; cottage cheese, yogurt, fruit (pineapple, peaches, strawberries, cantaloupe, bananas), mac & cheese, chicken of the finger/nugget variety, spaghetti, corn

Favorite music:  She loves the CD of kids' music that she got at her last Kindermusik class and falls asleep to it every night.  She also likes: songs from The Polar Express, songs from Sesame Street, and the theme songs to her favorite shows.  She likes it when I play the piano and sing; she'll sit on the bench and tinkle away on the upper keys, mimicking the style that I'm playing.

Recent stories: 

• We were proud of how outgoing she was on Halloween this year.  She was so excited and so eager that she was sprinting up the street and across neighbor's driveways and yards to get to their doors.  She went up to the doors alone while we hung back.  We helped her decide whether to go to front doors or side doors of various houses, and advised whether to knock or press a doorbell button.  She'd say Trick or Treat (and thank you when we prompted), but didn't appear confident enough to deviate from that script when people commented on her costume, etc.
• She's going to preschool three mornings a week now, for two hours, and is learning a lot.  The teacher is using various worksheets to help them become more dexterous with pencils and markers, is helping them learn the small letters of the alphabet as well as the capitals, and is helping them with numbers and counting.  The socialization is good for her and learning that she will not always have the undivided attention of an adult when there are other children around.  She proudly shows me her school paper each day and I make a big deal of it.  We put up the most recent ones in the kitchen and I periodically take them down and scan them. 

Testing, Testing, One, Two, Three

I felt angry at my husband this morning as he stayed in bed until the last possible moment.  I understand the temptation, but I need to get ready for work and G. needs attention and breakfast.  I shouldn't have to nag him, like the mother of a teenager, to please get out of bed.

Once it gets cold outside, I don't want to leave and I envy him for being able to stay home.  In some ways it's harder to leave G. to go to work now than it was when she was a baby.  My homecoming at the end of the day isn't always met by her running into my arms.  Sometimes she has to be coaxed to come to me, either because she's in the middle of something or she's at the point in the day where she's not going to do anything anyone else wants without coercion.  When she finally does and we can relax into a giant hug, I feel like I'm really home. 

The evenings are hard because she's already tired, we're all hungry, and she peppers me with all the things she'd like us to do together while I try to pull together a quick, but somewhat nutritious dinner. I almost just wrote that I, too, would like to play this, that, or the other thing, but I really just want to eat dinner, get her into her jammies, snuggle her, read stories to her, and then have a little time to relax before my own bedtime.

I also know that it's no picnic being home all day, either.  We love her irrevocably, insatiably, insanely.  But every day is a test we must do our best not to fail. 

The test is sometimes oral/verbal in nature: "Mama, can I have a marshmallow for breakfast,"  says the little blond cherub in the Hello Kitty pajamas, while smiling lovingly at you.  The right answer is, of course, you cannot have a marshmallow for breakfast.  Marshmallows can make for a delicious snack, and you can have one later today, but we need to eat healthier things for breakfast. 

Sometimes the test is physical: When G. doesn't like something we tell her to do (or not do), especially at the end of the day when she's tired, she will make a grunting noise (oh, so everlastingly charming, this) and kick, slap, or even punch me.  This is usually like being kicked by a tiny puppy and doesn't hurt, but obviously can't be tolerated.  I usually try to move away from her if I see this coming, telling her that there will be time out if she does this.  But almost every evening I end up putting her in one or more time outs while I'm trying to make dinner.  It's very frustrating.  Sometimes if she has eaten already, I just forgo my own dinner until I have her in bed so I can give her the one-on-one attention she craves, but I'm not quite as loving as I could be if my blood sugar wasn't low.

And yet, and yet. . . she just turned three and half.  Two years from now she will be in her third month of kindergarten and she will spend more of her day with people we scarcely know than with us.  As we try to navigate the parenting tests of this age, we must make sure we are taking pictures, doing fun things together as a family, and making memories. 

This morning we went into the bathroom, which has a window that looks out onto the back yard.  I lifted her up to show her that there was a dusting of snow on the ground.  She got so excited.  "After we go to the bathroom, I'm going to put on my hat and mittens and coat and go out in the snow!  Where are my boots?"

Oops, didn't pass the materiels management test question of the day -- I need to get her new boots, asap!