New Room

To make room for the much anticipated arrival of Flopsy, we redecorated one of the downstairs bedrooms for Mae and Adi. (Our house has two bedrooms upstairs, two downstairs, which will work great when Adi & Mae are teenagers but isn't optimal now). As I write this, Dave is reading their bedtime stories in the new room and my fingers are (figuratively-- I am typing afterall) crossed hoping neither will feel scared or lonely enough to wake us up in the middle of the night.

In order to generate enthusiasm for the move, as well as to have more time to work on the remodel, we've involved the girls in just about every step of the project.

Tearing out the carpet (and underlying linoleum):

 Removing trim:

Mudding:

 They picked colors for the walls: Adi was the expected blue but Mae surprised us by picking yellow instead of purple:

 









  We snapped in the cork flooring, Dave finished the trim and reinstalled the doors and finally! A finished project except the blinds... first thing in the morning :)

Time to turn out the lights... with the real reason for the girls' enthusiasm:

Mae at 4 years is

-Clingy. After an infant- and toddler-hood where she seemed to prefer strangers to her own mother, she has become much more focused on Mom and Dad. She wants to follow us down stairs for the quickest errand, wants us to stay with her while she gets dressed, wants us to stay in the room when she's falling asleep. One day in the garden, when I went all the way to the other side of the tomato plant she complained, "I want to be next to you so I can hug you". Really, she's always preferred having people around to being alone, just now she seems more particular about who that is

-Helpful. I think this comes from wanting to be with us. She begs to help cook dinner, do construction projects, wash windows, hang out the laundry. And now she's capable enough to actually be of help some of the time

-Persuasive. "Let's go to a restaurant for dinner. We haven't been to a restaurant for a long time." She convinced me one night to take the family to our town's summer street faire, by countering every argument that I put up against it. (We ended up going and had a good time).

- Social. She frequently invites people to dinner (or herself to their house). She says she wishes her friends from school lived with us, or we with them.

-Fearless (physically). Her physical talents continue to amaze us. She started riding a pedal bike without training wheels after a few months on a balance bike and loves jumping (slanted) curbs and riding as fast as she can in little circles. When our neighbors got a small skateboard ramp, Mae laid on her stomach on a skateboard and rolled, face-first, down the ramp. (Although this did not result in the seemingly inevitable trip to the emergency room, it did convince us to upgrade to properly fitting helmets!). She can jump from bench to bench on stadium bleachers, run a 1/4 mile race, climb a 6-foot tall boulder; but go on a boring hike? After 2 minutes, her legs were tired, she was hot, she wanted to take a break, she wanted water... But when we reached that 6-foot tall boulder, her legs miraculously recovered and she wanted to climb it over and over again. So if we had to guess, we'd put her in the extreme sports rather than endurance events. Basically, when she's interested in the challenge, she's strong and can do anything. When she's not, pulling teeth sounds like an easy job in comparison to getting her to move.


-Fearful (emotionally). She doesn't like scary stories, or really any story with even a 'bad guy' or something bad happening. Movies especially seem to bother her, but she is also sensitive to books (like Snow White). She likes to play at being a monster or a bear but quickly tells me not to reciprocate (or to be a nice bear who doesn't eat little girls).

-Wanting to be entertained. She seems to know that she can push Adi's buttons to get a reaction from her, often just by making a mean face or growling at her. I really think she does it just for the entertainment.

- Energetic. She has so much energy that she bounces, runs, jiggles and dances constantly, leading me to question frequently if she needs to use the bathroom. She can quickly become wild if she's around wild kids and has even made the 'tough guy' neighbor boy cry. She likes to bang on things-- tables, walls, floors, her own head-- and has trouble not fiddling with nearby objects. When people talk about how different their female and male children are, I often think that, if Mae had been a boy, we would have attributed all of this to her sex.

-Interested in how things work. "How does the gas make the car go?" "How does the food get out of your tummy", "How does the wire stay on the sticks [fence posts]."

- Interested in death and life: "When you die, will your tattoo go away?" "Do [road] signs live forever?" And we've had lots of questions about how the baby got in my belly. We've answered them honestly which has led to even more interesting questions.

-Grasping math concepts. I was surprised that she can recognize up to 6 objects (on a game card) without counting them out. She also shocked me one day when she announced to four of us that, since there were only two cookies, we could each have half. I've tried to test her on this since and she isn't perfect but I think it was more than coincidence. It seems to fit with the engineering questions and her spatial skills anyway. Just this morning, she told me we needed to invite 2 more people to breakfast-- Dave had just said that 6 pieces of French toast were ready.

- Organized. My parents commented early on in her toddler-hood that she didn't like things out of order-- she would close an open cabinet door or fix something crooked. The latest example has been with her clothes; we typically stuff clean clothes into her dresser drawers but when she helps put away laundry, she folds everything neatly and then wants to take all the existing clothes out of the drawer in order to fold them as well. I find this cute (most parents complain that their kids pull out all the clothes and make a mess-- can I really complain that she wants to make them tidy?) and have to bite my tongue to keep from telling her my opinion that folding is a waste of time.

Wearing rollers in her hair:

- Pouty & trantrum-y. We've avoided a lot of behavior problems with her in the past and she seems to be making up for it now. I don't know how much of it has to do with my pregnancy-related fatigue and therefore unavailability and impatience and how much is her deciding she doesn't have to be easy-going about everything after all. When I talk with her about it, she says, "I just don't want to do what you tell me." I'm not sure if it's because she doesn't want to do the actual thing or she doesn't want to be told what to do.

- Finally out of pullups. We waited for her to show signs of readiness but her pullups were still wet more nights than not. We finally decided to take her out of them and see if the subsequent bed-wetting would train her to wake up and go or be able to hold it. Although it seemed doomed to fail the first two weeks, we've now had a good run of dry nights. Once asleep, she sleeps quite deeply and I think she just doesn't wake up to go.

- An artist. She is able to copy a simple line drawing and likes drawing people. She loves drawing, writing letters, cutting paper with scissors and decorating paper with huge globs of glue. Making cards for other kids is one of her favorite things.

- Generous. Wrapping presents and giving them to other kids is another favorite thing. I've struggled with helping her find acceptable things to give away and end up feeling selfish for not wanting to part with her toys and books! I think this is just an expression of how much she cares for other people-- objects are insignificant compared to the act of giving them away.

Adi at 4 years is

- Independent (at home). She wants to do everything herself, from unbuckling her car seat to walking across the street to getting dressed. She can competently brush her own hair and refuses to let us put in head bands or hair clips. In a lot of ways, it is a complete reversal from her infant/toddler self who always wanted me around. In the house, she is frequently happy to sit and read a book in her room and she often plays by herself, keeping up a non-stop commentary.

- Dependent (in public). Despite her independence at home, when Adi is with a group of people (extended family, schoolmates or strangers) she wants to be with Dave or Mae or me. Although she often plays by herself at home, as soon as she is on the playground or at the pool, she follows Mae around. I've seen kids at preschool come up and ask her name and she responds with a scowl, saying "I don't feel like talking right now." It seems like the easiest opportunity she'll have for making friends and it is painful to watch her react so suspiciously. But I know it's not unusual.

- Fine motor skilled. She can thread a needle and sew small crafts, peel open difficult packaging, button and tie half-knots.

- Jealous. The grass is definitely less green on Adi's side of the fence. For her to be satisfied with something, it has to be markedly better than what Mae got; any small deviation that could be interpreted as better with Mae's thing will cause her to abandon her favorite color, animal, etc., in favor of the other thing. It's almost to the point where I just choose the better thing for Mae, so at least one girl will be satisfied. One of the most difficult things is that Adi never bonded as strongly with a 'lovey' as Mae has with her Annie; now Adi responds to Mae's love for Annie with wanting one of her own. We've tried as many alternatives as possible without giving her exactly the same thing but so far nothing has compared and it is of active debate if we should give her her own Annie or if this would be damaging to Mae.

- Obsessed with animals, especially on leashes. She has two little puppies and two lambs who have belts or shoelaces tied around their necks; she drags them along the floor with her. She wants to get a dog so badly that she requested that we buy a bag of dog food, so "we're ready when we get our dog." Getting to hold the leashes of several dogs was the highlight of our camping trip this summer with Dave's family. And at the dog show during our town's Labor Day festival, getting to hold a small dog on her lap was favored even over the candy tossed out at the parade. She also likes to pretend to be a dog or a horse (both of which walk on her hands and feet, not knees) and wants to wear a leash.

A horse in princess shoes:

- Into make-believe. Her favorite kind of playing involves pretending to be someone else or something else. She likes to play mom and tries to get Mae to be the dad; I'm often assigned the role of babysitter or grandma. Or she'll be a kid she knows and assign someone else the other roles in that family. Or she'll be Cinderella (we have let the Disney princess creep in, and Cinderella seems to be her favorite) and Mae and I are the mean step-sisters. Sometimes she's the puppy, sometimes a horse, sometimes the owner. If you haven't gotten the idea, much of the role-playing involves assigning other people their roles and she doesn't appreciate it when the other kids don't want to play the same game. She's definitely been working on learning how to compromise and play someone else's game in order to get a turn of them playing hers.

- Likes to be scared. She likes scary stories and movies and likes to play games where someone (a bear, a dinosaur) is chasing her. She also likes to be tickled sometimes and is the most ticklish person I've ever known.

- A puzzle whiz. Although it is currently not a big interest, she took an early lead in doing 20+ piece puzzles.

- Fascinated with vocabulary. She picks up words from the radio, from songs we sing to her, from our conversations; she probably asks what something means five times a day. I love hearing her slip big words into conversation (today the grocery cart was "vibrating" as we went over rough pavement) and using adverbs correctly.

- Driven. She has amazing perseverance. When learning how to pedal a bike (after becoming adept at the balance bike) she just tried to start over and over, sometimes using up 50 feet in her attempts. When hiking or running, she just pumps her arms and drives herself along, seeming to enjoy the challenge. The one exception is kids races (often held in conjunction with a road race that Dave or I are doing) when her aversion to strangers shuts her down to the extent that she just won't run.

- Focused. We can ask her to go get dressed and she will come back 4 minutes later, task completed. This seems to tie in with her physical perseverance.

- Easily potty trained at night. At some point, we realized her pullups had been dry for months. Since transitioning from them, she has only wet the bed once. We don't ever remember how long it's been, but I'd guess 6 months or more.

- A good sleeper. As an infant, she had very clear sleep signals (e.g. crying if you did anything other than putting her down to sleep) and short wake times. She continues to need a lot of sleep and very rarely gives us any trouble at bedtime. She doesn't actually fall asleep quickly but, once in bed, she doesn't seem to want to engage with Mae or try to stay up in any fashion. This has made bedtimes with the two of them much easier than it could have been! However, nap time isn't going so well. I had been expecting her to nap until kindergarten (which maybe she will) but she is willing to chat and stall and say she doesn't want to take a nap; although she has never failed to fall asleep in her bed eventually. She often sleeps 2 hours at nap but waking up isn't so nice. We have been pleasantly surprised by her good behavior on the few occasions when she has missed a nap due to some activity so it seems the end of the nap might not be catastrophic when it occurs.

- Gentle and loving. Adi loves to hold babies in her lap and can be remarkably gentle with them and other younger kids. She truly seems to love taking care of people and animals and I've noticed how gentle she is with my pregnant belly. Some of the times she gets the most upset are when *she* has been mean to someone and it is my opinion that her emotion has less to do with getting caught than with the realization that she's acting in a way she loathes.