I had to share this funny little story because something our almost 5-year-old daughter Sammie said the other day had my husband and I in stitches. She calls out from the bathroom – “Dad! I have to go poop but I can’t… Oh, nevermind!”
Hmmm, now that I’m reading it, it’s not quite as funny. I guess you had to hear her little 4-year-old voice call it out. Kids are so adorable with their bluntness. And I’m just glad that Sammie was able to solve her own problem!
Our 4-year-old daughter Samantha is having her first sleepover tonight. She’s been here when her older sister had friends sleep over, but tonight it’s her friend, just for Sammie. Four years old is a little bit young to have a sleepover. And tonight is the second sleepover in a row since older sister Taylor had a friend sleep over last night. I don’t usually condone two sleepovers in a row because that would make for a very crabby Sunday. But this is a special sleepover.
Sammie’s friend, Hannah, is an extraordinary little girl. She was born with a condition that made her spine grow into her brain. My daughter knows her from preschool, and then she was invited to Hannah’s 4th birthday party – that’s where we learned of her condition. In the weeks after the party, Sammie called Hannah to see if she could come over and play, but Hannah could not – she was scheduled to have brain surgery in early December, but it was postponed because she suffered a seizure and was also diagnosed with asthma. Then she underwent the brain surgery just before Christmas, and Sammie called her to see how she was doing. For an entire week after the surgery, Hannah was bedridden and in constant pain. She couldn’t come to the phone, much less go anywhere to play. Now she’s feeling better, although her symptoms are starting to reappear. So crabby Sunday, shmabby shmunday – my kids are having 2 sleepovers in a row.
Hannah’s recovery wish was to sleep over at Sammie’s house. And even if it involved a 4-year-old with a double sleepover, what parent would be able to refuse Hannah’s wish?
Due to the many technological advances that have been made in the world since we were kids, I think today’s youth have somewhat of a different perspective on Santa.
First of all, on Christmas Eve, they can track Santa’s travels on the internet. When we were young, it was “get to bed, and if you’re not sleeping by the time Santa gets here, he’s going to skip our house!” And in 2008, you can forget about needing the zip code for the North Pole so that your kids can use the post office to snail-mail their lists to Santa. In today’s world, kids communicate with Santa via email. Also, the lines “He sees you when you’re sleeping; he knows when you’re awake… etc.” have a whole new meaning with the modern-day concept of Big Brother. I reminded my 4-year-old daughter the other day that Santa is always watching her and can see when she’s not behaving. Her reply is what led me to wonder about the perception kids in 2008 have of Santa: “Mom, do you have blue lights on the Christmas tree cuz they have cameras and Santa can see.” So somewhere my daughter had gotten the idea that Santa uses cameras to watch kids, and the cameras are inside the blue Christmas lights! I wonder, if I invest in some blue Christmas lights, will that make her behavior impove any?
Everyone who has been reading my blog since I started it in the beginning of 2008 knows my disdain for the 2-hour delay so frequently used at my daughter’s school. Well, it’s that time of year again – Tuesday was our first 2-hour delay of the school year. It’s not like I want the buses to go out on the slippery country roads and endanger kids and drivers; it’s just that the delay throws off the entire family for the whole day! If there was some way to effectively implement the delay for those who would have trouble getting to the school in poor weather conditions, I think that would be a good solution. However, it’s obvious that would lead to kids falling behind other kids and such, so it’s obvious why they don’t do that. But 2-hour delays frustrate me nonetheless.
My 2-year-old gets frightened or crabby if we do things differently from our normal routine. So when there’s a 2-hour-delay, she sleeps in until after 10 and wakes up disoriented, hungry and crabby. I guess I could wake her, but I figure if she’s sleeping in then she needs the sleep – and it will pay off for me later in the day because her daily pre-naptime intensity won’t be quite as demanding as usual. So Tuesday’s delay was caused by snow, which meant that my 4-year-old wanted to play in it all day (no preschool today). But of course she wants someone to play with, and I’m not comfortable letting my 2 and 4-year-olds play outside by themselves of course. And on Tuesday it was too cold to take the baby out with us… So we were all stuck inside and my middle two have a rivalry going on, which means that they fight over everything and constantly; Tuesday being no exception because why would it be? Hopefully the salt shortage there is for the roads this winter won’t lead to more school delays – our first one did not go smoothly!
What?!? Believe it or not, the title of my post does not have the slightest hint of sarcasm! Walmart really DID save the day for us yesterday! It almost makes me sorry for my many rants against Walmart and their shady practices designed to put small companies out of business… almost sorry, but not quite there.
It all started when we decided to take the kids over to Fort Wayne, Indiana, which is about an hour away. We pulled into a stall at the Sonic drive-thru for a light lunch and some slushies (Sonic has awesome slushies and drinks), when we realized we had forgotten my husband’s wallet, which left us without money or credit cards. Luckily, we had picked up the mail before we left the house and brought it in the car with us. And luckily², we had gotten a commission check in the mail. So we braved the ‘big city’ Walmart customer service line on the Saturday after Thanksgiving to see if they would take pity on us and cash the check even without my husband’s ID. We were gifted with even more luck when they accepted my driver’s license to cash my husband’s check, and we were able to eat lunch. Except now it had gotten really late and we were all really hungry, so we decided to skip Sonic and go to the Golden Corral that was in the Walmart outlot instead. If you braved my posts about our vacation diary, then you know how much we like Golden Corral. And I’d say that the one in Fort Wayne is of the best quality out of any of the others we’ve been to. After lunch, we took the kids to a McDonald’s Playland, but it had only one little tunnel and one small slide; prompting our 4-year-old to proclaim, “Dad, this is boring!” But our 2-year-old loved it, and soon there were more kids to play with and everybody had lots of fun – including mom and dad since there was also a foosball table. When we left the McDonald’s, we noticed there was a Burger King across the street (when isn’t there?), and that Burger King had a 3-story play area! Oh, well, we had fun where we went and we can remember the BK for next time. We quenched our thirst with drinks from Sonic, and there was a cool looking car wash next door, so we treated the kids to a car wash also -they love watching the soap, brushes, and water cascading off the car. The second we pulled out of the wash –ding ding – our low fuel bell rang – uhoh. My husband and I just looked at each other because it wasn’t like we had unlimited money with us. In fact, we had spent the last of the check money at the car wash. Thank goodness gas prices are decent these days because with the change we were able to scrape together from my wallet and the car, we had enough to get us gas to get home… whew! Perhaps it can even be considered a blessing in disguise. When you compare the variety of shopping Fort Wayne offers to our hometown choice of Super Walmart and… well, just the Super Walmart, unleashing us in a larger city with all those shopping varieties could have been disasterous to our bank account!
And by the way, the Walmart customer service line wasn’t too bad, all things considered. Most of the line consisted of a family who had 6 kids and one on the way -wow. And I thought I had a lot of kids!
Today is the first day back to school (already?!?), and it’s really quiet around here. I guess my oldest two are my loudest two, and we have reduced the traffic in the house by 50% since half the kids are now at school during the day. Thank goodness for school; I’m enjoying myself already. So far, I’ve gotten two loads of laundry done – folded, put away and everything, and I have somehow also found the time today to put away most of the clutter that’s been haunting our dining room table for the last week and a half. I even got to work on my e-book a little bit, and it’s not even 1 o’clock! And, the kids at school are learning stuff, getting exercise, and socailizing with their friends; they’re not vegged out in front of the tv or outside fighting in the wading pool. Everyone wins!
While the oldest 2 kids are in school, I also have time to focus on my toddler, Disney, while her baby brother is napping. Today, I got to sit on the floor and play puzzles with her; something we haven’t done together in months, almost a year because of my pregnancy and c-section. And she was down for her nap by 12:30, which not only means some quality time together for me and baby Christopher, but also that my toddler should be to bed at a decent hour tonight. Win-win! While I was on the floor playing with my daughter, I was getting up to tend to the laundry and whatnot. My daughter was following me around the house, and this is where my day becomes challenging – trying to keep our clingy almost 2-year-old out of my husband’s home office so he can work. The home office isn’t a room where he could close the door and utilize the out-of-sight-out-of-mind tactic. The office is on the landing on our second floor, so if my toddler begins to head up the stairs or even looks up the stairs, she sees her best friend, Daddy, and it’s over. She tantrums until he holds her, and he can’t get any work done. Today she got upstairs and in the clutches of Daddy, so when I chased her down, of course she was upset. But I used one of my favorite child-rearing techniques: redirection. I taught her how to clean the toothpaste off the kids’ bathroom counter, which she happily did. We went downstairs for a popsicle, puzzles, and Barney, and all was forgotten. Wow. I had totally forgotten about the magic of the redirection technique because the last 2-year-old I had in the house was our “spirited” child, Samantha. Sammie was never re-directable. She has always been so strong-willed that it’s literally impossible to re-direct the kid, let alone being able to trick her into helping around the house. To this day, she will fight for her cause, whatever it may be, until she gets what she wants or she passes out. And now that she’s older (she’s 4), the crying doesn’t last as long, but she will remember what it is she wanted and bring it up throughout the day (or week or month) until she gets it. So I am actually enjoying Disney’s terrible twos a little bit – it’s so refreshing to have a kid who listens. I know, she’s not yet 2 and things could get worse – so much worse. But I’ve been there, done that, and after what Sammie put us through, no wonder Disney seems like a breeze. And even if she does get completely crazy, soon she’ll be old enough to go to school, and we’ll start the terrible twos all over again with Christopher. After 3 tantruming girls in their terrible twos, I’m curious to see what a boy will be like. Probably no big deal, at least compared to Sammie 🙂
So how is life with 4 kids? One word – chaotic. I suppose some of that can be attributed to us not taking any time off from volunteering with the various community groups we are involved in… Most logical people would have done the smart thing and laid low for awhile. But us, we did just the opposite and jumped into a few new projects head first – oops. But, I do enjoy getting out and spending time with fellow adults, and besides, we’ve already committed ourselves, so it’s too late now.
But anyway, the kids are adjusting just fine to having a new little brother. Our almost 2-year-old has reached the terrible twos officially, and she spends most of her time being upset or making messes. Figures, doesn’t it, that she would reach this stage right as there’s a new baby in the house. But it can’t be helped, and we just have to grin and bear it for awhile until it passes. The upside is that her terrible twos are no where near the magnitude of the turmoil that her older sister caused in the house when she was going through them, but it’s still hard to see our once sweet little girl being so nasty. I don’t know what it is about the terrible twos, but every kid goes through them (maybe the terrible twos aren’t so bad with boys? I’m hopeful…), and they can totally change a child’s personality for months, even years. Little Disney was the sweetest baby and toddler, and now that she is almost 2, she has begun tantruming (almost constantly), hitting, spitting, and biting. Much, if not all of the behavior comes from being so frustrated – she gets frustrated when people don’t understand what she wants or when she thinks her sisters are taking things from her. Even if they’re just trying to help her, if anyone is doing anything she doesn’t like, she’ll throw a tantrum. But what keeps me going is knowing that it’s just the age, and she’ll magically return to normal one day; that’s how it works. It usually happens suddenly, almost as suddenly as it began – it’s like a spell is broken, and hopefully it’s sooner rather than later; but I’m prepared for the long haul because her sister’s terrible twos (and boy, were they terrible) lasted from about the ages of 16 months until she was 4 years old.
And speaking of our 4-year-old, Sammie loves her new little brother and always wants to hold him. I’m trying to get better about how nervous it makes me; especially because Disney sees her older sisters holding him and then of course she wants to do it. But as time goes by, he gets stronger and less floppy, so eventually I can let them help more and be relaxed about it.
Taylor, our 8-year-old, loves her new little brother also, although with 2 younger sisters, she’s kinda been there and done that, as far as new babies go. She is still a big help, especially with Disney, but she and Sammie fight constantly, and now Disney is starting to join in… If we could get a handle on some of the fighting, things would be much better around here. I feel like my kids fight, argue, and bicker constantly. I probably feel this way because it’s true. Part of it is Disney being so frustrated all the time, and then neither she nor Sammie like to share things with others; and then also Taylor can be really nasty to Sammie, probably just cuz it’s summer and they’re sick of each other. Thank goodness school starts in less than 2 weeks. I say that now, but I’ll also be losing my day-help when Taylor goes back to school, so we’ll have to see how things work out.
As for the little guy himself, Christopher is almost 4 weeks old, and he’s doing well. He is a constant joy to have around, but aren’t they all at this age? The only problem with him is that he seems to be nocturnal – wakes all night and sleeps during the day. Luckily for me, my husband is a light sleeper and wakes with him before I even hear anything. He is getting no sleep, but I told him weeks ago, once you let me start sleeping through the night, my body will get used to it and I won’t wake up… I don’t think he listened. But my sleeping-lightly days are over – during my pregnancy I awoke very easily at every little noise, but now I’m back to my I-could-sleep-through-Armageddon phase. I also warned Hubby that this baby was going to be nocturnal because in the womb, he wouldn’t move much during the day, but he’s start going crazy about 9pm until after I went to bed.
And almost all new babies bring with them the fear of something being wrong – the other day, Christopher’s legs turned purple out of no where… I had just gotten him out of his stroller, but his straps weren’t too tight or anything like that; I checked on them later. It was horribly scary to see his little purple legs, and I’ve never experienced that with my girls. But the doctor didn’t seem to be too concerned; just something to take a look at next appointment – might be a blood vessel spasm, which I found out is not terribly uncommon in infants after looking it up on the internet. There is a condition called Raynaud’s Syndrome that is characterized by purple limbs, however they’re accompanied by extreme pain, and little Christopher was sleeping calmly while this happened. We’ll see what the doctor says on Monday.
That’s about it for now; it’s good to be sitting here blogging again – it’s been so hectic for a few weeks that I was not in front of my computer enough to even blog. But then I started thinking of all my faithful readers I was disappointing, and I thought I’d better make the time to give them something to read 😉