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How Easter Began

Video | | patmcg

Claire had Friday off and, as usual, she spent most of her day working on a project.  Lately, she is particularly interested in making seasonal or holiday-related pictures, cards, gifts, etc.  This Easter, she has taken this idea to new a level.  On Friday and Saturday, Claire planned and prepared her first play, a performance about how Easter began.  She assigned each member of the family a character.  Claire was the Easter Bunny, Molly was a chick, Kit was a bumble bee, and I was a butterfly.  Claire then made costumes for each character.  She taped paper and stickers to dresses for her and Molly, a similar idea for Kit, and we agreed on an outrageous orange outfit for my monarch butterfly.  Claire wrote a script, which I dictated on the computer so we could print out a copy for everyone.  Claire picked some music so we could do a dance in the middle.  She created a set and put out chairs for the audience.

This whole play was a surprise for Grammy and Grandaddy, who were staying with us and served as our audience.  Claire made sure they did not see the costumes or other preparations before it was time for the performance on Sunday morning!  Claire was super excited about her play, and he excitement was contagious for the rest of us.  Well, except for Molly, who refused to take part in the dress rehearsal, but who came around when it was time to actually do the play for a real audience.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you “How Easter Began”…

Spa Night

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Claire was invited to “spa night” at the house of her friend from school and the neighborhood, MH. It was MH’s idea to organize spa night, which involved several moms and cousins doing manicures, pedicures, hair irons, foot baths, the whole works for MH, some of her cousins, and friends.

We walked Claire over there after dinner, where the 7-year-old HM answered the door and agreed that 7:30 would be a good pickup time. Then MH let Claire in, said goodbye, and shut the door. Her mom came out moments later to say hi and, yes, adults are present too. Claire had a great time. Spa time was preceded by (another) dinner and a pillow fight, so actual grooming time ran a little late and even got Claire to bed late, past 9:00 pm.  So basically it was the perfect night.

Claire came home looking quite elegant, with straight hair and I believe her first real lipstick.

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Pushing for Underwear

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Molly loved her undies so much, she wanted to wear nothing else.
Molly loved her undies so much, she wanted to wear nothing else.

The other day, Molly’s teacher called me at home in the middle of the afternoon.  This is usually a bad sign.  A mid-day call from school is reliably preceded by vomiting, fever, both, or some other type of trouble at school.  Molly’s teacher sounded a little upset or nervous, so then I knew it was trouble.  But it was not as bad as I had feared.  Molly had just thrown a fit at school over her pre-nap toilet duty.  She had stubbornly refused to sit on the toilet for the second day in a row, and this time Molly was especially furious and indignant about it.  Not only has she refused to sit on the toilet, but she had also disrupted the class and made it hard for her classmates to get their rest.  Molly is only three years old and still given to bursts of uncontrollable emotions.  This one was bad enough, though, that the teacher had to essentially send her to the principal (school director).  This was not the first time that Molly has been sent to the principal for being disruptive.  Still, it was not meant as a punishment.  They just had to get Molly out of the classroom to restore order and to help Molly calm down.  Apparently Molly and the school director had a nice calm talk in the hallway where they found Moly’s happy place again.  At some point, Molly stated that she would rather just wear diapers because it is easier; she doesn’t have to stop what she is doing and go to the bathroom.  She can just go whenever she wants to.

It was right after Molly’s loud outburst that Molly’s teacher called me with a trembling voice, imploring us to do something.  She said this toilet thing was getting to be a real problem, and was there something we could try at home?  After some discussion, I agreed that we would get Molly some underwear and let her try going diaper-less at home as much as possible this weekend in hopes of sparking interest in the toilet.

So this is how we officially began a push on Molly’s toilet training.  Claire and I rushed to Target the next morning and picked out (among other things) some Tangled (Rapunzel) movie underwear.  Molly was very excited to try out her underwear!  She adored the princess on her underwear.  The smallest size that Target had, though, was 4, which was pretty baggy on Molly.  Still, it did the trick for now, while Kit ordered 3T undies from Amazon.

Molly did had a “leak” in her underwear and did not like the itchy sensation on her legs.  She has so far been very positive about sitting on the toilet, but aside from some initial success a while back, she has had no recent success in putting her urine on the toilet.  Molly’s teacher says her attitude is much better at school, and order is restored.  So at least that part of the mission is accomplished.

Molly Uses the Potty!

Video | | patmcg

Part of Molly’s bedtime routine is to sit on the toilet for a while.  She actually loves her toilet time.  She pulls up a step stool with a stack of books and sits on the toilet and looks at her books.  Normally we have to put an end to her toilet time after a few minutes because she is just relaxing but not getting ready for bed.  But tonight while Molly was browsing books on the toilet, I went off for a minute to check in with Kit.  When I got back to Molly, she was yelling, “I went to the potty!  I made urine!”  Now, Molly has been known to have an active imagination at times, but I did not get the sense she as making this up.  She was grinning ear to ear and super excited.

I congratulated Molly on her fine toilet work.  After wiping and washing hands, we went back to tell Kit and Claire.  Kit screamed really loudly with delight and started jumping around.  Molly got super excited too and started doing the same.  Personally, I was excited too, but my ears were literally ringing from all the noise.  Molly was so proud, though!  She said she wanted underwear now, and she thought Santa would know she used the toilet.

Claire, who was in a grouchy mood, initially tried to be excited but get a little irritated, maybe from the noise and/or maybe a little hint of sibling rivalry.  This was the first small whiff of sibling rivalry we have ever seen from Claire in her 3 and a half years as a big sister.  Claire complained that we were screaming too loud, and we are always asking her and Molly to quiet down if they are anywhere near that loud.  (She had a really good point.  We were really quite loud.)  Claire also said, sourly, “I but you’re going to email everyone in the world!” and then left the room.  Later she could complain about having to go out in the hall with just Muffin and her last remaining fish to get some quiet.  We had a certain amount of recognizing that Claire uses the toilet many times a day, and nobody ever says anything about it, but when she first did it as a toddler, we were really excited for her.  Molly was feeling sympathetic and started a “Claire used the potty!” chant and dance.

Goodbye, Sonny

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Goodbye SonnyClaire lost her first pet today.  He had not been with us for long.

About a week ago, Claire picked out four fish and a snail to put in the aquarium that she had received from Santa for Christmas.  Their names where Larry and Mary (the two tiny fish), Spots and Sonny (the two slightly bigger fish), and Max the snail.  Today Sonny stopped moving and gradually sunk to the bottom of the tank.  We are not sure what caused his premature death.

Claire was sad to lose Sonny but managed to hold back her tears.  We buried Sonny under the large pecan tree in the back yard, under a few inches of soil.  We all showed our respects with a few words.  Claire came up with something like, “Sonny, you were only with us for a week.  But we loved you, and we will always remember you.”  It was a brief but dignified ceremony.  Then Claire came inside and went to work on a small marker.  It was a nice drawing of Sonny with a few extra sparkles stuck on it to make it fancier, and then taped to a straw and stuck in the ground on Sonny’s final resting place.

Molly missed the ceremony since it was held during her nap time.  When Molly woke up, Claire was anxious to show Molly the grave.  Once outside, Molly was not so interested since she wanted to ride her little bike instead.  Since Molly would not pay her final respects to Sonny, Claire did it for her.

It’s the TV, Charlie Brown

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its-the-great-pumpkin-charlie-brownUp to this point, Molly has not cared about or even really noticed the TV, that big black rectangle on the wall that sometimes puts off random pictures and sounds.  Even when the TV is showing her beloved Elmo, Molly has been fairly hostile about TV.

Now, not watching TV is a good thing.  But like all good things, it should be taken in moderation.  Yes, Molly needs to be more moderate about not watching TV.  I mean, if she completely boycotts the TV, then we have no simple and easy way to distract her from her frequent rampages around the house, harming herself or the furniture, or just making a mess.  In fact, all of this happens almost daily.  Now, if Molly could just watch some TV — just a little — then we could all get a little break now and then.

Watching The Peanuts
Molly and Claire relax together while watching “It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown”

We finally had a break through on this front.  The trick is not Elmo or Dora, but the good ol’ Peanuts.  Charlie Brow and the gang finally hooked Molly.  We don’t know why.  But when we broke out the classic It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown for Claire for Halloween, Molly started actually watching.  She actually just sits there with Claire and watches for a little while, maybe 15-20 minutes.  It is a sensation.  This is literally the first time Molly has really watched TV.

Now, of course one day, maybe not too far away, we may regret ever introducing Molly to the TV.  But our experience with Claire in this regard has been pretty positive.  She doesn’t watch very much TV, very little on weekdays, more on weekends, mostly due to time constraints.  And what she does watch is generally movies provided by me and Kit, usually the same ones over and over, and not much junk TV with all those corrupting ads.  In fact, I don’t think she’s really watched a TV show in a couple of years now.  Let’s hope Molly follows the same pattern.  Then again, for all we know, she may only like The Peanuts, which would be alright too.

Scared

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Just in time for Halloween, poor Claire has suddenly developed an intense fear of, well, anything she can’t see, especially ghosts and the “Candy Man”.  Claire is scared enough that she literally will not be left alone anywhere in the house.  If she is upstairs with me, and I need to go downstairs for something, she comes with me, for fear of ghosts.  She feels especially scared in our bathroom, with all of its mirrors.  Supposedly the Candy Man lives behind mirrors.  If you say his name three times (or is it five?), he will come out of the mirror and kill you.  This is a real fear — on some level, she thinks it might actually happen, which is terrifying, if you think about it.

In particular, Claire has had trouble getting to sleep.  When we tuck her in, she grasps onto us for protection, and although she tries to fight through the fear, she has ended up in tears and begs to stay in our room.  She keeps coming out of her room all shaken up.  We have talked with Claire about these fears and how they don’t really make sense, and Claire agrees, but it doesn’t make her fear go away.  We joked about ghosts, too.  Suppose they were real, which they aren’t.  Would a ghost really be scary?  They can’t do anything.  They just float around like a cloud.  We people are the big, scary ones with our big, muscular bodies.  Also, Molly would scare a ghost because she is so loud and would easily scream them away, if they existed, which they don’t.  Claire wondered if Muffin would protect her, and we said yes, if ghosts were real, Muffin would be scary since she has such big, sharp teeth and can bark.  We showed Claire Muffin’s teeth, and she was impressed how scary our teddy bear of a dog can be.  After all this discussion, Claire headed to bed feeling good and safe.  Ten minutes later, she was up crying and desperate for the safety of our company.  She also wakes up in the middle of the nights looking for protection and is very hard to get back to sleep.  This is how the fear works.

Claire has apparently been spooked by her classmates, who are spreading rumors of ghosts and ghouls.  The stories are probably in good nature, but they really spook Claire.  After discussing it with Kit and me, Claire said she understood that ghosts are not real, and she even told one of her classmates she knew her stories were not real, but she would play along for fun.  Still, Claire is just spooked.  Fear is fear, and it doesn’t always make sense.

After several tricky nights of getting Claire to sleep in her room, we came up with a couple of ways to take the edge off of Claire’s feeling of terror.  One night about two hours after putting Claire to bed, she was still awake and scared.  She asked for a drawing pad to get her mind off of things.  Sure enough, after about 45 minutes of drawing flowers and peace signs, she was asleep, pencil in hand.  It did not work quite as quickly the next night.  Finally, last night, we decided to let Claire use the secret weapon of falling asleep, at least for Kit and me: audio books.  Nothing works quite like audio books to lull you to sleep.  We set up an old iPod Nano with Ramona the Brave, narrated by Stockard Channing.  In the story, Ramona, like Claire, also struggles with the fear of unknown scary things in her room at night, among other things.  Claire and I have listened this audio book in the car many times, mostly on the way to pick up Molly from school.  It did the trick tonight.  Claire was asleep within minutes.  She did wake up once in the middle of the night, though.  But she was not scared.  She just wanted to know how to adjust the volume on the story.

And this is how Claire got her very first iPod.

Kid-proof no more

Aside | | patmcg

It’s official.  Kid-proof packages don’t work on Claire any more.  At least, she has defeated the safety packaging on her Claratin.  The good news is that I no longer have to unwrap the Claratin for her in the morning.  I just hand her the package.  Luckily, she is also old enough to understand not to have more than one.

Twenty Something?

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After picking up the kids from school today, we went to the old standby for dinner, Jason’s Deli.  We have gone to Jason’s countless times after school, and Claire invariably orders the hot dog kid’s meal, while Molly gets the kid’s cheese pizza.  But tonight, Claire tried something a little different…the salad bar.  I did say to Claire, who is normally voracious after school, “So, just to be clear, your entire meal is going to come from that salad bar.”  She asked if she could get both the hot dog and the salad bar, but alas I told her that she did have to choose just one, and she went with the salad bar.

So this was Claire’s very first salad bar.  Okay, so that is not a huge milestone, but perhaps mildly interesting.  The funny thing was seeing Claire eat her salad, with no dressing, with bottled water for her drink, her clean haircut, and wearing her new glasses.  The whole scene made Claire look strikingly like a health-conscious 25-year-old woman on her lunch break.  This from the kid who usually stuffs down a hot dog and ice cream.  See for yourself…

Claire and her saladClaire on lunch break from her new advertising job?

Molly, for her part, went to great lengths to demonstrate the crucial fours years that separate her from Claire.  Molly threw a shoe on the ground and refused to put it back on, dumped her booster seat on the ground, got out of her seat to walk around, tried to jump off of her seat, and ate only a little bit of pizza, of course with ketchup on it.