molly
Bedtime Madness #2
The latest tide of bedtime madness had ebbed some in recent weeks. Molly basically moved, voluntarily, into the guest room, where she set up camp on the floor. She has blankets and pillows surrounded by books, magazines, and a little sketch pad. She quietly puts these to use while staying up until about 10:00 or 10:30 every night. At least Kit and I can get something done around here after 8:30 now. And Molly may realize she just can’t handle being in the room with Claire at bedtime without causing trouble. She is just not tired enough to go to sleep at 8:30 or 9:00, even though she gets up at 6:30 every morning. The two-hour nap at school doesn’t help matters.
Claire missed having Molly in the room the last few weeks and would try to convince her to come back for another try, but Molly has decided she belongs in the guest room for now. Claire has gotten over being scared and gets to sleep quickly by 8:30 or 9:00. So basically, Molly is awake up to two hours past her older sister. There is just no good way to deal with that.
So last night Molly sheepishly said she wanted to try sleeping in the room with Claire again. We all said “great!” and moved Molly’s stuff back into her bedroom with Claire. All was quiet for the fist 30 minutes. Then Molly was in Claire’s bed talking quietly with her. I was afraid Molly would keep Claire up (as she is like to do), but Claire said she would tell Molly when she wanted to go to sleep. Seriously, Claire needs her sleep. I talked to Kit, and we decided to relax and let them be and maybe it would be fine. I went for a run.
When I got back 30 minutes later, Kit said things had gone badly. Molly had grabbed all of Claire’s stuffed animals and thrown them across the room. She had taken Claire’s iPod Shuffle and wouldn’t give it back. There was crying and screaming. Molly was back in the guest room with all her stuff. Claire was deep asleep by herself in her room.
Claire just wants someone to sleep in the room with her, maybe a little chit chat before bed. Molly just wants to not sleep and, further, to keep Claire awake. She has actually told us that is her intention. It’s back to the guest room for Molly tonight, like it or not.
Molly Turns Four!
Molly is now officially four years old, just like her favorite TV character, Caillou. When Molly woke up this morning and we said “Happy Birthday!”, she looked a little confused and said, grumpily, “It’s not my birthday. It’s Kamile’s birthday.” Kamile is her friend who had her birthday party on Sunday, while Molly’s party was on Saturday. It’s a little confusing to Molly why we would have her party one day, then her friend’s party the next day, then Molly turns four the next day. We must have our dates wrong!
A few minutes later while getting ready for school, Molly looked at herself and said, “But I’m not any bigger. My feet are the same size. And my whole body.” This was cute and almost straight out of a Caillou episode. After some explanation of both the date and her not being any bigger, she seems to get comfortable with the idea of being four.
Molly had also been marking her fourth birthday as the day she would give up diapers completely. She has mostly learned to use the toilet now, and she said diapers are babyish and she wanted to put them in the trash when she turned four. We later talked her into donating the unused diapers to a friend. Molly has backed down from this self-imposed deadline, though. She is going to wait until she runs out of diapers instead.
Molly chose to have her party as a bounce house, so we set it up at Pump It Up! in North Austin. Since Molly recently switched schools, we were afraid we would not get a big crowd at her party. We invited her whole new class, some favorites from her old class, and some other friends from work, etc. With siblings, we ended dup with 24 bouncers. It was a good party, and we were happy to meet some of the new (to us) parents in Molly’s class.
Molly’s presents included a Skuut balance bike from Kit and me. Molly called this her “scooty patooty” bike. She got some plastic “Sofia the First” jewelry that Claire got at Target. Claire was a little sad that Molly was not very excited about the shiny necklace and earrings that Claire paid $5 for from her own allowance. Molly got an awesome “M” cape from Noni, which she often asks to wear and which she keeps with her at bedtime. Other presents are mostly books, puzzles, dolls, and hands-on art sets.
Happy birthday, Molly!
Buffalo-ing
Summer Break 2013
A few quick notes from summer 2013.
This was Claire’s break between first and second grades. Only Claire’s schedule changes for the summer so far. Molly does not have a summer break, being a full time pre-school student.
We decided to try out several different camps this summer for Claire to see what worked best. Some full day camps, some half day with a sitter the rest of the day, some in between. We basically have to experiment since up until now we mostly just used the good ol’ day care.
Over the summer, Claire’s weeks were split up like this:
- Four full day camps
- Four half-day camps, usually morning with a sitter after lunch
- Most of the camps were art-oriented, at Claire’s request, with a week of gymnastics, a week of cooking, and a week of science.
- Two weeks of vacation with the family to see family in “both Washington’s” — Washington DC and Washington state
To be honest, I think the summer was a little tough on Claire, who went from camp to camp on an irregular schedule and did not get to see a lot of her friends, some of whom were out of town for cooler climates or otherwise out of touch.
I know the summer was tough on me. The camps all started at 9:00 or 9:30, while my daily call for work was at 9:00 am. So I would drop Claire off an immediately get on a meeting on my cell phone for the drive home to work. And I would have to pick Claire up at odd times in the middle of the day (12:00, 1:00, 3:00, whatever). This is on top of Molly’s pick up and drop off at different times and places. This got old week after week.
On the plus side, Claire and I had a little time together each morning after dropping off Molly and before her camp started. We would get breakfast and do a little studying to help keep Claire sharp over the summer break. We would have a Smoothie and a bagel at Panera and then have Claire read or do some writing. That was pretty sweet.
Since most of the public pools are only open when school is out for summer, I resolved to take advantage of the limited swimming time we had available. The plan was to take the girls swimming every Friday after school/work. We always went to the little circular pool at West Austin Park. We packed a picnic or picked up something from a drive through (not as much fun!) then swam for an hour or so before heading home to see Kit and go to bed. This was a fun time for us all, except it got a little frustrating for Claire at times since I had to be 100% “on” Molly, who cannot swim, so I could not really play with Claire or even just swim with her. I did not have any free hands or attention while trying to keep Molly alive and what not. I basically stood there holding Molly while Claire entertained herself. I think Claire liked the picnic best or those rare moments when I could actually play with her too. Anyways, the goal was to do the swimming thing every Friday, which turned out to be 4 or 5 times total, with traveling, guests, other engagements, etc. often intervening.
So there you go — a sunny, fun-filled, stress-free summer! Well, it was sunny anyways. And intermittently fun and stress-free.
Bedtime Madness
I am going to rant a little bit on this one. Please bare with me. This might be interesting to read later.
After three years of Claire and Molly sleeping peacefully in the same room together, things have finally broken down.
Until about three weeks ago, Molly would sometimes get a little crazy while getting ready for bed, but once she was in bed she would sit and look at books until she fell asleep. It might take an hour or more of reading books, but she would completely leave Claire alone and get herself to sleep eventually.
Now Molly is a complete maniac once it is time to go to sleep. She finds anything possible to mess with. She peels the paper off of all the crayons she can find. Once she drew on the bed sheets with crayons. She has bitten the erasers off of all the pencils. No more writing implements in the room anymore! Molly wanders the room. She chews on stuffed animals. She walked over to our room tonight with a framed picture from her room completely dismantled. When we were on vacation in Anacortes, Washington last week (todo: link once blogged), Molly had the empty back hotel bedroom to herself while we hung out in the living room. We could hear Molly flipping through the hotel Bible for 45 minutes before she went to sleep. (We ought to try that at home, I guess.)
But Molly’s very favorite thing in the world to mess with is her big sister Claire. She tries to make Claire giggle. She tries to make Claire mad. Anything to get a reaction out of Claire. Claire usually ignores Molly at first, but Molly wears her down and pulls her in. Before long, Molly (and maybe Claire) is giggling loudly, yelling, stomping around. You can hear it downstairs and on the other end of the house. It does not stop until you move Molly out of the room and into the guest room. Just going in and telling them to it out has no effect; Molly’s primitive thrill-seeking “rat brain” has completely taken over. She says, I think accurately, that she just can’t stop doing messing around.
Is something bothering Molly? We just don’t know. Molly says she just doesn’t want to sleep, and bedtime is for playing. She says she doesn’t want to leave Claire alone; she wants to keep her awake. Sometimes when we finally move Molly to the guest room, Molly says she wanted to move in there anyways. You just can’t tell what is going on in that three-year-old head.
This goes on from about 8:00 pm to 9:30 or 10:30. We wanted to give the girls time to work it out and get to sleep together, but after weeks of this, they have not worked it out. You would think they would just get so tired they would fall right asleep, but they do not. Molly makes up for lost sleep with a nice hard two-hour nap each afternoon at school. Claire is tired but can’t get to sleep because she is all wired up by Molly. Now we are moving Molly immediately to the guest room for a few days, and it may turn into a few months (we’ll see). Not sure what we’ll do with the guests. :-O
Once we move Molly over, Claire falls back to her old issue of getting scared while being alone in the dark and still can’t get to sleep. Fortunately, Claire is seven years old and actually wants to work with us. She is slowly working on falling to sleep alone. Claire gets to sleep after an hour of two of being terrified, with occasional checks by us, but she sure toughs it out, the good ol’ sport. Claire says she knows everything is okay, and she should not be scared, but she just feels scared. She is just stuck there in bed scared but not wanting to bother us, because we have told her we are getting strung out, the poor thing.
Yes, Kit and I are going crazy. We have effectively lost our crucial 8:30 to 10:30 pm window of time for work, exercise, mail, etc. If you’r dealing with a kid down the hall yelling or crying or scared every few minutes, you are not really getting anything else done. Now days, everything has to be done before bedtime at 7:30 or so or else it just might not get done at all. By 10:30, we’re so strung out from all the commotion or just too sleepy to be effective. This schedule in particular does not work well with leaving work at 4:30 on the summer camp schedule, such as this week, and not getting back to it until late at night.
Okay, enough ranting. I just hope that soon we have (1) enough sleep for Claire once second grade starts in a couple weeks, and (2) a functioning guest room available to guests. Well, at least I knocked out this blog while the girls were going to sleep tonight!
DC for July 4
We took our annual-ish trip to Washington DC to see the girls’ aunt Cindy and uncle Tim. First a few photos…
And a few highlights…
- After meeting Tim & Cindy for dinner on the first night, once we were back in our rental car, Molly asked, “Who were those people?”
- We visited the Spy Museum, which was very cool. Claire was a little freaked out that spies are real and kept asking if they are good guys or bad guys. The answer: both, but even bad ones leave kids and normal people alone. Molly liked to push whatever buttons she could find, climb stuff, and watch the James Bond video over and over.
- Molly was wondering why we sold our car at the Austin airpot, bought a new one at the DC airport, then bought our old one back when we cam back to Austin.
- We also got to see the Lincoln Memorial, which was Claire’s first choice of sights to see in DC. She had learned a lot about Lincoln in school and also from talking about history with me and Kit. Plus, and perhaps most importantly, the Lincoln statue was a featured hero in the movie Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.
- We also walked by the White House, but the girls were too hot and tired to enjoy it or even really notice it.
- Over the course of the 2-day, 3-night trip, we also saw our friend Andrea in Silver Spring, Tim’s and Cindy’s friends near Mt. Vernon, and met our other friends at a Whole Foods in DC.
- We saw the official National Mall fireworks out the car window as we drove home from Mt. Vernon. What could be more American?
- At one point, Claire was in tears asking us to slow things down, as she was getting tired of “freaking around”.
- Molly was wondering if it was “still America” when we got back to Austin. It did seem like a lot of trouble to go on that airplane for a long flight and still be in the same country, I guess. We would later decypher the “still America” thing meant the 4th of July holiday.
- The day after we got home, the girls were tired and grumpy, but at least they saved it for after the trip.
Date with Ikea
We took the kids to Ikea for the first time in years. Neither Claire nor Molly had any remembrance of it. When we told them we were going to a furniture store, they we pretty bummed. Once we explained that it was not just any furniture store, but a big, crazy, Swedish one named Ikea with sample houses you could explore, a cafe, and a huge warehouse, they were sold. We were just shopping for a few household items, maybe a TROFAST here, or a SKYLTA there. Don’t forget the BJURSTA and the ÄPPLARÖ/ HÖGSTEN.
Among other treats, Molly was able to spend her first allowance money. She had earned $4 over the last two weeks doing the standard dishes, shoes, cleanup routine that Claire has been doing. Molly had been expressing a desire to have some of this stuff called money that Claire keeps buying cool stuff with. When we first told Molly we would be giving her allowance now, she was thrilled. The first time she took in her dishes, she held out her hand and said, “Where’s my money?” Anyways, Molly had $4 to spend. At Ikea, even $4 goes a long way. Molly bought four tiny stuffed animals for $2 and saved the other $2.
Molly was just a hair short to get into Småland, the kids’ play aera. But the girls had a great time exploring the famous “375 Square Foot Home” display, and snuggled up in the little bedroom together. They also enjoyed Swedish meatballs (Claire) and chicken fingers (Molly) with Lingonberry juice while watching Finding Nemo in the kids lounge. It was a fun morning shopping for housing goods. Now that is almost a contradiction in terms, but not at Ikea!
BTW, the name of this message came from the Pavement song of the same name.
Bedtime Delivery
There is a period of about 10 minutes between tucking Molly into bed and then finishing up Claire’s bedtime story and tucking her in too. During those 10 minutes, Molly almost always does her daily poop. It’s to the point where I literally now just expect to change Molly’s diaper when dropping Claire off to bed. Molly has a poop something like 85% of the time. You can tell for sure as you walk down the hall towards the girls’ room. The odor is unmistakable. I wonder how this will play out if/when Molly finally gets out of diapers.
McG Kids 