After a Trying Day...

It was a trying day with my darling daughter yesterday. My mom tells me Trevor went through a similar phase at five years old, but it's hard to remember when he seems (mostly) so reasonable now at seven. Compounding her five-year-old-ness, Amy's also dealing with her middle-child "stuff." Running down the list of challenges for yesterday:

- she threw Trevor's Spiderman car and broke it

- tried to slam the basement door in his face so he couldn't come upstairs

- woke Gavin up from settling down to TWO of his naps yesterday, one of which he couldn't get back to sleep

- refused to eat her pasta at dinner. This is nothing new, but I made her favourite kind and picked all the veggies and shrimp out of it, only to have her declare, "Yuck. I am NOT eating this."

- broke a lame little string of beads I won at Blackjack in Vegas last year, but they were blue and therefore, Trevor's. This had the intended effect of making him cry.

So when she asked me at bedtime:

"Mommy, why do you love me?" I had to dig deep and put aside the challenges of the day. I hugged her and listed off all of her wonderful qualities. I mean, look at her. How could you not?

More Stumpers

I remember the days before I became a parent hearing about how children ask endless questions about everything. Trevor never did much of that as a young child, however, Amy has become like a curiosity machine powered by Energizer lately. Here are just a few of the questions from a one-hour period this evening:

1. How does your body make milk? (wow, that prompted a long-winded answer about hormones and chemicals and pregnancy and milk ducts during which her eyes glazed over)

2. How did babies start? Me: like when the sperm fertilizes the egg? Amy: No, like who did the first baby? ('kay, just the origin of man, your usual bedtime conversation!)

3. Why won't my eyes let me sleep? (because you won't close them)

4. Why is it called a tangle? (I don't know, someone made up the word, I guess)

5. What is that man on TV doing? (she was cuddled up with me on couch as I was trying to bore her to sleep with late night talk shows)

6. Why is he telling jokes? (that's his job)

7. Are those jokes funny? I don't get it. (just to grownups)

8. Could I have a drink of water? (sure)

9. Why are these called fingers? (I don't know)

10. Why does Gavin blow bubbles? (I don't know)

11. Why do you wear makeup? (umm, ladies wear makeup to make themselves look nice, I guess)

12. When did you start to wear makeup? (I don't know, when I was 11 or 12 you can see where this is headed...)

13. When can I start to wear makeup? (when your body starts to change to get ready to become a woman, probably when you're 11 or 12, too seriously, you're only 5, tooo little to be wanting to grow up so fast!)

14. What day is it tomorrow? (Saturday)

15. Do I have dance? (not until Sept.)

16. Why do we have to have a passport? (so we can prove that we are Canadian when we travel)

17. Is our school the only school in Canada close to our house? (huh?)

18. Remember when you were pregnant and you broke my bed? (cringing yep.)

19. Will you miss me too much if I sleep over at Grandma's?

Amy, I'll miss you a lot, but it will be nice to have a chance to stock up on answers as I'm starting to run out.

Stumpers

Stumper #1:
Amy: How does the music get in the radio?
Me: What do you mean, like where does the sound come from?
Amy: No, I know it comes out of there (pointing to the speakers), from there (pointing to the dashboard radio)...
Me: That's a radio and those are speakers (why am I interrupting her)
Amy: I know! But how did the music get in there?
Me: In the radio? Well....ummm....cars have these things called an antenna...and we can't see ours from inside the van (it's pouring rain out and we can't open the window to check). Well, see on that car there? And that one? That long pointy uppy thingy sticking up? That's an antenna.
Amy: I can't see one.
Me: They're hard to spot 'cuz it's raining and those cars are driving way too fast in a school zone, but trust me, all cars have these long pointy uppy anntenas. Anyway, the antenna picks up radio waves and you can't see them or hear them until they go in the radio through the antenna and the radio waves come from a broadcasting tower (throughout this explanation I'm trying to pantomime radio waves)...
Amy: (looking at me, skeptically) Yeah, okay, radio waves, but how does the music get in there?
Me: Oh jeez, I'm not explaining this very well. You know what, sweetie, that's an excellent question. And that's why we have Google.

Picky Picky

My darling daughter is an amazing human being. I love her dearly. That said, she might be one of the pickiest eaters on the planet. We joke, but not really, that she only eats beige food. Not a fruit or vegetable. Her favourite food group is chocolate.
So recently I tried to camouflage some good healthy fibre in her favourite chocolate muffins by throwing in a sizable amount of large flake oatmeal. She took a big bite and started to chew and promptly pushed it out of her mouth into the sink. There was definitely something weird about this muffin. She examined it carefully and tried to eat around the little flecks of oatmeal for a couple of minutes. Then she decided it was impossible and told me to eat it.
When I came across this blog post from Alice at Finslippy, I was sure she had installed a nanny cam at my house and has been spying on me because the look of suspicion on her face is EXACTLY like Amy's was that day.

Dramatic Reenactment of Our Son, Eating a Cookie from Alice Bradley on Vimeo.

Ever wonder what mommy-guilt looks like?

...A great big stuffed purple horse. (Gavin, you look like I feel!) Let me explain...


I forgot Amy's show and tell this morning. This is not normally an issue as she is very good at remembering to bring something to share and has some interesting things to prepared to say about it, even if I don't practice it with her. The problem today, however, was that Gavin was supposed to be Amy's show and tell and, therefore, she needed me to bring him in! We were in our usual big rush this morning after blissfully sleeping in until 7:45 (thank you, Gavin, you amazing 2-month old, you!). I arrived at the school in yesterday's smelly clothes because I didn't see the point in wearing nice fresh clothes before having a shower...which I planned to do upon returning home from drop-off. Got back to the house, fed Gavin for half an hour while playing lame video games, and suddenly realized at 9:30 that I had totally forgotten about Amy's show and tell. Feeling about an inch high, I fumbled Gavin into his car seat, headed back to the school (still in yesterday's smelly clothes) for show and tell, mumbling some lame excuse about mistiming a feeding.

What about the horse, you're wondering? Later, while birthday shopping for a friend's party at Toys R Us, I bought that big, ridiculous toy for Amy, just because she asked. Which is terrible parenting. For which I have even more guilt. At least it was half price.
Nice.

Echoes

Yikes. Do you ever hear your kids talking to each other and hear yourself in their conversation? Sometimes it's positive, but sometimes it's positively cringeworthy.
I really notice it in my daughter, Amy, who's 5. Every so often, usually when things aren't going her way I can hear her frustration and impatience and know that she is echoing the way I sound when I'm stressed and impatient. Really not flattering. And I'm hearing more of it from her lately which means she is probably hearing more of it from me lately. I'm more tired and easily stressed than usual with a new baby around, and she's less secure and more stressed than usual, also partly because of the new baby and the fact that Mommy is a bit high strung these days.
I guess if I'm not crazy about her tone lately, it's time for me to get a hold of mine.

Why Vocabulary Matters

Excerpt from a conversation with my five year old while driving in the van the other day:

Me: How was kindergarten this morning?

Amy: Good. We talked about body science today.

Me: Wow, that sounds interesting...what did you talk about?

Amy: We learned about the tentacles.

Me: Hmm. And where are the tentacles, exactly?

Amy: Next to the penis on a man.

Me: (trying not to laugh out loud with that little visual in my mind), oh, was it maybe called testicles?

Amy: No, Mommy, I don't think so.