Sunday, August 23, 2009

What a Week!

School has begun. For Miss A and Miss E, the first week is over! Done! We have survived it! Wahoo!!! I did not forget to pick ANYONE up. Yay!

Miss A naturally loves schools. LURVES it. She is so happy to be back in school, she doesn't mind having homework four nights a week (so far, just math...mainly coloring blocks to show she knows how to color four things blue and one thing red. She's handling it pretty well, if I do say so myself.). She is also plain ecstatic about buying lunches. Super J and I evaluated our finances and figured, we could manage about $25 a month on her lunch card, which allows her approx 13 lunches. So, she and I went through the menu and determined which lunches she likes and what days I'm going to make her lunch. She is So. Happy. About. Buying. Lunches! Tomorrow, she even gets BREAKFAST for LUNCH! Imagine that.

I had grandiose dreams that I'd make her lunch everyday. Thus, when she was an adult, she would know her mother loved her during these crazy days of baby sisters, because she had a home made lunch everyday. Alas. She does not WANT a homemade lunch every day. And thus we see an element of Miss A's personality, which we kinda already knew, but we now see again. Super J says it may just be a wonderful way to use peer pressure to help her find interesting things to eat, like burritos. In any case, I guess I'm going to have to figure out another way for her to realize I did love her during this busy nutty time.

Miss E, upon finishing her first day of school, got into the Red Rocket and promptly burst into tears.

"Honey, what's wrong??? Why are you crying??"
"My teacher yelled at me."
"Why did she yell at you?"
"I don't want to talk about it." *sniff, sniff*

Later, I will find out that her teacher, Mrs. C, yelled (note: I'm sure Mrs. C didn't YELL at her. I'm sure she just spoke directly to Miss E, becasue Miss E says I yell a lot at her and I simply do not. So, please know that Miss E's definition of yelling and other peoples are very very different) at her because Miss E was having a difficult time getting into line and she told Miss E (and, I'm sure the REST of the class) that she needed to stand in a STRAIGHT line. Oh the sadness.

The rest of her week went well. Until this Saturday when a neighbor's dog nipped her in the face, leaving a mark on Miss E's nose and a bit of a scratch on her chin (and, undoubtedly, upon her psyche). She's fine, other than that. And it was an accident. But still, I've already told the girls that if the dog is out, they are not allowed to play at the neighbors.

Miss O has been fairly delightful this week, all things considered. She is very jealous and sad to see her sisters leave, because she has a sense that she, too, should be leaving. In fact, one morning after bursting into tears that SHE was not going somewhere, Super J let her ride with them to drop them off.

She will start school the Thursday after Labor Day, and I'm happy to say, she will go to school POTTY TRAINED!!!! Yesssssss! We are almost ONE WEEK into completely dry, completely potty trained liberation. Wahoo! Sadly, I'm the one who sends Miss O to the potty unless she has to poo, in which case she knows to take herself. So, it's not as if she is like, "Hey! Feeling the need to hit the loo!" but at least now she'll hold it and go when reminded. I'm taking what I can get. We are very proud. We are now down to only ONE in diapers.

Let's say it together, "WAHOO!"

She has been having a bit of a hard time with her dearest, bestest friend, Brit. Brit is a doll. Seriously, a doll. We all love her because she's a sweetie and she and Miss O get along famously. Miss O prays in EVERY prayer (and you think I'm kidding? I am NOT) that her friend Brit can come over, or that she play with Brit. It's very sweet and cute. Alas, Brit my be suffering from a bit of Miss O's devotion because they've started having disagreements. It's pretty normal for two 3 year olds to have them, so Brit's mom and I are not concerned and, as far as disagreements go, they are quite benign (I mean, we should all have the disagreements about who gets to be the mom and who has to be the baby, right?), but she and I had the following conversation:

"Mom, sometimes my friends hurt my feelings."
"Well, yes," I say, "sometimes friends hurt our feelings. And it's not nice, but sometimes we hurt our friends feelings. Sometimes we don't even know it, so we have to be nice and still love our friends because they love us and forgive us when we hurt their feelings so we should do that, too, because that's what being friends is all about. Doesn't that sound like a good plan?"
Miss O pauses and then says to me in an impatient and incredulous voice, "NO!"

Seriously, she said it like I'd asked her if she'd like me to repeat and re-explain my very lengthy discourse on friendship to her. Imagine that.

This leads us to Miss Q.

Miss Q has decided to be a crawler who enjoys an occasional stroll. I think her max is about 20 steps, often strung together after wobbling several times like a woozily stacked bunch of teacups (will they fall???? Will they FALL?). Oh the anticipation! We have realized that if she is carrying stuff in both her hands, she actually seems more balanced and will walk longer distances before, utterly tired, she collapses. Or, if not tired, just realizing she's not as efficient at walking, so she'll mainly crawl only to later surprise herself and everyone else by standing and walking around a bit.

Unless she notices that a gate to one of the stairways is open. Then, like a red hot missile, she shoots off to climb the stairs (and let me just say that she is FAST. And yes, she has fallen down some of the carpeted steps, but survived just fine [although her SISTERS freaked out. Oh, you should have heard the screaming, from them!]). In addition, she has also given me, her mother, several heart palpitations as she assesses going DOWN the stairs, by herself. Yegads. On a happy note, she has started going to bed around 7:00-7:30pm. On a sad note, this is because she is only taking one nap, often for only an hour or two which means by the time 7:00ish rolls around, she is a demon child, ready to go to bed.

Still, on several nights this week, we had everyone in bed at 8:30. Super J said it was a change in his paradigm, because we were able to accomplish tasks and maybe even watch a show and still do stuff we wanted/needed to get done...and all with no kiddos awake. Wow.

We shan't talk of Super J's work situation in this entry, as it is already way too long (both the entry AND the story of Super J's work situation), nor shall we speak of the stuff going on in the world of politics, and let's especially not dwell on my reactions this week, which weren't stellar, to both. In fact, I'm fairly certain I don't want to write about it (and record for posterity) because of all the swear words I was thinking/said through-out the week concerning it all. Suffice it to say, it has also kept us busy in certain ways. But, we still have a job for now, so we will be happy about that. And the world is still turning, so we'll be happy about that as well, and be glad to know it's all in the Lord's hands. Oh! And, as a goal, I'm working on my cleaning up my verbiage this upcoming week. So that's good, right?

One can only wonder what's in store.

5 comments:

Jessica said...

Incredible Post! Your girls are just going to love reading these someday, like we all do.
(They sure are adorable!)
Hang in there, and remember how GREAT you are!
PS
I understand wanting to clean up your verbiage, good goal... but stress has to be dealt with someway. I am not dealing well with it this week... does the verbiage make you feel better? Maybe I should try it, hum. Or I could just say "verbiage", is it a real word? I like it!

Unknown said...

That is some week. But, your house sounds awesome, I must say. Keep up the kids-in-bed-by-8:30 trend. It's lovely!

Jennifer Lee said...

"WAHOO!"

Adrienne said...

Ah, awesomosity to go along with your verbiage. K, I think if a dog is "nipping" children in the "face", there is a problem with said "dog", I don't CARE how cute or aggravated it was. The end.
Oh and a one diaper house! And this will be the last diapered one of all!! So much to be thrilled about.

Katie said...

OK, when you said that Miss O's friend was a doll, I took it literally - that her best friend was her doll. I was a little confused when you talked about Brit's mom. Yes, I'm kind of slow today!