A new era

Maia is off to kindergarten! When she woke up this morning she said, "I'm not going to school today." Then she dressed herself with care and brushed her hair and her teeth, and came down to breakfast, and watched her daddy pack her lunchbox. "I might say I like it," she said when we crossed the street in front of her school. We were early to her classroom (apparently we were supposed to line up with everyone else under the covered area), and she waited more or less patiently. When everyone else got there, she hung up her backpack and lunch with her classmates, we hugged her goodbye, and she ran off to the circle where everyone was meeting. No tears, no frowns, no hesitations. She's going to do so well.

And Eric and I came home to a childless house. I will get lots of work done today, and he's going to be starting his tutoring work as well (also possibly doing more of the porch-painting that took up our yesterday). It'll be nice to have the quiet house. But...but...

My kind of girl

Maia is currently reading an Elephant & Piggie book in the living room, mostly by herself except where Eric supplies sound effects. (Note: why are Dr. Seuss books considered good for learning to read, when they're filled with nonsense words?) She's been working so hard on learning to sound things out, and she's doing it. She's not doing it by recognition yet, except for some sight words, but she's so close and she's doing so well and I'm so proud. Also slightly concerned that I'm going to have to watch what's on my computer screen when she's around, now, too.

What are we going to do with her in kindergarten? I'm genuinely concerned about this. I think she's going to be more polite about being bored than Chloe has been, but I think she's going to be bored. She can add, too, and do very simple subtraction, and she's at least trying to count on (this is where, when a child adds four and four, she stops counting to four on one hand and then adds the other four; she can just start at four and go up from there). We've been kind of assuming she'll follow in Chloe's footsteps (and ours) and go into the accelerated program, but that's not until second grade. I want to go tell the school that she needs to be in first grade next year, not kindergarten. That's not my call, and I don't want to be a pushy parent, but I wonder if it would be the best thing for her. There's an open house for the accelerated program next month, and I'm going to try to ask questions then.

And in the meantime, more books, more workbooks, and more doing math and spelling in the car when the girls ask for it. We went to the library recently, where Chloe got a Minecraft instruction manual that she wouldn't stop reading until we made her and Maia got some chapter books she can't actually read but likes to look at (and I read to her). On the way home they were both uncharacteristically silent in the backseat because they were both intent on their books, and I looked at Eric and said, "I have the family I always wanted."

Tired

Chloe's been on a gluten-free diet this week. Her chronic stomachache hasn't responded to any other treatment, and it isn't responding to this one, either; we're giving it another day or two and then calling up the pediatrician again and demanding that they fix our child. I made a worse mess than I've made in quite a few years, baking-wise, trying to make gluten-free bread. I look forward to this being over too. But Chloe's been quite depressed about it--though much happier when she heard there was gluten-free pasta in the cupboard, and then in her bowl.

Yesterday, after school, the girls decided to take a picnic "lunch" out to the middle area of the apartment complex. This led to about three hours of play with the other kids, including, I was told afterward, the older boys coming to play school with them, plus some sort of parading and chasing game, plus a making-soup game with regular snack refills. When they came in for dinner I served up leftovers, including the last of the gluten-free pasta. "This is all there is?" Chloe said when I warned her that was all the leftovers we had, and she started to cry. 

It wasn't a tantrumy sort of crying; it was the crying of a tired girl who was very disappointed. I offered her rice and seaweed and tomatoes, which helped. "Can we snuggle on the couch and read before baths?" she said wistfully, and of course I said yes. We've been reading The Rescue Princesses, a series of books about princesses (well, girls who are called princesses; other than wearing tiaras all the time their lives are not actually different from the standard American chapter-book reader) who like to rescue animals in trouble with the aid of sparkly gems. And ninja moves. Don't ask. I only read a chapter, because it was getting late and I wanted to get her to bed on time. When we'd done baths and tooth-brushing and were snuggled in bed (after another chapter), I tucked her blanket around her and said, "You're tired, aren't you?"

Every other time I've asked this (of either girl), the response has been "I'm not tired!!!!" But this time she nodded and sighed. I kissed her good-night, and Maia as well, and she was asleep within a few minutes. My poor little growing-up girl.

Dress-up girls

Maia wears tights most of the time. It's not a comfort issue like Chloe's socks; if there aren't any clean ones, she's disappointed but not distraught. But she really loves them. She tries to convince us that they can be substituted for pants. (In fairness, Chloe tries to convince us of the same thing, but only when she's changing from her dance outfit to her Girl Scouts outfit when she's just come out of class and is still warm from dancing.) She can put them on herself, which is better than Chloe can do, and she's done her best to get us to let her wear tights and a skirt all winter.

(She's succeeded surprisingly often. This is because winter here is not like winter in Ohio, and she can do that without freezing...sometimes. I do so wish she liked to be warm.)

She's also quite preoccupied with her hair. There was a time when she seemed to dislike it because it was curly. It's settled down some now, possibly because it's longer, possibly because she's older, and now her joy is hairstyles. I even got her a hairstyles book for Christmas. If you need a hairtie, look no further than the floor of any room in our apartment. The girls use them for their dolls and ponies, and for making tiny purses and monster traps, but quite a few go into Maia's hair. She can put her own hair up, sort of, but what she loves is when Eric or I give her a ponytail, or pigtails (always "piggie-tails"), or braided piggie-tails, or pull half her hair back, or put in clips, or do little twisty braids. Sometimes she asks for a hairstyle after her bath, and wears it all night, waking up in the morning with little wisps of hair framing her face.

Chloe, on the other hand, likes to put together outfits. She particularly likes an outfit that Omi sent over, a dark tank top with a black sweater and some dark leggings (both girls love their leggings; I'm still the only one in the family who will wear jeans). She beamed when I said it looked grown-up. She likes her hair long and down. We cut four inches off recently because the fights about keeping it brushed, and her screaming during brushing, got to be too much.

I love watching them play and run. I love seeing Chloe curled up with a book on the couch, like I do (...or hanging upside down off it, like I did when I was her age). I love being Maia's audience when she gets a running start and leaps down the steps that go toward the apartment complex clubhouse. I can't say I love it when they howl in despair, "Why haven't you done the laundry??" when they have drawers full of clothes but they're looking for one particular shirt or pants, but it does highlight how particular they are about their appearances now, and while it's less convenient, it's a lot of fun.

Now if only I could convince them that clothes shopping isn't the deadliest of chores. I know their opinion will be radically different in eight years, but right now I can't get them into a clothing store without threats and/or bribery. Which makes supplying their individual styles harder, and is my excuse for why both girls are wearing too-short leggings half the time. Of course, they also howl in despair when I say it's time to get rid of them. "They're not too short!" Maia says. "We love those pants!" Chloe says. And I say, oh, all right, if your ankles don't freeze. They haven't yet.

Always

We interrupt this blog silence to bring you the news that Maia is simply spectacular at this age. For the first time I'm having a real sense of wishing she wouldn't change. Chloe was great at four, but I had the feeling better things were ahead (also I think her whining was already a force to be reckoned with?). Maia will probably be even better as she gets older, but I can't imagine how. She's still baby-cute and small enough to pick up and laughs like a toddler, but she's learning to do gymnastics and math and she's started drawing people with eyeballs and five fingers and she's doing her determined best to learn how to sound out words (she can spell "the," "love," and "in," and recently wrote a card "To Mom and Dad frum Maia"). I suppose the occasional tantrum could be improved, and I can't wait to see how she does in real school, so it won't be so bad as time goes on, but I still want to keep her like this always.

She's started worrying about mortality, though, which makes me sad. "I wish we could be reborn," she said the other day. And a few weeks ago she reduced me to tears when we talked about what to put on her tombstone (we were discussing graveyards because of Halloween) and she said it should say "I love my family and my life. I wish I could keep it." I've told her that she has a long, long life ahead of her and death is not a thing to worry about now. Then we talked about things that are good in life, such as juice, pizza, tickling, and being done with work. I hope she won't worry about it. I hope I haven't been influencing her--I've been thinking about it a lot myself, but I don't think I've mentioned it around the girls.

"Do you love me?" Maia asked the other day when she was interrupting me in the middle of work (I love these interruptions as long as they don't go on too long).

"I always love you," I told her, while she climbed up in the chair and I twisted her upside down and bounced her gently on her head on my lap. "Even when you're screaming, even when I'm yelling, I love you, love you, love you."

"Bounce me more!" she said, so I did.

Determination, of various sorts

We went to Silver Lake on Friday. It was warm enough to swim, so the girls went in their bathing suits and life vests, and they had their first real experience of a western Washington lake. This particular one is really a glorified pond, but there was a beach with sand and a roped-off kids' area, and the girls loved wading and splashing around. They went waist-deep, which was as far as the rope went, but decided not to go further, even though I said they could. (I didn't say I would go with them. I had not worn a bathing suit. I was prepared to get wet going after one of them, but I was not excited about it, and maybe they noticed that.)

I noticed the distinctive smell of Washington woodland, a sweet woodsy smell, which now that I think of it probably  comes partly from overripe blackberries. They noticed the sand and how the underwater plants started growing a few yards out, and the freshwater clamshells, and how in this beach there were no waves and no tide. But mostly, Chloë noticed...wait for it...the ducks. There were a dozen or so mallards and wood ducks floating near shore, and she was absolutely charmed by them, especially when they swam right near her. "I've never seen a duck so close before! Look at its webbed feet!" This flock was very tame; they had obviously decided being chased by small children was worth it for the free food. "That boy is feeding the ducks!" she said, pointing to a boy around eight or so who was tossing chips to the waiting birds nearby. "I wish we had brought food."

"We brought animal crackers," I said, and then as her face opened with hope, "but it's not good for the ducks to feed them." She asked why, and I told her (there was also a helpful sign not far from where the boy stood). I could see and hear her reluctance, but she said decidedly, "Then we shouldn't." I was proud.

* * *

We went to the Lynnwood Skate-and-Bowl on Saturday, for the Norwescon kickoff. Chloë has skated three or four times before, but Maia never has. When they got into her skates she had some trouble standing, but she worked at it, and shuffled gamely across the carpet. After some practice she fell down a slight incline--not her first fall, but her first one that hurt. She cried, naturally, and said she didn't want to go on the rink, so Eric took Chloë out, as she was ready to move on. But they hadn't gotten more than a quarter of the way around the rink when Maia said, "I wish we were with Chloë and Daddy," and I said, "We could go out and try to catch them, " and she said, "Okay."

We stepped into the rink. She was mostly shuffling her feet back and forth, and steadfastly ignoring all my attempts to teach her otherwise, but she clung to my hand and managed some forward movement. She fell a couple of times, but she kept getting back up and shuffling some more, and every once in a while she would exclaim, "I'm doing it!"

Meanwhile ahead of us, Eric reported later, Chloë was struggling to get better, and crying, as she too often does, "I can't do it." We've noticed that Maia tends to be better at things that require physical agility--I blame jaundice--but I don't know how much of that is her much more positive attitude. Chloë has shown determination to do a few things--such as guitar; she got one for her birthday and has been surprisingly diligent about asking for "guitar lessons" from me and about working on her fingering, even though she finds it difficult. (We're looking for a place for lessons around here with an actual teacher.) But most of the time if she has any sort of difficulty, she dissolves into tears and won't keep working on the problem without a lot of prompting. Maia has that reaction sometimes, but more often she just goes ahead and tries things. We never quite caught up with Chloë on that trip around the rink (though Eric spotted us and visited), but at our closest point I commented to Maia, "We're halfway across the rink," and she looked back and said, "No, Mama. Not halfway. Look!" I looked back and realized that while I'd meant halfway around the rink, we were all the way across, and she was awed at the distance she'd skated. She wanted to stop after we completed our circuit, and not long after that we traded our skates for bowling shoes, but she was so excited and proud of herself, and so was I.

Dancing into the new year

And today is the first day of first grade! "My stomach is still hurting," Chloe reported this morning. She's been anxious. Excited, but anxious. We went to orientation yesterday, since it was a new school--yeah, so we moved across the country, from our house into an apartment without sufficient parking but with a pool--and she was excited by the nice playground and the fact that the cafeteria is a separate building from the gym, and confused by the fact that gym is called PE here, and excited and anxious by turns about the fact that she's riding the bus this year. She likes the idea, but she wants us to come along. On the positive side, as we told her, all the kids from the apartment building who go to this school will be at the stop, so she'll be able to meet lots of kids at once this way.

"I wish I went to the same school as Chloe," Maia says. She's in preschool, but it doesn't start until next week. Gymnastics (for her) and jazz (for Chloe) also start next week. I've always loved September because it felt like the start of the year, and it's certainly starting a lot of things for us.

Eric's found a game...store, rather than group, and I've at least identified a knitting group to try. We're not settling into our new lives as well as we could since we don't like the place. We want to move, but we can't afford a house until approximately February and it doesn't make sense to move to another rental. I'm battling discontent. Also a tendency to not get started on things I want, like getting the house in order and getting to a good schedule for some goals I want to pursue, because I don't feel truly settled. But I'm trying to reconcile myself to what we have for now, and act as if we're settled and happy. The girls don't seem to be acting; other than occasionally wishing for a yard, they've seemed happy with our new arrangements, and I'm sure that getting them into school and classes will make that even better. Maybe I should go take a dance class.

I wanna hold your hand

Chloe often takes my hand when we're on a walk or out at a store. It's very sweet, her small-but-growing hand in mine, and the fact that she still likes to be in physical contact with me.

Except that sometimes she clings too long, and I wonder if it's because the sidewalk only admits two across and Maia is behind or ahead of us. Maia likes to hold my hand, too, but not as much. She's more independent. But she's more comfortable when she does snuggle. Chloe likes to wriggle and gesture, to stick her foot in my ribs (labor and delivery were supposed to put an end to that!) and demand to be tickled, to throw her limbs everywhere. She's affectionate, but her affection hurts sometimes.

I feel bad about not wanting her close all the time. She's five years old, almost six, and I imagine that before long she's not going to want to hold hands with her mom anymore. I love to hold her hand, and to snuggle with her at bedtime. But she doesn't want to be still the way a baby does; she's big and wild and intent on her own agenda, her own interests, and they involve flailing against me, literally as well as figuratively. And it makes me uncomfortable. And that makes me anxious. Am I too uptight about little things? Am I wrong in sacrificing my comfort to maintaining that connection? Am I wrong in even worrying about my own comfort?

"When people say you have to cherish your children when they're small," I said to Eric today, "are they right, or are they assholes?" I don't enjoy all the small moments with my girls the way society says I should. I do enjoy a lot of them, but I'm also honestly bored or frustrated or immunized some of the time. Maia draws me pictures every day. They're sweet and I'm proud, but I have dozens of them. Current society tells me I should be treasuring each one, valuing each moment. But I don't think that's reasonable. Society is an asshole. I think.

It would be nice to know. But there's no good way. So I keep holding Chloe's hand while we run along the sidewalk to catch Maia, and I keep pushing her off my lap when she's keeping me from getting up to do something, and I hang up some of Maia's pictures and I throw some of them away. I want to ask my mom if she ever learned to be content with her own compromises as a mother, but I'm afraid I know the answer.

These are the days to remember

One of the things I regret about not keeping up this blog is that I’m losing more of my memories of the girls. For example: Maia is so sweet right now. She’s three, almost four, and she plays really well with her big sister, pretending with the My Little Ponies and building coaches and castles with the Legos and imitating Chloe’s drawings, much more sophisticated than Chloe herself was doing at this age. But her laugh is still her baby laugh, and it thrills me to hear it because every time might be the last. And I remember that Chloe’s laugh was never quite like Maia’s, but I don’t remember how it was. When did she transition from her baby laugh to the smarter, fuller, sometimes-slightly-raucous laugh she has now? I don’t remember her first year of preschool, except for some highlights. I don’t remember exactly when Maia became potty-trained. I want to write it down, so I don’t forget it. I spend so much of my time exasperated or anxious or bored with the girls, and I hate that. I want to remember how good they are, even when I can’t feel that way in the moment.

A couple of Maia moments:

Maia dresses up as Elsa almost every day. She and Chloe were Elsa and Anna for Halloween—the warm versions, Elsa at coronation and Anna in her winter dress. Chloe already had an Anna dress-up dress, so I bought Maia an Elsa dress from China off eBay and made them cloaks and headgear (Anna’s hat for Chloe and a yarn wig for Maia). I figured they would enjoy them at Halloween (which they did—they had three or four different Halloween dress-up events and rocked them) and maybe dress up again once or twice and they’d be done. If I’d known Maia would be living in her costume I would have sprung for a handmade dress from Etsy rather than the cheap eBay version. I would also have actually finished the edges of the cloak instead of just cutting them and leaving them. (It’s made of fleece, with some flannel edging fused on, so this was permissible for something that wasn’t going to get a lot of wear.) It was fine through Halloween and a bit beyond, but the edging is suffering now. The dress is holding up very well, however.

"Can I have my snowflake necklace?" she asked one day while in this getup. "It gives me ice powers!" Then, "But only pretend. I don't really have ice powers."

I'm working from home now, and the girls have yet to internalize that shouting upstairs at me when they want something is no longer going to work. (This isn't so bad when Eric's home; but he teaches one afternoon a week.) Today I got on the phone with someone and heard Chloe yelling "Mom! Mom! Mom!" I slammed the door (which the phone on mute) to respond. Pretty soon came a persistent knocking. I used mute again and yelled, "Go away, I'm on the phone!" I'm a charming mother. When the call was done I went down and explained that they cannot shout at me because I will not answer, and if I don't it is appropriate to silently open the door to see whether I'm on the phone or in a rage-induced seizure. (I didn't say that last part.) Chloe nodded. I returned to work. Sometime later Maia came up and crept to my side. "I came up to ask you something because I knew I wasn't supposed to shout," she said humbly. Then she asked me to take out Twilight Sparkle's ponytail. 

A girl on fire

It is so amazing watching Chloe learn to read. She's acquired sounds and blends and several rules, and the world is blooming around her. We drove home from the mall the other day and she called out "'Stop'!" and "'Market'!" and "Is that 'Dillards'?" She spelled "splendid" for me in bed when she kept telling me she had a "splendid" idea for my Christmas present (though not what it is). Spelling words to keep her from knowing what we're talking about isn't safe anymore. It's wonderful.

The big day

Today is Chloe's first day of kindergarten. She's been so excited about it. We went school shopping last week, and school-clothes-shopping a couple of weeks before that, and she was eager to help pack her lunch and make sure everything was in order in her backpack. She had three nosebleeds yesterday, so last night we discussed writing a note to her teacher to keep her informed, and the first thing she asked me this morning was "Did you do that note?"

She was all smiles when we left her at her classroom door this morning. All three of us walked her in, since I'm working from home on Tuesdays and it wasn't terribly busy. Her teacher met her at the door and told her to put away her backpack and play with the Play-Doh at her seat; and she gave us quick good-bye hugs and was off. There was a "Boo-Hoo Breakfast" for kindergarten parents in the school library afterward. We didn't go, but I did feel slightly boo-hoo-ey as Eric, Maia, and I walked back to the car.

So did Maia; she wanted to be picked up and buried her face in my shoulder. But she's also anxious about going to meet her preschool teachers today, and she recovered quickly--though the house is very, very quiet without her favorite playmate to assist in making the usual ruckus, or demand the usual shows. Change, it is here.

Spring and surprises

The Greening has come, by which I mean the point in the spring when I first notice that the grass is green instead of dull (that's not a color, but it seems like it in late winter). Chloë noticed it too. "The grass is green now," she informed me yesterday. She also told me there are red flowers in our yard. What would I do without her news bulletins?

We spent a good part of the weekend outside. I worked on the garden and the girls drew with chalk, blew bubbles, slid down the slide and tried to ride Chloë's tricycle. Chloë can ride it but has trouble with corners and with getting stuck on the far end of our lawn. Maia can't reach the pedals but she doesn't stop trying. She's been so enamored of it that we decided to get Maia her own (shorter) tricycle for her birthday.

It arrived Friday, and I took Chloë into confidence about what was inside and told her she couldn't tell Maia because birthday presents should be secret. So far (as far as I know) she hasn't told Maia, which is frankly better than I expected. She has whispered to me in front of Maia, "We're keeping the tricycle a secret!" but that's not so bad and is utterly cute.

Saturday I took her shopping for Maia's birthday present. We've been talking about what Maia would like, and Chloë said she wanted to get her a stuffed cat and a stuffed duck and maybe another stuffed dog. I discouraged the dog, since Maia already has two and that's plenty, but we searched for a cat and a duck and at the second store (Toys R Us) found both. She picked out the ones she thought Maia would like and said, "I will carry them, since I picked them out." At the checkout line she told the cashier, "These are for my baby sister for her birthday. Because she likes my cat." The cashier thought she meant a real cat, but Chloë set her straight.

She carried the bag to the car, and when we arrived home carried the bag inside and retrieved the roll of wrapping paper so we could wrap them. "They will be all snuggly in there," she said as we crammed them together to get them to fit in the last remaining bit of wrapping paper. (There's another roll for the tricycle, if we decide to wrap it rather than assembling it ahead of time.) They just fit, and after Chloë selected a bow we put the present up on a shelf in her closet. She was so delightfully pleased to have gotten a present for her sister. I was so pleased my daughter is such a loving big sister.

On with the show

Eric dropped the girls off to me at work yesterday, per our usual arrangement when he's teaching. Chloë was asleep, because it was a preschool day and she doesn't nap on preschool days, and despite her protests that she doesn't need one, she needs one. Maia greeted me: "Mom! Hi Mom! Daddy go? Toë teeping."

I talked back to her some and got settled in the driver's seat, and headed down the road toward home. Maia started singing: "Aay bee tee dee...you too, Mom!" So I joined in.

She knows most of the alphabet song, though "LMNOP" is rendered as "emopee," and she waited for me to chime in with S. But she did her best in her beautiful baby voice--toddler voice, really. Then she started again. "You too Mom!" So we sang, and sang, all the way home.

* * *

That night...no, I guess it must have been Monday night, because it was after Maia went to bed. Chloë and I were up, and she was looking at her spider counting book, which she made at preschool by stamping the appropriate number of spiders on each page. The front had three spider stickers on it. "That's the mama spider," she said, pointing, "and that's the big sister spider, and that's the baby spider. But there's no daddy spider."

"You could draw one," I suggested.

"I don't know how."

"I'll show you. We can practice on another piece of paper."

I expected her to say no, but she didn't. So we went to the easel, and I held up the spider counting book and demonstrated, then counseled her on how to draw a spider. "First a big circle for the body. Then a small one for the head. Then eight lines for legs. Four on each side." Once she had that down, we refined the legs by adding extra segments, and she added a face to the head all by herself. "Now I can draw one on my counting book," she said, and did, and executed it beautifully. She was so pleased to have the spider family complete.

* * *

We left the spider book on the table, and tonight when dinner was winding down she pointed it out, and the status of each spider: "That's the big mama spider, and the big daddy spider I drew, and the two small ones are the big sister and the baby."

Maia listened as she shoveled pasta into her mouth with her fork. Then she said, "That big Mama over there," pointing at me. "That big Daddy over there. That big sister over there." She considered. "Small Maia here, eating her food."

It's a draw

Chloe adores her "staying up late" time, and lately she's been keen on using it to color with markers (not an activity we encourage while Maia is awake) to make pictures for Daddy. 

Last night, after some scribbling, she wanted to use stickers. First she selected a frog. "Oh, you'll have to make some water for it to swim in," I remarked. She grabbed the blue and scribbled in a little pond, then lovingly placed the frog. 

"I want the bear next," she said. "Where do bears live?" 

Then the hippo. "Hippos live in water," I said when she asked. "Maybe the hippo could swim with the frog."

"That pond is too small," she objected, so the hippo got her own water--which she later shared with the elephant. The fox got his own hole, and then the monkey got a tree. "I want it to be in front of the bear," she said, so she scribbled in leaves up top and a trunk coming down, at my suggestion. I was just as eager to show this one to Eric as she was.

Our own little Herbie

Chloë says she wants to be a dentist when she grows up. This, Eric tells me, is entirely because at Maia's recent dental appointment Chloë watched avidly and the dentist said, "She's going to be a dentist." Apparently he wanted to be a dentist from the age of three. Tonight Chloë and I talked about how she would decorate her dentist office. Then we talked about whether she would take care of children or grownups (she says both) and what she would have to do. "But I don't know how to fix cavities," she said when I mentioned them.

"You'd go to dentist school to learn how to do that."

"What's dentist school?"

"It's a school you go to to learn how to be a dentist. You would go after you finish regular school."

"After preschool?"

I explained about the different levels of school (and didn't describe college as being optional) and how dentist school would come after that. "I don't think I can do all that," she said.

"Of course you could," I said. "A lot of grownups do it. And all dentists."

Then we discussed what toys would be best for her waiting room and whether the kids would have to wear bibs in the dentist chair. It was probably not the deepest conversation I'll ever have with her about her future, but it was a good first one.

Just an ordinary day

Today when we were playing Legos (Duplos) with the Winnie the  Pooh set, Maia opened the little door to let Pooh in and said, "Open." Then she closed it and said, "Closed." She repeated this several times, especially after I squealed, "What a smart girl!" and kissed her head.

I was making applesauce in the kitchen this afternoon (we tried it for the first time this year, and it has so much more complexity of flavor than the storebought stuff. Try it!) when Chloë decided to play a game called "Go to Emma's house and then run home and go to bed early because we're very tired." I was Emma. My part consisted of answering to the name Emma and making conversation before she ran home. I do not know where she got the name. I do know that she didn't take a nap today. She's been skipping it occasionally--especially on weekends--but gets so tired and cranky at the end of the day that we don't think it's time to give it up yet.

Maia has learned to identify herself and Chloë at last, and lately has taken great joy in pointing out the members of her family: "Mama. Dada. Doë. Maia." When I'm serving out spoonfuls of apple butter to taste or putting on jackets to go for a walk, she's been quick these last few days to say, "Maia," to remind me that she needs her portion of attention.

And for some reason whenever I get her out of the car first (she sits behind me) she said, "Doë." Does she think Chloë doesn't like being in the car? Does she want to remain longer herself? Does she dislike being put down to wander the garage or, if we're out, being held while I unsnap Chloë's carseat one-handed? I don't know, but she wants her sister out first.

I've been trying to make Chloë understand that telling me, "Maia is in my way!" is much less helpful than telling Maia, "Please move." Maia is trying to be so helpful. She puts Chloë's potty seat on the toilet for her and moves the stool. How much more could you ask from a little sister, ladies and gentleman? But no, Chloë wails, "Maia, you're in my way!" even when she's not. Today her shtick was to say, "Maia, help me!" when I told her she had to put away the blocks before she could watch a show, and then complain, "Maia's not helping!" even though (a) she wasn't lifting a finger herself and (b) she hadn't told Maia what, exactly, she needed help with.

As I mentioned earlier, Maia has attached herself to her sheep. Instead of Feet, we've now been calling it Beep, and she seems satisfied with that. It's a bit of a relief to have a stuffed animal with an actual name, since up until now our only variations on the "Snake," "Bear," "Ducky," and so on have been modifications on the theme of "Small/Middle/Big Ducky." (Chloë was playing with something, I forget what, that she called eggs. She said, "Soon the mama eggs will hatch and then the baby eggs will hatch." We've got to have a talk sometime about how 'mama' and 'baby' are not just size descriptors.) I suppose there's also Tiger the leopard and Chloë's dolls--Laughing Baby, Newborn Baby, and Dolly Baby. My plan is to make the girls knitted dolls for Christmas, since Maia doesn't have an easily snuggle-able one and Dolly Baby is much the worse for wear already, and I'll be interested to see what name Chloë bestows on hers.

Status report: Chloë, 3 years 2 months, and Maia, 17 months

Eric said tonight, "It's October? How did it become October?" I've been saying, "Where did these brilliant big girls come from?"

Maia's getting to be so much her own person, talking and reacting (good lord, the reacting, mostly with belly laughs or high-pitched shrieks, sometimes in close succession) and having opinions and preferences. I think Chloë's a little frustrated that she's not quite as biddable as she used to be, but she's also much more interactive, more a real sister. "Move Maia!" she tells Maia when she's where Chloë wants to be putting the stool to wash her hands, but that's because Maia's standing close to watch her, or trying to reach the sink herself. They have a lot of fun together.

Chloë is so smart. I'm so proud and pleased when she comes up with this stuff. There was the "only books about big girls tonight" thing. Then there's her shoes. She's been so proud of being able to put her shoes on by herself, but she needs help sorting out which one goes on which foot. Recently, she told me, "I'm putting my shoes back the right way so they're on the right sides next time." How awesome is that?! I told Eric about it and he said, "I should have thought of that."

She's settled into preschool and adores it. Her first day there was some hesitation and a tear or two, but that was the only time. Every day it's "Is this a preschool day?" and the 28.6% of the time we get to say yes she then cheers and says, "I LOOOOOOVE preschool!" She's the youngest person in her class, but it's not slowing her down any. She knows the names of some of her classmates, and refers to them as her friends--though she calls everyone she knows her friend, so that may not mean anything. She loves to show off the little art projects they've done, and will tell me about the books they've read and sing the songs she's learned--though never when I ask, always at some later random time.

She can also sing "Rockabye Baby" and "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" all by herself. When did she learn to do that? And check this out: she can draw stick figures! She asked me one day "How do I draw you?" So I told her: "Draw a circle near the top for the head. Then a line or a long circle for the body. Then some lines there for the arms, and around there for the legs. And now maybe some eyes and a smile." She asked me to draw the smile, but she drew everything else.

That's totally me. Can't you tell by the nose?

She spontaneously sounds out the beginnings of words. She doesn't always get it right--"K-K-Grown-up," she'll say, or in one case, "M is for Halmoni." But she often does, and I love that she's trying, and all on her own initiative. We're working on getting her versed in her lower-case letters so she can get started more on phonics and reading. The other day she and Eric were reading the Little People book, and she pointed to a line and said, "That's my name." In fact it was "Cheep," the sound a chick was making, but she recognized the "ch" beginning. The fact that she has a book titled with her name probably helps her recognition, but I was still pretty impressed.

The other day Chloë wore some pants from last winter. I remarked, "I was thinking those fit better than they did last year...but then, she was wearing a diaper last year." Eric said to Chloë, "Do you remember wearing diapers?"  and Chloë shook her head. We're still a little hung up on wiping, and she insists on company, and takes a long time after announcing she's done to do anything about wiping, but mostly she's doing well on the potty--especially since we switched to the bigger seat we purchased while out at Mom and Dad's.

She was pleased to see it's the same kind as Llama Llama's in Maia's book. "It matches," she told me, though hers is white and green and Llama Llama's is red and blue. She's pretty keen on "matching" lately. "We match!" she tells me. "We both have a blue shirt on!" Or, "Put my earrings on. Then we will all match. Except Maia and you." (Eric was not in the room at the time.) She's similarly hung up on wearing "pretty" clothes. I haven't figured out what her criteria are for this, but she complains at least once a week that "none of my clothes are pretty!" I know time flies when you have children but hadn't realized we had reached the teenage years so soon.

We got a Roku box, to keep Eric from going completely insane by watching the same eight Dora the Explorer episodes over and over. The girls adore the new variety, and are enjoying some new shows, too--though Dora is still by far their favorite. Maia is even more obsessed than Chloë. She wants to page through Chloë's Dora omnibus every day; she exclaims whenever she sees Chloë wearing Dora underwear; she complains when she sees the Dora toothpaste or shampoo and isn't allowed to have it.  She's also basically claimed Chloë's Dora T-shirt, which admittedly is a little tight in the stomach for Chloë anyway.

She's talking up a storm. She asks us to "open" the toothpaste, and asks for her toothbrush by saying "Deet!" for teeth. She can say "read" very clearly, which I get a kick out of. She's also saying "Datey" (Stacey), her Cabbage Patch doll, and will rock it on the glider's ottoman. It's so cute. She can say "doll," too, and switches between that and "baby." The lamb Aunt Karolyn got her is her new lovey, and while I think she's probably saying "sheep" I always hear it as "feet." Eric scolds me for saying things like, "You can hold Feet while I change your diaper."

In the meantime, Maia has received her own potty, a Fisher Price frog one. (We decided to get rid of Chloë's because it's gross. Pro tip: don't buy the kind with a squishy seat, especially if it's got access points where liquid could conceivably get in and, at a later date, get out again.) She delights in sitting on it whenever someone else is on the toilet. She mainly loves reading the bathroom books and playing with her bits, but I'm pleased she's interested anyway. Not so pleased she's learned to take her own pants off to do it, but them's the breaks.

The girls are taking baths together consistently now that I've allowed bubble bath in their joint baths. Maia asks, "Bubbuhs?" every day. Chloë can climb in herself now; Maia squeals with impatience until I lift her in. They play in the bubbles, Chloë using the watering can to "make the fog go away," Maia often ending up with a bubble beard. Then I scrub Maia. Then I scrub Chloë. Then I let the water drain while the water reheats and we rinse and put away their toys. Then I turn on the shower and rinse them both clean, and then they get to play under the spray until the water is all gone. It works out better than our older routine and the girls love it. 

The girls enjoy their Legos and their beads a lot, as well as the tutus I made them...well, they did a couple of weeks ago, anyway. Now they've fallen out of favor. That's okay. They both like drawing, which is why there are more scribbles in the books and on tables than there used to be. Maia's been slower to learn the "paper only" rule than Chloë was. Chloë's very passionate about birthday parties and about the serial bedtime story I've started telling her. I realized a couple of nights in that this was a big mistake, since it means I have to make up something new every night instead of merely retelling stories and doing a new one once a week or so when I get tired of the current favorite. Ah well.

Maia's passionate about reading in general. Some of the books we read come with hand gestures (when I read them, anyway), and I love that both girls have picked up on them. For example, the My Toys book includes a saw, and on that page we all move our arms back and forth as if holding a saw. The next one pictures a drum, and I always have to grip the book extra tight because the girls bang on the drum. When we see a picture of an elephant, more often than not Maia will put her arm out in front of her face because I do that to imitate an elephant's trunk when I make the trumpeting noise.

These girls are growing so fast and so strong and so impossibly cute. Here's a pose Chloë orchestrated for me:

"Chloë, what's going on?"
"Just look at the camera and smile, and I'll stop with the Vulcan neck pinch."

Chloë and the Missing Zebra

So for this one you have to know that Chloë owns the book Olivia and the Missing Toy, in which Olivia's favorite toy goes missing. After rummaging the house and terrorizing her brothers, she discovers (spoiler) that the dog took it and destroyed it. That night she goes to bed with a stack of cat books, sending a black look at the dog and saying, "Only books about cats tonight." She forgives the dog on the last page.

So. I went into a baking frenzy today for some reason, on top of doing most of the prep for dinner because Eric was working. My second batch of bread was proofing on the counter where a bunch of other little junk is. When the first batch was out, I scooped the peel under the second batch and put it in the oven. Not much later, I noticed a plasticky smell, and was a little concerned, but we just got a new dishwasher (hooray!) and figured it was probably something to do with that.

Then I checked on the bread, which was baking nicely, and noticed something sticking out from under it. It was Chloë's zebra, a laminated-cardboard-ornament thing she got from a birthday celebration at preschool. (I know, I still haven't written about preschool.) I hastily pulled it out and showed Chloë, apologizing. It was mostly intact, but a bit, uh, brown. She said, "It's okay Mommy. It's okay. It will turn white again in the night."

She wanted to examine it, so I let her have it as I proceeded with the third batch of bread and the tortillas.  Sometime later, I turned around to find that Chloë had gone off to do something else and Maia was dropping two halves of a paper zebra to the ground. "Maia! No! You tore Chloë's zebra!" I said, and showed it to Chloë, and tried to get Maia to say "Sorry," but she wouldn't.

Chloë looked solemnly at the two pieces of zebra. She looked up at me and said calmly, "Only books about big girls tonight."

Good questions

"What is that water?" Chloë asked me on the way home yesterday.

"The Maumee River," I replied.

"Where is the Baby River?" she wanted to know.

"I don't know," I said.

"Dada," Maia contributed.

"I don't know if there's a Dada River either."

"Or a Big Girl Duck River," Chloë said.

#

"Why do you and Daddy not have bed friends?" Chloë asked me.

"We snuggle with each other," I said.

#

"Where was I when you and Daddy got married?" Chloë asked me.

"You weren't born yet."

A pause. "But where was I?"

"You weren't born. You weren't anywhere yet."

Another pause. "But where was I?"

Two stories

About a big girl:

This morning I changed Maia and then let her run around pantsless (and by "let" I mean "didn't want to bother trying to catch her this morning") for a while. Eventually it came time to get clothes on her, but Chloë needed to pee and then have her wiping checked, so I left the pants drawer open and told her, "Pick out some pants to wear," fully expecting she'd do nothing of the kind. I went and checked Chloë, and then Maia appeared in the doorway, new pants mostly pulled up.

About a story:

"You told me two stories yesterday," Chloë told me. "Remember the one where Dora and Boots went to Aunt Karolyn's house? And they were sad because you and Daddy went away. And they had a nap. Grandpa and Halmoni were with them. What else did they do there?" I couldn't answer because I've never told her such a story. I told her one story yesterday, a much-repeated one about Dora and Boots going up the Tallest Tree and the Cloud Staircase to get to the top of a rainbow so they can slide down. Originally they got up the tree by getting a lift from their airplane-owning friend, Tico, but lately Chloë has decided she'd rather hear about them using a long, long rope to climb up instead, so we've altered it. I think it's so interesting that she feels free to modify stories that way--but only the oral bedtime stories, never the books.

And as for this story about Aunt Karolyn's house, that's pretty much what happened at James and Amanda's wedding, except for the nap part, if you substitute "Chloë and Maia" for "Dora and Boots." And you know what Maia calls Chloë in our family pictures? "Dowah."