In session

At this moment, the girls are playing kindergarten: Chloe teaching Maia how to subtract. "What is ten minus one, Maia?" Chloe says, and when Maia hesitates, "What is before ten?"

"Nine," Maia says. She has three "badges" (stickers from kind cashiers at Kroger) on her shirt because she did great, every time, according to Mrs. Snyder.

(Maia is Rosa. Upstairs, she has a baby doll named Rosetta and two wooden dogs named Rosie and Rose.)

"So," Mrs. Snyder says. "Seven minus six equals. I'm going to draw some dots, okay?" She draws. "So how many does that leave?"

"One!"

"So write one there. You're going to get another badge. I think we have time for one more and then school is probably going to have to end."

Oh, honestly

Kindergarteners are crazy social butterflies. I'm not sure I can take this. Chloë came back to school after a week away (in Seattle) to an invitation to a party on Saturday. She already had one on Sunday, plus we signed both girls up for a Little Scientist workshop at Imagination Station. Then she got a form for Girl Scouts During the Day, a during-school (gym, in her case) six-week program for areas with few troops. (I knew that. When she got interested in Girl Scouts a few months ago, I tried contacting the local regional group on their website, since I couldn't find anything strictly local. No response.) And a new-to-Girl-Scouts day camp for spring break. And then there's ballet tomorrow and a playdate Friday afternoon. How are we ever going to catch our breaths when both of them are at it?

Chloë came home today and said, "Guess what? Sa'Mya has a loose tooth!" Sa'Mya is one of her closest school friends, due to their sitting across from each other the first half of the year. (Now she sits next to two boys, one of whom is nice, the other of whom is "uh." I'm interested to see who she calls her best friends come June.) She seemed genuinely excited about this news as a piece of news, but Eric and I both wonder if there's a level of when-is-this-going-to-happen-to-me going on as well. She doesn't seem upset about it. I hope she's not. She's one of the few of her friends and classmates who haven't had a loose tooth, but she's also the youngest in her year.

We bought birthday presents for those two parties yesterday (three presents in all, since Maia was invited to one of them too--the birthday girl's mother is one of Maia's preschool teachers) and I left the bag on the landing by the stairs. Today, while I was finishing up my work upstairs, I heard a commotion and Eric demanding to know which girl had taken out one of the presents and left it out. Both girls denied it. "Well, nobody's playing outside until one of you admits it," Eric said. Both girls denied it again. I told them to go clean the living room while whoever did it decided to confess. I sat in the office and worried.

I was sure Maia had done it. She got a Cinderella Barbie doll for Christmas, and while she loves it in general, she didn't like the two long locks of hair coming off the front of the doll's head (I thought it looked cute, since she's dressed up for a night of dancing, but my taste does not agree with Miss Purple-Shirt-With-Green-Pants-and-Magenta-Skirt-With-Stars's.) One day, I noticed that Cinderella's locks had been shorn off. "Did you cut off her hair?" I asked Maia. She denied it for quite a while, though she said "I saw her hair in the garbage," until Eric and I both explained that it's her doll, she can do what she likes with it, but it's more important that she tell us the truth. Eventually she admitted she had done it, and we talked quite a bit about lies and trust.

But obviously not enough. At length Eric came up and we talked about it, and at greater length Chloë came up and announced, "I heard from Maia that she did it." We explained that that was nice but Maia needed to tell us herself, which didn't happen until Eric sat down with her for a while and I took Chloë to the next room so she wouldn't keep butting in on their conversation. Eventually, she agreed that she had done it, and she got a room-time and no treat after dinner--not because of leaving the book out, but because she had lied.

I'm not very pleased about this. Is it normal for a three-year-old to go through a lying phase? I've already known she's in a can't-be-wrong phase: if she asks for bubbles in her bath and I say it isn't bath day, she says "I meant tomorrow!" If I say that no, she can't have marbled cheese (her new favorite thing) because there isn't any but she can have a string cheese, she says "I wanted string cheese!" And, of course, I know that a small child wants to avoid trouble, and knows that lying can avoid trouble. I just hope we're doing the right things to keep it from lasting. If we're raising an evil overlord, I at least want her to be an honest one.

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. 

Barbie talk

"I didn't know Merida was up here all night!"
"She was supposed to get a salon, like the other Barbies, because of all the weddings."
"Elsa and Cinderella got married. Because their names both end in -a. And they're both in blue."
"Merida wants to marry Anna."
"But Anna is already married."
"Then I'll marry Merida."
"But Anna is married to you."
* * *
"Yes, her feet are high-heeled. But they can be flat."
* * *
"Let's compare skins!"
* * *
"Psst! Elsa!"
"Go back to sleep."
"The sky's awake, so I'm awake. So I have to play."
"Go play by yourself."
Thump.
"Do you want to build a snowman?"
"Now let's do it with ourselves!"

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.

Naptime

I suppose I might as well make this official: I am on hiatus. Life is sort of difficult to live once at the moment, let alone over again for the blog (though the girls are mostly not the difficult parts. And certainly not the dull ones). Therefore, instead of our last post (Maia's doing much better), I leave you with this:

"Pirate sisters Chloë and Maia, best friends for ever!"