Indignant Toddler

Last night, at about 3 in the morning, I heard Ava on the monitor reprimanding her father...

"No Daddy!" (followed by some unintelligible Ava speak.)

This morning she woke up in a surly mood.  She demanded that I sit with her to watch Franklin. She hit Sophie when she wanted a toy that Sophie was playing with, and she cried when the headphones in the minivan didn't stay on her head. I dropped her off at preschool and she didn't even give me a second look.  It was like, "God, just get me to the crayons!"

I totally know what happened. She had a bad dream about KC, it seemed real, and she woke up pissed off at him. It happens to me all the time.

Do not mess with me!!

Poop Update: 9/24/2010

But first, a picture. I actually came into the kitchen to find Ava laying, full body, on the counter, trying to block Sophie's view by shoving her face against the screen. I took this just as she saw me and hurried to get down...

Sisterly Computer Battle

News on the poop front is good. We ditched the pullups for everything but bedtime. Magically, Sophie has neither pooped nor peed in her pants at school since.  Seriously.  After 9 months of using her clothing as a toilet, she has gone cold turkey...at school. She's had a few accidents at home, but nothing major. It's kind of amazing.

In other news, and equally amazing, Sophie loves school. Last night was her school open house and it was totally cute...dramatically different than her last school which was a terrible mismatch for us. She's making friends, learning things and thoroughly enjoying school lunch.  She's even made her first contact with a bully who she has, in perfect Sophie fashion, neutralized with her constant chatter.

Here are some of my favorite quotes:

On lunch
"Their corndogs are better than yours. But that's because you don't make corndogs."

On academics
"My favorite is 'Math Matibuliffs'" (We spent a few days thinking that this was some made up name the teacher had created and later discovered that it's called "Math Manipulatives".)

On the bully
"She put a yellow crayon on my nose and tripped me on the carpet by holding my pants. I think she's jealous because my hair is so much longer than hers."

The Family Bed Sucks

People around here love "the family bed". Not us. When Sophie was first born, we tried to sleep with her once or twice and it didn't work out—for any of us. We were afraid of squashing her and she was very sensitive to noise and movement and woke up constantly. Whatever comfort she was supposed to be deriving from it was not happening and she was much happier in her car seat, where she slept for the first 2 months of her life.

As she got older, she became even more protective of her sleeping turf. We took her to Northern California for a weekend of "glamping" (glamor camping) and she was very annoyed at having to share not only a room, but a bed with me.  "Where's my room?" she asked when we brought her into the little cabin/tent. I told her we were sharing. "But you snore!" she said and got ready to cry. The horror!

But in the last several months, she's been changing her tune. She wants to have sleepovers, share a bedroom with Ava and, every so often, climb into bed with us in the middle of the night. The first time it happened, I thought it was kind of cute and cozy. Now, I dread her midnight visits.  Here's why:

1. She always comes to my side of the bed and wakes me. Never KC.
2. She wants to sleep on my side and is a total bed hog.
3. She wants to press as much of her body against mine as is humanly possible.
4. She brings her giant, stinky, insanely hot fleece blanket and insists it goes under the covers with her.
5. She is wearing a nighttime pullup filled with pee.

I love my child, but I don't want to sleep with her. That's why I bought her a bed.  It's not personal. If KC insisted on bringing a giant, stinky blanket to bed or wore a fat, pee-filled adult diaper, I wouldn't want to sleep with him either.

The Psychiatrist

We took Sophie to the child psychiatrist on Tuesday. It was a very pleasant appointment with the final diagnosis being that nothing is wrong with her and she'll grow out of the whole pooping thing.

He also suggested the following:

1. That she no longer wear pullups, "Because that's like giving her permission to poop in her pants."
2. That we switch her from laxatives to stool softeners,"Have you ever taken a laxative? It's like Whoa!" (makes face like he's going to poop his pants).
3. That maybe the reason she doesn't always relate to her peers is because they're dopes, "One of my teenage patients said, 'I just can't stand stupid people.' And I told her, 'Yeah, and there are a LOT of them.'"

So she's back in undies and she's really excited.  She's making a genuine effort, but that said, we've re-initiated the shit sink.

Ninjas and Vaginas

But first, a picture...

I call this, "In cardboard fort with helmet"

Sophie had her first great day at kindergarten yesterday. When she got home, she was bouncing off the walls with excitement and Tyler reported that she told her all about the kids she played with and the "club" they're in together.  Tyler also reported that Sophie said the following:

"Charlie and Abe only want to come over so they can talk about my vagina."

I hear you, sister.

Last night KC went out with his friend, Rich, to watch some football and be manly.  (Sophie said, "He always goes out with Rich when he goes on dates.") I hung out with the girls and had a lovely evening.  Then, when it was time for bed, I realized that we were all out of milk.  CRISIS!!!  I told the girls that we had to go to the McDonald's drive through up the street to get some. They were excited because it was dark out and I didn't make them wear their coats (or, in Ava's case, pants).

Here's how it went:

Me: Okay everyone, let's go make a stealth trip to get some milk.

(They get their shoes on—matching patent leather mary janes—and we head to the van.)

Sophie: It's dark!

Ava: Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy... (this is a song she sings to the tune of Twinkle Twinkle)

Me: Very dark.  It's late.  Now we're not getting food or toys.  Just milk. This is a milk trip.

Sophie: Yeah. We're like ninjas!

Yes we are. We're like minivan-driving, patent-leather-mary-jane-wearing, milk-seeking, pantsless ninjas.

An update on poop

But first, my new favorite picture...

enjoying some quiet time

Tomorrow, at the suggestion of the Poop Lady, we are taking Sophie to a psychiatrist. The thinking is that maybe the issue is some form of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (or something else) that can be treated with pharmaceuticals.

Unlike many of our fellow Seattle-ites, KC and I are huge proponents of western medicine.  If there's a pill I can take that will solve the problem without giving me flipper babies, I want it.  And if there's a pill that can help Sophie (of course, without giving her flipper babies) I want her to have it. Honestly, I don't understand NOT giving your children medicine that will help them or ease their suffering. I remember a woman in my PEPS group (and I am one of the few people who truly loathed PEPS) saying that her baby was crying and she didn't know why, but she didn't give her infant's Tylenol because she didn't want to "just jump for the medicine." Good thinking.  "Hey infant baby. Teething hurts and you just need to push through the pain. I gave birth naturally, on the floor of my living room, while in downward dog, eating a gluten-free, locally grown muffin."

Anyway, tomorrow is the appointment.  This morning Sophie pooped on the potty during her morning potty sit (and that hasn't happened in a really long time).  Here's how the conversation went when I went in to check on her:

Me: How's it going?

Sophie: I made tons of poops!

Me: That's great!

Sophie: I made one big poop and lots of little kids.

Me: Little kid poops?

Sophie: I just like to call them that. (gets up and starts to put on a new pullup) Maybe I'm almost potty trained again.

Me: I think you're on the way.

Sophie: Maybe every time I go in the potty you should give me some money.

(we have a poop kitty as a reward system, per the Poop Lady's suggestion, but it's nearly empty)

Me: Okay. I'll get your poop kitty out.

Sophie: And each time I go you can give me a dollar!

Me: No. It was a quarter.

Sophie: Oh yeah. I thought it was a dollar.

Nice try, kid. Of course, I'd pay the dollar, but she doesn't know that yet.

2 reasons my kids are more awesome than other kids

1. They love babysitters
Provided the babysitter is young, female and cute. Homely babysitters don't go over well. This weekend we had a new babysitter--a friend of one of our other babysitters--and the girls immediately loved her.  She came in the house, Ava ran to get her dolls and then this conversation took place:

Julianna (the babysitter): Your doll is pretty!  What's her name?

Ava: Nina

Julianna: Nina!  What's the other one's name?

Ava: Nina

Then Sophie, who was trying to poop while playing with my iphone, called out, "I'm on the potty if you want to come see me!" Julianna went in and Sophie made her introductions.  Then we left and neither one of our children even said goodbye to us.


2. They are tiny adventurers
I'm convinced that if we were living in the 15th century, and Sophie and Ava were male, they'd be explorers. Ava is actually less inquisitive than she is bold.  She regularly flings herself off of the furniture and on to the floor, and she's always covered in scrapes and bruises.  She's torn every fairy figurine off of her Tinkerbell big wheel and rides it up and down the street with the boys Fred Flintstone style (because she's too small to reach the pedals). She would also make a good pirate.

Sophie is the super curious one. Today we went on a walk together to pick berries and go down to the beach. Here's a picture of a jellyfish Sophie found:

This was the size of a medium pizza

We looked at it and poked it with a stick. Then Sophie said, "Can we eat it?"

I love her. And here is one of my all-time favorite pictures of her:

At Toy Story 3-D

Another attempt on Sophie's lady parts

I've mentioned before that there is a pack of kids that play together on our street. There are mostly boys in the pack and two girls, Sophie and her best friend, Lucy (and Ava, of course...so 2.5). The boys in the pack are:

Charlie and Abe--6-year-old twins
Joseph--Lucy's older brother and Sophie's not-so-secret crush
Donovan--Ava's favorite who's moved to Vashon and is now an honorary member of the pack
Sal--lives around the corner and only has a time share in the pack

The girls are seriously outnumbered, and most of the time it doesn't matter.  The boys ride their bikes up and down the street and stab each other with sticks, and Sophie and Lucy play endless fantasy games about princesses and vampires. But every now and then the worlds collide and a little badness happens.

Tonight the twins came over to play in the backyard. The badness started when Charlie came upstairs to tell us that Ava was doing a lot of potty talking (and I commend him on his ability to understand her). Then I started to do the dishes and KC went outside on the deck to watch over the madness. I heard him say, "Hey! None of that kind of talk here!" Then about 3 minutes later he came in and told me he had sent the twins home.

Apparently, KC overheard the twins trying to convince Sophie to show them her "vagina".  And they actually used that word which, to me, sort of takes the oomph out of the taunt. Then, when KC reprimanded them, they sassed him a little. Then, when he sent them packing, one of them flipped him the bird, but with his index finger.

Of course, I had to tell their mother. For the record, we love the twins.  They're actually very sweet and totally spastic and funny.  It turns out they've just returned from a weekend spent with older cousins, hence the "vagina" and the unpracticed index finger bird.

Sophie was totally unfazed by the event, and this was one tiny moment when I was glad that she was wearing pullups. The showing of private parts may very well take place one day, but I'm thinking that the presence of poop-filled pullups are going to put the brakes on that for a while.

That's my silver lining.

The First Day of Kindergarten

Sophie is in turquoise

Yesterday was Sophie's first day of kindergarten and she handled it like a champ. She picked out her outfit which included turquoise leggings, red and white striped Hello Kitty knee socks and an additional pair of lavender fuzzy ankle socks on top.

When we got to school, she got out, grabbed her lunchbox, put her backpack on and said:

Sophie: I look Christian, don't I?

Me: No.

Sophie: I mean with my dress and my backpack.

Me: You look like you're going to school, but you don't look Christian.

Sophie: No, I mean Catholic.

(I realized that she was thinking of her friend across the street who goes to Catholic school and wears a uniform.  Sophie's dress was a pleated, plaid skirt attached to a turquoise cardigan with rhinestone buttons. Sort of Catholic school girl meets Jersey Shore.)

Me: You're right. Your dress looks like Lucy's uniform.

Sophie: Yes! (pause) Now don't hold my hand. You can look out for cars, but don't hold my hand.  Okay?

Already she's too cool for me.

"Nina" Revealed

In an earlier post entitled "Nina", I wrote about how Ava calls all of her dolls by that name.  There has been a lot of musing in this house about it.  Why Nina?  Who's Nina?  Where did she get that name? What does it mean?

Behold the answer...

Ava: (playing with dolls) Nina! Oh Nina...

Me: (to KC) Who is Nina?

KC: I don't know.

Sophie: (looking up from the miniature Buckingham Palace she's building out of magnetic blocks) Oh that's just Spanish.  "Nina" means "girl" in Spanish.

The mystery has been solved...by Sophie.

All I can say is, "Ahhhhhh."  And, "duh."

Sophie's Songs

Sophie has been freaking us out for a long time with her frequent bursts of unnatural smartness. We had her tested this year—not because we were planning to put her into a "gifted" preschool, but because her teacher thought she might be autistic—and it was confirmed that she is freakishly smart. (As an aside, we also think that her freakish intellect is somehow conversely linked to her inability to use the toilet.)

We're not sure exactly what her "gifts" will consist of, but we're thinking she's going to be some sort of thespian. She is also a total task master and regularly demands that Tyler take dictation on her various creations: there was a play written in Sunriver, a comic book, a series of maps, and some songs.

This is one of my favorites:

The Rock/Straw Song aka "We Like Notes"

Up High

I can totally remember my older brothers teaching me how to high five. That's one of those cute pet tricks that much older siblings and parents love to do.  KC and I are totally guilty of doing it and today we overheard this:

Sophie: (raises arm) Ava...up high!

Ava: Up high (sounds like uh hi)

Sophie: (lowers arm) Down low.

Ava: Down low. (sounds like dow lo)

Sophie: (raises arm again) In space.

Ava: In space.

Sophie: In your face! (smacks Ava's face)

Ava laughs and laughs and asks to do it again.  They do it about 4 more times until, finally, Ava gets annoyed at getting slapped. 

Let it be known that we did not teach Sophie this version of high five.  It was the 8 year old across the street.  We did let it go on for a while, though, because it was funny.

Chipmunks from Heaven

So we're staying in KC's brother's house in Sunriver.  It's a beautiful log-ish home with really high, knotty pine, vaulted ceilings. Yesterday, KC and I were sitting around when we heard a soft thump. We thought it was the work of a child until I heard KC say, "Oh my God!  It's inside!"

I turned to find a teeny chipmunk frozen on the floor of the kitchen, looking completely freaked out.  I screamed, everyone jumped up (KC, babysitter, kids) and the chipmunk ran into the kitchen and climbed up into one of the cabinets.

KC eventually shooed it out the door with a broom, but there were more. In the last 36 hours, 5 or 6 little chipmunks have fallen from the ceiling into the kitchen. One of them is in the house right now. As it turns out, they spend a lot of their time trying to chew through the vent screens on the roof.  They want in, and they finally got in.

Tomorrow the pest guy comes to fix the screens. KC says he won't kill any chipmunks, but I'm thinking that's what pest guys do.  I'm excited to see what the pest guy looks like.  I'm thinking Jed Klampett meets Boss Hogg.

Abuse

We have been on vacation in Sunriver since last Monday.  We're having a lovely time, but we have had a few rainy days.  On one of those days, we went in to Bend and took the girls to Target.

We spent most of our time letting the girls look at toys (they ultimately chose baby Zhu Zhu pets).  Sophie roamed aisle to aisle asking me if I would buy her things for her "6 year old birthday". Ava spent almost all of her time in the Dora aisle.

She had found a Dora that talked and danced, "We did it!  We did it!"  (For the record, we will never buy her that toy.) She took all of the dancing Doras off of the shelf and put them in a circle on the floor.  Then she sat in the center of the circle and went around pressing each one's button, creating a horrible dancing Dora chorus.

When it was time to go, Ava told KC that Dora hit her.

This is one of her themes lately. She regularly tells me that KC hit her and since we arrived in Sunriver, she's been telling me that a bee hit her.  I'm pretty sure that KC isn't hitting Ava.  I do think it's possible that she got stung by a bee.  She had a nasty bug bite when we first got here, so maybe that's what she's referring to. As for Dora, I can only say that their scuffle in Target hasn't affected Ava's love for her.