Making Memories

We were in recovery mode today.  Yesterday we partied hard with our friends.  This statement takes on a whole new, yet still quite accurate meaning when you consider that "we" is in reference to four adults with our six children under five getting together for a fun evening of grilling, trampolining, swinging (on the swing set), running, sandbox-ing, exploring, chasing, and s'mores eating, with grown up conversation in between.  The three "little kids" (under 2) went to bed after s'mores and the three "big" kids (3 and 4) got in jammies and stayed up to watch Snow White while the adults visited around the fire pit.  My husband and my friend's husband had spent what seemed like an hour getting that fire started.  They didn't use a lighter or any matches.  Just some old-fashioned cave-man fire-starting stuff.  I was literally on my way to get the lighter (because it was way past time for s'mores!!) when I saw smoke finally rising from our fire pit.  The manly men prevailed, and it was good.

We had a wonderful time with friends.  The kids all got sufficiently sweaty and dirty and scraped up to consider it a true summertime playing extravaganza.  They explored our "woods" (treed area around the perimeter of our yard) and jumped themselves silly on our new trampoline.  My husband, hero of the evening, played a new game with them, which involved getting on his hands and feet under the trampoline and chasing the kids by pushing his butt up into the trampoline from the underside while running around bear-crawl style.  I wish I had seen this and gotten a photo.  I heard the laughter and screaming of the kids, but I was putting Sis to bed while this was going on.  So I, like you, have only a (very hilarious) mental image of these antics to go by.  Oh how I love that man. 

Needless to say, we were all feeling a little worn out today.  Incredibly, the girls only slept in a little bit past their usual wake up times, so they were pretty tired and crabby today.  We got lots of good down time in though.  Nothing like being pooped to bring a family together for some serious bonding.  The girls made breakfast with their Daddy.  

They love helping him cook eggs.  They work the pepper mill and really get into pinching and sprinkling the salt from my salt pig.

We read lots of books and just relaxed.

This afternoon we went outside for more backyard fun.  I love watching the big girls run and play in the yard.  They go on "adventures" and make up scenarios involving monsters and giants and castles and rescue missions.  We got them sufficiently tuckered out again this evening.  

This is the stuff of memories.  

Memories in a Box

When I was a little girl I loved to go to my Grandma's house.  She had a jewelry box full of costume jewelry that she let me play with to my heart's content.  I would go back to her bedroom and put the jewelry box on her big bed.  I'd drape myself in her jewels all afternoon.  She had long necklace strands with funky beads, tons of bangle bracelets, brooches, and clip-on earrings, essential for my very young and at that time un-pierced ears.  I have many memories of these adventures.  And I don't remember this, but one story goes that, as a tiny tot, I once placed all of my Grandma's necklaces on at one time and somehow fell over, calling out in my little voice, "Help!  Help!" because I could not get back up.

My Grandma passed away about two and a half years ago.  This past week, my Mom gave me her jewelry box with her costume jewelry in it.  Oh heaven!  Now, I was a little sad because it wasn't the same box, and much of the jewelry I played with wasn't there anymore.  I had had visions of opening my Grandma's white jewelry box to find all the fun beaded strands I had played with in the late 70s and early 80s.  I guess Grandma got some new stuff since then.  The new box is dark-stained wood.  But happily, a few of the pieces I remember playing with were still there and some other items I remember seeing her wear, even if I didn't play with them.  It was magical to watch my girls' faces light up as they explored this treasure trove.  

They both loved to see themselves all decked out.  Lass repeatedly said, "I go wook in miweh (look in mirror)" and "Sissy, wook miweh too, huh?  Come on!"

They were princesses in their finery. Then Miss decided they needed to be "scullery maids" (we had been watching Snow White).  So she changed into her "raggy jewelry" for cleaning house and she and Lass went to town.

Oops.

Anybody remember these?

Those old Fisher Price toys were the other thing I used to play with at my Grandma's house.  The "Mommy" with the blue body and yellow hair was a toy I used to love to carry around with me all the time.  Sort of like how my middle child has to carry around her "Wedda" (Cinderella) doll at all times and always in her left hand (check the photos above, she's always there).  My girls weren't into the little people like they were the jewelry.  Miss said, "Oh, cool people!" and then went back to playing with her princesses.  Oh well.

We're home now, trying to get back into the swing of things after yet another week of travel.  We've been on the road a lot the past few weeks to be with family.  I am thinking about my grandmas, and my husband's grandma, and my girls' grandmas.  Grandmas are just special.  I have always loved and appreciated my grandmas, but I find myself cherishing them more now that I have children.  I wish my girls would know my grandparents the way I did.  I know I can't make that happen (though I try with visits as much as possible), but that makes it all the more important to me that they will have wonderful special relationships with their grandparents.  So we travel.  We get sleep deprived from driving late into the night and sleeping in cramped quarters.  We rack up the miles on my vehicle. We get flat tires that my poor husband has to change at 11:00 at night.  But you'd better believe my girls will have amazing memories. Someday they might have a special item that brings those memories flooding back, like the box of my Grandma's jewelry.  Definitely, they will know the specialness of their grandparents. And that makes it all so worth it.  

The Tantrum

Last week my husband worked nights and Miss didn't nap.  That wasn't the best combination, and we had a few rough points during the week.  It reminded me of another time my husband was working nights and Miss had her first super crazy meltdown tantrum.  Aaaah, memories...

*******

Okay, so I am floundering a bit with this "Terrible Twos" thing. I hate even saying that. "Terrible Twos." Having a nearly-two-year-old is not terrible. Most of the time, it's pretty great. But I have found myself in this place recently where sometimes, just sometimes, it is totally. crazy. psycho. During Miss's toddlerhood thus far we've had our share of "moments." Brief little fits. Minor tantrums. They were usually short and they'd blow over quickly. Miss could be distracted pretty easily, and if not she'd pull herself together without too much drama. The one area where we sometimes would have a big meltdown would be after nap when Miss would sometimes wake up in a terrible mood and just have a screaming fit for what seemed like an age.

And then we had today. This morning. My girl woke up like a little ray of sunshine, as always. We had fun playing and coloring and watching a little bit of Sesame Street. We pretended to be dinosaurs. She pretended to make lemonade. Then she said she was hungry so I took her in the kitchen to get a snack. I asked her what she wanted. "Bunny crackers." "Yogurt." Okay, no problem. I got out the yogurt, got a spoon, opened the yogurt and started to put it in front of her. Strawberry yogurt. Yum. Then she asked for a sandwich. I simply said something like, "Well honey, let's have a little snack now and then I'll get you a sandwich at lunchtime." Hello. Commence screaming. Seriously. She started howling like a banshee and did not stop. I tried all my usual tricks. I tried to get her to laugh. I said something like, "I'm sorry you're upset. Please use your words to tell me what you want and I'll be happy to help you."  Ha!! After a while of more shrieking I thought I heard her say, "bunnies," so to try to positively reinforce her "using her words" I got the bunny crackers out and put some on her placemat. She screamed harder. I ate her yogurt and tried to wait her out. She said "down" so I got her down from her chair, at which point she fell to the floor and continued howling. My husband, who was upstairs trying to sleep came downstairs and asked her why she was crying. She stopped for a second, said "Daddy" and then went right back to yelling. He looked at me, I shrugged, he went back upstairs with a comment to the effect of, "Well, I just wanted to make sure that you weren't knocked out down here or something . . ." The rest of what he said was lost in the noise of our daughter. I'm pretty sure that was his no-so-subtle way of saying, "Okay, since you're conscious, can you please do something about our child's insane wailing?" It didn't help that he happened to come downstairs during the part where I was eating her yogurt and trying to wait her out, so it probably looked like I was just chillin', having a snack, not realizing that our child had turned into a little puddle of insanity on the floor.

Anyway, it went on. I could describe the whole painful morning in detail, I'm sure, as it feels as though the scene is scorched into my brain, never to be forgotten. The First Big One. But I'll spare you the details. Okay, I probably already gave way too many details. So, we can leave it at, It Was Bad, and move on. I probably could have ended it rather quickly by turning on the TV or letting her watch Yo Gabba Gabba on the computer or something like that. But I could not bring myself to do that. It just felt like that would have been reinforcing a behavior I'm not anxious to have repeated. Okay, don't laugh, I know it will be repeated in some form quite a few times and probably agonizingly in public on at least a few occasions too. I'm just saying, I don't want to increase the frequency of the Tantrum From Hell by reinforcing it. I'm a psychologist. I'm all into my behavioral principles. I know them forwards and backwards. I guess I automatically get Skinnerian in my head when dealing with this discipline stuff. But I gotta say, this morning, I felt L.O.S.T. I wasn't mad. I wasn't really even upset. I just had no idea how to make it stop. I knew I didn't want to reinforce the behavior, but I also wasn't trying to punish her. She's almost two. She doesn't have good control of her emotions and still has trouble expressing herself. She's learning to deal with this stuff just like I am. But wow. I felt like I had been dropped into the deep end and had forgotten how to swim. I suppose, to stick with this simile, I managed to tread. And you know what eventually worked? I sat down on the floor where we had been coloring earlier, picked up a crayon, and started coloring. Within a minute she had stopped crying and was sitting next to me coloring away. Who knew?

So, I don't really know where I'm going with this post, except to say that I am finding more and more Mommy-moments when I really feel like I'm not sure what the heck I'm doing. I always end up just going with what feels right to me, and things turn out okay. But then I look back and analyze everything and wonder if I did it right and am I going to screw my kid up forever or is she going to turn into a raging brat because I didn't discipline her enough or did I do it too much and now she's going to be insecure or rebellious??? Maybe that's a little bit of an exaggeration. I'm not quite that neurotic. But I do tend to look back on what I did and see if there's something I should do better or differently the next time. I guess I'm just making a mental note to myself that, even with all my principles of reinforcement swirling in my head, I still need to learn how to make it work with this girl. And maybe it will be different every time. And then I'll have to learn it all over again with Lass. And so on. So, I've come to realize that there is no greater in vivo learning experience than motherhood. This is my classroom.

After Miss's fit resolved, I got Lass (poor thing was just hanging out playing during the whole drawn out drama) down for a nap and asked Miss if she wanted to do some finger painting. This was a first for her so she had no idea what I was talking about, but she sure thought it sounded cool. So we got messy as our way to "make-up" (not quite the right word, but I liked the alliteration of the title) after the meltdown.

She liked squishing the paint between her fingers.

Masterpiece #1.

A bit of a lighter touch with this one.

After a while she got freaked out that her hands were so messy.

So she cleaned them off and got right back to it.

She decided to try tasting the paint and didn't much care for it.

For the record, Crayola's "washable" finger paints are indeed washable.

Gallery.

She seemed to like this set up better.

Aaand, we're done.

What better way to finish a messy craft time than with a bubble bath?

Hanging out with Lass at lunch time. We had no more eating-related meltdowns. She had forgotten entirely about the sandwich. For lunch she wanted strawberry yogurt and Cheerios. Unfortunately I had eaten the last strawberry yogurt while she was howling face down on the floor, but she was content with apple. And I wasn't gonna fuss about the lunch menu today. Apple yogurt and dry Cheerios? Sure.

And here she is proudly showing off her artwork to her Daddy when he woke up.

Before I click "Publish Post," I feel like I should say that I know this is my second post in less than a week that might seem like it has a bit of a "complain-y" feel to it regarding mothering a toddler. I am not complaining. I realize all the time how lucky I am to have these two little people to bring up in the best way I can. Sometimes I screw up, and sometimes I nail it, and always I hope that I will learn and get better. And this blog is my way of chronicling this journey, and sharing it, and helping myself to figure it out by getting the words out of my head. So that's it. Going to Arizona tomorrow. Wish us luck on the plane! Good night.

*******

Things are back to normal around here this week and much improved, though Miss still isn't napping, which means she's a bit of a mess by bedtime.  But nothing like she was that day^^^  

Cookies

Recently, Miss has been showing a real interest in helping me in the kitchen.  Every night she comes in and asks to help me make dinner.  I love this.

Not only does she learn some good stuff, about cooking and measuring and following a recipe (or not), but also about the joy of cooking and spending time together in the kitchen.  That's my favorite part.

That, and the pride she shows in the finished product, hearing her family tell her how delicious her dinner is and being able to taste a yummy dish she helped create.  Her proud smile is priceless.

Tonight, before making dinner, we got decked out in our aprons and baked cookies.

The girls helped measure and stir the dry ingredients,

then the wet ingredients,

Miss painted my finger nails this afternoon 

Lass is smelling the combination of maple syrup and vanilla 

This was her first time cracking eggs.  She loved the feeling of the shell and just kept squeezing and crumbling it.  I had to pry it out of her fingers, very carefully to keep the whole shell from going into the bowl.  I couldn't stop laughing as she just kept squeezing and squeezing it. 

Miss is a pro at the eggs now and just needs a little bit of help. 

And finally, the chocolate chips get added.  Of course, they have to be sampled first.

Lass was not pleased at having to wait her turn to stir the cookie dough once the chips were added.

Not happy at all.  Don't worry, she didn't draw blood.

And she did eventually get her turn.

Her face when she realized we had to bake the cookies before she could eat them:

Dessert after a yummy dinner.

Spending time in the kitchen with my girls is so fulfilling.  Admittedly, I am kind of neurotic about my kitchen, but I really do try to push myself to not worry about stuff and just let them have fun.  I want them to have great memories of cooking.  I certainly have some wonderful memories from today.