"What does it eat?"

Alice: I'm going to paint the lion's head red because he's a fantastic meat eater.

Sera: What do you think he just ate?

Alice: A deer.

***

One morning, while Alice was playing in bed still, I recorded this video from the spy camera. She is imagining a scenario where the shark's mommy is telling the shark to eat the whole deer's head. The deer is sad when its nose is bitten off.

***

Alice, ever the scientist, has this thing now where whenever she encounters a creature, she will ask what it eats. If it's a meat eater, she knows she might be in danger. One time we had her almost convinced that if she hopped around outside, a wolf might mistake her for a rabbit and try to eat her.

When we were at Prairie Ridge last weekend, they had some fake artistic buffaloes in a field, and Alice asked if they were real. I asked her what she thought, and she said she thought they were fake. But then, just to be sure, she asked, "What do they eat?" When I told her they were like cows and just ate grass, she finally relaxed.

When we discovered a strange little bug on the counter, the first thing she asked was, "What does it eat?"

When we were on the bike path a couple weeks ago and came across a wounded deer in the woods, Alice was nervous at first, then asked what it ate. Once she knew it was a vegetarian, she was no longer afraid.

Simon's Silly Side

Simon puts a piece of deli meat on his head and asks,
"Do you like my hat?"

 Simon's personality is becoming more and more evident. I know I shouldn't compare the kids, but we only ever know anything by comparison, so compared to Alice, Simon is much sillier. He seems to love jokes, and picks up on them right away. I remember a long time ago he was making weird noises at the table, and I asked him if he was a monkey. Without missing a beat, he said, "No, I'm a duck. Quack! Quack!" Whereas Alice is much more serious and literal. When she hoots and I call her a monkey, she will say, very sternly, "Mom, I'm not a monkey. Monkeys have ears on the sides of their head that stick out, but my ears are flat and point backwards." I can tell she will write great essays in high school with lots of specific supporting evidence. Simon might be the class clown.

Simon loves to play little games. He will hide his purple puff ball in the hole made by the couch hideabed handle, then come ask very seriously, "Where's my purple ball?"  When I profess that it must be lost, he retrieves it and happily declares, "I found it!" Then he repeats this a bunch of times. 

When he eats popcorn, he pretends the little pieces are saying, "Don't eat me! Don't eat me!"

Once I commented that his fingers were like raisins after the bath, and now every time he gets out from the bath he studies his fingers and says, with a big grin, "Do you want to eat my raisins?"

One time in the car ride back from Ohio, Simon said, "Mommy, can you tickle me?"  Often after a bath he will ask to have his tummy tickled.

Zac reports that he and Simon developed a little game when they read the Red Truck book. Simon will pick a different color every time, and Zac has to read the whole book as if the truck is that color, and if Zac messes up and accidentally reverts to calling it Red Truck, Simon will correct him.

The only downside is that he often views going to timeout as a fun little game.

Potty Training Progess...

We're trying a little more actively to potty train Simon. We're still at the very beginning of what seems like will be a very long process. There has been a breakthrough in that he has finally tinkled on the potty a couple of times. Our incentive for him is that he gets two M&Ms when he tinkles and four M&Ms when he poops on the potty. He's still only ever pooped on the potty twice--it seems to only be a monthly event.

But he's really excited about the M&Ms and understands the reward concept. I just think he hasn't fully figured out the rest yet. He'll often tell us he wants to "go poop on the potty and get M&Ms" when he has just pooped in his diaper.

Extreme Mammals at the Science Museum

We all had Monday off for the MLK holiday, and since the weather was so cold, we headed to the science museum. Our membership gets us free admission to the special exhibits, so today we saw their Extreme Mammals exhibit. It was pretty interested, although we didn't get to enjoy it much because the kids were a bit hungry. It will be nice when someday they are capable of understanding they should eat now so they won't be hungry later. In fairness, they're a bit young to fully appreciate standing around reading placards.

After we made it through the exhibit, we had a snack on a bench, and once refueled, the kids were content to play in the discovery room for a long time. Simon, who already seems to have a much longer attention span than Alice, did some puzzles and built towers with blocks. It's always very interesting to watch Simon work on a puzzle--how he has finally learned to turn the pieces different ways until they fit. I think they must do this at school, because although we have a few at home, he has only done them a few times.

 Alice played with the toy dinosaurs and had fun trying on various costumes. She and Zac also spent some time looking at things through the microscope that projected the images onto a large screen (better to view with little kids). We are always so grateful to have such a wonderful museum so close.

Leaping Lady

Crime and Punishment

One morning, as I strapped Alice into her carseat to head off to school, I noticed some marker drawings around the zipper on her coat. This was not a stray mark accidentally made; it was a very intentional, large drawing. She had been told on multiple occasions (with sessions of time out for reinforcement) to not color on her clothes. Not able to deal with it at the moment, I made an ominous promise that we'd figure out the punishment later, then sent her on her way.

That evening, we decided to send a strong message and rather than just sending her to timeout, we banned her from videos for the evening bed time snack. I knew the punishment was a good one when she immediately burst into tears.

Later that night, she had to sit at the table and eat while only Simon could see the videos. The problem was, without a video to keep her glued in place, she kept getting up and wandering around, occasionally in site of the video. I gave her several warnings and then made a specific threat: if she didn't accept her punishment, she would not be able to watch videos the next night either.

At some point I left the room, but Zac was still there, and sure enough she ended up in front of the video. So we had to follow through, and ban her again.

The next night, she was resolved to accept her punishment. She did not come close to watching the video even once. Just to test her, we set up a phone camera to spy on her and we both simultaneously left the room briefly on two separate occasion. Still, she did not go near the laptop screen.

The next day, we inadvertently discovered that she had taken a blue rock from Grandma Cam's house, even though, according to her own account, Grandma Cam had said no. Once Alice realized this confession had gotten her in trouble again, she immediately became obsessed with whether or not she would be able to watch videos that night. Although the punishment was effective, we didn't want to overuse it, so we just sent her to timeout for 10 minutes straight, with lots of lecturing before and after. She still cried (the sign of an effective punishment), so we felt we had done our due diligence.

In the days that have followed, whenever she makes a bad choice, she immediately starts asking what the punishment is going to be and if she can still watch videos. Mostly we still use timeout, but I'm starting to realize the open punishment can be useful.

For example, tonight, right after I reprimanded Simon for poking me in the face with his wand and telling him he would go to timeout if he poked me one more time, I overheard Alice whispering in his ear, "Simon, go poke mommy."  Luckily, Simon just looked at Alice like she was crazy and went on his merry way. He knows what time out means.

For that little bit of treachery, Alice had to clean up the entire living room all by herself before bedtime snack, and it was a very messy living room. To her credit, she did it with alacrity. Anything is better than missing those videos!

Alice wants to be good, and it must be hard to be a slightly devious four year old when so many temptations abound, but we hope that by laying down the law early, we'll avoid more problems later on. Time will tell.

Boots and mud

Alice had fun getting all dressed up for her playdate with Grayson today. I don't know where she got this pose. The foreshadowing of the teenage years is frightening.

She and Grayson played indoors quite happily all morning, while Lindsey and I visited. Before we left, though, Alice wanted to see the Christmas tree Grayson planted outside. Alice got two steps off the sidewalk before slipping on the mud and falling down. Since she was already a mess, I just let her run around and play in the mud with Grayson for a while. I hadn't replaced the back-up clothes in the van yet, so I just stripped her down to her undies in the back of the van, then put blankets on her and cranked up the heat for the drive home.

What's the point of being a kid if you can't play in the mud?

Of Pigs and Daughters

Context: Having bacon for breakfast.

Alice said, "I like pigs; they make a delicious snack!" Then, a few minutes later she added, "Why do we never go to a market, just grocery stores? I want to see meat hooks."

Background: Our new nighttime routine with Alice is that after we read her three stories, she gets five minutes. She always chooses to watch a video in that time, but it is usually something to supplement a concept mentioned in a book, like watching parasailing or figure skating. But sometimes Alice just comes up with questions, and we have to find videos to answer them. Lately, she's been watching some videos of how things are made, like books, pillows, pickles, etc. One night, she watched some video with Zac and on the screen afterwards a video on how to cut up a pig popped up. Although they were out of time for that night, Alice remembered it, and so when it was my turn the next night, she very specifically and forcefully requested a video on how to cut up a pig. I tried to talk her out of it, but she insisted. I told her it might be sad to see a pig cut up, and that it would be gross, but she was completely undeterred.

So, not wanting to thwart the world's next brilliant surgeon, I dutifully typed, "how to cut up a pig" into the YouTube search bar. The videos were surprisingly plentiful, but I needed something shorter than five minutes, so I finally settled on this one.

Alice watched the whole thing, riveted, not flinching or wincing once.

It's funny, because at the slightest hint of danger or distress in a movie, Alice freaks out. She couldn't even watch two cartoon, talking Dinotrux fight on Netflix. But apparently we have completely failed to instill any empathy towards real animals in her. Keep in mind, she was obsessed with Peppa Pig for the better part of a year, and she was completely unfazed watching this pig get cut up, something I was even having trouble watching. It was so hard for me to watch, that a minute in, I handed the phone over to her and tried to go to a happy place in my mind, while I once again thought about how morally, we probably really shouldn't still be eating meat in this day and age.

Prairie Ridge

Saturday was beautiful, so we headed out to Prairie Ridge for a walk and to play at the nature play space. The kids spent a long time "fishing" in the pond with little sticks, catching all sorts of muck and water plants.

Alice practices her ninja skills with a stick, while Simon suffers through enforced walking. I'm still trying to convince him that he is capable of walking places and doesn't need to be carried all the time. So now, if he is properly fed, he will submit to walking as long as he can hold my hand.

At the play area, the kids played with this other random kid for a while. He had is own digger, and we actually remembered to bring ours, so thank goodness there was one for everyone.

Alice played for a long time in the outdoor kitchen area. She would fill pots and pans with dirt, which was oatmeal, then cook them in the mailbox, then bring them to the table. I don't really know what the scenario was, but she played happily for a long time.

Simon's big jump

He started out flopping but now he's getting better and better at jumping, onto the cushions at least.

How Simon eats a strawberry

We're still working on civilizing this kid.

Alice, the future fashion icon

 Alice now insists on being involved in picking out her clothes each day. I still reserve the right to veto things, and I provide a lot of rules along the way, but she is taking a bigger role in the process.

Each night, before bath, we pick out her clothes for the next day. She prefers things with skirts or sparkles. Luckily, we have lots of things like that as hand-me-downs from her cousin.

Here, she is sporting a "winter skirt" that she just discovered and loves.

This picture was taken before I combed her hair, so I didn't send her to school looking like a total maniac. Just a partial one.

What's in the box?

Later, Simon decided to comb his hair.

Team Awesome After Holiday Party

Every year for the last several years, we've hosted a white-elephant, potluck Christmas party for our game-playing atheist friend group (which Rob creatively named Team Awesome years ago). This year, due to lots of people's scheduling conflicts, it just didn't work out to do it in December, so I rescheduled it for January.

We had a really good turn out, and this was the first year there were other kids there besides ours. Our friends Meg and Greg have a 7-month old boy, and our friends Katie and Joel have nearly 2-year old twin girls. Plus, our friend Jan's boyfriend's kids came, a 6 year old and a 13 year old. So it was quite a crowd!

Once everyone arrived, we did the white elephant gift exchanged. We had to explain it several times, but the kids did a pretty good job waiting our turn to pick the gifts. Alice picked the gift for Zac's number and Simon got to pick the gift for my number. I can't remember what Alice got except it had a leather billfold in it. Simon's gift was a blue gazing ball, that is currently hanging from one of our stocking screws in the mantle. Simon was pretty clingy at first, but after we ate supper, he warmed up and wandered around playing.

All the other kids pretty much played independently of each other, but Alice and the six-year old boy hit it off. They played in Simon's bedroom with the inflatable crayon, shield, and bowling pin. At some point Alice convinced the boy to help her get stuff off the high shelf in her closet (that she conveniently cannot reach) and they retrieved a large drum and small drum and proceeded, by completely their own plan, to have a mini marching band (really, all two of them lined up and everything). They banged their way through the party, and although I made sure it was short lived, I was actually secretly impressed that Alice (because I'm sure she was the ringleader) had conceived and executed the plan. They probably got into all sorts of other trouble, but the event was such a blur that that's all I can really recall.

All in all, it was a lot of fun, although chaotic with so many people (13 adults plus 7 kids) and trying to keep track of everything and still have a couple of conversations.

That evening, after everyone left, Alice found a bag left behind and put it to good use.

Dancing and jumping

Alice was demonstrating some unique princess dance moves, when suddenly tragedy struck.

Simon then showed off some of his own dancing and jumping moves. We're still trying to get him to do a proper two-footed jump and landing. You don't realize how hard these things are, until you see how much Simon struggles to do it. He's getting closer, though.

North Cary Park

On Friday, our friends Rob and Kate had told us about North Cary Park, not far from us. I couldn't believe there was a park we hadn't been so yet, so when Sunday morning presented us with beautiful weather, we hopped in the van and headed north.

The park was really cool, with tall slides build in the hills. There were also climbing rocks, greenway paths with a cool bridge over a ravine, and of course, an muddy field for the kids to run around in. We had a blast.

At the sand pit, some kid had left a digger toy behind while he went off to play, so Simon had a great time scooping sand with it. He got some digger sand toys from Aunt Taesen for Christmas, but of course we forgot to bring them.

Simon also loved going down the slides. For the record, Alice, slightly more aware of her mortality, was afraid to go down alone (but would go down with me).

At the rock climbing place, Simon was at first content to climb on the the child-sized boulder, but soon demanded to be hoisted up on the big climbing rock with Alice and me.

Once on top, I thought he would be scared.

But no, clingy boy suddenly insisted on sitting by himself. He must do everything himself.

We ended up running around in a field, that turned out to have some very muddle sections that both kids managed to slip and fall down in. Luckily, we had some extra clothes in the van so we were able to change them before putting them in their car seats.

Simon's sleep problems

Simon continued to have sleeping problems even once we returned home. While in Ohio, putting him down for every nap and night involved holding him until he fell asleep, followed by fits of hysterical crying when we left the room, repeated until he finally really fell soundly asleep, by which time it was usually time for us to go to sleep.

Back at home, that first night, he went to sleep OK, probably because he was so exhausted, but woke up hysterical in the middle of the night, screaming about being scared. I was exhausted, so I just came in, told him I was going to lay on the bed in his room, and he just had to lay down and go to sleep. It wasn't a good long-term solution, but it worked and we both fell back asleep quickly.

We couldn't figure out the problem, since we assumed he was having sleeping problems in Ohio just because he was in a strange place. But now we were back home, so everything should be fine. The best we can figure, he's just finally in stage where maybe he's having nightmares, or he realizes he is alone at night and has the imagination to think about how that might be scary.  At any rate, we decided instead of psychoanalyzing the problem, we'd just sleep train him again and try to get him back to normal.

Zac did most of the work putting him to bed each night, since Simon seems to have an excessive attachment to me right now. So each night, Zac would give him plenty of verbal notice that he would be put in his bed, then he would put him down. Simon would pop right back up and start screaming and crying, but Zac would still walk quickly out of the room. Then, Zac would let Simon cry for a few minutes, go back in, calm him down, put him back in bed, let him cry for a few minutes, go back in, etc.  There were several rounds of this each night, and sometimes in the middle of the night, but each time got a little better.

Finally, a week after we got back, Simon returned to normal and went to be without a fuss.  Phew!

Inflatables from Kate and Rob

Our friends Kate and Rob dropped by in Friday night to give the kids some large inflatables Kate found in her stuff. They got a giant pink crayon, a bowling pin, and a shield.  It was nice of them to think our kids would like the stuff, and of course they did. Both kids really like Kate and Rob and they nicely tolerate our kids. Alice drug Kate back to her bedroom and got all dressed up in her princess regalia for the occasion.

Simon had fun playing with the pink gloves in the bath.

Cake and candles

When I told Simon the next day was going to be daddy's birthday, his eyes immediately lit up and he said, very earnestly, "There's going to be cake and I'm going to blow out the candles!"

My cake muse was slacking off a bit this year, because all I could come up with for Zac's cake was to combine the lightning bolt symbol from his favorite game, Fallout 4, to make the bottom part of the 3, and also include the 7 and the Z. It was a nice concept, perhaps, but a bit of a letdown in reality.

Luckily, everyone in this household is much more focused on eating the cake than viewing it.

In the video, the personalities of our two kids are evident. Simon is laser-focused on the candles, but embedded in the ritual enough to know he has to wait until the end of the song to blow. Alice is focused on singing and enforcing the rule that one should not sing happy birthday to oneself.

We only blew out the candles twice, before the kids wanted to dig in to the cake. Then they ate cake using the candles, another fun ritual. Alice, never one to sit idly and silently, discusses what candles are made of.

Spiders and sneaking to the bath

This is pretty typical of what happens after bedtime snack. Alice is talking incessantly, and Simon clears his place then wants to take off his shirt to sneak to the bath.

Simon's latest thing is that he likes to "sneak" to the bath, and he insists on being at least partially naked for this. Like most things, I forget how this routine started, but it has persisted. At bath time every day, Simon likes to squiggle across the floor like a snake to get to the bathroom.

The video is cut short because while Simon likes sneaking, Alice likes streaking.