Jubilee had trouble falling asleep tonight. She called out to me at some point and explained that she’s afraid of the monsters. She knows monsters aren’t real, but her mind was full of some images she remembered from a story, and naturally the emotions were real too. Then she told me, “My brain is a smart brain because it thinks of things even though they were a long time ago.”
I don’t want to jinx this, but I was very excited that Maddie had dry underwear and pull-ups all day. She still rarely tells us that she has to go, but she did something in the toilet almost every time I had her sit down. She was even dry during her nap. Yay!
To celebrate, we told her she could have ONE prize for having dry underwear all day. We gave her a single M&M. She was tickled pink! I know this doesn’t sound like a big prize, but we don’t want to set up huge expectations and have to meet them every time. And at what point do we stop with the M&M’s? Maybe we’ll take her to ice cream or something as the final prize.
What are we going to do for Angel? She’s not big on sweets. We’re considering renting an inflatable jump house (her favorite thing to do) and let her jump around for a few minutes at the end of a successful potty training day. (=
Angelina peeled her first orange today, and then she promptly peeled another!
All three girls wanted to eat some leftover Shanghai noodles. (They’re thick like udon noodles.) It wasn’t mealtime, so I thought I’d make a game out of it. I sat on a step stool in front of them, then explained that they were the baby birds and I was the mommy bird feeding them worms. They said, “Tweet tweet!”, flapped their arms like wings, and opened their mouths until I gave them a “worm.” It was so much fun!
Growing up, my mom used to often ask herself, “What was I going to say?” Usually I would give the wisecrack response, “I don’t know what you were going to say, Mom.”
As an adult, I find myself asking myself the same question.
And now, Jubilee, at the ripe old age of 4, is already pondering out loud, “What was I going to say?”
Jubilee excitedly told us, “I have a great idea! If you put raisins in water, they will become grapes!” I (David) then proceeded to explain to her how you can’t simply put dried fruit in water in order to return it back to it’s former glory. I tried to give her some semblance of a scientific explanation, but I knew the particulars would be lost on her. “Besides, it will just make a mess,” I concluded.
But she persisted, so we filled a cup with water and put a raisin in it.
I knew that the raisin was just going to sit there, day after day, getting increasingly slimy and gooey. So, it was no surprise that after the first couple days there was little noticeable change. But by the third day, I was shocked! The raisin swelled up and now looked like a brown grape. Sure, it wasn’t really a grape, but as far as Jubilee was concerned, the raisin became a grape again. Amazing! And she was so proud of her discovery she proceeded to eat the “grape” and, I think, pretended to enjoy it.
Our little Jubilee, the scientist.
I was getting ready to go to church tonight. Maddie was with me in my bedroom. As I grabbed a rugby shirt, she said, “No!” She pointed to a pink and white striped hoodie.
“You want me to wear this?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she replied. Then I think she said, while pointing to the rugby, “That’s Ba-Ba’s shirt.”
I complied with her request.
At 4 years of age, Jubilee is in her prime when it comes to asking “Why?” I try my best to not get fed up and say, “Just because.” Sometimes I say, “Why do you think so?” If she responds with an “I don’t know,” I may or may not be a little mean and say, “Then I won’t tell you.” (Don’t fret, I usually help her come up with an answer.)
I think Maddie is copying Jubilee. She says “Why?” all the time! She easily asks why four times as much as Jubilee. She is more persistent with asking “Why” than Jubilee. And much to our frustration, there is no reasoning with a 2 year old. To top it off, she probably doesn’t even know what “Why?” means!
Today I set aside time specifically to read to all three kids. I had them sit on the living room step. (You know, how many houses have a sunken living room? That’s the step to which I’m referring.) Then I faced them with an open book. It went very well. Of course, they talked most of the time. Sometimes I would shush them, but of course it would only take a few seconds for them to start jabbering again.
At one point, I told them to raise their hand before talking. This always works with Jubilee. But she’s 4! (Sidenote: when Jubilee first started raising her hand, she would raise it just so she could say something, and after being called on would scramble to come up with something to say.) So when I said, “Raise your hand to talk,” I also raised my hand as a demonstration. This of course prompted Maddie to simply follow suit and raise her hand. And Angel was of course watching Maddie, so she too raised her hand. I was cracking up, but I still called on them and they continued to talk my ear off.
My dream career, provided I had the required “mad math skills,” would be a cryptopher. What’s that, you ask? A cryptographer is one who writes or solves codes.
Jubilee likes to ask me to read words that she sees. Most of the time, I am busy doing something, so I can’t look at the word. “I’ll spell it for you,” she says. Then she proceeds to spell it. But she doesn’t use spaces. So I have to visualize the word in my head and determine the word breaks.
Jubilee and I are two cryptographers in a peapod: she makes ‘em; I break ‘em.
Here are some examples from when she’s looking at the calendar:
1) LABORDAY
2) FIRSTDAYOFFALL
3) YOMKIPPUR
4) FIRSTDAYOFSUKKOT (with apologies to my Jewish friends because I didn’t know the Hebrew word.)
While driving yesterday, she stumped me a for a few minutes with TOWAWAY. I kept visualizing “To Wawa Y.”