Well, after one of those requests and a realization that video game time was again getting out of hand, we reinstated the star chart. They can earn a star for all variety of things – making their beds, clearing the table, putting away laundry. I even have the generic “help mom” on there as a way to reward otherwise unspecified good deeds.  But after 24 hours, my favorite star-earner is “read a book.”

At almost 4.5, both kids can read pretty well.  Daniel, honestly, is ridiculous. He can read it all. All of the words. ALL OF THEM. And he has so much committed to memory as “sight words,” his speed is downright alarming.  Rebecca is still sounding a lot of things out, but is getting faster and smoother by the day (she’s also more likely to “cheat” and just guess by looking at the picture on the page). Regardless, I want to encourage both of them to keep practicing their reading at home.

So I tossed “read a book” on the star chart.  Well, being the first day and starting from zero, both kids were desperate to earn more stars.  So when we ran out of laundry to put away and the dog had been fed, I suggested that Daniel read a book to Ellie.  Over the course of the afternoon, Daniel read three books to Ellie, and Rebecca read two.

When they each asked to read a second book in order to earn a second star, I hesitated. Were they just gaming the system?  Then I realized I DON’T CARE IF THEY ARE.  It takes 10 stars to earn 45-60 minutes of video game time. Read your baby sister ten books in exchange for some time on the Wii? GO FOR IT.

This is a win for everyone.  The kids earn a reward while practicing reading (nearly any book they want, though I draw the line at the super short ones that they have completely memorized).  Ellie gets extra attention from her big brother and sister, and gets read more books than I find myself able to do in a given day (oh, am I a slacker second-time-mom on that front).  And I get eager, happy kids and anywhere from five to fifteen minutes of peace, interrupted only by the occasional request for help on a tricky word.

WIN.

And he’s doing so freaking well in school. Reading amazingly well, picking up the wacky nuances and exceptions of written English faster than I could have imagined (seriously, we have a messed up language).  Picking up all kinds of new concepts, getting to the point that his handwriting is fairly legible most of the time.

Today, he finished his first map. The Montessori families in the crowd will recognize this work. They use a push pin to punch out the shape of each continent, and then glue it all onto the map. He’s been working on it periodically for several weeks.

I’m so proud of him, and I love how proud he is of himself.

Despite only being two short months into the school year, we already got the re-enrollment forms for next year. They’ll be five next August, just making the cutoff for kindergarten. We could certainly save a lot of money by sending them to the neighborhood public school next year.  But I already signed the form, and the kids will stay at their school next year for “Junior Program,” the name they give to the kindergarten year. Worth every penny, we’d practically keep them in that school until they’re teenagers if we could.

Three cheers for preschool.

Like, you know, now.

Someone told me that Four is the age of attitude. (Well, Four through Seventeen, but whatever.)  Rebecca seems to have gotten the memo.  For all of the times that Daniel has been the one to push me straight over the edge, these days he is downright compliant.  Persistent and stubborn, sure. But reasonably compliant.

Rebecca… oh, she has mastered that sulking, pouty glare when she doesn’t get her way. She’s not foolish enough to actually talk back and get in trouble, but she will give you the stinkeye, big time.  She calculates, she manipulates. She knows exactly how to poke Daniel and rile him up and piss him off, all while technically not misbehaving.

The daily occurrence is with regard to the carseats.  While the seats are identical, they each have a “side” that is their own.  Occasionally they like to switch seats, and the long-established rule is that both kids need to agree on the switch, or you can’t do it.

At least once a day, I watch her block him out and say “no,” just to assert her power to do it, and to piss him off.  Daniel being Daniel, this tends to send him into dramatic wailing, which only satisfies Rebecca even more.

I can see that she’s manipulating him over something completely trivial. I can see that she’s doing it on purpose. And yet, technically, she is doing something that is well within her rights.

I am trying to tell her that I’m onto her, that I see what she’s doing and she needs to stop being mean to her brother. I am trying to get Daniel not to react so strongly, adding fuel to her quietly smoldering fire.  But this stuff is so subtle, it’s a tricky line to walk.

Since she was a baby, I knew Rebecca was clever. Always watching, always figuring people out. Sometimes a little quieter than her brother, but more because she is observing, and lying in wait.  She is figuring out the game and exactly what she needs to do to play it.

Middle school? High school?

I feel faint.

Yeah. The demon has returned.

The details are a little different, of course. For instance, he no longer protests time-outs by intentionally pissing himself. So, you know, that’s a bonus.  In fact, this year there is less physical resistance to the time-out, and overall a bit less yelling. What we have now is a lot of whining and crying, a lot of fighting with Becca, and a lot of attempts to negotiate in totally non-negotiable settings. A lot of climbing on, hanging from, and jumping off of very unsafe places that we have specifically and repeatedly told him not to.

Just like last year, there is a lot of last-minute changes of heart (suddenly insisting that he ALWAYS wanted oatmeal for breakfast, when I’ve already made the waffles he asked for that morning and the 800 previous mornings), and mood swings so fast they’ll give you whiplash.  A lot of tears and foot-stomping over important things like who took the first bite of lunch, or what color cup he gets for his milk.

And lest you think I’m focusing too much on Daniel, I assure you that Rebecca is far from exempt this time around. She is being extra pouty and rude. She completely flips her lid if Daniel does not immediately respond to her latest demand. She has got Attitude with a Capital A.

In fact, one of the biggest additions to this year’s Wake-Me-When-It’s-Over Behavioral Phase, is the degree to which they are fighting with each other, not just with me or M.  It’s not as though they’ve never fought before, and thankfully they do still play well together for quite a lot of the time. But it can turn on a dime, and a game will suddenly become Preschool Deathmatch 2011.  They scream, they shove, they hit. But mostly, they push each other’s buttons.  They boss each other around, they ignore the one doing the bossing. They stage sit-ins in each other’s rooms. They hoard the coveted toy/play-doh/pencil that the other suddenly wants (which, 10 seconds ago, neither could have given a crap about). It’s mental and social warfare out here.

Both kids are, literally and figuratively, bouncing off the damn walls. It’s a bit better when we get out of the house, which I try to do as much as we can. But that’s obviously trickier to balance with Ellie’s needs (and her hatred of the carseat, the stroller, and the heat and humidity) thrown into the mix. How many days until school starts again?

Whatever the specifics, it seems this is a repeat of last year’s pre-birthday insanity. Some kids flip out at the half-year mark, some are hideous around x.75.  My kids seem to really lose it in the month or so leading up to their birthday.  On the bright side (if there is one), last year Daniel snapped out of it right on their birthday. Literally overnight, a behavioral switch flipped, and the tail end of the summer was actually quite nice. I can only hope we see the same thing this year. Four more weeks…

One aspect of her narc-dom is that she is quick to assign blame when things go wrong.  If she steps on an errant block, she immediately questions “who left it there?” Guess what her response always is… “I think it was Daniel.”  Oh, she will throw him under the bus without hesitation.  But it’s not just Daniel. It’s anyone but herself.

Witness, this morning’s conversation over breakfast (during ANOTHER F%#&ING SNOW DAY):

Daniel: Becca, your flowers are in the back! [translation: your shirt is on backwards.  From the kid whose shirt is both backwards AND inside-out. Guess who dressed themselves this morning?]

Becca: Oh! Mom! Who put my shirt on backwards?

Mom: Well, who got you dressed this morning?

Becca: Um, YOU DID! [with quite the accusatory tone]

Mom: Nope, you dressed yourself this morning.

Becca: Oh. Um. Well… I like it this way.

Mom: Super.

The shirt remains backwards. On principle, it would seem.  The Narc is never wrong.

The bossiness that made me call her “little mama” is ratcheted way up.  The sly cleverness she has always possessed is now serious sneakiness and outright lying.  She’s extremely whiny, total drama and histrionics when she doesn’t get her way.  She is all sass and backtalk, and very grabby.  You know, pretty par for the 3.5 course.

But, here’s the thing.  As obnoxious as this behavior is, OH AND IT IS, it makes me weirdly happy.  Happy, in a sense, because it’s finally Becca’s turn to get the time outs and Daniel’s turn to be the “good one.”

I’ve complained about Daniel’s behavior plenty of times. He has always been my more intense and challenging kid, and we’ve gone through some real doozies in the last 6-12 months.  But every time I write about it, or talk about it, I feel terrible. I hate the idea of him being branded as the “bad” kid. Because he’s not bad.  He’s sometimes intense and challenging, but he’s a good kid with a good heart who goes through some nasty behavior at times.  And there’s his sister, during the worst of his times, doing everything she can to be his opposite. “I’m doing good listening, Mommy!” she says, all but rubbing it in his face.

So, in a sense, it feels strangely good to have him cruising along while she gets counted and pisses us off.

Yeah, he’s still the same kid, and so is she.  He’s not the model of perfect behavior, and she’s still not as intense as he was at his worst.  But there’s something oddly satisfying about this turn of events.  Like two wrongs making a sort-of right.

At least, you know, as long as she snaps out of it soon.

My brother and I were not close.  In fact, we actively loathed each other as children, and are now at least friendly as adults.  But we have never been close, despite (or maybe because of) the scant 17 months that separates us in age.  I very much hope that my kids do not have as difficult a relationship as my brother and I had, especially as kids.

One of the things that stuck out for me in the Nurtureshock chapter about siblings had to do with close relationships.  If I’m remembering correctly, those who reported being closest with their siblings were not necessarily the ones who fought the least.  Rather, they were the ones who had plenty of positive interactions and memories to counterbalance the (all-but-inevitable) fighting.

I can’t really think of any such memories with my brother from our childhood.  My memory could certainly be failing me, clouded by the perception that we always hated each other, but maybe that’s part of the point?

Still, I watch my kids and how they play.  Most of the time, making my heart swell, they seem to really enjoy playing with one another.  They make up games, scenarios, races.  They destroy the room with pillow forts and throwing stuffed animals around.  They jump all over the place.  It doesn’t surprise me, nor does it particularly alarm me, how quickly they can go from giggles to screams.  Par for the course, I’d say.  But what does amaze me is how quickly they can go from screams back to giggles.  They don’t seem to hold grudges for very long, if at all.  If one kid goes to time out for hitting/jumping on/grabbing from the other, they barely wait until the timer beeps to get back into their shared game.

I know they’ll get older, get their own friends.  They’ll probably be more separated by activities and gender and interests.  But I really, really hope that they can continue to seek out each other’s company and be each other’s most trusted friend.  What mom doesn’t want that?

The $10,000 question… how will Baby 3 fit into (and/or change) this mix? Will it be big kids versus pesky little sister? Will the girls band together and leave Daniel the odd man out? Will the little one and Daniel find a shared love that Becca has no interest in?  Or will they all get along at different times and different stages? Only time will tell.

For your enjoyment: 20 seconds that makes any mom smile…

While we travel quite frequently with our kids, we generally either stay in our own time zone (Florida) or go a single hour earlier (Chicago).  The only time we’ve dealt with any significant time change was our trip to California when they were only 7 months old.  Over the course of our brief four-day trip, they didn’t adjust to Pacific Time AT ALL, and we essentially started each day at about 3 or 4AM.  Charming.

With that being my only precedent, I was nervous about the 5-hour time difference between Boston and Honolulu.  No adjustment at all would have my kids awake for the day by 2:30AM.  Obviously, that would be entirely unacceptable.  Thankfully, however, 3-year-olds are a hell of a lot more adaptable than 7-month-olds.

When we arrived at our rental house, it was around 5:30PM local time, so after 10:30 Eastern Time.  My kids had been up since before 5:00AM, with only one pathetic nap between the two of them.  Daniel passed out cold on the drive from the airport, and for the second time in his life, actually transferred inside and stayed asleep. For the rest of the night.  I managed to change him out of his travel clothes and get a Pull-Up on him, and when I set him into his bed, he just rolled over and smiled.

Rebecca went to bed shortly thereafter, and thankfully I had thought ahead and packed our friend, the Good Nite Lite. I set it to “wake up” at 5:00AM, local time.  And while we were all awake before it turned yellow, at least it was dark out and the light was blue, and we were able to convince the kids to stay pretty quiet and rest in bed (we shared a room, alas) until it turned yellow.  We weren’t the only ones in the house up at that hour, of course, so we all took advantage of being wide awake and about 100 yards from the beach and went to watch the sunrise. (I even let M hold my camera for a minute…)

After that, it honestly wasn’t bad at all.  Being up early, plus plenty of activity and sunshine, meant both kids took an awfully good nap nearly every day.  The nap enabled them to stay up to a normal bedtime, and I bumped the Good Nite Lite to 6:00AM for the rest of the trip.  By about 5 or 6 days in, they even slept quite a bit past when it turned yellow.  Hooray!

My pregnant and jet-lagged ass, on the other hand, was completely exhausted and crashed HARD at about 8:30 every night.  Ah well.

However, I have heard from a number of people that West-to-East is about a million times worse as far as jet lag goes, and unfortunately, that has proven true for us.

Obviously, travel day was all over the place.  Barely slept on the red-eye, “naps” were here there and everywhere the day we got home.  Both kids were exhausted and losing their minds by 6:00PM, so we put them to bed.  I think I only lasted another hour or two before I crashed, too.  Unfortunately, we were ALL awake from about 10:30PM to 1:00AM.  It was so ridiculous, we ended up putting on a TV show for the kids at midnight.

Yes, they “slept in” the next day, but then what do you do? Nap? No nap?  Plus, Daniel had picked up a nasty cold and was that much more exhausted from being sick.  And me?  Completely bone-tired.  We ended up trying a no-nap day for the kids (I may have put on a movie so I could grab a nap, myself), in the hopes of getting them tired enough for bedtime, but it didn’t work.  Another night of being wide awake at 11:00PM, though at least it wasn’t as long this time.

Add to all of that insanity the fact that we’re on a bit of a let-down from leaving a great vacation, it’s a holiday week, the kids haven’t been to preschool in over two weeks… basically, it was a nightmare of re-entry.  No routine, no schedule.  Getting them up and to school would have been hard, but at least it might have forced us back into normalcy.  What actually happened is that we didn’t get back to near-normal sleep until Saturday (got home Monday), and behavior has steadily deteriorated as they are simply bored.

I can’t tell you how excited I am for them to go back to school on Monday morning.

Could we have made the adjustment back to reality any easier? Who knows. I think my attempts at skipping the nap to get them tired enough for bedtime (the challenge of the West-to-East transition) backfired, and I would have been better off with a mid-afternoon nap and a late-ish bedtime.  And had we not been sick and had it not been a holiday week, I think making ourselves get up and go to school in the morning would have been a good thing.  But regardless, it took a solid 5-6 days to get adjusted back to our home time.

Was it worth it?  Hell yes.  The trip itself was great, and I’ll talk more about it in another post.  But re-entry has been absolutely brutal.

Oh, was it ever one of those mornings.  They’ve been pretty bumpy recently. With sunrise getting later, both kids have been waking up late as well.  Gone are the days that I can enjoy such a thing.  Instead, it makes getting ready for school that much more rushed.  And I know it will shock you to hear that Daniel is not the fastest nor most responsive 3-year-old in history.  No, he’s a notorious slowpoke, always stopping to look at something or touch something or otherwise get distracted from the task at hand. Plus, he’s going a back to the pit of insanity a little these days.

This morning’s wrongdoings?  He doesn’t want any milk. He does want milk.  He wants a banana, peeled but not cut, in a bowl that is way too small.  The banana breaks, but he holds it together better than he usually does.  He and Rebecca start chasing each other in circles around the first floor while the waffles are in the toaster.  He slips and falls, claims to have a scrape that needs a band-aid. It is quite non-existent, but he goes and gets the box, anyways.  I pull out a green band-aid, he wants a blue one.  I pull out the one that looks blue, only to get it on his knee and realize it’s purple.

OMG. THE END OF THE WORLD. A PURPLE FUCKING BAND-AID.  Oh, the tears, the drama.  Breakfast is ready.  Time is ticking away.  I tell him he can have the purple band-aid or none at all, but the obsession isn’t done yet and he needs to wail about “feeling sad because I want a bah-lue band-aid.”  Whatever. Breakfast is ready.

My new strategy when he is too busy wailing/obsessing about something, to eat his meal, is to set the timer on the microwave.  He’s welcome to choose to eat or not eat, but whatever is still on the plate when the timer beeps goes in the trash.  Oh, Daniel does not like the threat of the trash.

But today, apparently 10 minutes was not enough to eat a pumpkin waffle.  Not when you’re too busy arguing with your sister about lord-knows-what.  And so, the timer went off, and though he had finally started eating, I had to take the plate away and get into the car.  More tears.  Feel like shit.  I know he most definitely will not starve (he already had a banana, had half his waffle, and there’s snack at school – I think he’ll survive until lunchtime).  I know that if I set that timer, I needed to follow through or it would be a completely empty threat and the timer would be a meaningless tool.  Still, I feel like shit.

He wails, the tears coming down his face, the nose constantly running. But it’s time to go.  We get in the car, he’s maybe recovering a little bit, but I am boiling over.  So frustrated with these rushed and cranky mornings.  Hate that he drags his feet and argues, but also hate the tone that I leave them with.

He wants to put on his hat and mittens, but of course not until we’re on the road.  I furiously pull over and jam them on his head and hands.  We get to school, and he takes them off while still in the car.  He doesn’t want to bring them inside.  It’s 32 freaking degrees out, and I know they’ll play outside later. I put them in his bag so he can at least have them for later.  He loses it.  The school administrator working the drop-off line helps him out of the car, and I can see her trying to talk him down on the sidewalk.

I pull away.  And I cry.

Even when you might be doing the right thing.  Even when the kid is clearly being a typically insane 3-year old.  I’m still the one who feels like a horrible parent and spends half the morning crying.

1. At lunch, the kids asked for a treat when they were done with their sandwiches.  I offered a chocolate chip cookie.  Both of them said, no, they wanted a gummi vitamin instead.

2. Mid-afternoon, Rebecca took a look at the laundry basket full of clean (unfolded, of course) clothes.  She said, “Mama, will you fold this so we can put our clothes away?”  I folded it, and both kids RAN up and down the stairs to put their clothes away in their dressers.

3. While I was making dinner, M was doing some dishes (you know, to make room for all of the new dirty dishes).  Not only did Rebecca insist on helping load the dishwasher, but both kids nearly fought over the opportunity to help scrub pots in the sink. I swear to God.

Seriously, I am not the queen of healthful eating. I am an almost pitiful housekeeper.  Maybe my kids are compensating for me?  Either way, it’s awesome.

—-

Change scene to this morning:

Daniel: (wailing) “I’m feewing saaaaaaaddd!”

Mom: (exasperated) “Why are you feeling sad?”

Daniel: (still wailing) “Because you made me feel sad!”

For the record, I “made” him feel sad because, when he asked for a peanut butter, jelly, and banana sandwich for breakfast, I put too many slices of banana on it.  That’s right.  I made him a damn PB&J for breakfast upon request, but I didn’t do it “right.”  I may also have somehow used the wrong banana, it’s unclear.

Oh, and when he started wailing about the sandwich? I set the kitchen timer for 10 minutes and told him he could choose to eat his breakfast or not, but if he didn’t eat before the timer went off, it would go in the trash.  So he wailed for another 9 minutes.

Way to take me down a notch, kid.

And, even though I know he was being completely insane this morning? Who’s the one who now feels like total shit?  This lady, right here.

Parenting. Not for the faint of heart.