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| Previous Week | Back Home | Next Week | Journal Key: Green = Steve | George = navy | Janet = Purple | Evelyn = Black 10/25/13 (Friday) Yesterday is typically a day when Daddy is supposed to be in charge of putting kids down. Quite naturally since Ev is totally in charge of them on Monday and Wednesday. It didn't go very well, though! The evening started to come apart at about the time when Owen wet himself. It happened to be right when I was trying to get him into the bath, so I thought it was fortuitous. Unfortunately, Owen was convinced that he was going to be changed into new underwear and pants, and was very upset to find out this was not so. Owen was not listening, Daddy did some terrible things like taking a book away from his bedtime reading, draining the water from his bath without letting him do it, and dressing him in his pajamas while he was screaming "MOMMY!" at the top of his little lungs. We had a very one-sided discussion about listening and how we had to get better at it. I felt guilty for doing all this, so it was actually kind of nice for me when Owen woke up and called for me at around one in the morning, because I wanted a chance to see him again. We read a book, one of our only Blue's Clues books, which is about how Blue has a bad dream after reading a book about a dragon, and needs to be comforted. Blue reads her book when she is staying up late after her friend has already gone to sleep, and she reads with her head under a sheet and uses a flash light. After we were done reading this book, Owen claimed sadly that he did not want to go back to sleep. I suggested that he could look at a book in his bed until he got sleepy. He complained--with some basis in fact--that he couldn't see the book by the light of his tiny mushroom night light. So, no doubt inspired by the book we had just read, I grabbed a more powerful flash light type night light from the hall, gave it to him, showed him how to turn it on, and ran away. In the morning, around 6:45, his mother found him in bed, complaining that his flash light didn't work anymore. We don't know how long he was up reading the book, but hopefully not the whole time. Evelyn and I both came to pick him up today, and his mother decided that it was a good time for Owen to learn how to flip his coat on. We laid it on the floor in preparation, and Owen promptly laid down on top of it and tried to stick his arms through the sleeves. It took a lot of convincing to get him to try the flip method, but we did actually get him to do it. This evening was the Halloween "boogie bash" at Cara's school, so Evelyn and Cara went off to that while Owen and I hung around at home. I wasn't about to have another awful night with him, so we were lazy and easy-going. I let him watch an extra Scooby show, fully intending to skip his bath. As it turned out, however, the boy had once again played outside and his feet were incredibly filthy. The problem was compounded by the fact, discovered by me only late in the evening, that Owen had "lost" one of his socks. When we removed that shoe, the bare foot underneath it was quite a hideous sight. I really don't understand how he gets all that dirt in there. So we had a bath after all. Finally bathed, brushed and in his pajamas, Owen picked out a good half-dozen books. He seemed certain that we were going to read them all. I compromised and read him four, which after all is one more than his usual complement. The last one we read was the Blue's Clues book. Owen does not believe that Blue is a girl dog. Fortunately, he did not ask for the flash light afterwards. 10/26/13 (Saturday) Grandmom and Grandpop brought Griffin up to play! They also brought Halloween treats. I was in the living room with Owen, who had a little box of raisins, and Griffin, who had a little bag of M&Ms. Griff: I can't get my nemenems out! Owen: My ravens are stuck! Griff: My nememens! Owen: My ravens! Somehow, I was able to help both of them. Cara and Owen went off with Grandpapa for a sleep over Saturday night. Saturday evening Grandpapa yielded to the temptation to buy Dunkin Donuts (his decision-making process was a joy to watch). He come home with a box of 12; 3 each of 4 varieties. Cara selected a chocolate glazed doughnut, leaving two identical ones in the box. Then there was the battle of bedtime. Ultimately, no bath took place. Somehow, Grandpapa got the little guy calmed down and into his PJs; he even showed Grandpapa which toothbrush is his, and brushed his teeth. 10/27/13 (Sunday) This morning Owen, Cara, and I engaged in a hilarious pillow fight, punctuated by periods of dramatic sulking any time Cara complained that he had hurt her. During his participation, on the other hand, he thoroughly enjoyed himself and laughed uproariously. On the plus side, he is now able to get onto the high stools in the family room all by himself. (I think he still needs help getting down from them, though.) And his drawing has advanced remarkably. I've sent a sample home (as if you don't have plenty). They had to carry him, kicking and screaming, to the car to send him home. For some reason, Grandmama is actually looking forward to next week. This evening, I did something very good very badly. I started Owen on a star chart: he has to wash his hands after he goes potty, eat a good dinner, take a bath, and get brushed and flossed, and he can potentially earn four books at bedtime. However, I gave him his star for brushing before he'd finished, so Steve had to threaten to take it away, which sounded to Owen like a fun chance to use the eraser on the white board. Poor Steve has been forced to repeatedly attempt to explain the concept of the chart to Owen while putting him down. We'll see how I do tomorrow. Eventually, we'll manage to hold his hand under the pump and spell w-a-t-e-r. 10/28/13 (Monday) Some Vampire Weekend song was on in the car, and I was listening to the lyrics, thinking, why doesn't Owen notice these words and associate them with his own life like he does when the guy sings the word "rusty" in "Giving Up the Gun"? Later, "Giving Up the Gun" came on. "Hey, he said Rusty! Like Grandmom's dog!" said Owen. "That's the first time I ever said that," he continued, "and now I'm done. Turn it off." We had a lovely Monday evening. Owen and I had eggs again. Steve had made popcorn earlier, trying to emulate Captain America in the Superhero Squad, and he'd left us some. I had to make a second bag after dinner. We brought some for Cara. Owen still doesn't like going to dance, but I brought a coloring book this time. It was from his pumpkin-picking trip. "Hey, I went there!" he said, pointing to a picture of a farm. We found some crayons and he carefully colored two people and one pumpkin periwinkle while Cara came out and got her shoes on. Then Cara and I had to stand around and try to convince him to leave. I worked on the star chart this evening. I let Owen make his own stars, which is not particularly successful but which satisfies him. He got one for eating a good dinner. He got one for having a good bath, though I wouldn't have minded better listening. He got one for getting his teeth brushed nicely. He selected three very short books. It could have been a much worse evening. 10/29/13 (Tuesday) Another exciting evening coaxing our boy through his duties. Evelyn told me he had had a good day, because there was dirt in his hair, nose, ears, on his back, at least one fleck of dirt in his eye, and of course copious amounts in his shoes, on his socks, and somehow in between his toes--we suspect he takes his shoes and socks off at some point. Fortunately he earned his chore chart star for washing his hands, so that in eating what little of his dinner we managed to convince him to eat, he probably didn't consume any dirt. Tuesdays end up being late evenings for us because Cara has dance and we don't all get home until after six. Dinner runs almost directly into bath time. Owen wanted to watch his latest television fixation, "The Creeper," an old episode of Scooby-Doo that teaches us that teens in the sixties wanted to hold dances in old barns and eat corn on the cob covered in chocolate. But we convinced him somehow to get upstairs instead. He paged through several books and found various other ways to amuse himself until I finally managed to get him into the bathtub. When the water was finally drained out, there was a gritty residue left behind on the walls of the tub. Though it all took a lot of convincing, a few moments where I mentioned the possibility of his losing some stars, and a couple of occasions where I had to start counting to three, we got everything done and he got all four of his chore stars, with no meltdowns (though there was one small bit of crying when he was in the middle of running back into the kitchen from having had a bout with a bite of food that "made him jump," and he accidentally fell on the floor of the kitchen and got scared, and needed a bag with ice in it that he could hold on his foot for five seconds, until he forgot about it, had another bite of food, and had to start jumping around the house again). So, four books! One of the books was about Disney Princesses. The one he saved for last was a thick, four-page foam book with pull-out soft animals. I objected strongly to this book, but it had the advantage of brevity. After his books, you might think he could finally go to bed. But no! First he needed his lion. Then he needed his drink of water. Then he needed some guys. Then he needed different guys because one of them was no good. Then he needed his blankets. Then he was finally ready. 10/30/13 (Wednesday) I'm not really sure how great a mom I was this evening. I made a healthy dinner, and I made sure Owen ate a decent portion of it. This was impeded because, possibly because I was doing it, Owen decided he could read at the table. I am fully capable of reading and eating simultaneously. He cannot read. He cannot pretend to read and eat at the same time. Also, in the middle of dinner, he decided that, since Cara and I already had, he wanted to also put on his pajamas. (I'd offered, earlier, and he'd said no.) I tried to get him to go and do this himself, since he was set on it, but he wouldn't. We watched Cinderella, Cara colored, and Owen looked at books. There wasn't an awful lot of dirt in his shoes. I mean, there was an awful lot for a normal person, but, for him, it was minimal. We skipped the bath. He was not a good listener while we brushed his teeth, so he lost a star. He ended up with two stars and got to pick two books. He picked very short ones. I let him go to bed with (literally) twenty little guys, but I did not let him have the flash light. I figure I broke even. | Previous Week | Back Home | Next Week | |