Joy and Madness

Oooo.

So, we had a bit of an adventure this weekend. Friday was pretty standard: Arrive, cuddles, dinner (pasta cheese,) bed, 'I can't sleep,' 'lie down and close your eyes,' 'seriously, eyes closed, sweetie,' sleep. On Saturday we were back to the run of ballet, shopping and Tumble Tots, with a side trip to pick up warm clothes for Arya. She requested Batman gloves and a Elsa hat, but needs must and we ended up with My Little Pony gloves and hat and a big, pink scarf. We also ended up running a little late (my bad, I just had to put the shopping cart away and throw the rubbish,) but it all worked out in the end.

Also, free magazine from Tumble Tots, which always triggers a welter of guilt. This term: Why giving children milk at bedtime makes you a horrible monster!

We went home and had lunch, then very shortly after we were onto pizzas for dinner. Arya helped me with the toppings, and I hadn't the heart to gainsay her. See, I'd had to go across the road for mozzarella. I asked Arya if she wanted to come with me, but explained that we'd have to go straight away, not when her episode of PAW Patrol finished. She decided that she wanted to finish her episode, so I nipped out and back, at which point she put on her flipflops and asked if they were okay for going out in.

The first couple of bangs spooked Arya a
little.

I am a monster.

The reason for the early dinner was that we'd decided to take Arya to the fireworks in Cambridge. Well, actually we decided to take her to the fireworks in Ely, but there weren't any and we'd already made the offer to her. We left much later than planned, but still got there in time.

Actually, it was pretty great timing in the end. We got a decent spot and didn't have time to be distracted by the funfair rides. We did get Arya a flashing wand, and although they were out of the butterfly ones that she really fancied she was pretty taken with the star in the end. The first few bangs were a shock, but it was a good display and she was soon swept up in the excitement. She was also utterly adorable bundled up in her hat and scarf, and we even managed not to lose a glove or an Everest.

Oh, yeah; her gran bought her an Everest (from PAW Patrol) plushie, which is just the best thing ever in Arya's eyes. Granny Scott has completely won at presents.

Heading back, we spent forty-five minutes or so getting out of the car park, then Arya went to sleep in the car. It was quite late, so I'm glad to say that she slept in a bit. I was up and about when she emerged from her room.

Polystyrene packing = rescue
ladder for Everest.

We went out for a last bit of shopping, but spent most of the day getting some rest. As we discussed:

Arya: I'm a little bit tired.
Me: We're going to have a quiet day today because we're all a little bit tired. It was a long day yesterday and a late night.
Arya: (with absolute gravity) Yep.

Hanna sat to watch Beauty & the Beast with Arya, but Arya got a little spooked and asked to go home to Ipswich, which seemed an extreme way of asking for the film to be changed. As Hanna was flagging, she went for a nap and Arya had a bounce around.

"This isn't my house! I need a
better house."

Then I unboxed my new computer with a little help from Arya, and this proved to be a grand plan.She set the packing up as a ladder. I pointed out that she'd be too big, so she declared 'Everest could climb it!' And so she did. Then she decided to climb inside and decorate the box itself, drawing on the insides of the box with her crayons and asking for tickets to enter it (I provided an old season ticket for the purpose.)

To round out the day, she decided that the computer itself was a fine thing, so she sat and did some drawing using Paint. Once she got the hang of the controls, she really went to town, and I'm pretty sure she freehanded the complete London Underground map. After dinner, she decided that she wanted to go back to Ipswich straight away, which made me a little sad - I quite liked putting her to bed first last week - but given how sleepy Hanna was, it was probably better they get away quickly.

As I put her in the car, she asked to stay with me, but I know she also likes to get back to Daddy Andrew. Hopefully it won't be too long before we can get a place for all of us.

The London Underground, by Arya

The Trouble with PAW Patrol

Mother and daughter

It's been an up and down weekend. Mostly up, but with a big down.

The good is that we spent an hour or so at the pool, and had a great time. She got a bit tired and mucked about at the end, taking a fall, but wasn't badly hurt. When we got home she let me give her a bath wearing her new goggles to protect her eyes, and that was great too. She even let me give her her nasty medicine without any trouble, and when I put her to bed - albeit slightly late - she went to sleep quickly. Now, I ought to add that Friday's bedtime was tougher. I've been using one approach, and it turns out that Andrew and Hanna have been using a different one which doesn't involve leaving her on her own and checking in from time to time, so my not staying with her... didn't go down well.

Anyway, Sunday. On Sunday morning she woke up after spending the night in with Mummy, went through to check her new gro clock, then came to the living room to wake me up, because the clock was showing the happy sun face that means it's wake up time. I was in the middle of a dream partly inspired by rewatching Fury Road the night before, so when I woke up to a little girl's face calling me, I sort of knew how Mad felt.

Serious face.

We went to the cinema, which means Chiquito's breakfast, and we saw Finding Dory. Despite some early jitters, Arya managed to stick it out, and seemed to really enjoy the film. She watched some PAW Patrol on the way back, and then agreed to Sarah & Duck instead when we got home, so that Mummy and Daddy didn't go crazy. At dinner time she stopped watching to eat, and then...

Then things went a little south.

She said she was full, watched the end of her episode, and when I asked her to come and get ready for bed, she burst into tears and then insisted that she wanted to come back to the table and finish her pizza. This built into a major row, because she was either lying to try to avoid going to bed or, more likely, had lied about being full so she could watch TV. Hanna got angry. I got angry. We were all tired and tempers were high.

Eventually we managed to find some calm. Arya ate a little more pizza, took her medicine and - because she did that very well, and it is nasty stuff - had a little ice cream. After that she got ready pretty well and I tried not to get angry again, because the simple fact is that she doesn't understand that we're in a hurry, that Mummy needs to leave to pick up Daddy Andrew from the train station, because she's three. However, the upshot of this is that she isn't allowed to watch PAW Patrol for a week, because it's not okay for her to lie to us.

I told her she shouldn't even ask for PAW Patrol this week, but I don't know if she'll understand that. She did straight-faced deny that she'd got into any trouble that evening just ten minutes after she'd been howling in tears. On the other hand, it's not that she has a bad memory. Early in the day she'd repeated back to me what I'd told her at bedtime a week before, almost word for word; and not just 'goodnight.' but: 'if you get ready quickly, you can have one more episode of PAW Patrol, and then I'll say goodnight and I'll be right outside.' She's a smart kid, which is perhaps part of the problem. She's learning to manipulate and it's something I want her to partially unlearn. I guess what I want is for her to know how to manipulate, so that she can see if someone tries it, but not actually do it.

Anyway, it was a less-than-ideal ending to what was otherwise a really good weekend, and hopefully will prove to be an aberration and not the start of a trend, because the rest really was wonderful.

Whose House?

I honestly don't know what happened here,
although if I had to guess I'd say that the
multicoloured mat messed with some
automatic filters. Arya took one look at the
picture and simply assumed "I was green."

This weekend had plenty of frustrations, but also lots of joy. Plus ca change, I hear you say.

Hanna and Arya arrived late on Friday, so I moved the little one straight into bed from the car seat and didn't really see her until Saturday morning. Saturday was a bit of a red letter day, as it was Arya's last day at accompanied Tumble Tots. We've got a couple of weeks out for Easter, then she's moving up to the big kids class, an hour later and without parents. I imagine there might be some teething troubles in week one, but that she'll adapt quickly, and probably be better for the supervisors on their own.

Eeee!

After TT we had to go into Cambridge as Arya has been complaining of pain in her feet. We stopped off at the cinema complex for a Chiquito's breakfast (the long term staff cooed and ahhed over Arya and said wasn't she big now, and we got a bit of a pang that we don't get there so often anymore) before heading for the town centre and the shoe shop. While Hanna found a parking space, I took Arya to get her feet measured, and found that they were... basically the same size. Arya was pumped to get to have her feet measured with the iPad, however, and clearly keen to get some new shoes. I suspect that the ache is due to impending growth, a perfectly reasonable supposition which Arya nonetheless felt was not a good enough reason for her not to have shiny pink trainers.

Best smile!

We went to the bookshop as well, where Arya was fascinated by the Very Hungry Caterpillar jack-in-the-box. She talked me into buying her a card game from the same franchise and then threw in a Gruffalo fox at the last minute, but it was still less than that jack-in-the-box and I felt I owed her something since I was essentially distracting her while Mummy went skivvy shopping and I would have felt bad doing that by just showing her things she couldn't have. Anyway, then we stopped into Waitrose on the way home (still forgot to get Parmesan) and that (Daddy said) was that.

It was a very long day, and when we got home we barely managed to make it to bedtime without all collapsing into tears. Arya and I played her new card game a few times (although it's a little tricky for her as yet) and then some 'Go Go Dragons!' which she's very good at, while Mummy cooked. For all she was tired, we made it all the way through without any accidents, which was pretty awesome, and with Arya being pretty good about toileting in general. After dinner we went to bed and she read to me from one of my old notebooks. I'll be honest, I don't remember the notes for my old Stargate fanfic reading quite so much like The Gruffalo, but there we go.

If she has a conception of gender roles, it will be that Daddy
cooks, while Mummy does light construction.

She fell asleep quite quickly, cuddling Foxy, the notebook, her watch and a bottle of Nandino Strawberry cordial. She did persuade me to let her have a second bottle of milk, and woke at about four with her nappy having leaked. I got her changed and into our bed, where she filled enough of my side of the bed that it was easier just to go next door and sleep on the dry side of Arya's bed, where Hanna very kindly let me doze in until eight thirty. I have to say, I needed that lie in and I greatly appreciate getting it.

Tea.

We had pancakes for breakfast and then Hanna finished off Arya's summer house. Then we had lunch and Hanna went out for a bit to visit game friends. Arya wanted to go after her, but I explained that Mummy had the car and we couldn't take a bus after her, and instead Arya invited me to her house for a tea party. I moved her little kitchen unit into the house and she made biscuits. I provided ginger biscuits from the cookie jar and we sat and munched happily.

We went shopping to get wine for the coq au vin and also happened to pick up a box of mini Magnums; not sure how that happened. Actually, I do; we left an empty ice cream tub on the sofa and Arya got an ice cream craving. Ordinarily I'd just have said no, but I don't like telling her things are for us and not her (barring gluten or alcohol.) It had started to rain a bit so we watched some Sarah & Duck and chilled until Hanna got home. We had a couple of accidents in the afternoon (I've noticed once she has one she seems more likely to have another,) although throughout the morning she was superb at asking for and using the toilet.

While Hanna and Arya had a bath, I made dinner (the aforementioned coq au vin) which actually went down really well. We got to bed pretty late, but Arya said she didn't want a song, just for me to go to sleep. She conked out without finishing her (first and only) bottle of milk and I slipped off to spend some time with Hanna before they headed off for Ipswich.

Short Time

Short weekends means packing in
maximum adorableness.

Well, this was quite a weekend, despite being pretty short.

Once more, Hanna and Arya arrived late and, in the latter case, having been asleep for some time. She woke up a little as I carried her through to bed, but settled easily enough and put an arm around my neck as she snuggled down for the night cuddling an Olaf.

Unfortunately, early nights mean early mornings, and she got me through at 6:30ish although , coming out of some pretty weird dreams, I initially thought it was 5:30. I let Hanna sleep for a bit, then made some tea and woke her up so Arya could sit with her while I made porridge. This was where the trouble really started.

Arya got very stroppy and turned her back on Hanna when Hanna tried to talk to her. Hanna had words with her, and when Arya tried to cuddle me in escape I had to have words with her. We laid down some baseline expectations - listen to us and look at us when we're talking to you don't seem unreasonable; cuddles are always optional, as is any physical contact other than holding hands when we're somewhere busy - and expressed our concerned that she was becoming a spoiled brat.

She said: "I don't want to be a brat," which is a good sign, right?

After a bit of tension over breakfast, Arya found her feet again and was utterly lovely for the rest of the morning. She played beautifully with Mummy until it was time to go to Tumble Tots, where she listened well and mostly did as she was asked, with some minor interpretation. She's still not wild about dancing in public, but showed a marked rise in confidence otherwise, which was especially noticeable to Hanna having missed last week's session.

We then went into town for new shoes, as the zips on Arya's boots had gone. We stopped off for lunch, and as Arya was well up for 'eggs and beans and bacon' we went to Chiquitos, where they were happy if a little confused to see us on a Saturday and gave Arya all the beans (which she ate like a trouper.) Despite being by this point pretty tired and a little grumpy, she was a star in the shoe shop and as we went to pick up some bits from M&S. Part of me wanted to get a Christmas jumper, and Arya seemed to concur, but without a definite, no questions winning design I wasn't ready to spend £30 on a one month item of clothing.

And then home, with Arya falling asleep en route but waking up to come shopping for dinner. We had pasta with a paprika chicken sauce, although Arya passed on the sauce and just had peas and sweetcorn with her pasta. She went down pretty quickly, with one major stumble. When I brought her milk in, she was desperately upset that she hadn't got to push the buttons on the microwave. Hanna told her that, if she finished the bottle, she could press the buttons for the next one. We went to bed, got settled, and after a few minutes she held up her empty bottle and said: "I press buttons now?"

And then sleep, and off to Ipswich.