After Tim got back from his conference and (mostly) recovered from his stomach virus (or whatever it was), he had a work-related day trip and an evening foster care training, plus we got to spend a couple of hours taking Daniel to the doctor for a follow-up visit for his strep. (The strep ended up being pretty much a non-event by the way; after 12 hours on the antibiotics, Daniel felt fine.)
Then there was our 12-hour power outage. Tim about gave me a heart attack one night by bolting up in bed saying, "What was that noise??" I vaguely recalled there being an ongoing crackling noise at the tail end of my disappearing dream, which was the same noise that had woken Tim up in real life. Now the noise was gone. It had sounded like it came from outside the house, but Tim took a flashlight and went to check. As he reached the end of the hall I saw a bright flash of light, heard a loud bang, and the power was off. So at three in the morning I hauled myself out of bed, groggily hunted down an old electricity bill and called their 1-800-number to report an outage. We thought the couple houses across the street that usually go out with us were affected as well, but it was hard to tell in the middle of the night. Other houses clearly had lights still. Neither child had woken up, although I did hear Daniel talking in his sleep about a clock.
The next morning when I went to wake Daniel up, I looked out his window across the street and solved the mystery of the crackling noise. Our neighbors across the street have an enormous (and I do mean enormous) oak tree that overhangs their living room. Sometimes on windy days I worry about it blowing down on top of their house. At least the tree itself was still standing, but, although it had not been storming the night before, two giant limbs had fallen on the power line and snapped it. Daniel of course rushed through his morning preparations and was out the door fifteen minutes early so that he could survey the damage. I went out with him, being as I didn't know whether or not there might be a live wire on the ground (it turned out later that there was, though thankfully not in the street), and I didn't trust Daniel's vision or curiosity enough to be sure he wouldn't step on it. Our neighbor who owns the house was out too, so we chit-chatted a bit and traded stories, and then I saw Daniel off to the school bus. He was disappointed that he didn't get to stick around and watch the crew come fix the wire. (Our neighbor commented, "He's going to be an electrical engineer; you can see that one coming!" It's interesting how many people say that, or some variation of it, to us. Yes, Daniel has great aptitude and interest in technical things, and I think he will very likely go into a technical career, but why engineer and not electrician? Maybe people assume that with two college-educated parents we will necessarily produce college-educated children, but actually we'll be happy with any career that suits a child's abilities, contributes to the world, and makes a decent living.) Esther did get to watch the electrician and the tree-trimming crew at work, and later she played electrician with Daddy. He was impressed with how well she remembered everything they had done. That one may well choose to become an engineer, although right now she's trying to decide between biology and physics. :-)
We finally got our power back about 3:00, and a few hours later Tim's dear friend from Arizona arrived for a visit. He and Tim have been friends since seventh grade, and he was actually the one who officiated at our wedding. He had a meeting in a city five hours away from us, so he came a couple of days early, rented a car, and made the five-hour trip down just to spend time with us. Now, that's a good friend! We had a wonderful time together. Tim and Mark played lots of pool and table tennis, and Esther hung on his every movement. One morning I overheard her asking him if he would like her to feed him his cereal! (He politely declined.) Daniel was away at school for most of the visit, but he got in on some of the pool action.
Mark left on Friday morning. On Saturday morning, not quite as early as we wanted to, we loaded up the SUV and headed out to my grandmother's house to spend the long weekend with her and celebrate her 88th birthday. We had a great time there as well, even though the air conditioner wasn't working and the temperatures were above ninety degrees. Some of us spent a lot of time in the cool basement! :-) But we wouldn't have traded the visit for anything. Grandma is very special to us, and we love being close enough to go for a weekend. Esther, true to her usual form when traveling, woke up at four in the morning our first night there and insisted it was time to get up. And somewhere during those pre-dawn hours she discovered her first wiggly tooth. Daniel slept fine, but the visit was an interesting preview of what our summer travels may look like. He was calm and pleasant as long as he was in physical contact with me or engaged in conversation with me. And of course he was fine when doing projects, of which he found many: adjusting the drapes, cutting an unused cord off of a recliner, fixing the screen on a door, fixing the back doorbell. But if he wasn't with me or doing a project, he had no idea what to do with himself. We are going to be away from home for three weeks this summer. It could be...interesting!
This week has been a little less busy so far...just dental appointments for two of us, an audition for Daniel to perform in his school's end-of-year talent show, the arrival of Daniel's new mattress (his long-anticipated birthday present), our one-year post-placement visit with our social worker, and an inspection by pest control people to get rid of a possible carpenter ant nest. We're hoping that the actual nest is outside somewhere and the twelve ants Tim killed in our bathroom after we got back from Grandma's house were just scouts, but we've been putting the inspection off long enough!
Then this weekend is the 30 Hour Famine at church. I will be involved the whole time, and Tim and kids may come for some of the Saturday activities. We decided that Daniel isn't ready to do it yet, though I'm hoping he can next year.
Next weekend we have friends from DC taking a detour from a long road trip to come spend the night with us, and the following week we have two medical appointments (one in another city) and Daniel's Family Day, plus packing to go out of town for three weeks. I'm super excited for the trip: we're going to see my family in Oregon, drive down the coast together to northern California to be at a cousin's wedding and see extended family, then fly on to Arizona with my sister and return her to her supported living community before spending almost a week with Tim's family and friends in Phoenix. I suspect the trip will feel long at times, especially with our kids, but I am so looking forward to seeing loved ones I haven't seen in a few years and introducing everyone to Daniel! In particular, Tim's mom is no longer able to fly easily, so this will be her first time meeting her newest grandson. Very special. And for a long time we weren't sure if we were going to be able to do it financially. I was praying hard for us to have the money by the time we needed to decide, and I'm so grateful that we do!
So that's our lives right now. (And I thought things were going to get relaxing once Tim was done with the semester! Ha!)
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
What a week!
The week of which I speak is not last week but the week before--I'm just a little bit behind, here!
Tim "celebrated" Mother's Day by going off to a conference and leaving me alone with the kids for a week. The timing was not his choice, of course, but I still gave him a hard time about it! He gave up going to his usual professional conference this year because he didn't want to leave me on my own, but this one was a particularly good opportunity for him, and we decided it was time to give it a try.
The reviews...were mixed.
On Sunday after Tim left, both kids were positively angelic. We had a really nice time outside, then Daniel occupied himself on the computer and let me read and play with Esther until bedtime, and afterwards I had some good one-on-one with Daniel. It was great! It was also the highlight of the whole week, which means: things went downhill from there!
On Monday, Daniel's school started standardized testing. He is excused from the testing this year only, but all his teachers and classmates were involved, so he was put in with the special education class. That worked well the rest of the week, but on Monday he hadn't known it was coming and I think he was a little upset by it, plus just stressed by being off his normal routine. On Monday night I had a support group meeting. Daniel has always had a hard time with going to the kids' group associated with this meeting; something about all the kids and the adult caretakers that he doesn't know well just doesn't work well for him. So I had told him that he could try coming to the adult group the next time, but that was before I knew that Tim wasn't going to be there. Daniel coming with just me would, I'm pretty confident, be a disaster. So I made him go to the kids' group. He was mad, and made sure I knew it. And even Esther, uncharacteristically, cried when I left. So, Monday afternoon and evening, not so good, although I was pleased that Monday evening ended with Daniel asking to call Tim, and pouring out to him the whole story of his day, in English. Tuesday morning, also not so good. Tuesday afternoon we slowly climbed back out of our hole, and we did fine again until Thursday.
I'm sure Daniel would prefer that I not share the details of Thursday. But it ended with him being as rowdy and uncooperative as he knows how to be, and egging Esther on to do the same, right at bedtime! And right at that moment, there was nothing I could do about it. Daniel is just too big for me to pick up and hold in my lap until he calms down, like I can do with Esther. And while I can talk either child down out of the trees when it's just me and him/her, this time neither one was listening to me. Daniel finally realized that keeping Esther up was not in his own best interest and tried to help me get her to bed, but by that point she was so riled up that it was quite a job. I was soooo happy when both kids were asleep and I could pour out my evening into Tim's sympathetic ear!
Friday afternoon Tim came home, and we were all very glad to see him. The kids settled, and I felt better for having reinforcement in the house!
Saturday evening, Tim came down with a 24-hour stomach bug, and was pretty miserable. But the kids were positively angelic again. At one point Daniel had Esther in his lap, showing her how to play his favorite game on his computer, and at another point he actually invited her to play the Wii with him! I thought, "You've got to be kidding me, you fight over me all week, and now that Dad's home you can suddenly play together?? That's not fair!" But I was happy to be able to do what I needed to do and leave Tim to do what he needed to do at that point, which was sleep!
So that was my Mother's Week. I am, as always, glad I get to be a mother...but also glad that I mostly don't have to do it on my own!
Tim "celebrated" Mother's Day by going off to a conference and leaving me alone with the kids for a week. The timing was not his choice, of course, but I still gave him a hard time about it! He gave up going to his usual professional conference this year because he didn't want to leave me on my own, but this one was a particularly good opportunity for him, and we decided it was time to give it a try.
The reviews...were mixed.
On Sunday after Tim left, both kids were positively angelic. We had a really nice time outside, then Daniel occupied himself on the computer and let me read and play with Esther until bedtime, and afterwards I had some good one-on-one with Daniel. It was great! It was also the highlight of the whole week, which means: things went downhill from there!
On Monday, Daniel's school started standardized testing. He is excused from the testing this year only, but all his teachers and classmates were involved, so he was put in with the special education class. That worked well the rest of the week, but on Monday he hadn't known it was coming and I think he was a little upset by it, plus just stressed by being off his normal routine. On Monday night I had a support group meeting. Daniel has always had a hard time with going to the kids' group associated with this meeting; something about all the kids and the adult caretakers that he doesn't know well just doesn't work well for him. So I had told him that he could try coming to the adult group the next time, but that was before I knew that Tim wasn't going to be there. Daniel coming with just me would, I'm pretty confident, be a disaster. So I made him go to the kids' group. He was mad, and made sure I knew it. And even Esther, uncharacteristically, cried when I left. So, Monday afternoon and evening, not so good, although I was pleased that Monday evening ended with Daniel asking to call Tim, and pouring out to him the whole story of his day, in English. Tuesday morning, also not so good. Tuesday afternoon we slowly climbed back out of our hole, and we did fine again until Thursday.
I'm sure Daniel would prefer that I not share the details of Thursday. But it ended with him being as rowdy and uncooperative as he knows how to be, and egging Esther on to do the same, right at bedtime! And right at that moment, there was nothing I could do about it. Daniel is just too big for me to pick up and hold in my lap until he calms down, like I can do with Esther. And while I can talk either child down out of the trees when it's just me and him/her, this time neither one was listening to me. Daniel finally realized that keeping Esther up was not in his own best interest and tried to help me get her to bed, but by that point she was so riled up that it was quite a job. I was soooo happy when both kids were asleep and I could pour out my evening into Tim's sympathetic ear!
Friday afternoon Tim came home, and we were all very glad to see him. The kids settled, and I felt better for having reinforcement in the house!
Saturday evening, Tim came down with a 24-hour stomach bug, and was pretty miserable. But the kids were positively angelic again. At one point Daniel had Esther in his lap, showing her how to play his favorite game on his computer, and at another point he actually invited her to play the Wii with him! I thought, "You've got to be kidding me, you fight over me all week, and now that Dad's home you can suddenly play together?? That's not fair!" But I was happy to be able to do what I needed to do and leave Tim to do what he needed to do at that point, which was sleep!
So that was my Mother's Week. I am, as always, glad I get to be a mother...but also glad that I mostly don't have to do it on my own!
Friday, May 11, 2012
and then there were germs
Last night, we were anticipating, with a mixture of excitement and trepidation, Daniel going to his first middle school dance tonight. Tim had just finished grading all of his students' finals, and was looking forward to getting some other things done and to playing with Esther. I was pleased that Esther is over whatever bug she has had, and seems to have returned to spending the night in her own room after a string of nights coming in and waking me up at least once.
When I put Daniel to bed, he couldn't breathe well and asked me to put some normal saline drops in his nose to help clear it out. It worked, but he told me that some of the drops had gone into his ear and made it hurt.
At 12:30, Esther came in and woke me up. I'm not even sure what inspired her to get out of bed in the first place, but she wanted to be tucked back in. Less than an hour later (but at first I didn't even realize I had been asleep, and thought it was just a few minutes later), I heard the medicine cabinet in the bathroom creaking and got up to see who was doing what. It was Daniel, looking for something to scrape out his ear with because it was really hurting. Remembering how miserable earaches were for me when I was his age, I stayed up with him for an hour, giving him an antihistamine, pain medicine (650 mg of acetominophen designed for arthritis relief, which was all I could find at that hour of the morning), a heating pad, and a little entertainment. When it got to the point where I thought the pain meds might kick in soon, I put him back in bed with instructions to wake me up if I was still hurting in half an hour. My cold feet had not yet let me fall back to sleep when I heard Esther mumbling, so I went to check on her to find her sitting on the side of her bed saying something about having lost her blankie. I retrieved the blankie, put her back in bed, and checked on Daniel. He was asleep, thankfully. So after lying awake with cold feet a while longer, I finally got back to sleep. I only had to get up one more time, at 5:30 to put Esther in her sleeping bag after she wet her bed. (Which reminds me, I need to do laundry...)
At 7:00 I got up again, made Daniel's breakfast, and woke him up to ask how he was feeling. His ear was only hurting a little bit, so I had him get up and get ready for school and was all set to send him out the door with a note asking his teacher to let him call us if the pain came back. Then he started grumbling about how much he hates asking to use the school telephone, and I was reminded of the time in the fall when I sent him with a low-grade fever and instructions to call me if he got sicker, and he spent the afternoon with his head on his desk and a fever of 102, not bothering to call me despite feeling lousy. So we decided that he was going to the doctor. Oh my word, I am SO glad we did that! Even though it took most of the morning, we now have a diagnosis...of strep throat! And I am so glad we didn't send him to school and spread the germs around his classmates...so glad we are already started on the course of medication before he got to feeling really lousy...so glad we aren't stuck with a Saturday or Sunday decision of whether to take him to an urgent care center or tough it out over the weekend...so glad I don't have to figure out how to get him to his doctor in a neighboring town (a drive I'm not comfortable with) while Tim is out of town next week...so glad that Tim had already finished his urgent work for the week and has been able to have Esther with him all afternoon so I could nap and catch up from last night. Of course, I'm not glad that Daniel has strep in the first place, but it could have been a whole lot more unpleasant! I'm also glad Daniel's doctor thought to test for strep, since he doesn't have any of the classic symptoms except an irritated throat, and even that I don't think has the tell-tale white patches. But for whatever reason he decided to swab, and it came back positive.
So our expectations for today did not come to pass. But the sun is shining, Daniel is not too uncomfortable (I think; he's been zonked out in his bed for a while now!), and we all get to spend the evening together. And that just might be good too.
When I put Daniel to bed, he couldn't breathe well and asked me to put some normal saline drops in his nose to help clear it out. It worked, but he told me that some of the drops had gone into his ear and made it hurt.
At 12:30, Esther came in and woke me up. I'm not even sure what inspired her to get out of bed in the first place, but she wanted to be tucked back in. Less than an hour later (but at first I didn't even realize I had been asleep, and thought it was just a few minutes later), I heard the medicine cabinet in the bathroom creaking and got up to see who was doing what. It was Daniel, looking for something to scrape out his ear with because it was really hurting. Remembering how miserable earaches were for me when I was his age, I stayed up with him for an hour, giving him an antihistamine, pain medicine (650 mg of acetominophen designed for arthritis relief, which was all I could find at that hour of the morning), a heating pad, and a little entertainment. When it got to the point where I thought the pain meds might kick in soon, I put him back in bed with instructions to wake me up if I was still hurting in half an hour. My cold feet had not yet let me fall back to sleep when I heard Esther mumbling, so I went to check on her to find her sitting on the side of her bed saying something about having lost her blankie. I retrieved the blankie, put her back in bed, and checked on Daniel. He was asleep, thankfully. So after lying awake with cold feet a while longer, I finally got back to sleep. I only had to get up one more time, at 5:30 to put Esther in her sleeping bag after she wet her bed. (Which reminds me, I need to do laundry...)
At 7:00 I got up again, made Daniel's breakfast, and woke him up to ask how he was feeling. His ear was only hurting a little bit, so I had him get up and get ready for school and was all set to send him out the door with a note asking his teacher to let him call us if the pain came back. Then he started grumbling about how much he hates asking to use the school telephone, and I was reminded of the time in the fall when I sent him with a low-grade fever and instructions to call me if he got sicker, and he spent the afternoon with his head on his desk and a fever of 102, not bothering to call me despite feeling lousy. So we decided that he was going to the doctor. Oh my word, I am SO glad we did that! Even though it took most of the morning, we now have a diagnosis...of strep throat! And I am so glad we didn't send him to school and spread the germs around his classmates...so glad we are already started on the course of medication before he got to feeling really lousy...so glad we aren't stuck with a Saturday or Sunday decision of whether to take him to an urgent care center or tough it out over the weekend...so glad I don't have to figure out how to get him to his doctor in a neighboring town (a drive I'm not comfortable with) while Tim is out of town next week...so glad that Tim had already finished his urgent work for the week and has been able to have Esther with him all afternoon so I could nap and catch up from last night. Of course, I'm not glad that Daniel has strep in the first place, but it could have been a whole lot more unpleasant! I'm also glad Daniel's doctor thought to test for strep, since he doesn't have any of the classic symptoms except an irritated throat, and even that I don't think has the tell-tale white patches. But for whatever reason he decided to swab, and it came back positive.
So our expectations for today did not come to pass. But the sun is shining, Daniel is not too uncomfortable (I think; he's been zonked out in his bed for a while now!), and we all get to spend the evening together. And that just might be good too.
Monday, May 7, 2012
Some Daniel vignettes
Recently Daniel had a choir concert at school. He's lucky that we made it, since he didn't tell us till the night before! Apparently he had brought the announcement home with him previously, but because I was involved in a serious phone conversation and didn't immediately look at the stack of papers he shoved in my face upon his entry from school, he got annoyed at me and hid the announcement about the choir show. Stinker! The night before the show he asked us something about "that music activity" and when we responded with confusion, he first debated with himself out loud about whether to tell us, and then went and got the piece of paper. So we had him to the concert on time and we were all able to attend. One of the songs he has been singing around the house for weeks...but not with recognizable English words...so I was happy to finally know what song it is. On the chorus for that one, I swear I could pick out his individual voice from where I was sitting in the back of the auditorium! He does so love to sing. And we love to hear him. He also sang a solo (in Chinese) in church again a couple weeks ago and did a good job.
I got a bit of a reality check about older child adoption the other day. I was applying sunscreen to Daniel when he did something mildly irritating. I scolded him, then noticed a white streak showing on his cheek and reached over to rub it in. He kind of laughed and said, "Oh, I thought you were going to hit me across the face." Ouch. That reaction doesn't reflect our relationship at all, but it does reflect his history, and nothing about his life from here on out is going to change his history. Some of that history is good, some of it not so much, but all of it is beyond our control. And that's just the way it is.
Daniel had a couple of days off of school recently, and devoted some of his time to fixing his translator, which had not been working. Since the translator was bought in China, this involved a call to tech support in China. The person who was helping Daniel asked him why he was calling from America, to which he explained that the translator was from China. Then she wanted to know why an American living in American needed a Chinese-English translator, to which he explained that he is Chinese and his English isn't very good yet.
Then she saw his QQ (internet chat) profile picture...
which is...
wait for it...
this:
(I'm not sure I would have posed so obligingly if I'd known he'd post it on the internet!)
So then Daniel explained that he was recently adopted from China and that his QQ picture is of his American adoptive mama. I can only wonder what the tech support person now thinks of American adoptive mamas.
I have started reading Dick and Jane books with Daniel as part of he reading instruction. This past Saturday I wrote an extra story Dick-and-Jane-esque story for him:
"Look, Mother look! Come see funny Daniel and funny Esther! Daniel and Esther can run and jump. Little Esther can jump a little jump. Big Daniel can jump a big jump. Can Father jump? No, Father must do something. Father must work. Father must make a test to give his students."
True story! :-)
I got a bit of a reality check about older child adoption the other day. I was applying sunscreen to Daniel when he did something mildly irritating. I scolded him, then noticed a white streak showing on his cheek and reached over to rub it in. He kind of laughed and said, "Oh, I thought you were going to hit me across the face." Ouch. That reaction doesn't reflect our relationship at all, but it does reflect his history, and nothing about his life from here on out is going to change his history. Some of that history is good, some of it not so much, but all of it is beyond our control. And that's just the way it is.
Daniel had a couple of days off of school recently, and devoted some of his time to fixing his translator, which had not been working. Since the translator was bought in China, this involved a call to tech support in China. The person who was helping Daniel asked him why he was calling from America, to which he explained that the translator was from China. Then she wanted to know why an American living in American needed a Chinese-English translator, to which he explained that he is Chinese and his English isn't very good yet.
Then she saw his QQ (internet chat) profile picture...
which is...
wait for it...
this:
(I'm not sure I would have posed so obligingly if I'd known he'd post it on the internet!)
So then Daniel explained that he was recently adopted from China and that his QQ picture is of his American adoptive mama. I can only wonder what the tech support person now thinks of American adoptive mamas.
I have started reading Dick and Jane books with Daniel as part of he reading instruction. This past Saturday I wrote an extra story Dick-and-Jane-esque story for him:
"Look, Mother look! Come see funny Daniel and funny Esther! Daniel and Esther can run and jump. Little Esther can jump a little jump. Big Daniel can jump a big jump. Can Father jump? No, Father must do something. Father must work. Father must make a test to give his students."
True story! :-)
Some Esther vignettes
Yesterday Esther was wearing my robe, which she decided made her look like an angel (it's white and shiny). She asked me to play Mary to her angel Gabriel. Some of the conversation went like this:
Mary: [acts startled]
angel [holding a box wrapped in her blankie]: Don't be afraid; I brought you a present! This is your Son of God. You can call him Jesus.
...later...
Mary: But how can this happen? I don't have a husband.
angel: Yes you do!
Esther's two favorite TV shows these days are Word Girl and Wild Kratts, both on PBS Kids. Word Girl, in between saving her city from various villains, is notorious for defining words. So now, Esther has begun to define words too. The other day I was discussing with Tim where to display something, and Esther remarked, "Display means to hang it up where people can admire it." Another day Esther's daycare teacher told Tim that Esther is a leader of the pack, and Esther said, "Do you know what a pack is? It's a group of animals that live together." (I'm not sure what she thought about her teacher saying that she was the leader of a group of animals! Ha.) Meanwhile, Esther's favorite thing to do with me is for the two of us to pretend that we are the Kratt brothers going on "creature adventures." One afternoon we spent a good fifteen or twenty minutes luring an imaginary Spotswat the Cheetah Cub across our backyard with imaginary meat tied on to the end of a (real) stick, and then taking care of him in the Tortuga HQ (the underside of our weeping cherry tree). And that was only part of the play! Tim and I have both recently noticed an explosion in the complexity of her imaginative play.
I read in some parenting book that four is the age at which young children have the most violent imaginations. I can believe it! Earlier this year, Esther killed her imaginary friend on more than one occasion, and talked with great relish about her imaginary babies having cancer. [She hasn't talked about Robba Bobba or Rugga Guggan at all in months, though, so the imaginary friendship phase may be over.] More recently, when I didn't get out of her way fast enough to suit her, my dear little girl inquired sweetly, "Would you like me to run over your toes with a lawn mower?"
Esther still likes to play that she's a baby All The Time. I'm rather looking forward to her growing out of this phase. Of course, when she's not being a baby she wants to be everybody's boss and caretaker. In particular, she wants to serve everybody food at the table, whether or not they've expressed a desire to have the food in question, and whether or not she's actually capable of dipping it up neatly.
Esther continues to rack up new achievements. She has started skipping--I didn't teach her, I just noticed her doing it one day--and Tim recently taught her how to dribble a basketball under her leg. It is the funniest thing to see such a little girl doing that trick! She also continues to be fascinated with printed words and numbers. She is finally starting to "get" phonics, not so much the part of knowing what sound each letter makes, but the part of hearing a word and being able to isolate the first sound. Before this she would say things like "Blueberries starts with /k/! /k/ /k/ blueberries!"
She is excited about going off to kindergarten next year. She really can be a big help around the house when she chooses to, but she has informed me, "Mommy, when I go to kindergarten you'll have to wash the dishes and fold the clothes all by yourself, because I won't be here to help you. You'll say, 'waaaaaaah!'"
Having Esther around makes us smile often. :-)
Mary: [acts startled]
angel [holding a box wrapped in her blankie]: Don't be afraid; I brought you a present! This is your Son of God. You can call him Jesus.
...later...
Mary: But how can this happen? I don't have a husband.
angel: Yes you do!
Esther's two favorite TV shows these days are Word Girl and Wild Kratts, both on PBS Kids. Word Girl, in between saving her city from various villains, is notorious for defining words. So now, Esther has begun to define words too. The other day I was discussing with Tim where to display something, and Esther remarked, "Display means to hang it up where people can admire it." Another day Esther's daycare teacher told Tim that Esther is a leader of the pack, and Esther said, "Do you know what a pack is? It's a group of animals that live together." (I'm not sure what she thought about her teacher saying that she was the leader of a group of animals! Ha.) Meanwhile, Esther's favorite thing to do with me is for the two of us to pretend that we are the Kratt brothers going on "creature adventures." One afternoon we spent a good fifteen or twenty minutes luring an imaginary Spotswat the Cheetah Cub across our backyard with imaginary meat tied on to the end of a (real) stick, and then taking care of him in the Tortuga HQ (the underside of our weeping cherry tree). And that was only part of the play! Tim and I have both recently noticed an explosion in the complexity of her imaginative play.
I read in some parenting book that four is the age at which young children have the most violent imaginations. I can believe it! Earlier this year, Esther killed her imaginary friend on more than one occasion, and talked with great relish about her imaginary babies having cancer. [She hasn't talked about Robba Bobba or Rugga Guggan at all in months, though, so the imaginary friendship phase may be over.] More recently, when I didn't get out of her way fast enough to suit her, my dear little girl inquired sweetly, "Would you like me to run over your toes with a lawn mower?"
Esther still likes to play that she's a baby All The Time. I'm rather looking forward to her growing out of this phase. Of course, when she's not being a baby she wants to be everybody's boss and caretaker. In particular, she wants to serve everybody food at the table, whether or not they've expressed a desire to have the food in question, and whether or not she's actually capable of dipping it up neatly.
Esther continues to rack up new achievements. She has started skipping--I didn't teach her, I just noticed her doing it one day--and Tim recently taught her how to dribble a basketball under her leg. It is the funniest thing to see such a little girl doing that trick! She also continues to be fascinated with printed words and numbers. She is finally starting to "get" phonics, not so much the part of knowing what sound each letter makes, but the part of hearing a word and being able to isolate the first sound. Before this she would say things like "Blueberries starts with /k/! /k/ /k/ blueberries!"
She is excited about going off to kindergarten next year. She really can be a big help around the house when she chooses to, but she has informed me, "Mommy, when I go to kindergarten you'll have to wash the dishes and fold the clothes all by yourself, because I won't be here to help you. You'll say, 'waaaaaaah!'"
Having Esther around makes us smile often. :-)