Happy Mother’s Day!

Happy Mother’s Day to all the strong, proud, inspiring mamas I know!

We did a bit of crafting this afternoon to celebrate mother’s day. The girls made up some “crown kits” that Granny Jo had sent.

(Yes, I know. Not the best picture. Sometimes trying to get a good shot of two moving preschoolers is hard!)

Also, this week Tess got glasses and Rose got earplugs (making bathtime a lot easier). We’ve found a similar set of trials with getting Tess to wear glasses as there have been with the patching regimen; some good days, some “oh my god it’s only 9.30am” days. But steady, incremental acceptance over a period. She will now happily wear them for about 30 minutes, which is up from 5 minutes earlier in the week. Onward and upward!

But still, she’s super cute (and she knows it!)

Through the eyes of a four-year-old

Rose’s grandad bought Rose a camera for her birthday. This evening I sat down to upload a few pictures for the blog and noticed that she’d taken over 200 photos in 24 hours. The girl is nothing if not enthusiastic!

Her first photo (of my arm)

She took quite a lot of portraits of her family, like this moving one of Tess

Here’s a photo of me, a testimony to a knee-high life

Daddy, which captures his frenetic moving.

There were a serious of photos that were absolutely perplexing. Strange, childlike images of drawings or colours. Until I realised that she was taking photos of the TV.

She took one self-portrait, capturing a knowing look

…and at least 24 photos of her feet, in the car journey on the way to her fourth birthday party

She clearly found the camera too distracting at the party because there was but one, an incredible likeness of J’s grandmother, arriving with a tub full of chocolate crackles

On the phone

Rose just spent half an hour talking to her friend Oliver in France. Half an hour! You can usually only get one or two things out of her on the phone, but she was positively garrulous tonight with Oliver. She’s getting to be such a big girl! I wish I could’ve transcribed the conversation, but she was holding on to me with a fierce grip, she was that excited and nervous.

I remember that at one point Oliver asked her about “school” (what we call day care) and she said, “I’m going really well at school at the moment.”

Adorable!

I’ve also added some photos of Rose’s 4th birthday party with our other parents group friends. We hired a play centre. It was a rainy day, so the kids pulled their fancy clothes off and ran around in the rain in the nude. It was adorable!  (I only uploaded internet-safe pictures).

Conversations with a preschooler

(Sound of Tess screaming)

Me, rushing into the room: Oh my gosh! How did Tess get Scamps (Roses’s mechanized toy hamster) tangled in her hair!

Rose: I don’t know!

Me: Are you sure?

Rose: Well, I was holding it and it flew out of my hands and landed on Tess.

Me: Did you put Scamps on to Tess’s head, ensuring the mechanized surface was against her hair, and then turned him on?

Rose: Yes.

—————-

This afternoon the neighbourhood cat, Ben, wandered in.

Me: Hello, Ben. Have you had your dinner?

Rose, to me: Mummy! He can’t talk!

Letter to Santa

NOTE: The only bit I wrote was “kind regards”

Going away

Rose is a bit concerned about me flying to New Zealand on Sunday for a few days. I’ve explained multiple times that I’m going to look after Grandad, and that he’s been in hospital and needs me to help look after him.There’s been quite a lot of to and fro about how Grandad is my Dad, and that’s why I need to take care of him. She knows all that, but she still doesn’t want me to go.

Last night I talked to Dad on the phone. When the call finished Rose asked, “How’s Grandad’s knee?” (Dad had knee replacement surgery.)

To be honest, I was quite surprised that she’d remembered Dad’s knee. She’s still only three, the age that embodies solipsism. I mean she frequently forgets that I work as a librarian and not as Cinderella. I told her, “Grandad’s knee is feeling better today, isn’t that great?”

“Does that mean you don’t have to go to New Zealand now?”

Beautiful pictures

Rose has been drawing some beautiful pictures lately. Check out her picture of a garden today. So pretty!

Rose’s big bed, and how we finally got around to it

Until last week Rose has been still sleeping in a cot. All her age-mates moved to big beds at least a year ago. Not all of them are in big beds per se, some of them just have the cot side taken off. But no one is still sleeping in a cot with the sides up. The reason why we didn’t move her earlier is because there just didn’t seem any good reasons to. Over the years I’ve adopted the attitude “if it ain’t broke don’t fix it” towards parenting matters. She has been happy in a cot. She’s never asked for a big bed. People had all sorts of reasons to move their kids into big beds (a sibling needed the cot, easier to travel, their kid didn’t sleep anyway so why not?) None of these things applied to us so we just didn’t get around to it.

Eventually I tested the waters and took the side off her cot a few months ago and she hated it. She wouldn’t go to sleep. She insisted on us putting a table next to her bed because she was worried about falling out. She did fall out. It sucked, for all of us. And when we stayed in Melbourne she slept in a single bed and absolutely hated it. She kept waking up crying. She wanted to know why she couldn’t sleep in Tess’s (portacot) bed. I started to second guess myself. I wondered if we’d waited too long. I felt guilty for not moving her sooner. She went happily back to her cot and we didn’t say anything any more.

Then, a month ago we went to a bed shop and picked out a new bed. I figured that we’d get a bed for her room. Her Granny Anne could sleep in it when she comes to stay next week. She could get used to the bed slowly by it just being there and one day she might like to try it out.

Rose wanted the wrought iron one with rosebuds and the Dora the Explorer duvet cover. We selected a lovely hardwood bed with a bookcase headboard that is so gorgeous she hopefully will still be using it when she’s a young woman. It arrived last Friday and I put it together on Saturday. Rose hasn’t slept in her cot since.

Rose loves her bed. She loves reading stories in her bed, she loves sleeping in her bed. There’s been no transition issues in the slightest. Every night we’ve asked her if she wants to sleep in her cot or her bed, and she chooses bed. Yesterday she said to me, “Mum, I don’t want Granny Anne sleeping in my bed. I want to sleep in my bed. I want Granny Anne to sleep in my cot.

I guess the time was right!

Further adventures

Rose really really likes the neighbourhood cat, Ben. He’s been coming by at least once a day for a saucer of milk, and Rose usually stops whatever she’s doing (even eating ice cream!) to come over and talk to him.

The only problem is that she doesn’t really know very much about cats. She doesn’t seem to grasp the fact that he’s not a person. You have to do a lot of explaining and mediating her interactions (“Rose, don’t push his head into the saucer!” “Rose, don’t wrap his tail around your wrist like a bracelet,” and “When Ben runs away like that it means he’s scared.”). This is pretty understandable, she’s never really interacted with a cat before.

Things start to get a little weird, however, when you listen in to her conversations with Ben. The other day she asked him if he’d like to have a picnic with her. This evening she told him about getting a letter from her friend Phoebe, and then rushed off to get the letter to show him. Then I had to explain that Ben isn’t really interested in Tinkerbell gumboots. All very strange, adorable, and funny.

Her paternalistic attitude towards Ben in thinking that he needs help with everything is somewhat reflected in her relationship to Tess. She’s always been interested in helping with Tess, in particular with giving Tess bottles. But just recently she has been really helpful taking Tess’s shoes and coat off when we come home. It absolutely melts my heart to hear here mimicking adultspeak to Tess. “Come on, Tess. Let’s take your shoes off. Here you go, now your coat.”

Tonight we were over at Will and Ann’s place for dinner. Tess started crying at one point, she had tried to push a toy stroller down some steps and went for a tumble. I picked Tess up for a cuddle. Rose implored me to let her cuddle Tess. Tess wasn’t completely reassured by the semi-headlock that Rose put her in, but she understood the love.

Happy 3rd Birthday Rose!

It was Rose’s birthday yesterday – we had such a lovely day! Opening presents in the morning and the Zoo in the afternoon. Then on to Balmoral Beach for a fish-and-chip dinner, and home for birthday cake. Such a lovely day.

I took a whole bunch of photos which can be viewed here.

But really, all you need to know about Rose’s birthday can be discovered by watching this video, which I started shooting shortly after she woke up at about 7.20am (not bad!).

Chris and I are particularly taken by the list of things that she needs “in case I need it for my party” (note: her “dummy” is a set of Tess’s teething rings that she has taken a shine to, Patch is her rabbit, and Whinny is her soft toy horse that I bought years ago in a little shop in Harvard Square for a girlfriend’s baby, but couldn’t bear to part with it.)

We’re having her birthday party next weekend so that Granny Anne and Pap can join us for the celebrations. She’s celebrating her birthday with her friend Joe and his mum Tara.