I have an abundance of card stock in my art supplies, and Claire has a lunchbox full of stickers. She’s getting to an age where games (taking turns, following rules) are interesting. Instead of buying a card set, I decided to be frugal and make a memory matching card games. There are small sets with large-ish pictures, and bigger sets with smaller stickers. We tried out the butterfly game after dinner and it was a hit!
The inspiration came from this post.
We’ve had a busy week, with someplace to go every day until today. I decided today would be a relax-at-home day, and this morning Claire and I did two crafts. She is still learning how to handle materials, developing fine motor skills, and beginning to grasp the steps of a project. The two crafts we did were from the All Kids Network. We made a paper plate sun and the tissue paper fish.
With the fish, I prepared the materials and gave them to Claire. She put the bits of paper on. I forgot about putting the eye and the smile on, but no biggie.
With the sun, I cut up the pieces; Claire painted the plate and the smile. After it dried, she put glue on the rays and the sunglasses and told me where to position them.
She’s not quite three, so these projects are mostly a collaborative effort. But we have fun, and she’s starting to do more on her own. Here’s a happy child:
I want Claire to have a mailbox for pretend play (inspiration came from No Time For Flash Cards), but we don’t need yet another plastic toy around, and I could use the money on something else. Besides, any day we use paint is considered a good day according to Claire. 🙂
So I dug out a shoebox, and Claire painted it. Blue blue blue! I painted on the word, then gave it a coat of Mod-Podge to seal it. Voila!
Yesterday Claire and I went to Happy Hollow Park and Zoo. We had lots of fun with the rides. One of the featured activities was Cardboard City. Visitors are encouraged to play and create a city of cardboard based on imagination in the Meadow, using old boxes and paint. And this gave me an idea.
I’ve been wanting to give Claire a barn to play with, but many of them are outrageously expensive. So I found an old box and, with a little cutting and taping and painting, ended up with a barn. Claire helped me paint the barn red. Then I took over with the roof and trim, and collaged the inside of the box. I’ve had the paint, paper, and tape on hand for years, so for a very minimal cost we have a toy barn! It may not last as long as a wooden one, but we had fun making it (especially me). Now all we need are some farm animals!
The summer speeds along. It’s astonishing! Our transition into the new home continues. Claire, especially, has difficulty. Her sleeping habits are regular again. However, she has zero interest in being away from me, ever (even for me to be in another part of the house sometimes), and she is especially rejecting of others. It started right after the move, with her Grandma Kay. Whenever Kay would come near her, she told grandma to go into another room, to go away.
One of my sisters visited later in June, and Claire was pretty horrible to her too. After the first day in which Claire was shy and sweet, she would raise her voice to her aunt. “Don’t say words!” “Go away!” “Don’t look at me!” These demands were accompanied by screeching. (Claire didn’t have the same feelings toward her uncle, however; he was just nifty.) We took the opportunity to admonish her about being kind, but the bottom line is that in this new house and new life there was an unfamiliar person taking a lot of my attention and time, and this just didn’t sit well with Claire.
A couple weeks ago a friend of mine came to visit, and Claire behaved similarly. She warmed up to my friend a bit, but would bluntly state her wishes too, such as “Don’t talk to me.” Then last Friday, when her beloved babysitter came for the first time in a month, she decided the babysitter was no good either. After about 45 minutes with A__, she didn’t want the babysitter to sit in the same room, or touch any of her toys, and so on. I got a call about an hour before I was due home; A__ informing me what was happening to let me know. I decided that as long as Claire was safe (not self-injuring or something), that I would come home at my planned time. When I came home she’d been crying and wailing for me and clung to me.
She’s even been mean to her father in this way. And increasingly, Claire says, “I want to go back to the old house.” I conclude that this has been a seismic shift for her. If she can be taken away from her home, then what about Mommy? What if Mommy is taken away, or she is taken from Mommy? Many days she doesn’t want to go anywhere, sometimes not even outside. Not to the grocery store, the park, for a walk. Pushing her is a catalyst for a tantrum; then everyone is miserable, so what’s the point?
And the tantrums! Oh, they have become ever more voluble and frequent.
However, it’s not all negative stuff. Claire is as sweet, playful, and loving as ever — even more so. So much change in a little life…
We’ve done a few activities, such as:
Berry picking in June!
“Washing” windows:
Baking cakes (and licking batter off the beater):
Having backyard picnics:
Enjoying the sprinkler:
And making stuff, like sand clay and painting birdhouses! Claire made the bowl with a little shaping help from me, and I made the candle holder.
I painted the white coat and Claire added her flair:
Onward to August!
It had been a rough winter for Claire. She got sick nearly every month since September (and coincidentally she started preschool one day a week that month), had two bouts of pneumonia, and required treatments to help her breathe. The latest illness began on Mother’s Day, and by Thursday she was in a spiral of non-stop coughing. I mean that literally. She couldn’t utter a sentence without coughing between words. She couldn’t eat; she coughed so much and so hard she vomited. She hardly slept. The doctor had me bring her in and gave her breathing treatment, then sent us home with a prescription for prednisone and albuterol treatments. We also discussed whether to forgo attending preschool in the fall.
At our follow-up appointment on Tuesday, we discussed the situation. It turns out that Claire has asthma. This may be something she outgrows, as her respiratory system gets bigger and her immunity builds. She’s very petite. We have an asthma plan. When she’s healthy, it’s the green zone, and we need not do anything. At the sign of any sickness (fever, runny nose, sneezing, congestion, coughing — any one of these) we enter the yellow zone. We are to give her albuterol every four hours round the clock and prednisone twice a day until the cold goes away.
However, if she’s in the yellow zone more than a week, or she falls into a coughing spiral as she has, we enter the red zone and need to seek emergency attention — Urgent Care if they’re open, the ER if not.
At first I felt a little sad about pulling her out of preschool. I really want her to have the social outlet, and I want it too. The doctor pointed out, though, that if she’s sick all the time, she can’t get the social contact anyway. And preschool is a lot more exposure to illness than small play-dates with friends. So, I set about creating an at-home curriculum for us next year: reading/phonics, science, art & craft, music, games, adventure days. I’ll invite a couple friends over to join us now and then. And after more pondering, I realize that I have a gift. Soon enough, Claire will go to school five days a week and enter into her own life away from me. I have the privilege of her company for another year, at least, and maybe two.
I just returned from a day-long retreat with my friend Karen, where I realized something else. We’ve resorted to doing “puffs” — breathing ten times from a little chamber where the medicine is squirted into — because she fought the breathing treatments that took ten minutes every time. And I realized, today, that by sitting with her and helping her count breaths to ten, I am setting the foundation for her to learn how to settle herself and become aware of breath. It also helps me to stop and breathe, and be quiet. Breathing is the foundation of meditation, which leads to attention, which leads to love, which leads to patience, which leads to forgiveness, which leads to peace.
So what first seems like a hindrance has turned out to have aspects to appreciate. I’m grateful for that.
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I have written this post quickly, because my life is in flux and I have to give my attention to other things: dinner, and packing. I feel eloquence is lacking in the above reflection, but it will have to do. We move on Tuesday! So much to do before that!
Lookee what I made! I finally took a lesson on how to use the sewing machine I was given for my birthday 11 months ago. Now that I know my way around the machine (the basics, at least) there will be no stopping me. This one is for Claire. (Pillowcases, anyone? When I learned to knit, all I made for the longest time were scarves. You can happily knit just scarves for a long time. I can see the same thing with pillowcases.)
Throughout my life, writing has been a cherished expression for me. At one point I even felt that writing was as important as breathing. I so urgently wanted to tell my story about where I came from, what was done to me, what had happened in my life. I wanted to share tidbits, information, inspiration, resources. It was a form of therapy, a creative outlet, and a way to connect intimately with others (even when those others were anonymous).
I’ve noticed since becoming a mother I have written less. No, I take that back. For the first two years of Claire’s life, I wrote about her. Then I decided to reign that in, since she is developing greater agency over her life. Lately, blogging about my life strikes me as an incredibly narcissistic activity; it always has been, but at one point I actually thought it had value. Increasingly, though, I see that my vignettes, reflections, and insights are not original, and I’m not certain that writing them (here or in a paper journal) effects anything beneficial. I don’t seem to need to do it anymore. So this blog has become a place to link to resources related to my current activity (parenting) and the occasional photo or movie of Claire. This morning I realized there are usually three factors that cause my writing silence; any one of these can be cause for me to abandon writing for while:
As it happens, all of these factors are true at the moment. Hence, my sporadic posts.
I’ve been reading voraciously this year. Some years I barely touch fiction, other years I devour it. This is a fiction year. Yet I’ve also been immersed in a number of existential books by Eckhart Tolle, and most recently I’ve been soaking in Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life.
At this point, I’ll keep living as usual. There’s a season for all things, and the writing season will probably come ’round again.
We had fun with shaving cream and food coloring!
Claire and I made this little collage, courtesy of my favorite idea site… and left real carrots out for the Easter bunny.
I just heard a fascinating interview on Fresh Air with Judith Shulevitz as the guest.
She has written a book about the history of the Jewish sabbath and also included a memoir about her own journey into keeping Sabbath customs. I found her lyrical and articulate, and her views impressed me. What I especially appreciate is the concept of resting as a community, and of stepping back from our attempt to manipulate and control the world for one day.
For one day each week, the Sabbath encourages us to enter into a moment outside of ordinary time and all the cares associated with it. I can’t do her ideas justice; it’s worth a listen.
Even for an agnostic such as me, it was worth a listen. And now I want to read the book. It resonates the way the Unplug campaign did. I found that the weekend I unplugged for one day, I felt more centered. Last weekend I did not unplug, and I felt I hadn’t even had a weekend!
Go here for more information and to listen to the interview.
Inspired by No Time For Flash Cards
If I’m ever at a loss as to what to do, I head over to No Time For Flash Cards for ideas. I love this site. It’s clear the Allie loves children, especially young ones.
Today we did the letter of the week, small k.
And letter of the week, big E.
