MiciahMiciah's behavior lately has been phenomenal! I don't know if it's because she's 7 now (and hence older and wiser?) or because she has her own room and space, or both. But for the first time in her short life, her and I have no tension between us. It's incredible!! Really, I can hardly tell you how good this feels. Instead of yelling at her near-hourly because she's being whiny and ridiculous, we tell each other jokes and laugh together.
Like, the other day we were calling each other names. This has always been a favorite pasttime of ours. Some of what I remember:
Miciah: You're a toothbrush.
Tamra: You're a toothbrush that's been used to clean the toilet.
Miciah: Eww. You're a toothbrush that's been used to clean the toilet that's been flushed DOWN the toilet!
Miciah: You're a fire.
Tamra: You're a fire dog.
Miciah: You're a fired dog that rides on the fire truck.
Tamra: You're a fire dog that pees on the fire to put it out.
She thought the peeing on the fire line was hilarious and laughed for a solid few minutes. ... Nothing like the laughter of a 7-year-old to make you feel like a comic genius to simple minds!
She does lots of projects now. With her own room and her own space, I've given her access to all my craft and scrapbooking stuff (this was initially hard to do, but she loves it so much!) so long as she doesn't use too much of it at once, and so long as she takes care of it. So far, this arrangement is working out wonderfully, and she comes up just about everyday with a new project. For instance right now she's been focused on Valentine's Day. She has made a Valentine's Day gift and/or card for the family, Elijah, Teancom, both of her teachers, and her old Kindergarten teacher. On top of that, she made a little folder envelope thing for these people to put valentines into. So cute.
She already ran out of Elmer's glue (2 bottles of it). I told her that if she needed any craft supply in particular, we'd get it for her, and this makes me feel good in supporting her artistic side. She really loves to create things, and she's quite good at it. I've also seen her experimenting with different supplies. I've seen her using Elmer's glue on black paper to write words (which only really works for a few hours until it dries clear). She's tried to use buttons in several unsuccessful but clever ways. ... It's fun to see what she comes up with, and it's heartwarming when those things are for me.
(The other nice thing about her having her own room is that the boy's room stays fantastically clean. Clearly Miciah was the messy one. Plus, it's just easier to keep a room clean when there's less people sharing that room. Miciah's room is nearly always messy now, but since it's not really a shared space, I can close the door and forget about it. This is VERY nice.)
So for the first time in our shared existence, I have really been enjoying Miciah. We've been able to get rid of her No Whining and Going to Bed Good charts because she no longer needs them. Her wild tantrums are gone. She's helpful with the boys. Her response when I ask her to do something is usually, "Sure, mom," instead of the old, "Ugh! WHY?!" I LIKE this Miciah!!
ElijahElijah is loving the wii. He's especially good at tennis: he flails his arms and jumps around like a madman. This makes him inconsistent, but often genius! He can pull off amazing shots.
And today he discovered wii boxing, and for the same reasons, he is also genius at boxing! Seriously, watching him play is something else. They'll replay his KO's and it'll show in slow motion the punches he does. Wow. I can't do that. So he's on a rapid incline to boxing pro.
Elijah is also into cooking right now. He'll come up to me and ask to make cookies or brownies or cake. He "writes" me "recipes" that consist of things like cake, cookies, marshmallows, ice cream, all mixed together and put in a cake pan to bake. Cute. The other day he was insistent that we make pumpkin pie. Pumpkin pie in January? That hardly seems right. But he pushed and pushed, and besides we still had one pie crust left (I don't make them, I buy them--a tradition from my mother), so we made pumpkin pie. It was fun to see Rob's reaction when he came home and found a pumpkin pie sitting in the fridge. And it was fun to make a pie with my son.
After the pie got out of the oven and I set it out to cool, he came running into the living room and said, "Mom! Come look! It's real!" He was referring to pumpkin pie's ability to "breathe" as it's cooling. It brought back memories from my childhood, watching the cooling pumpin pie as it was bubbling, and thinking it was alive.
And Elijah is now finally showing interesting in reading and writing. Hurray! He can actually write pretty well, and he knows more letters than I thought (since he won't consistently learn from me). This is good, since Kindergarten isn't that far away now.
TeancomTeancom is daily discovering new words and ideas. My favorite lately was him discovering that he is a boy just like Rob. They were in the bathroom getting ready for a shower and Teancom said, "Dad, you have a tail!" Rob looked at him and said, "So do you." Teancom replied, "Yours is big."
Teancom is a sweet, sweet child. Very easy to discipline in the fact that he never needs to BE disciplined. However, when he does need disciplining (once a year), it's actually very hard because he's SO sensitive. He'll react to the "I'm disappointed in you" look. So a few fun disciplining stories:
Toilet PaperTeancom decided that toilet paper was fun. He decided this 2 days in a row (that's a LONG bad streak for him). On the second day, Rob was home and I asked him to go into the bathroom and take care of it. He walked into the bathroom and with considerable emphasis and a raising of his voice, said, "NOOO!!" Teancom ran out of the bathroom and burst into sobs! I held him as he cried for a good 5 minutes or so. Rob came back and said, "Was I too hard on him?" I had to laugh because a) I remember disciplining Miciah and b) without discussing it, Rob had done exactly what I'd hoped he would. Teancom is so sensitive, that I knew if Rob were to go in there and be firm, Teancom would never play with the toilet paper again. And he hasn't.
Water BottleTeancom asked for a drink of water. We have 2 itty bitty water bottles that we keep in the fridge for them to get whenever they want. So I told him to get the water out of the fridge, which he did. In the past he's spilled the whole thing everywhere and that's frustrating. But I was trying it out again. I went into my room and was reading a book when he came in and said, "Water mess, Mommy." I said, "Where's a mess?" "On the floor." Ugh! I looked at him and said in that annoyed mother tone, "You're in trouble, Teancom." He immediately frowned, lowered his head, and started crying. I told him to stop crying and show me the mess. He brought me to a washcloth on the ground. It was dirty with chocolate and I thought that might be the mess he was talking about. Then I picked up the washcloth and underneath it was a pea-sized amount of spilled water. I realized that he had tried to clean up the water all by himself! And then I felt like the world's lousiest mother.
ChurchTeancom has figured out that it's fun to run up and down the aisle to sit with Daddy on the stand. Does he want to actually sit up there with Daddy? No. He wants to run up and back. And while I admit that's fun, it's slightly distracting for everyone else. And while part of me knows I should try to keep this behavior to a minimum, the OTHER part of me says, "Dang it. That's their FATHER up there." So we've made a deal that he can go up to sit with Daddy if he will go and SIT with him.
Last week was a particularly bad one in terms of running up and down the aisles, so Rob took him aside right before the meeting 2 days ago and asked him to be very good. Teancom said he would be, of course. Still, Teancom wanted to go sit with Daddy. I told him no. He asked again and I told him no again. He said, "Want to go up stairs!" And there it was. Teancom even admitted that he really only wanted to run up and down the stairs.
I let Teancom go up there once and told him that if he went up and came right back, he'd be in trouble. He ran up to Daddy and when Rob saw him, he gave Teancom that "I'm very disappointed in you" look. Teancom immediately frowned and lowered his head. Rob let him sit with him for a few minutes, though, which is good. And then a few minutes later Teancom was back. ... And wanted to go back and sit with Daddy. So true to my word he got in trouble a little and then he was fine for the rest of the meeting.
The kids are getting used to not having Daddy sit with us at church, and it's actually working pretty well to sit on our own. Still, Elijah will find JW and sit by her for some part of most meetings, but the fact that we survive them without her help some Sundays is a blessing. I'm LOVING that my kids are getting older!
Kids Getting Older
Speaking of loving that my kids are getting older... One of the other things that is really really nice is that for the first time since I started having kids, I can clean the house and it'll stay clean! I no longer feel like I'm just running to the next mess in the house. I no longer feel like I clean one mess while they just make another in a different room. And it's fantastic! My house, particularly the shared space, is nearly ALWAYS clean now, which makes it feel a bit calmer in the house all the time. Woo hoo!
The kids also play together on their own, and this is also fabulous. Even Teancom, who should need a lot more work and attention, since he's a 2-year-old. Teancom is not your normal 2-year-old. I tell people he is more like a 4-year-old in his behavior. For instance, if he brings a toy upstairs that is meant for downstairs, all I have to say is, "Teancom, that's a downstairs toy. Can you take it downstairs please?" And his reply EVERY TIME is, "Okay." And then he does it! If I don't want him to touch something, all I have to do is ask him not to touch it, and again, his response is always, "Okay." It's unreal!
Deep Cleaning the House
My focus for the last 2 weeks has been on deep cleaning my house. I've been in process of de-cluttering the house for a few months now and it's been such a successful and rewarding venture, that I extended my efforts throughout the whole house. On Saturday we finally finished. We now have gone through every single room in the house and re-arranged things, thrown things out (mostly given things to Goodwill), and cleaned every inch of the space. Saved for last were Miciah's room (the part that was my craft supplies and/or random things) and the storage room. But since we'd done every other room, re-arranging the storage room (which was CRAZY) was not too hard, and doing Miciah's room just required me to put things where they go. ... Now the only thing left is the garage (since Rob moved some things from the storage room into the garage), but that'll have to wait until it's warm outside.
The result of cleaning Miciah's room is that she has a ton more space to do her projects. I found more supplies for her to play with. And the room looks clean now instead of very, very cluttery. We've clearly defined which spaces are hers and which are mine and Rob's. ... After I cleaned up my space in her room, I made her two matching 12x12 pages (my first scrapbooking type project for MONTHS). One has her picture on it and the other says, "Miciah's room." Miciah's room now feels like HER space, and she loves it. She then made Elijah an "Elijah's room" sign and then made me a page since I made one for her, she said. She's so thoughtful.
And that's life here. Things are calm for the moment. Rob still isn't super happy at work, but he's figuring out how to not stress so much about it. The last few days he's made a huge effort to be happy and make me laugh (since I called him a coward. Cause that's what good wives do, I'm sure), and it's been fantastic to feel like I have Rob around. The kids are happy, mostly, and things are under control.
For now.
