Our Kids

Lela’s outbursts have gotten more regular and a bit intense. So much so that I decided to talk to her pediatrician and her teacher. Today was the teacher. It was very insightful, a little depressing and at the same time encouraging.

Have you heard of the four temperaments? Sanguine, Choleric, Melancholic, Phlegmatic

Well supposedly we have all four in each of us but one may become dominant. It seems that right now as Lela is changing from a toddling youth to a young girl her dominant personality type is coming out and it is Choleric. Now I am not in to labels at all but I do want to make sure that I am helping her in the right way during her growing pains. Listening to your child scream at how they don’t like you is hard but listening to your child scream how no one likes her and how she doesn’t fit in is downright unbearable, so much so that I am happy to cling to a label to help me get where I need to be to help her.

So what is a choleric? Here is the wiki answer:
Choleric
The choleric temperament is fundamentally ambitious and leader-like. They have a lot of aggression, energy, and/or passion, and try to instill it in others. They can dominate people of other temperaments, especially phlegmatic types. Many great charismatic military and political figures were choleric. They like to be in charge of everything. However, cholerics also tend to be either highly disorganized or highly organized. They do not have in-between setups, only one extreme to another. As well as being leader-like and assertive, cholerics also fall into deep and sudden depression. Essentially, they are very much prone to mood swings.

What does this mean for me and for Lela? Well it means that she is trying to control me while she views me as trying to control her. Basically she and I are in a power struggle, a struggle because I too am a Choleric. Say what???? Yes it’s true which means as my child rails against herself in fits of rage I also know that deep down she is a very strong child, strong enough to build herself back up and start over as I have had to do many times. I love her so much it is painful, I am drawn to tears just thinking of my little Lela and this struggle she is in to become herself. I can only stand by, set boundaries for her, guide her and carry her when she needs it.

I love you Lela and I am here with you and for you. Always remember how much you mean to Daddy and I. We are so grateful that you fought so hard for this life with us, you have made us so proud and you are only 7! Life has great things planned for you so keep working to uncover your true self.

Move live-blogging! (sort of)

I’m putting the girls to bed right now… around 7:45pm. I started the process around 7:35 after teeth-brushing. Read a book each for the girls (More Cat in the Hat for Lela — darn Dr. Seuss made his books long!). And now starts the fun.

Piper is notorious (in our household, at least) for dragging out bedtime. So far these are the conversations I’ve had:

7:38pm: Piper: “I want my baby reba.” (Rebe is her elephant)
Jason: “You’re holding baby reba.”
Piper: “No, my grumpy baby Reba.”

7:39pm: after locating grumpy baby Reba I return to Piper:
Jason: “Here’s your baby Reba. Now it’s time for bed. You cannot get out of your bed anymore, ok?”
Piper: “Ok!”
Jason: “Do you understand you cannot get out of bed?”
Piper: “Yes, I understand!”

7:41pm: I hear the door open. I know it’s Piper. Lela *never* comes out. She either sends Piper out for her, or she ‘suggests’ to Piper (in a Jedi-like manner I’m sure) to go out. Anyhow. Door opened.
Jason: “Piper, are you supposed to get out of bed?”
Piper: “Nope. Lela wants her star sheets on her and I want the soft side of my blanket on me.”
Jason: “In bed.”
Piper: “Ok!”

I of course put Lela’s star sheets on her and take a guess on which side is the “soft” side of Piper’s blanket. This time I guessed right.

7:48pm: All is quiet. Except for the clickety clack of Otto wandering about looking for stray food, socks, or stuffed animals left below the 4-ft high OttoZone. Something must be up in the bedroom. Luckily Landis is asleep in our bedroom already so I’m not having to juggle three kids.

7:51pm: I knew it! I hear the door:
Piper: “Hi Dad!”
Jason: “In bed.”
Piper: “Is mommy there?”
Jason: “No. Now you cannot get out of bed.”
Piper: “Ok!”

I’m not quite sure she’s grasped the definition of ‘cannot’. Interesting.

7:57pm: Good news… Landis is up! I shouldn’t have said anything!

Well, it started with Lela… seems to have landed a glancing blow on Piper (so far) but then landed completely on Landis. What is it? The nasty-cough-runny-nose-makem-feel-puny bug. Wheee… it provides loads of entertainment, especially for parents!

It’s certainly painful for a parent when their child is sick… there’s only so much you can do and at times you just feel completely helpless. But with Piper and Lela at least you can sit down and explain things with comforting words… they can even have some relief purely by distraction (Leap pad, Doodle pad, Cat in the Hat, etc…)

But when it hits Landis… ouch. It’s terrible hearing her cough then cry because the cough just hurt her throat. And then her cry is so hoarse it makes things even worse. Poor thing.

Uber-kudos to Mystique, though, for taking care of not just Landis, but a sick Lela, a somewhat-sick (but certainly grumpy) Piper, while still managing to make wonderful meals for her goofy husband. All the while surviving on just decaf, too!

So that’s what is going on around here… a couple of sick kids. Who knows how we got sick but we like to blame it on a nearby park that we’ve nicknamed, “get-sick-quick park.” That nickname has stuck so well that Piper was even referring to it by that name when she was talking with my parents over video-Skype. I’m not sure my parents caught it, but when they asked her what she did that day she replied in a cheerful voice, “get-sick-quick park!” Cracked me up.

Mystique and I enrolled in a monthly parenting “class” and our first one was this past Monday. I found it very interesting… the class leader is very enthusiastic and obviously very interesting in the subject and even within the first 15 minutes of the class I began to understand things a bit better.

One side comment that I heard in the class a few times was that the age the girls are entering (3-4) was the hardest time for a lot of people. At age four things suddenly got better. Awesome. I don’t want to say I’m looking forward to 12/21/2008 too much (mainly because I can’t imagine missing any day with the girls, no matter how hard it is), but honestly it is in the back of my head.

So yeah, it’s been hard lately… and it’s not knock against the girls, it’s not their fault that their discovering their voice, the power they (can) wield, and cause and effect. It’s growth. But their growth forces my growth and it’s hard to teach this old dog new tricks.

Especially this trick called “patience.” Not sure if you’ve heard of it. I thought I had, but it’s been taken to the next level. Times two. The great part about being a parent is that usually after things happen I can laugh about it. Sometimes that grace period (of no laughing) is minutes… sometimes it’s days. Once or twice it’s a week.

For example… I think it was last night (yes, it also helps when days and nights blur into one) when Piper was “bothering” Lela. So I stepped in to try and figure out what I could do. Lela looked right at me and almost yelled, “take care of Piper!” And she didn’t mean that in a sisterly, love-my-sister way. She meant, Get. Her. Away… NOW.

One of the things I took away from our first class was presenting the girls with two options and asking them what would work best for them. I know, it might be an obvious way of handling things, but I never thought about it and according to the instructor, the “what would work best for you?” question and the end stimulates some good brain cells and helps with development.

So anyways… last night Lela was not interested in brushing her teeth. So I presented her with her two options. And before I get to these two options (have I added a disclaimer to every other sentence in this post?), I’d like to say that sometimes thinking up of two options which ultimately end up the way you want it is hard, especially late in the day. So anyhow… I said, in my calm, soft voice so she would have to lean in to hear me, “Lela. You can either go to bed right now or you can brush your teeth and we can read books. What would work best for you?”

As soon as that was out of my mouth I knew I had messed up because I just gave her the option of going to bed without brushing your teeth. Ugh. And of course her reply? “Go straight to bed” in an equally soft voice where I had to lean in to hear it (hmmm).

I literally took a deep breath at that moment because thoughts of failure went through my head, and then I watched her turn around and bounce (yes, she actually bounced) out the door towards her room.

At that point I thought to myself, “well, that sucked,” and I turned my attention to Piper who was still willing to get rid of Mr. Plaque.

Thankfully, less than a minute later, Lela came back to the bathroom and said, “I want to read books.” I said, “well, we’ll have to brush your teeth then.” To which she replied cheerily, “Ok!”

So we brushed our teeth and thoughts of success ran through my head. But so did thoughts of running my head into a wall fifty times, so that was an odd state of mind.

I won’t get into how that night went… we’re still having “fun” with sleeping but I think it’s getting better because Mystique and I realized what we were doing. She posted about it previously… we slowly regressed back to what we’re not supposed to be doing. Which is funny (now) since we used to do that with putting the girls to bed when they were one year old. It’s always a learning process.

jason

Hard to believe, but Lela and Piper are three years old today. This is kind of a fun birthday because it’s the first one where they’re actually aware of it.

This morning the girls got up a bit early while Mystique and Otto were out for their exercise. When Mystique came back to the bedroom she sat down and said, “Do you know what today is?” The girls laughed and smiled as we started singing Happy Birthday to them.

If you ask Piper how old she is today, she’ll hold three (usually) fingers and say, “FREEEEE!” If you ask Lela, you’ll get random answers… last night she was 39. But she’s really excited about being 39!

Had a nice family breakfast this morning. The girls even got a free cinnamon roll because it was their birthday. Of course, I took it to work

Tomorrow we head out on our road trip to California! Should be fun. I hope the California Slocums knew what they were getting into when they invited the five of us and are even allowing us to bring Otto the wonder dog. Yikes!

That’s all for now. A huge happy birthday to Piper and Lela. Love you.

jason

I really need to get video of this because no matter how much I try, I won’t do it justice with words. Here goes anyways:

This past weekend Piper and Lela got two holiday shirts from Grammy and Grampy. Amazingly Piper went for one shirt while Lela went for the other without any fuss. Lela’s has a big picture of Santa, which is funny because of the holiday party the day before where she didn’t want to be in the same room with Santa.

Piper’s shirt is green and, I think, says Merry Christmas on it. But the best part about Piper’s shirt is that there are little jingle bells attached to the front. She loves them. She’ll run around just to make them jingle. But it gets better.

I don’t know how she started this, but if she really wants those bells to jingle, she’ll fire up uber-jingle: she’ll bend over at the waist, get her arms all up under her shoulders with her elbows out like she was running, and then just twist her torso back and forth and back and forth so fast. Just like a dog shaking out the rain.

And those bells will j-j-j-JINGLE! She gets such a kick out of it and I swear, every time she does it I can’t stop laughing. It’s too funny.