11/15/09 - My Little Preschooler

Eva has become quite the “little grown-up” lately.  When I tell either of the girls to do something, Eva will try to parrot me by turning around and repeating the order to Amanda.  “Sit down and eat your dinner, Amanda!” she’ll scold, as she herself walks away from the table.  “Eva, you’re not the mommy,” has become a frequent refrain in our house.   

 

As soon as we put Amanda down for her nap, Eva calls out, “It’s school time!” and gets out her little lap desk and crayons.  Her favorite activity is cutting out pictures with her little scissors and pasting them where the directions say on the page: behind the kitten, on top of the mountain, on the girl’s left hand, etc.  It’s adorable to see how proud she is of her accomplishments. 

 

Eva’s very observant and imaginative, and it always makes for entertaining conversation.  "Mommy, there's no more baby in your tummy!  Now your tummy is squishy!"  She told me the other day.  Thanks for noticing! 

 

When they’re playing together, Eva will often feed little sister her “lines”:  “Say, ‘It’s time to go to the doctor,’ Amanda!”  And Amanda will willingly oblige.  It gets really funny when she tells Amanda to argue with her.  “Say, ‘This is your dog,’ and then hand him to me, Amanda.”  After sister repeats what she’s been told, Eva will turn around and respond, “No, that’s not my dog!”  Way to keep things interesting.  

 

They love to pretend that they’re going somewhere: the library, the “hair-plane”, the store, or even Grandma’s house.  Inevitably, for whatever reason, mommy and daddy’s room ends up being their ultimate destination.   Awhile back I asked Eva, “Why are you girls on my bed?”  ”Cause this is Home Depot,” she replied, “and I’m buying tools to fix the tent.”  Alrighty, then!

 

Fall Colors

The weather is getting colder, the icy winds are getting stronger, and the leaves are turning vibrant shades of red and yellow.   The girls are getting used to wearing their heavy coats again, and always relish an opportunity to try out their new umbrellas on a rainy day.   Already we’ve had two bouts of hail, and even occasional funnel clouds in neighboring counties. 

 

The girls love to watch the squirrels in our backyard scamper around, gathering food for winter.  We leave apple cores and other treats for them sometimes, and it drives Rebel to distraction watching them chatter and scold at him, safely beyond his reach through the window.  It’s become next to impossible not to track pine needles into the house from our neighbor’s tree.  Occasionally one of us will find a stray one in the carpet that pokes through our socks, but thankfully they’re easy to vacuum up.

 

Keeping Busy

The job search has been frustrating and wearing at times, but Dave is keeping himself busy in the meantime.  He patched up and painted the alcove that used to be a fireplace, installed remnants of laminate flooring he found on Craigslist, and turned it into and nice entertainment area with bookshelves and TV.   He tore out our nasty bottom cabinets and replaced them with the nice ones from Lowe’s that we’d been slowly collecting over the past year.  It makes the kitchen look so much larger, and now we have lots more counter space! 

 

Dave also spends a lot of time with the girls.  He loves to take them on the local bike trail when the weather is good.  Eva rides her tricycle and Amanda scoots along on her little Fisher Price ride-on.   When it’s raining, the community center is always an option.  There’s plenty of space for them to run around and burn off all that pent-up steam.

 

Gratitude

It’s hard to believe that the holidays are right around the corner already.   With Thanksgiving coming up, and so many people falling on hard times, we really want to help the girls to understand what it means to be thankful.  It’s fun to be spoiled with presents, but we never want them to lose their gratitude for what they’re given, and it’s never too young to learn. 

 

A couple of weeks ago Eva found a toy catalog.  She flipped through a few pages, pointed to a toy she wanted and said, “Daddy, you buy me that!”  Awhile later I took the girls shopping with me, and they kept asking for things that caught their eye.   They had started to develop a little entitlement attitude.   A normal stage of childhood, but one that has to be nipped in the bud before it gets out of hand.

 

It’s a normal life lesson that every one of us has to learn eventually:  you can’t always get what you want.   So now we’re making an effort to remind the girls to be thankful for what they have.   I continue to take them shopping with me so that they once again get used to the fact that most shopping trips don’t involve buying a new trinket.  I had Eva help me pick out toys to donate to Goodwill.   We remind them to say “Please” and “Thank you” when they want or receive something, and we’re trying to scale presents back to special occasions, like birthdays and holidays. 

 

This Christmas, with Dave being out of work, we’ll be trying to keep things simple, anyway.  This year we plan to just get one present for the both of them: a small toy kitchen they can use indoors when the weather is too cold for them to use the playhouse.  They’ll love playing on it with the toy dishes Grandma Geri sent them.