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Did you know her favorite color was pink? She wears this swim hat a lot, so her hair won't get cold. For about a week, her bike helmet served the same purpose. We have been potty training for three months now, and I'm trained, but I'm not sure how well she's doing. You can see that we live in an area with a lot of green. As all the dandelions of spring went to seed, we were often stopped in our trek to the car so she could get a "wish" which is what she called the flower. "Look mom! A wish!" she would call out.
She loves "honey buzz" cheerios, and eats bowls of it every day (to make up for everything else that she won't eat, with the exclamation "I hate that!"). She pushes her sister around, both physically and verbally, but barely speaks to any one outside of the family. She ripped half the pages out of her coloring book the other day, setting them aside "for grandpa." (There is also a half-eaten bowl of goldfish for him when he comes to collect.) She loves to color, and play with Kiddo's Snow White, Prince, and Queen figure. We've been talking about letters this week. I've been trying to teach her "I." Four days later, she still can't come up with the name.
She sometimes is polite, and sometimes not. For example, she just ordered me to turn up the music, "Louder." "Louder, please," I responded somewhat automatically. "LOUDER!" she yelled. (I think she thinks she was doing just what I asked, because she always wants me to say things louder, just for the joy of it.)
She wore a bandaid on her finger for a week, crying like a banshee each time it was taken off, enough to make me wonder if the hurt was actually more serious than I thought. Last night my husband made her an enormous splint, and put it on loosely enough that it would fall off while she slept (or actually that we could easily remove). This morning she is convinced that the bandaid miraculously healed her finger while she slept.
I am organizing a mother's preschool for her this fall, along with three or four other little kids her age. I really wanted to send her off to a professional preschool, but it wasn't the right choice for her. I cannot think of an organized class that she has not dropped out of, by sheer persistence of non-participation/non-attendance. She has dropped out of nursery (our church program for kids her age) because she just won't attend. Not even with me, or my husband, or grandma... Then they asked my husband to teach the kids who turn four this year, and told us Babs could attend with him. She really won't do that either. I keep trying to figure out how we're going to watch two kids while my husband shepherds eight tiny kids, and I play the piano. As for swimming class... well, she awkwardly stopped attending that class as well. She just wouldn't go into the pool area, and I was pretty sure that no one, especially the teacher with four other equally small people to watch in a pool, wanted me to leave her there screaming. She would drop out of church, but my husband and I just won't.
And yet she is truly funny. And creative. And loving, when she wants to be. And helpful, when the mood suits her. And when she's happy, she's very, very happy. Perhaps I need to rewrite the poem: "There was a little girl, who had a little curl,..." because there is no curl in her hair, but the rest fits her just fine.
