Cal's Gift Ideas for Grandma

My mom called us this morning to find out our birthday plans for Cal.  Since his birthday is during the Christmas season, I automatically thought that she was looking for gift ideas for Cal for Christmas when she asked me for some things that he likes.

Cal happened to be breathing down my neck at that time, so instead of delivering her some ideas myself, I handed the phone to Cal for him to do that.  "Cal, Grandma is asking for some ideas for Christmas.  Tell her some things that you like."

He got right to it.  "Superheroes.  I like Superhero stuff."

He paused to gather more thoughts. "Um, boy things... umm... Daddy, what do boys like?"

"Tell her things that YOU like, Cal," Dan responded.

"Umm... Ninja stuff. Well, Ninja Turtles... I like Ninja Turtles."  And then  he added, "And
Angry Birds stuff."

Cal then listened to whatever my mom was saying to him, or, at least, appeared to be listening.  After several seconds I'm sure he cut her off when he wrapped up the conversation with a matter-of-fact, "And can you try to remember these things for my birthday?  If you don't, that's okay -- you can just call me."

Turns out, Grandma was looking for some gift ideas for Cal's birthday, so I don't think she'll need to call him back about that.  She got some good ideas and some even better laughs.

Cal's Random Act of Kindness

Cal is usually dressed for bed before Ella is, and last night was no different.  She had just gotten her clothes off when a fully-jammied Cal was darting off to the bathroom to brush his teeth.  He did this all by himself and finished before Ella was fully jammied herself.

Without saying a word, he darted back into our room (this is where we do our jammying for some reason) and hopped up onto the bed to lay with Daddy for a bit.

Once I finished with Ella, I told her, “okay, let’s go brush your teeth.  You go to your bathroom, and I’ll meet you there!”  And off she went.  It’s the same statement every night; and, for whatever reason, I ALWAYS get full cooperation from her when I say it (unlike most other things).

I took a few breaths of my own without having to motivate anyone, respond to any questions, drum up any fake excitement over insignificant things before heading to the bathroom to meet her.  These are some of the best few seconds of my day.

I had just stepped outside our bedroom when Ella came bounding across the hallway floor toward me with her toothbrush in her hand.

“Look what Cal did, Mommy!” she exclaimed, her eyes smiling and her mouth grinning from ear to ear.

I looked at the toothbrush she held in her hand and on the brush was a dab of toothpaste.

My eyes quickly smiled and my mouth grinned from ear to ear as well.  I pictured Cal, alone in the bathroom after brushing his own teeth, thoughtfully grabbing Ella’s toothbrush, opening the tube of toothpaste (something she is unable to do herself), squeezing a little dab of paste onto the brush and gently setting it down next to the sink.  No one was watching or expecting this of him, and he didn’t bring any attention to the fact that he had.  It was a genuine random act of kindness, a small action on Cal’s part that warmed my heart and filled me with pride.

“Cal, that was SOOOOO nice,” I told him.  “I am SOOOOO proud of you.”

And Ella and I then went and brushed her teeth.

A Book About Thunderstorms (by Cal)

As I mentioned in my Daddy's Clouds post (see October), Cal is very interested in clouds.  This  interest has recently expanded to lightning, thunderstorms, tornados, hurricanes, typhoons and cyclones.  Last weekend, we made a trip to the library and came home with books on these topics (and a couple of "Fancy Nancy" books selected by me for Ella).  And it's been nothing but weather ever since.  In addition to reading the library books, we do internet searches for videos of these weather events on a daily basis.  Dan and I regularly field questions on these topics and most of the time provide answers based on our experiences and guts; sometimes, we go back and consult the library books for the "right" answers.

 

Between all of the reading, watching, asking and answering this week, Cal wrote another book on approximately 3x1.5 inch pieces of paper.  Here it is:

 

 

 

 

 

The End (unless Cal decides to add more pages).

 

Please Go to Daddy...

I heard the familiar shuffle of little feet across the carpeted hallway approaching our bedroom at 3:40-something AM today.  It’s become routine – hear kid in hallway, figure out which kid it is, look at clock, calculate amount of time left in slumber, sigh.  I knew my alarm was set for 6:03am (yes, I set my clock on an odd, non-multiple-of-five time), so I found some solace in the fact that I did have a couple more hours to get some much-needed sleep before having to wake up for the day.  I’ve been battling a cold and a nasty headache for a few days now, and every minute of relaxation and sleep seems to help; every minute of loud or stressful dealings with kids seems to worsen things exponentially.

Please go to Daddy, I thought hard.  Please go to Daddy… Please go to Daddy… Please go Daddy. I repeat this in my head every time we have a middle-of-the-night visitor, and I never get the results I wish for.  My kids always come looking for me to address whatever it is they need or think they need in the middle of the night.

“I’m wet.”

“I’m scared.”

“I’m cold.”

“I want to sleep with you.”

“Can you turn my fan on?”

“Can you turn my closet light on?”

“Is it midnight?”

“Zoe’s in my bed!”

I know Dan hears them, too.  Every once in awhile (and by “every once in awhile,” I don’t mean to suggest that this happens with any frequency acceptable by me), he’ll address the need (and by “address the need,” I don’t mean to suggest that he presents solution which is acceptable by the kid with a need) by pre-emptively hopping out of bed the moment he hears a footstep on our bedroom floor and taking the middle-of-the-night visitor back to his or her room where he sternly insists he or she stay in bed and sleep until morning.  For the most part, though, he stays out of it, leaving me to deal with the situation as requested by my visitor.  Not that I blame him for staying out of this – no one in his right mind would deliberately interrupt his sleep to deal with a tired, whiny, unreasonable kid.  Some of us just don't have that choice.

As expected, last night’s middle-of-the-night visitor came to my side of the bed.  Normally, I acknowledge the visitor’s arrival by either getting out of bed to address the situation and get the child back into his or her bed or by just pulling the child up into our bed for him or her to finish his or her night’s sleep there.  I prefer the latter – it’s easier, and I like to cuddle with my kids.  While this is true, I do recognize it’s setting a bad precedent, one that’s difficult to break once it becomes routine.  Plus, Dan very strongly prefers that our kids sleep in their own beds.

Last night, I chose an entirely different approach.  It was Ella.  I knew I didn’t want to pull her up into our bed like she wanted; but I also didn’t want to deal with the struggle that would surely follow my informing her she needed to go back to sleep in her bed.  So I just ignored her and just felt her presence not more than 2 feet from my face.  Five minutes must’ve passed before either of us (Ella or me as Dan was certainly not going to jump in) said anything.  I can be pretty strong willed, but apparently Ella is stronger willed as I was the first to say something about her being there.

“What’s wrong, Baby Girl?” I asked, gently stroking the side of her head, hoping a calm acknowledgement of her being there might have some positive influence on the situation but knowing full well it wouldn’t.

“I want to sleep with you,” she replied, handing me her blanket and sheep as if this proposal of hers was actually going to happen.

I informed her that she couldn’t, which triggered the exact reaction I was looking to avoid by ignoring her when she first came into our room.  She was very upset, throwing pretty tempting phrases like, “I want to sleep with MY Mommy” at me to change my mind.  She also tried supposed statements of fact like, “My bed is cold” and then simple negativity like, “No!”  With every phrase she threw at me, I had a logical, pleasantly-delivered response.  This was a delay tactic as still held out hope that Dan would jump out of bed to take Ella back to her room and get her back into her bed himself.  It also provided me some time to muster the strength to pull myself out of bed to do that deed myself.  I mean, I was tired, sick and prone to getting another headache.  Meanwhile, Dan did chime in with some input like, “Big girls sleep in their beds, Ella,” and then he fell back to sleep.  Gee, thanks for the help.

Finally out of bed, I placed the blanket over my shoulder, picked Ella up and held her over the blanket so she could rest her head on it and then grabbed her sheep.  I love holding Ella in this position.  I then carried them (her, her blanket and that sheep) back to her room where she informed me once again that her bed was cold.

“That’s because your blankets are on the floor, Boo Boo,” I told her.  They were.

“I want to rock,” she informed me.  The glider where I oftentimes nursed her the first year of her life is still in her room, and she likes to rock in it with Dan or me holding her.

“No, we can’t right now” I told her, “but I’ll sit on the floor and hold you for a bit.”  I then proceeded to do so, rocking us back and forth a bit myself.  At the same time, I made a mental note of the time – 3:57am… I’d sit with her another couple of minutes, get her back into bed and then get back into my own by 4:03am.

The room was silent for a minute or two.  After that, it was time for me to transition her to bed.  She initially fought this move, using the same excuses as she did before.  Getting her to actually stay in her bed and fall back asleep seemed a very distant possibility.  Giving up and carrying her back to my bed was more likely.  Plopping into her bed, throwing a blanket on her, blowing her a kiss and darting back to my room only to have her follow me seemed a sure thing at this point.

But, call me the Ella whisperer (last night only), I did get her back into bed without much more of a squawk.  I placed her blanket on her and made sure she had a “handle” (corner of it) in each hand.  I then placed the multi-colored big knit blanket from our neighbors on top of that and then placed her quilt made by Aunt Sandi on top of that.  She could not claim she was cold.

She then told me she wanted to give me a hug and a kiss (this has become a signature Ella thing), to which I was, of course, receptive.  She told me to turn on the fan and the closet light (another part of the bedtime routine), to which I responded with a whispered, “of course” and actually did so.

I was practically holding my breath at this point.  Not that it was good that I was awakened at 3:40-something AM to deal with my middle-of-the-night visitor, but it was ending much better than I had expected.  I was actually walking out of Ella’s room, both of us with grins on our faces, Ella appearing to be cooperative and committed to staying in her bed and me with a good shot of getting almost two more hours of sleep next to my now snoring, fortunate husband.

Our Little Problem Solver

Orange felt star on floor

“Mommy, look, an orange star!” Ella exclaimed to me as she approached me from across the room and saw on our hardwood kitchen floor the smallest of orange, felt stars that had fallen off of Cal’s Frankenstein bookmark.

“I see it!” I responded with the excitement that only a mom can muster over insignificant things and non-events.  I’ve gotten pretty good at this over the past couple of years.

She continued to make her way to me, sitting on the bottom of the staircase to put on my shoes.  It was Saturday morning, and we were getting ready to head outside to rake some leaves.  I say “we” and mean “we” – the kids actually helped… or tried to help.

Anyway, she and I exchanged some hugs and kisses after she reached me.  She then turned around, looked toward the kitchen and said, “Where is it?”

I knew exactly where it was, but she wasn’t looking for a response from me; rather, she was just wondering it herself.  Where was that orange, felt star?  Hmm… I saw her thinking.

She then stepped toward where she remembered it being but didn’t see it.  Without saying a word or skipping a beat, our little problem solver then walked around the island, then parallel to the sink, then around the kitchen table and toward me.  This was the exact same path she had taken when she stumbled on that orange felt star the first time.

A couple of steps shy of it, she saw it.  “There it is!” she exclaimed, pointing at it.  This time she didn’t seek recognition from me.  She was simply satisfied she hadn’t lost track of it and then proceeded to dart off and play with “Big Baby” (the larger of her two baby dolls).

I found this to be really remarkable and actually worthy of genuine excitement that went unexpressed.  Ella figured out on her own HOW to find what she knew she had seen moments earlier and then found it.  If she’s anything like her mother, this will be a very practical, frequently-used skill when she has kids of her own.