Cora started preschool again! Can my little girl be so grown up? She can read Bob Books like Bow-Bow and Jip’s Tip. She’s learning to tie her shoes. This reduces her to tears every day, however. I should have waited a few more months. She had her very own treasure hunt fifth birthday party with ten guests. (For her fourth birthday, Cora only had six guests and Lina had ten and I heard about it for a year so you’d better believe we were having ten this time. I even invited stand-by children, which really paid off when one of the original set left for vacation.)
Cora checked off her very own happiness and fun charts this summer, earning first a trip to the swimming pool and then ice cream. These charts were designed to entice her to do anything but beg for TV. Force it as much as I did, the charts didn’t work and I had to pull out the big guns.
I banned all three girls from the television for two weeks.
Mike said, “You’re punishing yourself.” Cora said, “I’ll never have fun, ever!” Lina said, “Do you mean two weeks like it’s already Wednesday and the end of next week is Saturday so that’s only ten days without TV? But if you make us wait past next Saturday that’s starting another week! But, Mom! But!” The first day lasted seven. By the way, the tipping point for this decision was the time when I wouldn’t let them watch a show and tried to stop the whining by playing charades with the girls.
Mom: Okay, what am I?
Cora: Lina, what is she?
Lina: I’m not playing.
Cora: Tell me what she is!
Mom: Lina, just help Cora play.
Cora: Errrrrr! I don’t want help!
Mia: I’m a monkey! I’m a monkey!
Lina: Why can’t we just sit around and do nothing?
(I’m holding myself back from the appropriate amount of italicized words, in an attempt to keep readability. There were more. Lots more.)
So you can see the kind of dysfunctional playtime we had to fall back on once the TV was off. The first day, I tried to call friends to rescue us. I called like eighteen friends. Obscure ones from last year’s preschool. Long lost ward members living as far away as Lehi. The home-school family that never lets their kids go anywhere unaccompanied by parents. No one. We tried painting, playing cards. Cora had the haunted look of a woman about to walk the plank. Finally, a friend said we could come to their house.
And from that moment on, having no TV was never difficult again.
That’s right. No whining for cartoons. No saying, “I’m bored.” Cora painted two to four pictures per art session, opting for like ten art sessions a day. In a week I had to replenish the supplies we’d had for a year. Lina read to Cora. Mia told knock-knock jokes. Cora taught Mia how to count past ten. The girls dressed up Carter, made pioneer hats for themselves, dug holes for hours in a dirt pile in the backyard, “swam” in the bathtub, and when I wanted to play charades, dang it, they played with me.
I win!
The full two weeks came and went and no one—including me—remembered that we could watch TV again. I’m starting to sound like an infomercial so I’m going to stop but it was seriously incredible. Like I’ll have to send out one of those please-forward-this-or-if-you-don’t-you-probably-hate-your-own-mother emails about it, or bear questionable testimony of it in church.
The irony was that the first day I let them watch TV again, it was to see “The Sound of Music,” a three-hour long version that Grandma and Grandpa Z got for one of Cora’s birthday presents. Like drinking from the fire hose after fasting. They loved the movie, though. Lina explained the plot for ten minutes to one of her friends, who was trying to escape the whole time of course.
Lina finally, finally lost one of her front teeth! She’s seven and a half years old and was very patient but that tooth was stubborn. (“Only two people in my class haven’t lost their front teeth,” Lina would say sometimes, morose and then embarrassed, hoping no one noticed how much she cared. Lina’s not the kind of girl who’s one of the last two people in her class to do anything.) She was playing “tug of war with her mouth” and just a few streaming drools of blood later, had the slippery tooth in her hand. We cleaned it, put it in a baggie, lost it anyway, found it by miracle between the seats of the van, put it under her pillow. The usual.
Lina is taking jazz dance this year, with Cora and Mia taking ballet together. She’s reading Diary of a Wimpy Kid and loves to bike and scooter and play “night games” with older friends down the streets. “Night games are like games you play at night, only you can play them during the day, too, like Sardines and Capture the Flag,” Lina explained when I asked. These days, I let all of the girls roam outside unattended. Poor Carter knows it, too. He searches for the girls, even after a nap, and pounds his head repeatedly into the front door in a slow gonging-motion if he can’t find them.
Carter likes to walk backward like he’s practicing. You know, in case his forward-walking-motion is ever cut off. When he runs into objects like the piano or the wall, it’s like discovering a secret friend. Then, going forward again, he runs, falls, runs, falls. It never gets old. If the front door opens, it’s a mad dash straight to the road, violent wrestling against whoever prevents him. The other day he changed it up by sprinting along the sidewalk, feverishly checking behind him, laughing like Mr. Hyde that I hadn’t “caught him” yet. I let him go five houses. He screamed all the way back to ours. The vast majority of his calories come in the form of soy milk, which he begs for with pathetic moans that Mike and I call “the m sound,” which is almost talking, right? He empties every Ziploc bag from their containers each morning, like a chore. (I stuff them back so he can do it again.) However, he still sits in my lap for as long as I want, whenever I want, and therefore classifies as the best baby ever.
Mia. Oh, what can I say about Mia? You really have to see the pot belly and the amazing, female-80’s-rock-band hair to fully appreciate Mia. Everything she does is framed by it—wild, huge, gorgeous hair. There is no messing it up. Put a ponytail in it, rub it with pancake syrup, shove her head through a turtleneck seven times—it’s just better looking. When I tell her she’s such a good little girl and she says, “No, I not. I a big girl,” her hair punctuates for her. Keeping it back from her face at dinner time is half the reason she doesn’t eat (the other half is the crap I’m feeding her. See the August post.) It vibrates when she unleashes her most powerful weapon: her screaming.
That girl can out-scream the shower scene in Psycho. Her screams bring the house to a standstill. There’s literally no functioning in their wake. If you can get her to stop, she’s one of the most logical children there is (I include Lina in that statement). So the whole episode goes like this:
Mia: (in the middle of the night) I need to go potty.
Mom: (setting her on the toilet seat): Okay, go ahead.
Mia: (screaming).
Mom: Did you want to get on the toilet by yourself? Take your pants down without help? Stop screaming.
Mia: (screaming).
Mom: Stop or I’m going to bed.
Mia: (Silent. Big teary eyes. Huge hair.)
Mom: Use your words and tell me what you want.
Mia: I—I—wanted—I—want—put—it down! (Followed by three catches of breath)
Mom: You wanted to put the toilet seat down yourself?
Mia: (Nodding. Hair billowing. She gets off the toilet, puts the seat up then down, pees and goes back to bed. Hair spilling lusciously over her pillow.)
If I had good leverage all the time, and a megaphone, we’d never have to listen for more than a minute.
As usual, to finish I’m going to quote my children. Mia has so many, I’m piling them all up at the end.
Mia: (riding a tricycle facing back wheels instead of handle bars) I can’t go!
Mike: You need to face the other way.
Mia: (stands up, turns the tricycle around, gets on facing back wheels again) I can’t go!
Lina: (singing) You’re beaut-i-ful.
Grandma Z and Aunt Karen: (at the same time) Oh, thank you!
Lina: (uncomfortable) Pretty much it’s just a song.
Uncle Nate: You did it? I’m glad.
Mia: (confused) You’re God? Oh, I’m Mia. (As in, it’s nice to meet you, God.)
Cora: Mom, tell me if my bum’s sticking out.
Lina: (without looking up from her book) It is. (She’s right.)
Mia: Cora’s mean at me!
Lina: No she’s not.
Mia: Yes her is!
Cora: How do ducks learn to fly?
Mia: There just wing it! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!
Mia: It’s very hurting. I very, very get my mouth very big. Like this.
Mia: Charlotte’s very eating! Yay for Charlotte! Yay for Charlotte! Charlotte, you’re my best friend now! (Mia runs through the house, arms raised in victory)
Mia: Carter’s very having it. (His food)
Mia: Don’t mess up it. You mess up it!
Mia: Do you like my armlace? (a necklace draped on her arm)
And finally, Mia, Cora and Lina all do this last one but especially Cora, who authored it, and Mia, who is never one to be outdone.
Cora: (Wearing a bathrobe) On the outside, I’m Cora but on the inside I’m . . . naked girl!” (Bathrobe thrown open so Cora can flash observer and then run away with what little energy remains in the face of such hilarity. Bum-shaking optional.)
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