Kid-Modes: Two

This is my last blog before I have the baby. I’m supposed to be induced Thursday, and heaven help my family if I’m not. Oh, am I ready to be done!

The kids have two settings these days: “idyllic” and “why-are-we-having-a-fifth?”

Here are some examples of each, by child:

Carter used to hit when he was mad. We’ve since realized he has around fifty punches stored daily inside his arms and that you can let him release them in more appropriate ways. We encourage him to punch the couch, our hands, and Mia. (Hey, Mia likes play-fighting. We’ll see later if this turns into a very unwise decision.) Now, when Carter is mad, he points his finger at the offender and lectures them in very serious, very authoritative baby-language.

One time, Carter was punching my palms with only his right hand and I kept trying to get him to use his left, too. I pointed to his left hand. “Use this one!” He kept frowning at my instructions, confused. Finally, he glanced at my palms, glanced at his left hand, and then cocked his right arm and punched his own left hand. He was a little frustrated when I burst into laughter. After all, he’d gone out of his way to obey my bizarre instructions. What did I expect?

Carter can clap and slap hands during pat-a-cake. He winds up and throws with painful accuracy (the bull’s eye is generally a literal eye). He defies nearly all efforts to video-record his actions, by dropping his activity and diving for the camera any time he sees it. He throws all his food on the floor to show he’s full. He can unlock the sliding glass door. He once escaped and got three houses away. We found his blanket in the neighbor’s yard. He will die before he stays in one spot for sacrament meeting, dance lessons, restaurants, or parks. Parks? Are you kidding? Who doesn’t love slides and wood chips? Carter. He chases birds, strays into the parking lot, and climbs on tables with the intent of becoming paralyzed.

Meanwhile, Mia is in the why-phase.
Me: Mia, I’m so glad you’re my daughter.
Mia: (astonished) Your daughter? Why?
Me: Because then you get to live with me.
Mia: But why are you glad I be your daughter?
Me: Because then you don’t live with someone else. Because I get to hang out with you.
Mia: Why?
Me: I just like you.
I don’t think I’m good at explaining things. Mia walks away from these discussions very confused.

In fact, Mia asks so many times about being my kid that we had the following conversation.
Mia: Will I still be your kid when you have the baby?
Me: No. You didn’t know? You’re going to live in the mountains.
Mia: (throwing herself onto the coffee table, screaming) I don’t want to live in the mountains!
Me: Honey—oh I’m so sorry. I was teasing. You’ll live here. You’ll always be my kid.

I swear I thought Mia would be amused by the change in our verbal routine. I wasn’t planning on tears—big ones that stuck to her eye lashes as she gave me a hug. Ever since then, we’ll be out on the porch with the whole family, enjoying the evening weather, and Mia will turn to me and say, “Remember when you said about me and I will live in the mountains? But you were just kidding? And I’m not going to live in the mountains.” She thinks this is very funny, but always insists on an answer, as well. “No, you will still live here. I love you.” And I make sure she gets a hug.

Other isolated Mia quotes:
Mia: (excited, talking to friends.) And then? A big-people comes into the game and be’s the monkey in the middle!
Mia: (frustrated) I am go-getting it.
Mia: Don’t put milk on my cereal. It might sog.

Mia still screams when she’s angry. Riverton City has not issued any citations for volume. We will keep you posted.

The other day we were at a splash park. Cora filled an empty chip-bag halfway with water, offered strangers a chip and then gathered an entourage of giggling followers as, one-after-another, the unsuspecting participants reacted to a surprise finger-dip of liquid instead of a snack. Even the adults were cracking up. It’s like she set up her own candid-camera episode. Cora is hilarious. We had family over for dinner once when Cora ran laughing into the front room for no reason and handed Mike a ball-cap, upside down. She escaped as everyone realized Mike’s lap was drenching from the water spilling from the cap. The only problem with Cora is that she tends to take a joke too far. The eventual time-out that night came from dumping a cup of water down Mike’s back while still inside the house. For some reason, I find her water theme amusing since she was so terrified of water for the first half of her life. I’m so proud of her for actually getting wet at the park. Saturday was the first time she’s ever been splashed without screaming. She got decently wet by the end.

Cora also likes to gets even. After a fight with me, she slyly turned on all the lights in the house, including the ones in the basement, porch, and loft right before we had to leave for the store. She knows I hate 1) moving when I’m pregnant, 2) leaving the lights on, and 3) thinking. So I’m trudging around getting more and more frustrated at having to turn off so many dang lights and finally I turned to her and said, “You turned on all these lights on purpose!” Not everyone has the capability to portray multiple emotions, but Cora makes it easy. Guilt, amusement, fear (of punishment), and pride (you have to admit that trick was diabolically clever). Seriously, she was so afraid to laugh and she wanted to so bad. I wish I’d been a cool parent and laughed with her, but I was so mad.

Speaking of water, we took the kids to a water park called Seven Peaks and stayed inside the grounds for our entire goal of two hours! It was close call, and we even had Karen and Eric to help us. We spent forty-five minutes in the heated kiddy pool (the kids liked it at first but got bored), ten minutes of pure torture in the wave-simulator (the younger three were shaking and screaming from terror and cold—both very real), and decided to go home, despite the fact that a second set of friends had just arrived. We got Carter and Mia dressed while Mike took Cora and Lina so they could at least go down one slide. They ended up having so much fun that Mia got in with them. Meanwhile, I walked Carter around the park. He wanted to walk up and down a bridge. We’re talking like twenty times, I was 36 weeks pregnant. (It is pathetic I just complained about that.) He also wanted to say hi to food-workers. And steal fries from the counter. He’s kind of hard to resist. But at least the girls all had fun and even want to go back someday. We stopped at the BYU creamery on the way home and got hamburgers and ice cream, which was the highlight of the trip.

Lina’s summer break has finally started!! It’s hard to get to bed on time when the sun goes down so late. This has led to more than one melt-down and several impromptu naps on the couch. Lina used to wake up from naps and insist that no time had passed, because she truly believed that none had. One time, she fell asleep into her room during a time-out, woke up totally stressed about getting to school, and it was six o’clock in the evening.

Lina has been so awesome lately. When Haylee (Mike’s sixteen-year-old niece from Pennsylvania, visiting Utah to hang out with relatives and check out some colleges) came to stay the night with us, Lina disappeared as soon as she got here. It was so unlike Lina that I searched the house and started to get worried. She was making the bed in the basement for Haylee. Lina assembles birthday presents by hand for her friends—necklaces, usually. She earned 104 points at school, worthy of a final-day ice cream party. She packs her own sack-lunches and wakes me up when it’s time to hug good-bye. Is it so terrible that I don’t help her? She has definite opinions on how to style her hair, but still wants me to brush the thick, long, brown locks every day. My girls are all lucky with their hair—Carter, too, considering he missed all seven of Mike’s cow-licks. I swear Mike was so traumatized growing up with his hair that cow-licks is the first the he checks for in the hospital. “Any in the front? The back? Okay, Nikki, I guess you want to see the baby, too, huh?”

Other news: my parents came for a few fun-filled days on their way to Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, where they watched my brother, Nate, complete a full ironman. A huge congratulation to him!!! During the same visit, we got to see most of my Halladay cousins, who not only grew up in my hometown, but attended the same church and high school as me, so we’re pretty close. It was awesome to see everyone.

After all that fun, we’re settling in for a home-bound stretch. We will send pictures when the baby is born!