Just a little update about what in the world we're doing these days…
We got our first/only snow day of the year and let’s just say… Portland snow leaves a little to be desired. And after the 30 minutes it takes to get the kids suited up (after the 30 minutes it takes to dig all the snow clothes out of storage), they were able to go outside for about 14 and 1/2 minutes before they were cold, tired and whining for hot chocolate. Ah well. At least we have the pictures to prove it was here. Because by the end of the day, it wasn’t anymore!
My kids have severe sweet tooths (sweet teeth?). I blame Nick. And over the holidays they all get a bit out of control (including Nick). 
So when Nick sat down with them to make their gingerbread house creation during his stay-at-home dad week, it was all they could do to contain themselves from eating all the decorations before they went on the house. And immediately after they were done, Nolan came up with the idea that after Christmas he should get to invite all his friends over to eat the disgusting cardboard marvelous creation.
After Christmas he didn’t let the idea drop, but his friends were all out of town until this week. So, both Mylie & Nolan each got to have one friend over to help in the demolition. Now please understand, this is the Costco kit, out of the box. We did not make anything from scratch. It is stale and hard and probably full of preservatives and any number of disgusting things. And it tastes AWFUL. It’s not even kind of good. It’s truly vial.
Somehow, that doesn’t matter to kids… at least not ours…
The countdown begins... the excitement is palpable...
Demolition begins
Delicious and nutritious.... NOT!
Oh the carnage!!!
We had so much fun destroying and eating the house, we’ve decided to make it an annual tradition. However, with more advanced warning, maybe we’ll make our own gingerbread next year, lest the children’s stomachs turn to cement bricks.
This little lady LOVES being a big sister, and boy is she good at it. To a fault. She ALWAYS wants to hold Oliver. And she generally doesn’t even mind if he’s crying. She loves to talk to him and get him to smile. And though he’s a little high maintenance right now and cries after a few seconds of her holding him, I do believe he loves her just as much. Yesterday in church she got up to bear her testimony while he was sleeping soundly in my arms. As soon as he heard her voice over the microphone he roused and stuck his little head up in the air to listen (something he had not done with any other speaker at the mic). This could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
Mylie and I had a doozy of a fight today. They’ve been occurring with greater frequency lately, as we’ve had the perfect storm of conditions for tension. For instance, a new baby. Lack of sleep for mom and dad (see post below). A whole lot of togetherness while she’s been home from school for two weeks. Lack of sleep for the kids over New Years. Anyway, the list goes on and on, and the listening skills have gotten worse and worse, and the tantrum behavior has gotten bigger and bolder.
So, today, another incident happened. Something that started out simple and stupid, like asking to watch a TV Show before school. I told her she could, but then she pushed the envelope and asked for a movie instead. I told her she couldn’t because there wasn’t time before the bus came, and she tried to bargain, saying she’d only watch a little bit of the movie and turn it off when it was time to go. Having allowed this before, I knew it never ended pretty when I said it was time to turn it off, so I declined, telling her it was a TV Show or nothing. Being on a short fuse that she was, she exploded into a fit a whines and cries. So I turned the TV off. She turned it back on. I sent her to her room. She slammed the door. I showed her how unacceptable that was. She kicked the door. I told her if it happened again she would be grounded for a week. Eventually, she retreated from damaging property and just screamed five-year old obscenities at me from her room. I ignored.
The real kicker was when I proceeded to turn on the TV Show for Nolan and made her stay in her room the whole time. Yeah, that was truly vindictive and passive aggressive of me – I don’t deny it.
One of the other things we’ve noticed when trying to deal with this kind of behavior with this particular child is that once things are calmed down and we go to try to talk to her about it, she puts up kind of a wall. It’s not that she refuses to talk about it – it’s more that she’s incapable of the auditory processing it takes to listen to what we have to say and apply it to her behavior. Thus, lessons are not learned, and the behavior continues. So we’ve been slowly implementing a new tactic – note writing.
We’ve found that if we write our feelings down as well as the problems we see with her behavior, it has much more of an impact. We got this idea because she is CONSTANTLY writing notes to her friends and us. So, after she had been cooling off for about 30 minutes, I slipped a note under her door that told her how much I loved her and appreciated all the help she’s been giving me with her brothers, but that having tantrums when I tell her no is unacceptable.
A few minutes later when I called her down for lunch, she smiled sweetly when she handed me this:
Translation: Dear Mommy, I don't like you when you're mean. I still love you. Love, Mylie
The best part was, she was so very proud of herself. She asked if I liked it, and I told her I loved it. In kid speak, it said basically the same thing I had just written to her. And truly I was very proud of her for attempting to sound out all the words for herself. Normally, she gives up on words she doesn’t know and just uses the first letter of the word in it’s place. I think she got the message too, because at least three times today I saw instances where I expected a meltdown that didn’t happen.
I think the pen might turn out to be very mighty in our house, indeed.
Thanks to Grammie we had a gingerbread house to decorate. Every night of the week the kids kept asking if we could decorate it and it never was the right time for it. Finally on Monday I thought we could spare a few minutes to decorate it after we had a good Family Home Evening talking about the real meaning of Christmas. Luckily the house came pre-built and all we had to do was decorate with frosting and candy. Being creative is not quite my thing so the frosting was not put on very elegantly but the kids had fun doing it. Even Mylie was honest saying I wasn’t doing a very good job and that it did not look very nice.
Now that we made the house both Mylie and Nolan are already talking about when they get to break it up and eat it. He wants to invite his friends over to eat it after Christmas. Can you imagine a bunch of 3-year olds eating hard, stale, disgusting gingerbread with hard frosting?
Both on Friday and Saturday I got a great opportunity to go on a date night with Mylie and Nolan individually. On Friday Mylie and I went to see a performance of Annie by the Northwest Children’s Theatre. Even though I expected to be overdressed, I thought it would be fun to get dressed up in my suit.
Getting to the performance wasn’t too bad and I thought being there 30 minutes early would have given us enough time to get a cupcake at Cupcake Jones before the performance. Unfortunately parking was a bit of an issue and Mylie kept complaining she had to walk far. Once we got parked I had to carry and run with her to make it on time. The show was excellent, especially Miss Hannigan. It was hard to tell if Mylie had a good time because she just seemed to be tired the whole time. She also missed out on the cupcakes. Maybe next time.
For Nolan’s date night on Saturday we went with Karli’s aunts and uncles to Gospel Christmas put on by the Oregon Symphony and some local talent. This has been a tradition for her family for some time now but she was unable to come due to just having Oliver. Since Mylie got to see Annie the night before, I thought I’d give Nolan a try to see how he did at a performance. We went right after Mylie’s performance at Zoolights (see part 3) so he was already tired and the show did not start until 7:30 PM and went until about 9:30 PM. It also had a few extra encores. He actually did quite well the first half and even clapped many times but the second half he was very tired. He still stayed quiet and did a good job waiting. Folks around us were quite impressed with him too. He seemed to like the music but probably was a bit overwhelmed by the whole thing.
The other night we had a Family Home Evening, an evening where we are encouraged by our church to spend together as a family that includes a lesson and always a game and treat. While going through our mail we saw we received the Friend magazine, a children’s magazine distributed by our church. Being the parents that did not prepare a lesson for this evening we quickly told Mylie to go read a story and tell us about it for the Family Home Evening lesson. She was excited for the challenge and we really didn’t know what to expect. The story she chose was Toys for Tim about a child who helped his friend, who had cancer, by selling toys at a garage sale and giving the money to Tim and his family. Lo and behold she pulled it off and even provided a last minute illustration of Tim (see below). I could not believe how she was able to retell the story in her own words. I guess she’ll be put on the rotation for the lesson from now on and I can go back to choosing the treat.
Mylie's Illustration