week ending nov 4, 2007:

Week ending November 4, 2007: This week has been similar to the previous weeks in that Chloe is quizzing us on all sorts of subjects, and Alex is continuing to test his limits. Since they started school both kids are quick to cry over stuff that didn’t previously bother them and Alex has been showing other signs of being stressed out, so I decided to try to take it a little easier on them and to try to keep life around here even calmer than usual. Well, that didn’t work very well. On Monday their swim instructor tried to “teach” them to hold their breath by bobbing them under the water while they were screaming “no!”. They’ll have a different instructor from now on after my conversation with the manager of the swim school. Then on Thursday we lost Chloe’s “Bunny”. She’s slept with bunny every night since she was 6 months old, so it is a BIG deal to her. We’ve looked all over and I continue to have hope that we’ll find Bunny. Chloe is occasionally sad, but hasn’t lost any sleep over it. To take it easier on the kids I’ve tried to reduce my expectations in some areas. Sure they can put their shoes, and sure there is no reason why I should have to ask them 100 times to do it, but maybe I can be less confrontational if they get distracted before getting their shoes on. Or, if they don’t want to put their shoes on, maybe I can say “do you want to put your shoes on, or do you want me to do it for you?” Well, “give them an inch and they’ll take a mile” didn’t become a proverb for nothing. Alex’s behavior this week can be summed up in his behavior at breakfast. He wanted his breakfast on the light blue plate. The light blue plate was dirty. We went back and forth about this with him sitting at the table refusing to eat breakfast for a half hour until he finally conceded that he could eat off of a different color plate. Then he didn’t want to get dressed, didn’t want to go to Sunday School, didn’t want to wash his hands, etc. It would be easy to assume that he’s just being a rotten kid, but the other night he dissolved into tears in the middle of playing a cheerfully rowdy game and he curled up in my lap and sobbed with his arms wrapped tight around my neck. I really think he’s just stressed out. He’s usually so well behaved that these last few weeks have been like alarm bells going off. Chloe’s whopper questions this week include “Why is there water in toilets?” “What about outside toilets?” “Why do trees sleep in the winter?” “How do frogs keep warm in the winter?” And my favorite “How does blood swim around inside me if it doesn’t have hands?”