thekeeslings's blog

She must be getting older...

Yesterday Alana was less than well behaved when we went out to eat.  We tried everything we could think of to get her to listen, from bribery to withholding privileges (no videos, no treats, going straight to bed when we get home) and eventually resorted to the last ditch, "If you do not listen mommy is taking you into the bathroom and you WILL listen or..."

She was just completely out of her mind.  She wanted to go back home, and she thought that if she acted out enough she'd get her way.  There was NO way she was going to win, so Ken and I finished our desserts anyway.

Then we get home, and it was like a nuclear meltdown.  We put her in her bed, she'd get out, she'd scream for me or Josiah or just about anything.  Eventually she negotiated getting me to take her to the potty- I think because she knows how badly we wish she was fully potty trained by now.  So I sit her down, and she starts talking. 

Alana:  Mommy, I think I made Ken angry.  (When she's serious, she always calls him by his first name.  SO CUTE.)
Me:  Well, sweetie, you didn't listen very well, did you?
Alana:  I didn't want to.
Me:  And that made Daddy upset, because he wants you to learn to listen to him.
Alana:  I didn't know I would make Ken angry.
Me:  You could have made better choices.  Mommy and Daddy tried very hard to show you how important it was.
Alana:  I'm sorry.  I want to be able to watch a video and see brother.
Me:  If you listened to Daddy you would be able to.
Alana:  I'm sorry.  I didn't want for Ken to be angry.
Me:  Will you try harder to listen?
Alana:  I will.  Can I talk to Ken?
Me:  I'll ask Daddy if he will talk to you.
Alana:  I love Ken.  I want to be his princess.
Me:  You are, sweetie.
Alana:  Pretty please can I tell him?
Me:  Of course.

And she did.  She told him she knew she was bad and didn't listen, and she was sorry and she didn't mean for him to be mad.  The rest of the evening she behaved perfectly (well, with one exception when it got close to bedtime) and she made sure to look at Ken and have him NOTICE her listening.  A few times she even put her hand on his arm and told him she was listening and being good.  It's amazing- because I for one would have expected it to take longer for our emotions to factor into her reasoning, with most kids it seems to be much more about fear of punishment.  Yet, with Alana it is less about the punishment (though she hated it) and more about the fact that she knew how much she'd upset Ken.  She HATED him being angry with her, hated it more than anything else.

I'm so insanely lucky to have the children I do.

This is a no-spin house.

So, yesterday I had a friend's boys.  The older one took the younger one's bowl and dumped it out.  The younger one yelled for me...

And then it began.

Me:  Timmy, did you dump out your brother's bowl?
Timmy:  I don't remember.
Me: it was one minute ago.
Timmy: but I don't know what happened!
Me: have you been hit on the head?
Timmy:  what?  No.
Me: then you are fully capable of remembering what happened to you a minute ago.
Timmy: but...
Me:  You will answer me, or you will get a time out.
Timmy: but I don't know what happened.
Me: Don't you dare lie to me.  I do NOT believe you.
Timmy:  Maybe I did, then.
Me: did you, or did you not?
Timmy: (looking at the floor, shuffling his feet, mumbling) I think I did.
Me: Go in the other room.  I won't punish you, but if you EVER lie AGAIN...
Timmy: Okay.

Oh...  My...  God...

So this is what I have to look forward to?  Can I just give them back when they get old enough to try that kind of stuff?

Hot Corn!

Alana calls pop corn "hot corn", which I think is adorable.

Today for lunch we had pasta with tomato sauce and celery with ranch.  Alana ate all of her celery and part of mine, but didn't touch the pasta.  I've never really been sure how to judge whether or not she's eaten enough lunch.  Do I go by how much she's eaten, total?  How she's eaten from each food item proportionately considered?  Is more than her share of celery but no carbohydrates enough?  If she'd eaten all of the pasta but not the celery, I'd probably make her eat a stick.  But all of the celery and no pasta just baffles me.

I wonder if I'm a freak for being so obsessed.  In any case, I decided that I'd consider her lunch eaten.  So when snack time rolled around, I asked her if she was hungry.

"No," Alana says with a sigh, "I told you."
"Not for lunch," I replied, "I know you didn't want noodles."
"I wasn't that hungry," Alana says.  Her tone says that she is totally tired of talking to me.
"But a snack?" I said, "would you be hungry for a snack?"
"Not crackers," Alana says.  She's been eating a lot of crackers lately.
"That's fine," I said, "how about something else?"
"We had dip," Alana said.  We've been having a lot of celery lately, too.
"Fine," I said.  "How about pop corn?"
"Come on," says Alana, "hurry!"

Cool.  I found something she'll eat!  If she doesn't have a snack she gets super cranky.

hot corn!

Princesses PRINCESSES!

Alana loves princesses with a passion that before now was reserved solely for Chocolate and Ice Cream.  She often pretends to be a princess, either by crawling on all fours and announcing she is "Princess Pony", by putting on wings and proclaiming herself as "Princess Butterfly", or my personal favorite- taking off all her clothes to be "naked princess Alana!"

She has amassed a collection of Polly Pocket princesses, but they have plastic clothes that wear out and tear.  Alana will cry and cry for days the second anything goes wrong for her Princesses, so Ken and I decided to start replacing the Polly Pockets with more practical (although, sadly more expensive) Barbie Princesses.

Enter Princess Belle, the new love of Alana's life.  She came into our home late last night and kept Alana up past her bedtime.  I woke up twice last night to hear my sleep-deprived daughter awake in her bed whispering confessions of undying devotion to her Princess Belle, and once to hear Alana crying because Belle had lost a shoe somewhere in Alana's bed.

I can't be angry, though, because Alana's love for Belle is TOO CUTE FOR WORDS.

Evidence:

Walk with Belle

DUPLO CRAZY!

Since I'm watching my friend's kids several days a week, I decided to invest in some serious entertainment.  Enter the Ebay bidding, and SUPER HUGE LOT OF OVER 400 BUILDING BLOCKS!

The kids had different goals.  Josiah wanted to kick the blocks around and throw them.  JJ wanted to see how big he could stack them (pretty big) and Timmy wanted to make a town.
    Josiah and JJ more or less got their way, and Timmy more or less didn't.  Poor Timmy- he feels like the little kids ruin EVERYTHING and doesn't understand that they feel the same way about him and his wanting to organize things all the time.  Well, Timmy is outnumbered.

Timmy did manage to make one building and a playground.  Alana did her best to try to help him, but he didn't really want her help so it turned into a big mess.  Alana didn't really notice how frustrated he was with her.  She was having a good time!  The MEGA HUGE lot of Duplo blocks came with a Tigger and Pooh, and Alana of course felt that Tigger had to "bounce" everything, including me.  Getting bounced backward on a block covered floor is less than fun. 

The culminating efforts eventually became a stack as big as JJ and then a stack as big as me.  YAY!

I won't go into excruciating detail about how long it took to clean up.  =D

Never, ever, leave a toddler alone with a toilet.

So Monday night the toilet gets backed up.  We unplug it and think, "eh, no problem."  An hour later it gets backed up again.  This time, no unplugging.  So Ken goes and buys an auger and roto-roots it.  STILL PLUGGED.  So we call a plumber and he says that he'll have to lift the toilet and go at it through the back.  We decide to do it ourselves, because who wants to pay $300 when you're young and vital and can lift your own toilet?

THIS is what we see:

How in God's name did it make it that far?

Oh yes.  My old cell phone.  In the toilet.

JOSIAH MUST HAVE SHOVED IT SO FAR IN, IT WAS OUT OF VIEW.  The worst part is that it was wedged in such a way that I couldn't just reach in and pull it out.  So we had to lift it with a screwdriver and grab the casing with a needle-nose plier, which ended up breaking the casing.  I just kept going at it until it had broken apart enough that it popped out, kind of like a cork.

Alas, Horatio, I knew thee well...

*sigh*
Now we need to keep the bathroom locked.  It gets FREEZING in that little closet with the door closed, but I suppose butt cheeks of ice are a small price to pay to not have to stick your hands in a toilet's back door.

I need to go shower with bleach now.

Virtual Tour of the New place!

I'm not totally done unpacking, and little details like pictures on the walls aren't done yet.  Plus, the house is a bit of a wreck.  But, even so- people have been asking when they get to see pictures and I thought I'd oblige.  I'll probably do a more extensive virtual tour in a few months when things are totally settled.  For the time being, this will have to do!

The bathroom:  It's pretty old school!  The sink is a standing basin, and the toilet is in it's own closet.  See that grate?  All of our heating grates are like that, old iron things sunk in to the floor.  When the heat blows, Alana and Josiah will sit on them to warm their butts. 

The Kitchen:  IT'S BIG!  There is open floor space!  And look- all of my stuff fits on the counters!  That countertop is linoleum hot glued down.  There's extra green paint in the basement- I'm thinking of prying up the linoleum and repainting the counter.  Look at how cracked the paint is on the utility closet door- the paint all over the house is like that.  People have painted and repainted without scraping- sometimes over paper or tile.  If we were buying this house I would have to fix it up properly.  As it is, I don't really mind.  I think it gives the place personality.

The dining room:  Um, we HAVE ONE?  The table and curio cabinet came with the place.  I'm very pleased.  There you can see the stack of boxes of books (eight of them, total) waiting for bookshelves so they can be unpacked.

Bedroom:  YAY!  It's SO MUCH BIGGER.  The two dressers and desk used to be literally smashed up against each other with no space in between.  Now I feel so much more comfortable!  The closet is smaller- so all of my jackets and cloaks are hung on wall hooks so that everything fits.  I don't mind.  I like it.  :)

The kids room:  It's already a wreck.  It doubles as a play room, so it spends most of the day obscured in toys.  The kids LOVE it.  Plus, I can play videos for them in there and have the living room to myself to write.  Not that I plan on doing it a lot, but since Alana no longer naps, I can put a video in for her while Josiah is sleeping and have a little quiet.  Nice!

The Living room:  We measured the wrong side of the sectional, and it DOESN'T FIT RIGHT!  Oh well.  Now we have a couch and a lounge chair... right?  We now watch all of our television on the computer anyway, so we don't mind not having the proper TV.  It's nice!

DSC03289

This is what I have to go down every time I need to do the laundry.  The basement is divided into a bunch of interconnecting small rooms, and it's really dank and cluttered with previous tenant's stuff.  It seriously makes me think of Silence of the Lambs.  I may be insane, but I LOVE it.  I like a house that has a story to tell (as long as it's not ACTUALLY Silence of the Lambs.)

Dis Okay?

I think my kids may be a little obsessive-compulsive.  Not to the point of wanting to vacuum the ceiling, but just enough to make things interesting.  Earlier today I served the kids macaroni and cheese, peas, and hot dogs for lunch.  Josiah happily mashed his in to a ball and ate it.  Alana gave me a very cross look and proceeded to very careful separate her plate in to thirds, stacking and re-stacking the peas until they stayed in one place.  I calmly asked her if she would mind eating her food.  She irritably replied, "I just made it pretty, mom."
    I asked, "well, would you mind eating it?"
    Alana thought for a second and said, "I'm not hungry anymore."
    A half hour later she wanted chips and ranch.  Eventually the lunch got eaten.

    Then, later on, they both want apple juice in open cups (groan) and I got them some.  Josiah spilled some of his on the floor and in a very panicked voice turned to me and said, "dis okay?"
    I replied, "oh, you spilled!  That's okay, mommy cleans it."
    A few minutes later there was another small spill.  Josiah tearfully said, "mommy again?  Dis okay?"

    I hope this OCD is just a temporary glitch as a response to the move, and not permanent.  I don't want to spend the rest of my time as a mother corralling peas!

Moving!

We are MOVING!

February first we will go up a few blocks and over a few blocks to a nice brick house with a real live yard that we won't be sharing with a little old lady, her dog, a guy who sometimes vomits in the dumpster, and everyone else in the complex.  (If you need our new address and I haven't already contacted you, send me a message or call!)

The kids are less than enthused about the move right now.  Josiah regularly freaks out and demands to be carried around while I'm packing.  And who could resist this face?

hold me NOW!

    Alana is nervous about leaving, I don't think she fully realizes that life will continue as normal.  At least she's conquered her fear of cardboard boxes!  It's all I can do to keep her from scaling box mountain every chance I turn my back.

boxes on the hillside, little boxes made of ticky tacky...

    Six more days before the moving begins.  I'm going to have me a real live DINING ROOM!  Yay!

Where's Belle's Pink Dress, mommy?

I am so peeved right now.

    Alana keeps asking for Belle's pink dress and Jasmine's green dress.  She has a Belle doll and Jasmine doll I bought at the Dollar Store.  Both dolls came with two dresses.  As I type this, Belle and Jasmine are naked but wearing shoes.  I took all the cushions off the couch and dug everything out of the crack between the back of the couch and the springs.  I found a few small plastic animals, a dog toy and little bowl from a Littlest Pet Shop set, and some various things including the shoes that Belle is currently wearing.  But her pink dress?  Nope.

    I pulled out the refrigerator.  Did I find it?  No.
    I moved Alana's bed.  Did I find it?  No.
    Alana keeps asking where it is, but with a smile.  She asks me to take the cushions off the couch or look under the "fidgefader".  I think she is mocking me.  Really, I do!  I think this is some kind of grand practical joke.  The last time I saw the pink dress, it was on a Polly Pocket in the living room.  The doll and dress went *poof*.  They are NO WHERE.  This has happened before- like right after I bought Belle and she disappeared for four days, only for Alana to run off and fetch her so they could watch Beauty and the Beast together.

    I know I *said* I wanted a clever daughter...  I just didn't know what I was asking for!