Girl of 100 Lists

Do you remember that Go-Go's song, "Girl of 100 Lists"? Lately I hear that song in my head quite frequently. It pops into my mind whenever I come across one of my oldest daughter's lists.

She's really into making lists right now.

Considering that I have a shopping list on the fridge, a to-do list on the kitchen counter, not to mention post-its multiplying by the dozens on my desk, I'm not too surprised this trait has popped up recently.

One of the first ones I noticed a few months back was a list she made for her sleepover at her grandmother's house. She numbered everything and even put checkboxes on the list so she knew when the item was packed. It was full of all kinds of essentials like "P.J.'s, underwear, clothes for tommorow, tooth brush, tooth paste, a pair of socks, head band, a book, a pair of flip flops, floser, pic of mom". That last one is one of my favorites. She's taken to keeping me with her at all times by having a photo of me in her backpack that she takes to school, and now I've even made the list for sleepovers. That one makes my heart smile.

On this list she even took it a step farther and had a section for the details of all of those items, so she knew exactly which pajamas and tooth brush and book were coming with her.

Then a few weeks later, she wrote a "To Do List". Apparently one day she felt like she had a lot going on and she needed to keep it straight. Fortunately for her, her To Do list looks much different than mine. In hers, it's all about what she's actually doing that day. I guess that'd be more of a schedule, but she's still fine-tuning her list skills. This one had the following items listed on it:

1. Piano lessons from 4:00-4:30.

2. Do my homwork around 2:55.

3. Jump on the tramp from 3:15-3:40.

4. Bring Bunny for sharing.

5. Friend's mom to pick me up from school.

6. Wear sparkly peace shirt.

Her day was very organized and orderly, even if the actual list was out of order.

She's also been making lists of all the birthday parties she's invited to, so she can keep track of all the good times headed her way.

Then there is the "favorite songs" list, which has gotten quite long lately.

And of course she's been making a list of who she will be inviting to her upcoming birthday party.

One of my favorites was her shopping list that she wrote out for me last week, on my actual list that was on the fridge. It went a little something like this.

Tootsi rolls

Gummi bears

Jelli bellis

Fruit by the foot

Pears

Bananas

Donuts

She wrote it out and then came over and told me she put down 2 healthy things for me to buy at the store. After my "good job!", she gave me a sly smile and said she might have put some other things on there too.

She also left my husband a note on his pillow around that same time. It said "Buy Milke way Mid-night Carmel Fudge". That's it. No please. No title.

I guess that one was really more of a command. But a cute one. And one motivated by her recent Halloween loot I imagine.

Can't you just hear that song going over and over in my head as I collect these lists that she leaves lying around the house?

"I am the girl of 100 lists
From what shall I wear
To who I have kissed
Check items off
Let nothing be missed
Sing I to myself and my 100 lists"

But there better not be any kisses on her lists.

Or we'll be coming up with a whole other list of things to be talking about.

Processing

First off, thanks to everyone that has given me their virtual hugs and support since we lost Enzo. It's nice to remember how many laps he lied on and cheeks he licked, whether you wanted him to or not.

We are still processing in our family. My husband and I have been much more affected by this loss, as I would have expected. And we have been wonderful support for each other, drying our tears as we talk about how strange and sad it is not to have him around anymore. It's truly amazing how much your mind and muscles have their own memories, and you have to stop yourself every time you go to do something for him, and he's not there.

As for the kids, I am seeing the reaction I thought I would see from my younger daughter. She's still at that age where she will talk about things and yet it is somehow still distant and not as much of a tear jerker for her. More on that in a minute.

I am not, however, seeing the response I thought I would see from our oldest. She seems to not be processing this loss at all, which worries me. Looking at it from my counseling and professional perspective, I feel like she is shutting out the sadness and not giving it a voice or any recognition. She questions why people say things like "I'll always love Enzo" when he's not around anymore. As if our love should die with him.

And she has hardly said a word about it at all since it happened. I'm getting concerned. I recognize that we are all different and process things differently. I just want to make sure there isn't a lot of sadness welling up inside, waiting to explode. Or worse yet, turn into anger. I tried to explain this to her this morning.

My younger daughter brought up Enzo yet again this morning as we were leaving the house. My three-almost-four-year-old was the one that mentioned him at least a dozen times during the day or two after his death. She started off by acknowledging that he was gone so we didn't need this or that anymore around the house. She just matter-of-factly stated it, in a sweet way that was her method of continually processing what was very real to all of us.

More specifically, on the morning after she found out, my younger daughter came downstairs to breakfast with a picture of him that she had drawn. Eerily, she drew it on black paper. This piece of mourning was a drawing of her and Enzo together. In the middle of Enzo's chest she had put a heart sticker. Then she told me that he had sad eyes, because she thought he was sad when he died. This all brought tears to my eyes, but I contained myself as I have been trying to do around the children. We then had a very nice talk about how we miss him and still love him.

I mean seriously. I don't know if I can take credit for her passion and empathy, but she reminds me so much of myself when I think about it. We both swing hot and cold at the drop of a hat (oh, how I loathe her tantrums), and her sensitivity and insight at her age continually amazes me.

So this morning my younger daughter says she had a dream about Enzo last night. She says "Isn't that silly? He's not even here anymore but I had a dream about him."

I say that it is great that he visited her in her dreams, and that it just means that she misses him.

My older daughter then says that she never thinks about him. And she doesn't say it meanly, just like it's the right answer; like now that he's gone, she's supposed to move on, so that's what she's doing.

I take this opportunity to try to talk about feelings and how it's good to talk about them. I explained that if we get too much of one kind of feeling we can get out of balance. I also say that sometimes when we have too much sadness in us and we don't let it out, it can turn into anger.

She questions this, as she likely should, so I try to explain it a little more, but I don't do a very good job. We are trying to get out the door and I'm on my own with the three little ones, so the whole subject gets sidelined.

Every day I have been trying to prompt her to talk about it, but I'm not getting anywhere. I ask her if it makes her sad, and she just doesn't really go there. I ask her if she misses him and she just gives a little "uh-huh" type answer. I don't push it too far; just once or twice a day I ask about him when the topic comes up.

Since it's in my nature to talk about everything well past the point of enough-is-enough, I have to be careful around this one. But I do think it deserves some attention, so I will continue to nurture it, hoping for a breakthrough.

In the meantime, I hope he comes back to visit us all in our dreams.

I really want to give him another hug and kiss.

Practice Makes Perfect

Last week my oldest and I were talking about what activities she might want to participate in for the winter. Her weekly tennis lessons are over soon, and since she thinks they are "boring" I figured we better start lining up something new and a little more up her alley.

We didn't sign up for soccer this fall because she said she wasn't interested. I revisited the idea when we were talking about different sports. Not that she could do it until next year, but I asked about it anyway. Her reply was that she liked the soccer camp she did last summer, but it was "boring".

There it was again. That word.

When I poked around a little I found out that she thought it was so "boring" because you didn't actually play any other teams. She wanted some game time action and all they did were drills.

I explained that practice is where you learn what to do in a game. I tried to emphasize that you won't know when and where to take the ball during the game if you don't practice first. She still didn't seem sold but at least she bought the idea a little.

Then she asked about playing softball. I liked this idea since I played it a little when I was growing up, and I think it's a great team sport. So I looked into it the next day and explained to her what I knew about the season. Practices start in February, games start in March and are every Saturday through April.

"So if we start practice in February, how long do I have to wait until we play a game?" she asks.

Here we go again.

This time I started asking her about the sport and how it's played. She had some answers but it was clear that her main idea of the sport revolved around hitting the ball, which she loves to do. I explained quite a bit of the game and she seemed to catch on pretty quick.

But she still wanted to know how much they have to practice.

"If you don't practice, how are you going to know how to catch the ball with a mitt? How are you going to know where to throw the ball when it is hit to you during a game? And will you know where to run?" I asked her.

She conceeded and said she'd still like to play, even with all that practice time. Apparently she's never heard the phrase "practice makes perfect". She thinks you go out there and automatically know what to do, or else figure it out along the way. Which means she's in for a big surprise.

And a surprise is exactly what she got a few days later.

This past weekend we had her friends over for a sleepover, and they all wanted to ride their bikes around outside. This gets a little tricky since her friends have been riding a lot and are now proficient without the training wheels. On the other hand, my daughter learned to ride the bike without training wheels in late August, but is still hesitant to practice and we haven't really pushed her. The result is that she can pretty much ride fine in a straight line, but when it comes to turning, and sometimes stopping, she gets nervous and tends to fall or need help.

Now you see where this is going.

After a few minutes outside with her friends, and my husband helping her, I hear her run inside crying. I go find her and she is already a pint of tears and a few shrills into a major tantrum. I try talking to her, but she escalates so fast that within seconds she is saying that she hates herself and she hates that she can't ride her bike. And she wants nothing to do with me.

Now I have to fight through my own pain of hearing her in such despair and try to rebuild this crumbling bit of foundation in front of me. I explain that we haven't helped her practice and it's our fault too that she's not as far along as she wants to be. But I also note that it's okay if you aren't as good at something as someone else and it's all still fun as long as we keep trying. She of course wants none of this reasoning and continues right along with her tantrum.

"I want to be able to ride my bike like them RIGHT NOW!" she yells with fury. "I want it all to magically happen NOW!"

Yes, she did actually use the word "magically". Which means she knows in her heart that it's not an instant thing and that it does take practice.

Now it's all making sense why she doesn't want to practice anything. She doesn't like not knowing how to do something and all the frustration that comes with it. In her magical thinking, you don't have to deal with that frustration if you just throw yourself into the game.

But alas, you do. In my experience you feel that much more like an incapable nincompoop if you are in the middle of a pressure situation and can't perform. Which is exactly what was happening at that moment.

I finally got her calmed down, but it took a while. This one was a doozie. And in the meantime we had to convince her friends that this sleepover would still be fun, even though their host was in the midst of a meltdown.

Eventually everyone was happy again, watching a movie and eating popcorn. And the rest of the sleepover was a great success.

Case closed, right? Not so.

Now we have to keep moving forward. It's really tempting to just sit in this middle space of not knowing how to do something, like help her through this phase of life, and just ignore it and let time pass and things happen as they may.

But now I realize we we have work to do together. And it starts with me and my husband. We have to teach her that being on the beginning side of the learning curve is okay. She has to learn that there is no getting to the other side without going through the middle.

And I need to get over my own feelings of being a nincompoop because I have not been able to instill in her the sense that it is okay not to be perfect. You see the trick here, right? I have to accept and learn from my own limitations while teaching her to recognize and accept hers.

Once again my children teach me that as hard as we try, there is always more to learn.

Instead of "practice makes perfect" I think we better concentrate on "there is always room for improvement".

Less Than Perfect

Last week my oldest daughter started bringing home her 1st grade homework. Her Kindergarten teacher wasn’t big on homework, so this is a new routine.

She was pretty excited to start this process. The first day she hardly took a breath between getting out of the car and ripping open her backpack to pull out her assignment.

I wonder where that overachiever attitude comes from? Hmmmm…I’ll think about that and get back to you after I’ve worked out a matrix and graphed the possibilities of her genetic inheritances from her parents.

At the end of the week, she completed an assignment and left it on the table. I hadn’t taken the time to read through it with her first, and I noticed some mistakes. I called her over and pointed this out in a gentle way so she could fix it, as endorsed by her teacher who doesn’t want to be sending home all kinds of red-inked papers to 6 year olds.

But this is where the trouble began. She was not happy that I highlighted these imperfections. She wouldn’t even listen to my reasons as to why I wanted her to look at her work again. She just kept telling me “No, you’re wrong! This is how she told us to do it!!” in between all her tears and whining.

I should have read through it with her before she started to try and prevent this situation. But I also recognized that she has to learn that it’s okay to admit mistakes and try to correct them.

So I gave up and we left it as is. I told her we’d let her teacher look at it and find out the answers later.

Today was the day. The red ink day.

Her work came home and sure enough, the two answers were marked wrong. It still had a lovely stamp on it and said “Good Job!” but all my daughter saw were the two red corrections and the “-2”.

The tears started and were soon followed by some hyperventilating and the insistence that she was still correct.

I had to pull her aside and calm her down before I could even talk to her. When she was ready to listen, I explained that it was okay to make mistakes. I told her that’s how we do some of our best learning. And that she still gets a lot of credit for all the hard work and all the other answers. And so on.

She then tells me she doesn’t want to make mistakes and that it’s not fair since I don’t make any mistakes.

Oh how I love the fantastical and innocent thinking of a six year old.

So then I start explaining the concept of grades to her. I tell her about all the different levels involved, and I write out all the letters, including pluses and minuses, so she can see that even with some wrong answers, she can still do great work.

And I tell her that I got good grades, but they weren’t all A+’s like she thinks they were. Then I even tell her that I’ll show her my grades. She looks quite pleased when she realizes that she gets a glimpse into the pre-mommy mommy.

The other day I ran across my transcript from graduate school. I had put it in a safe place so when I decide to go back to work I’ll have it handy for the job application process. I take her with me and we pull out my transcript from the file. I point out the B’s that are listed among the A’s.

I tell her that I’m very proud of my work and that I was happy to get those grades, even the almost-but-not-so-perfect B’s. Then she wants to see an F, but thankfully I didn’t get any of those.

This all sinks in and she agrees that it’s okay to make some mistakes, as long as we try to learn from them.

So this afternoon we sat down and read through her homework together. This time I made sure she understood it before she completed it. And it all went much smoother.

My daughter’s inability to accept being wrong, or less than perfect, was my red ink.

And thankfully I’m still learning from my mistakes too.

It's a Princess Life for Me

At bedtime, after we read a couple books to our daughters, we let our oldest have “night-light time”. The 3 year old also gets night-light time, since they share a room, but she has to turn her light off after she looks at one book. My oldest then keeps her light on and reads for about 30 minutes. Or until we tell her time’s up.

Last night, when I went to say good night and give the 5 minute warning for lights-out, I see that my oldest daughter has taking a little creative license with her night-light time.

She has hunted down 15 specific books (which you would know is a project in itself if you have ever seen the book case in their room) and has categorized them.

Leaning against the wall are two Olivia books, three Fancy Nancy books, two books about the color pink, and eight books about princesses.

Not only are they each in their own little themed stack propped up against the wall, but each stack is labeled. There is a note sticking out of the first book in each pile that says their category type and the quantity for that type, all printed in her lovely Kindergarten scratch.

I inquire about her mini library, and she informs me of her project. She tells me she had a couple of them to read, and then she realized there were themes, so she looked and looked until she found the ones that she knew were in these categories.

“We have the most princess books,” she says. “Which is good, because those are my favorite.”

A big smile takes over my face and I kiss her good night.

Huh.

An overly organized, project-driven girl that prefers the princess life.

I have no idea where she gets it.

Familiar Sounds

Three year olds are a lot of fun. They are so simple and innocent, especially when compared to older siblings. The tantrums I could do without, but the rest is pretty darn cute.

My three year old likes to keep up with her big sister. So we get a lot of "Look at this!" going on around here. She shows us all kinds of wonders of the world, like how she can point her toes, bend over and lean on her head, or jump in the air. Real amazing stuff.

But we always humor her and say "Wow!'" and "Good job!" so she knows that she is not forgotten.

Except sometimes she is sort of forgotten. She will be showing off her talents and I will be in the middle of changing a diaper or pulling dog food out of my son's mouth, and I just can't give her the attention she wants. When that happens, I give the "Uh-huh, that's great! You are doing a good job!" response, withouth even looking at her. I know it's not ideal, but sometimes it's all I've got.

Apparently I do this quite often. And my oldest has noticed.

Yesterday we are in the kitchen and my oldest is digging through the "gum drawer". Yes, we have one, no it's not FULL of gum, yes it's sugarless, and yes I swore I would never keep that much gum in the house that it needed its own drawer, but that is neither here nor there.

So here is my oldest, doing her own thing, and me doing my own thing that I think involved emptying the dishwasher. And my youngest is saying "Look at me sissy! Look at me sissy!" and trying to show her big sister another one of her astounding feats.

And without skipping a beat, while her nose is deep in the search for watermelon Trident, my oldest says "Yea, uh-huh, that's great. Really excellent. Good job," without an ounce of inflection in her voice and not even a peep sent her sister's way.

I totally cracked up. I couldn't help it. When you hear yourself echoed back to you in the voice of a six year old, you just have to laugh. Which then made her laugh. And I had to call her on it, admitting that she must see me do that all too often. Which made us laugh a little more.

And there's my younger daughter, still showing us her trick.

Ah, the innocence.