A Girl of Extremes

We had a great day today, I LOVED being home with them. I won't return to my pouting about how much it sucks to have to work, though, don't worry ;).

We had some errands to run in the morning and then headed to the daycare for Amy's TG'ing dinner - DELICIOUS as always. After lunch we did our own TG'ing dinner shopping and raced home to pick up Jack from school. Once home the Munsters played inside for a bit then we headed outside where it was beautiful. They swung and climbed rocks and rode the slides while I took pictures. When they started to get tired and cranky, we came in for supper. I made banana pancakes and couldn't cook them fast enough - four plates were empty before the next four were ready. They all had four pancakes and a hard boiled egg. After supper was cleaned up, I gave them all a bath and bribed them with a tv show to clean up the living room, which they did very well. We snuggled in my bed to watch Kai Lan, then finished bedtime with teeth, pees and stories. I just left the girls' room with NO tears. I'm not going to jinx myself by saying anything more!

Wen had a great day, too, I think, but we had some interesting moments of extremes. She HATES having her hair washed. You wouldn't think a little body like hers could produce the volume of screams it does. While I try to keep her seated to reduce risk of a fall and water on the floor, she tries to stand up to get away from the water. Let's just say she wins. I have to reposition her to a sitting position no less than 15 times in the course of a washing. Tonight she seemed to catch on and kept her legs straight to complicate my efforts. I hate this process. I hate making her scream so badly, I hate holding her down, I hate that she may not understand what I'm saying. The only good thing is when we're done, and I say "all done" she seems to get that. She stops crying almost instantly while she looks at me and nods. That has got to be building some trust, right? So there's one extreme.

Another moment we had was a little disturbing. We were playing outside and she was getting tired and hungry. She wanted me to pick her up, and I said 'no'. I redirected her to the swings or slide and gave her the option of sitting on my lap. After asking a few times and hearing 'no' a few times followed by other choices, she completely shut down on me. And I mean completely. She stood near me, eyes completely blank, face of stone, stiff body. I tried to get her attention and she ignored me, I moved into her eye gaze and she looked right through me. It was unsettling. I took her arm and lead her to me and pulled her into my lap. It took a moment of a stiff body, but she finally settled against my chest, sucking her fingers vigorously and turning her face against me. I wish I could hear her thoughts. When we first met her, she sucked her fingers a lot and with force. As she's become more comfortable, the frequency has reduced to times when she's sleepy and the violence has all but vanished with a gentle suck in it's place. Guess it's not too early to start catching her up on her dose of parental induced psychological trauma, Heaven knows her sibs have a few years head start.

Can you have three extremes? or is it limited to two by definition? Well hell, it's my blog so I can do what I want. The third extreme happened in pjs in my bed as we settled in to watch tv. I coerced the kids to choose a Kai Lan episode. She has shown little interest in tv as yet so she was fidgety and distracted as the show started. However, as Kai Lan started to talk and threw in a word of Mandarin Wen's face lit up, her eyes wide and her fingers fell out of her mouth. She looked from the tv to me and burst into the biggest grin. She loved the show and kept repeating the Mandarin words as the were said, and (I think) adding some more to build phrases. She was so happy, I could have cried.

Enjoy the pics!

N