Saturday, June 5, 2010

On the Other Side

IMG_8153 After a horrific 72 hour tantrum, we made it through the weekend. And now Amaya has settled down to normal levels of naughty-ness. The kind we laugh about and take pictures of. I think she sensed that both Jake and I were at our limits.

Jake said, “I can tell what kind of day it is just from the way she wakes up.”

And it’s so true. As long as waking up does not involve poop and time out behavior, we have a good day. IMG_8177

IMG_8215

Here’s Amaya “going to my meeting". IMG_8185

And light saber outside after our dinner picnic.

IMG_8206

It helps that all day long it’s popsicles, fruit raids, bike rides, backyard picnics, library trips, sprinklers, beach expeditions, shows and 1 itty bitty 5 minute lesson on the alphabet. Namely, the letter A, which we’ve been stuck on for about a month now. We’ve tried to move to other letters, but it results in the same issues, so we’ve decided to stick with A. A is for Amaya. But A is tricky. It changes to other letters no matter how many times it has been A, and sometimes numbers, apparently.

That 5 minutes is torturous, but somehow, we get through it. Then it’s back to blueberries in cups and playdough all over the kitchen table.

5 comments:

Damaris @Kitchen Corners said...

Do you love being on vacation? I'm really excited for you and hope that your 6 months of stay-at-home momness is awesome. You deserve it.

Metta said...

Sometimes I find that I'm jealous of my 8-week old baby. I see her cuddled up in a warm ball, being rocked (by me) and fed (on demand, by me) and in my sleep-deprived delirium I just think how nice it would be to swap roles for a day.

I think with all of the bike riding and popsicles and picnics and beach fun I would be jealous of Amaya too.

Jealous in the good way, of course.

Rock on, super mamma.

sienna said...

i read your stories, but then i see her picture and i just can't imagine her being that naughty. looks can be deceiving i guess. maybe she'll be a really easy teenager.

Jesse said...

Reading all the Amaya posts we have been having a running conversation about this, remembering how Miriam was, etc. Every kid (and every parent) is different, and they do change. Miriam was really hard in some ways, and she's still hard in some of those ways (still hates to sleep), but she's gotten a lot easier in other ways. She refused to learn the words of the ABC song (she would sing the melody and mix up the letters), until she went to first grade (in America) and saw she was the only kid who didn't know it. Teaching Miriam to read was torture (especially now that I'm teaching Gwyn and it is totally easy), but once Miriam figured it out and realized that it meant access to fairy stories 24/7, she has been non stop. She just finished the Hobbit. So you just don't know. Amaya seems plenty smart. I wouldn't worry about her academically.

Mariko said...

Well, I guess it would be worse if she were ugly and naughty. Ha ha.
Believe me. She's naughty. Even the brand new preschool teacher knew her by name after 1 day and even gave that LOOK. You know the one. It's so weird to be on the other side of that.

Jesse: Learning to read is so torture. I hate it hate it hate it. And I'm not even teaching her how to read yet. Mostly I'm trying to teach her that certain things are really gross and she should stop doing them. Then we throw in some occasional letters. We worked on B today. I thought I was going to go into a tantrum.
I definitely don't worry about her socially. Except that she's SO social. I can imagine the parent teacher conferences in the future.

Da: I love being on vacation. I wish I could forget that I have things to do while I'm on vacation.

Metta: I'm totally jealous of babies. It's so much better than being an adult.