hi name's Abbie and I'll be your new blogger

Hi my name is Abby (preferred if it has an "ie"). Quick family update tons of new fish and 2 new dogs (Chloe died from old age&skin infection). Other than that not much has changed over 6 years besides losing relatives. (and fish!!) Still got my two EXTREMELY awesome brothers

Oops

A couple days ago, the children broke the ceiling light cover in Abbie's room. I'm not entirely sure how they did it, but it involved swinging blankets at it. Abbie was okay with the new look for a day, but eventually the exposed bulb creeped her out and she demanded a new light cover.

We drove to the local home improvement store, bought a new cover for about $5, and brought it home. Abbie was so excited to have her cover back she asked for it as soon as we pulled into the garage. I told her just a minute, and carried the cover into the house with many other things. On the way in, I banged the cover against a chair and shattered it.

I guess I'll have to spend another $5 tomorrow.

Boom

A huge storm blew through town tonight. Someone down the street lost half a tree. Our house is fine, although hanging clothes outside to dry today turned out to be a wasted effort on my part.

Abbie was terrified when the storm hit, and by "terrified" I mean "screaming hysterically." She's never been bothered by rain or storms before, but the lightning, thunder, wind, and rain in this one set her off. I pulled her back into her room, which is one of the more sheltered rooms in the house, and did my best to entertain her until the storm passed. I sang, I read, and I asked her brothers to cheer her up. The last tactic as it spurred her to entertain her brothers instead. As she explained, "my brothers aren't funny; only I'm funny."

I know that showing fear is a sign of growing maturity, but I hope her fear of storms isn't going to be a long-term issue. I would be happy, though, if she would start showing some fear of time outs.

And the Answer is...

I finally found Ian's cow blanket tonight. It was inside the grill in our backyard. The boys are no longer allowed to take their cow blankets outside.

Moo?

Ian lost his cow blanket last night. He has slept with that cow blanket every night for almost since birth. He depends on the cow blanket to comfort him when he's hurting, calm him when he's upset, and entertain him when he's bored. And now it's been missing for over 24 hours. I swear I've looked everywhere inside and outside the house, and can't find it. He seems to be sleeping okay, but he misses it often throughout the day. If I can't find that cow blanket, he's either going to adjust and learn to soothe himself, or things will get very ugly around here.

Bob

We've never done much to trim the back of Abbie's hair, and it's several inches of matted mess. Abbie won't brush it, and she fights with all her strength if we brush it, so we usually let it go until birds try nesting in her hair. At that point we hold her down and brush her mercilessly until she has pretty smooth hair. A couple days later it's a matted mess again and we restart the cycle.

I've been threatening to cut Abbie's hair for a long time. Mommy won't let me, though, because she's afraid chopping off her hair will traumatize her. As proof, she claims that her parents cut her hair short when she was a child, and she still hasn't forgotten what they did to her. So we let it go, watch it tangle, and brush it out while she screams.

Tonight Abbie walked out of her room carrying a large chunk of hair. I asked her to turn around, and sure enough half of her hair was now shoulder-length. She found a pair of scissors that I foolishly left within her reach, and had gone to work on her hair. She said she did it to be like her brothers, who now have slightly shorter hair than she does. Mommy finished the haircut a little later, and now Abbie has an easy-to-manage hairstyle without us having to traumatize her. Of course a little later she asked if she could put her hair back on, so I don't think she understands the permanence of her actions.

You Can Lead a Child to Food, but You Can't Make Her Eat

Abbie's menu for the day:

Cereal (not eaten)
Mandarin oranges (Tory ate most of them)
Granola bar (Abbie carried it off to the backyard, so I don't know if she ate it)
Chips (1-2 servings)
Spaghetti
Chocolate milk (1 glass)

Abbie has a horrible diet. I suppose I'm to blame (partly), so I'm cracking down on the snacks. Notice that I limited the chips and sweets. When Abbie asks for a snack, I usually offer something healthy, which she of course rejects. This leads to her frequently telling me she's hungry. I respond by telling her that's because she won't eat what I offer her. Hopefully it sinks in eventually.

Oh, you're Wakko all right

One of the joys of parenting is sharing the things you loved as a kid with your own kids. Now that everything is on DVD, it's easy to share my childhood cartoons with my children. Looking back on them, I realize most of them were garbage (the new Transformer movies helped me realize just how vacuous that series was). In my quest to select a higher class of cartoon, I stumbled upon Animaniacs. I remember enjoying that show as a child, and I remember that it was pretty smart for a kid's show. So I picked up the first season on DVD to see what the kids think.



The problem that I now realize is I enjoyed Animaniacs when I was, oh, 13-years-old, not 3-years-old like the boys. Most of the show's dialog goes right over the kids' head, so never mind the smartness factor of the show. They do enjoy it, though, they just enjoy different things than I did. Mostly they enjoy the slapstick nature of the show. That, and saying "hello, nurse." They also enjoy the fact that there are three Animaniacs, just like there are three of them. They even identify with individual Animaniacs. Abbie is Dot. Tory is Yakko. Ian is Wakko. It works out well. There's also a lot of music, which the kids enjoy. Sometimes the songs are quasi-educational, so maybe they're learning something from the show.

@#%$

While riding in the car the other day, the kids were fighting in the backseat. They had discovered a couple toy cars buried in the wasteland of fast food toys covering the backseat floor, and were grabbing at each other trying to control the brightly-colored plastic toys.

"Give me back my damn car!" Abbie screamed.

Mommy and I were instantly concerned about this. We asked where she heard that word (probably daycare). We told her that word is very rude to use. We did our best to be calm so as not to encourage her to use that word just to get a rise out of us. Abbie, almost in tears, kept screaming that she wanted her "damn car" back,

Finally mommy grabbed the car. When the kids fight over something, the best thing to do is to take it away; that way everyone can be unhappy together. Mommy held the car, looked at it, and found the word "Dan" written across its back bumper. Apparently this car was named Dan.

"Abbie, do you want your Dan car back?" Mommy asked.

"Yeah," Abbie whined, still fighting back tears.

Mommy threw the car back to her. It's easier to tolerate their fighting when we know they're not cussing.

Bad Idea

We took the kids out for ice cream after supper tonight. It's currently 10:30pm, they've been locked in their room for over an hour, and they're still bouncing off the walls. Ice cream might have to be a mid-day treat from now on.