This December 25th I'm giving myself the gift of peace. Which means I will, as needed, step away and journal, blog, or read. I will not be present every moment. And that's just fine. I'm not nearly as indispensable as I think I am. Case in point, Theo is already taking a nap on the couch in the midst of kids playing. If he can fall asleep surely I can step out of the room.
And while I'm patting myself on the back. Here's the single smartest thing I've ever done. Two days ago I removed 3/4ths of their toys and stashed them in the garage where they'll rotate back into play in a few months. I then had empty tubs waiting for the new toys to go into today. As the kids tired of one toy and asked to open another gift I quietly removed the toy and put it into a tub. I felt calm and peaceful each time I cleaned up their space and there was room for them to enjoy a new toy. This may be the biggest mom-win of my entire life. Seriously.
First Impressions: Now I know why I never attempted cutesie matching pajamas before. It's a set-up for failure, right? I got carried away and put the three youngest in Christmas pajamas last night. This is what I learned:
Reason why this will fail if put kids in pajamas at beginning of bedtime--toothpaste.
Reason why this will fail during the night--child who hasn't peed the bed in months will pee the bed on Christmas Eve.
Reason why this will fail the next morning--child too absorbed in playing with new toy will poop herself. Then try to cover up the poop and hence there will be poop smeared all over the bathroom, bedding, etc. Nobody needs to be cleaning up poop smears at 9am on Christmas morning.
So, cutesie pajamas never again. Also, my first break came at 9:30 on Christmas morning.
Second Impressions: I finally have a label for how Jane plays with toys. I'm calling it Haphazard Squirrel.
We all know squirrels bury nuts and seeds during the fall in caches that they uncover as needed during winter thaws and in the spring. I thought squirrels had a mental plan for where these caches were but then I read an article that said no, they just do some most-logical-spot type burying and then randomly go looking when hungry later. They might discover their own caches or another squirrel's. They might not recover all the nuts they bury.
Today I've watched Jane play more closely than I usually do because I'm consciously noting what she likes, how she interacts with the others, etc.
I've been frustrated since the girls came to us by what horrific messes their toys make every single day, sometimes several times a day, and I didn't know why it was so bad. Honestly, I just chalked it up to more kids because more kids = more mess, that's logical, right?
Nope, it's our Haphazard Squirrel at work. She doesn't play--she scatters and hoards. She is obsessed with tiny things. I've already observed that on nearly every trip out of the house she'll find the tiniest pebble or bead or millimeter of thread and hold it in her hand and treasure it deeply and cry when she loses it.
As she's unwrapped each new present she has frantically flipped through it, pawing it apart, really. Then she's found some tiny bit and tried to hide it away--in her slipper, under the couch cushion, etc. Maybe it's because she's perpetually jealous and not wanting the others to have it. Maybe it's just her love of tiny things and her love of the act of squirreling something away.
When James plays he lines up every item in his collection. He has had a collection of animals figurines since last Christmas. He still has every one (that the puppy hasn't chewed) because his play is lining them up, talking to himself about their characteristics, then moving them and lining them up again. If he wanders away it's easy to clean up his animals later because they're all in a row and you can scoop them back into their tub.
When Jane plays she dumps out every item from their storage tub and then, happily and busily and chattering to herself or others with wonderful imaginative play, scatters and hides. She's obsessed with purses and bags. There's nothing funner than getting a new purse and filling it with a random assortment of toys--they never make sense, it's not a coherent collection like she's pretending to have a tea party or go on an adventure, it's a giant wooden block and ten other random items plus a few socks--and then haul them around the house. She never unpacks and plays with the items. The fun is solely in the collecting and hauling.
As I'm writing this I'm thinking about her past and that we know she never spent more than 5 days in one home at a stretch. She was constantly bounced between mom's, grandma's, aunt's, and other-grandma's-ex-boyfriend's houses. So, obviously she never experienced a life where you'd expect your toys and clothes to be at hand. She lived a nomadic lifestyle.
The result of Jane's playing style--that is pretty much copied by Kate--is that it is nearly impossible to maintain sets of anything. Cleaning up dominoes, for example, means sweeping under every piece of furniture, lifting couch cushions, emptying every bag, searching both her bedroom and the play area, emptying shoes and coat pockets---it's exhausting and so much harder than life needs to be.
But writing out my observations from today, and thinking about why she is this way, and wanting to nip this in the bud both for Jane's sake and also before Kate has it modeled any longer--leads me to think about reasonable solutions.
To give Jane credit, she truly does improve a problem behavior when we talk it through with her. I think I can have a meaningful conversation about how much she loves tiny things, hiding things, packing up bags, etc. Then, I think she can begin to grasp why it isn't fun to play with toys when we've lost items in a set.
Finally, I think I need to set some literal boundaries for her. I think I need to mark physical spaces for her to keep all her toys within e.g. using a hula hoop laid on the ground, laying down blankets or towels, etc. If she has a visual limit for where the toys can go, and if we consciously teach why squirreling toys away in hiding places is harmful, then maybe we can get control of the problem.
Because Grandma is a deeply unhappy woman fixated on Things and hoarding those Things and I can already see that Jane has both that tendency and early years of modeling. But that's for the next post...
And while I'm patting myself on the back. Here's the single smartest thing I've ever done. Two days ago I removed 3/4ths of their toys and stashed them in the garage where they'll rotate back into play in a few months. I then had empty tubs waiting for the new toys to go into today. As the kids tired of one toy and asked to open another gift I quietly removed the toy and put it into a tub. I felt calm and peaceful each time I cleaned up their space and there was room for them to enjoy a new toy. This may be the biggest mom-win of my entire life. Seriously.
First Impressions: Now I know why I never attempted cutesie matching pajamas before. It's a set-up for failure, right? I got carried away and put the three youngest in Christmas pajamas last night. This is what I learned:
Reason why this will fail if put kids in pajamas at beginning of bedtime--toothpaste.
Reason why this will fail during the night--child who hasn't peed the bed in months will pee the bed on Christmas Eve.
Reason why this will fail the next morning--child too absorbed in playing with new toy will poop herself. Then try to cover up the poop and hence there will be poop smeared all over the bathroom, bedding, etc. Nobody needs to be cleaning up poop smears at 9am on Christmas morning.
So, cutesie pajamas never again. Also, my first break came at 9:30 on Christmas morning.
Second Impressions: I finally have a label for how Jane plays with toys. I'm calling it Haphazard Squirrel.
We all know squirrels bury nuts and seeds during the fall in caches that they uncover as needed during winter thaws and in the spring. I thought squirrels had a mental plan for where these caches were but then I read an article that said no, they just do some most-logical-spot type burying and then randomly go looking when hungry later. They might discover their own caches or another squirrel's. They might not recover all the nuts they bury.
Today I've watched Jane play more closely than I usually do because I'm consciously noting what she likes, how she interacts with the others, etc.
I've been frustrated since the girls came to us by what horrific messes their toys make every single day, sometimes several times a day, and I didn't know why it was so bad. Honestly, I just chalked it up to more kids because more kids = more mess, that's logical, right?
Nope, it's our Haphazard Squirrel at work. She doesn't play--she scatters and hoards. She is obsessed with tiny things. I've already observed that on nearly every trip out of the house she'll find the tiniest pebble or bead or millimeter of thread and hold it in her hand and treasure it deeply and cry when she loses it.
As she's unwrapped each new present she has frantically flipped through it, pawing it apart, really. Then she's found some tiny bit and tried to hide it away--in her slipper, under the couch cushion, etc. Maybe it's because she's perpetually jealous and not wanting the others to have it. Maybe it's just her love of tiny things and her love of the act of squirreling something away.
When James plays he lines up every item in his collection. He has had a collection of animals figurines since last Christmas. He still has every one (that the puppy hasn't chewed) because his play is lining them up, talking to himself about their characteristics, then moving them and lining them up again. If he wanders away it's easy to clean up his animals later because they're all in a row and you can scoop them back into their tub.
When Jane plays she dumps out every item from their storage tub and then, happily and busily and chattering to herself or others with wonderful imaginative play, scatters and hides. She's obsessed with purses and bags. There's nothing funner than getting a new purse and filling it with a random assortment of toys--they never make sense, it's not a coherent collection like she's pretending to have a tea party or go on an adventure, it's a giant wooden block and ten other random items plus a few socks--and then haul them around the house. She never unpacks and plays with the items. The fun is solely in the collecting and hauling.
As I'm writing this I'm thinking about her past and that we know she never spent more than 5 days in one home at a stretch. She was constantly bounced between mom's, grandma's, aunt's, and other-grandma's-ex-boyfriend's houses. So, obviously she never experienced a life where you'd expect your toys and clothes to be at hand. She lived a nomadic lifestyle.
The result of Jane's playing style--that is pretty much copied by Kate--is that it is nearly impossible to maintain sets of anything. Cleaning up dominoes, for example, means sweeping under every piece of furniture, lifting couch cushions, emptying every bag, searching both her bedroom and the play area, emptying shoes and coat pockets---it's exhausting and so much harder than life needs to be.
But writing out my observations from today, and thinking about why she is this way, and wanting to nip this in the bud both for Jane's sake and also before Kate has it modeled any longer--leads me to think about reasonable solutions.
To give Jane credit, she truly does improve a problem behavior when we talk it through with her. I think I can have a meaningful conversation about how much she loves tiny things, hiding things, packing up bags, etc. Then, I think she can begin to grasp why it isn't fun to play with toys when we've lost items in a set.
Finally, I think I need to set some literal boundaries for her. I think I need to mark physical spaces for her to keep all her toys within e.g. using a hula hoop laid on the ground, laying down blankets or towels, etc. If she has a visual limit for where the toys can go, and if we consciously teach why squirreling toys away in hiding places is harmful, then maybe we can get control of the problem.
Because Grandma is a deeply unhappy woman fixated on Things and hoarding those Things and I can already see that Jane has both that tendency and early years of modeling. But that's for the next post...
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