Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Me too!

Chloe was eating some frozen veggies and offered me a "bean". I said.. "ooh! Thanks! Lima beans are my favorite! " she said..." Really mom? ... Lima beans are my favorite, too!!" So we proceeded to eat the rest of the veggies together. :-D

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Grumpy Dad

Chloe last night "dad, you're too grumpy for me."

First Cavity

Chloe went to the dentist today and found out she's got her first cavity.

Monday, April 26, 2010

All ready for school wearing her daddy fire department shirt and red sport pants. I love those long pretty pig tails. :)

Chloe is wearing her 3-D glasses to watch "how to train your dragon". She went with Aunt Tia. 
A story from Abby. "Yesterday when I was being sneaky about talking Chloe into changing out of her work pants into play clothes we started talking about her room. I asked her if she liked it and she said she really did. And I told her it was a really cool room. She asked if I helped you put it together and I so no...that I helped move some stuff but that you had done it all by yourself to make sure that it was perfect because you knew her best. She looked around really thoughtfully and said, "yeah she did so good. It's like she read my mind." This feels so good!

Friday, April 9, 2010

Moving

Chloe and I are living with my mom. We moved into her two bedroom apartment last august. Chloe sleeps with my mom; I’ve got my own room. We do really well all together. Chloe and I help my mom, and she helps us. A lot. We all need each other and it feels good to be so close. It’s not always perfect, but I’m continually surprised at how relatively smooth us living together is. We are moving this week. Mom found a different apartment in our same complex that is a three bedroom. Chloe gets her own room now. It’s on a ground floor so we can stomp and jump as much as we want. We have a small yard area to run and play in and plenty of nearby parking. There is less traffic going by and mom gets her own big patio.

Chloe is a bit nervous about moving. Every time I talked to her about moving she said she didn’t want to. I asked her why and we talked about things that would be different. We figured out she didn’t want to because she doesn’t want to sleep on her own in her own room. She is scared and still wants to sleep with grandma.
She’s had her own room for quite a while at Mikes’ house, and she had her own room when we lived in the “big house”…. But she’s always slept with my mom since we’ve lived here.

This is one of the things about me as Chloe’s mom. I always try to validate her as a person. I recognize that her home and her schedule and habits are her entire existence. Changes like moving are literally life altering changes. If she says she’s scared, she’s scared. It’s my job to comfort her and make the process as easy as possible. I’ve thought for hours and hours on how I can make this transition smooth for her. She is very protective of her toys and where they are kept and if I touch or move them. So I figured it would be better to move all her things while she’s with Mikey. I still didn’t make that decision without her. I had a talk with her about the fact that we are going to move. She’s been to the new apartment with me a few times, moving some of my things. I explained to her how moving works, that we need to pack everything up and then unpack it and how unpacking means everything is going to be put away in different places. I asked her if she wanted to help me move her things, or if she just wanted me to do it while she was gone. I explained what might happen or how it might be in each scenario. I gave her as many choices as I could. I tried to make everything seem as in control and taken care of as I could. It really helped her engage.

As far as the sleeping arrangement, I’ve assured her that she does not have to sleep on her own when we move. She will have her own bed in her own room with her own things, but she will not have to be alone. Ever. She knows and understands that the eventual goal is for her to sleep there, but she is supported and reassured. She knows she won’t have to face that fear until she’s ready.

I won’t, or I try hard, not to spring anything on her. That has never worked well for her at all. She thrives when she knows what’s coming up. Changing gears in the middle is a real challenge. Today is Friday. She is with her daddy and she knows when she comes back on Sunday we will be moved into our new apartment and she will have a new room. It has always worked best for everyone when I can give her many details and many choices. Before she went to Mikeys this week, I asked her if she wanted to bring her first thing to her new room. She chose the painting I did for her (the one she designed). So we took it over there and she chose where she wanted it hung up. She is not scared. She is excited and she was running around the yard and in and out of the apartment like we already lived there and it was all hers. She knows that her fears are acknowledged and she doesn’t have to worry about them. Yes, she still reminds me about our “deal” with the sleeping thing as the one caveat to our moving. And I reassure her.

If I didn’t respect her or regard her as a person, I could have heard her say she was scared about moving, and minimized it. I could have said ‘there is nothing to be afraid of’ and tried to push her forward. I could have heard her say she didn’t want to move and said ‘well, we have to.’ That would have cut her off and given her a clear message that her feelings are not important. I could have not considered how small her world really is and how monumental of a change moving is. I would have never found out what her fears boiled down to and she would have felt alone and worried about the move as a whole. She would have been scared and worried while I was trying to move things and she would not have been able to have fun or look forward to any part of our new place. Not only that but her behavior would have been more difficult for me to handle and we might have had some really difficult days last week.

I always, always feel good about acknowledging her feelings. I feel good asking about them and helping her through them. If I had stopped our conversation about moving right when she said she didn’t want to… I can’t imagine how much conversation, growth, opportunity we would have missed out on. She may not have completely known why she didn’t want to move. I initiated that conversation. She wasn’t saying that to be difficult. She doesn’t want to be difficult. She was just saying the only feeling that she recognized at the time. Through our conversations, she realized there are really good things about moving and things to look forward to. She also was able to identify and clarify her fear and nervousness of sleeping alone. Her fear of sleeping in a bed alone is such a small, manageable part of our move. (from my perspective, not hers initially) And I got to help her experience the move in a positive way and feel good about it. And we can talk about the sleeping arrangement later.

I know that she’ll sleep in her own bed in our new apartment eventually. I just don’t insist that she does it on my time, when I want her to. It’s my job as her mother to keep her safe. Part of keeping her safe is keeping her feeling safe. If she doesn’t feel safe… in her world - she isn’t safe. Period. That’s her reality. If she doesn’t feel safe… she thinks I’m not keeping her safe. That’s my job. That’s what she comes to me for. How can I expect her to trust me if I don’t do that job? When she can’t trust me our relationship begins to crumble. Its part of my job as her mom to prove to her daily that I’ll be (to the best of my ability) what she needs me to be.

Favorite Color

Chloe told me that her official first favorite color has now changed from purple to red.

Officially.

stories

A few stories from this last week:

I dropped the leftover pizza box on the kitchen floor one morning this week. I saved the pieces of pizza, but a bunch of toppings fell on the floor. I said “oops”. My mom asked what happened and I said “I dropped a bunch of pizza ingredients on the kitchen floor.” She told me not to worry about cleaning it up so I could get off to work. About 5 minutes later Chloe went into the kitchen to get a straw (to drink the milk left in her cereal bowl ) and she said…
“EEW!! DisGUSting! … Now I’ve got ingredients all over my feet!”


Chloe doesn’t like minty things. Even when sometimes something isn’t minty she calls it minty if she doesn’t like it. Her favorite candies are Hot Tamales though. I guess cinnamon isn’t minty. Anyway. The other morning I was going in to be with her as she was waking up. I had just gotten ready for work and brushed my teeth, etc. I laid down next to her like I always do and we started chatting. After about 30 seconds she said
“MOM!! Your Voice Stinks!”
My ‘VOICE’? …Cute.
Then for a second I thought… What? No way. I just brushed my teeth.
Then I thought. Oh. Minty. Haha.
It’s funny that she would rather smell morning breath than toothpaste breath.


Chloe likes to play games on my Iphone. I get little applications that I think she’ll like. More times than I’d like to admit I get addicted to them, too. So I ended up getting this fish aquarium app that was a bit like a computer game we used to play. She can feed the fish and buy more and sell them after they grow up. While she was playing on this game, she wanted to tap the screen and nothing else.
She said: “Mom… please, hold the phone”
…short pause.
“HAHA… get it mom? ‘HOLD THE PHONE’??”
I love her sense of humor.


I was telling Chloe about a friend of mine at work who really likes gnomes. I’d heard of this joke about a gnome saying… “OH GNOME YOU DIDN’T!!!”
It’s a pun. I love puns. So I told Chloe about it. She loved it too… so all evening she was saying “oh gnome you didn’t!!” and then she stared trying to say gnome for every time she wanted to say the word no.
“I want to wear GNOME shirt to bed tonight”
(you want some water?) “GNOME Thank you”
(where are your shoes?) “I don’t even GNOME”


For bed the other night we read There’s a Wocket in my Pocket.
After we got done reading the book Chloe got really close to me and said…
“Mom. There’s a ZEE-VEE behind the TV” and we continued to make up rhyming words for silly creatures hiding behind things around the room. She’s pretty good.


My mom told me the other day there were hanging out and mom was ‘poking’ all the ‘polka-dots’ on Chloe’s jammies. They were having a great time. Then Chloe started getting tired of being poked and said:
“GRANDMA! STOP CRIMING ME!”
I guess anything that is unwanted is a crime.

Thursday, April 8, 2010

sperm whale

Chloe: Daddy, why's it called a sperm whale?
Mikey: um....
Chloe: What's sperm?
Mikey: Gah...

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Locked me out

I'm taking Chloe to the bathroom at haggen... For the first time she tells me not to come in the stall with her. She sais. "Wait out here mom, I'll be just fine. I'll come out when I'm done." a few seconds later... After she locked the stall from the inside... She said "I'm pooping mom, so you can just come in and help me wipe"

Sunday, April 4, 2010

New pet for a day.

Chloe found a baby sized hair clip. One of those little claw things. She said. " mom, I'd like to introduce you to Snappy! Be careful, though. She's a biter-McBiterson!!"

Thursday, April 1, 2010

Bath her way

Chloe taking a bath at daddys house. He went in to check on her and this is how she was chillin.