Their highlights, lowlights, and little rituals.
Papaya continues to want everything to be just so. I can tell you precisely what goes down every night at bedtime:
- Bath
- Dries off with towel, she holds it and goes to bedroom to pick out pajamas.
- Brings pajamas back to bathroom to pick out a diaper (“night diap”)
- Pee (“one last pee”)
- Takes pajamas and diaper back to bedroom to put it on. Has me help with diaper, lies in the exact same way (horizontal at foot of bed, head toward me), and put on pajamas
- Back to bathroom to brush teeth
- Say goodnight to Mama and Nashi
- Locate bottle of milk but doesn’t drink yet
- Have me read My World then Goodnight Moon
- Grab milk, turn off light, drink milk
- Toss and turn, fall asleep holding my hair
This has been on repeat for months now. Recent development! We’re on night two of no diapers at night!
She loves snacks, juice, the tree swing up the street, and copying everything Nashi does.
She hates when anyone helps her do or move anything, not having juice on hand, and getting picked up from preschool shortly before snack time.
Other rituals:
- When getting in the car seat, she likes to climb in on her own, then face and lean towards the back of the car then the front of the car saying “hi back there! hi up there!”
- Bumping bellies with me while sticking out her tongue
Getting weird at 9pm on the day of daylight savings
Nashi amazes me by showing occasional big kid behavior and little kid behavior. Sometimes when he gets injured, he’ll just sort of decide to keep playing instead of crying about it. Next minute he’s asking me to accompany him to his room to put on a shirt because he’s afraid to enter the room by himself.
I haven’t discussed violin in a long time but that’s going well. Effective practice sessions take some strategizing on my part, especially timing wise, but it’s generally a painless experience. Lessons go mostly well, and group class is far less painful than it used to me. He’d probably be even further along skill wise if I actually made it a truly daily priority to practice and progress. That being said, I do keep up with a decent amount of regularity and he is progressing just fine. He is even slated to do his first solo at the next recital in June.
He loves playing soccer, riding his bike in the driveway, and having any excuse to rough house. During the summer I allowed a “karate game” where we basically just physically battled, partially an attempt on my part to teach him when it’s ok to playfully hit and when it’s not. Had to stop it because he would kick and punch when he’s not supposed to. But! He’s been on a good streak lately of not punching or kicking so I’ve told him if he keeps that up a little longer, it shows me we can play the karate game again.
He hates most grownup food, naps, having his picture taken, and wearing anything other than this funny clothing combination of green pants with shorts on top plus Seahawks shirt. The shorts he loves because Mama found him a pair that matches my workout shorts. He loves the Seahawks shirt because I’m not sure why actually. Oh, and knee high socks stretched up. This week he attempted to wear it three days in a row, but cried on day two when Mama said we have to wash these damn things before he gets to wear it again.
Other rituals:
- Claiming “I don’t care about..” anything that he wants but couldn’t get
- Competing for the right colored plate or bowl with Papaya
- Retrieving his favorite outfit from the dryer on those days where we wash it, and securing it for the next day
Only let me take this photo without the scary face because I told him just wanted to show him how the gloves looked
seattlepapa 