Sunday tumbled in

and I was up very early with a headache. Que cera. I was thinking in the bathtub and came to the idea that maybe Esme will be MORE ready for Kindergarten when she is six, than the other children.. and maybe that isn't such a bad thing. She has such a happy-go-lucky sweet attitude (at least now, that could change by then, too), that she will probably be thrilled to see other kids and use the material she already knows to be the one with her hand always up, always ready to do something NEW if perchance it does come along etc etc... And that in that time she does need to learn a few other very important skills that are not set yet for her -- how to follow rules, how to be nice to other kids (not a lot of opportunity right now), less argumentative about things she doesn't want to do, P/T (of course, and away from home will be different than at home), self-help in putting on jackets, shoes a bit more, eating her lunch and maybe not always 'fun' food away from home etc... There are a lot of things about K that will be new and challenging for her. There will be TOYS she has never seen - kids to play with them with her, new puzzles and ideas and things like Dora and Elmo she has never seen but I know other kids would love to fill her in on etc etc.... So - hold back mama... it isn't all gloom and doom....

There are a few kids on Esme's forum that have very different personalities. One is a year older than her and very emotional. She has been in preschool for a year already, and gets almost 'depressed' when they ask her easy things. She comes home and cries to her mom that the teachers must think she is 'dumb' and that she doesn't want to go back because she knows there will never be anything new. This little girl is one of those I would call 'too smart for her own good..', in the real sense of the words. The other, older kids at the school tease her because she is a 'baby' and 'babies don't read'. She takes all of this so seriously to heart, and the poor girl sometimes comes home in tears. And her mama can cheer her up temporarily - but she really relies on her peers and of course, kids at that age are not kind... so... BUT. I don't think Esme is that kind of personality - I think she would find some other common ground with the other kids and make them forget that she is 'a baby.' I think she has such a strong 'happy' and 'sweet' mixed with a leadership 'come see the great things with me' that it will take some serious downtrodding to make her upset for more than a short period of time.

And another thing I wanted to touch on. I have found in the past few months a way to get Esme to cooperate with getting her hair washed... and now it also works on cleaning the grime out from under her fingernails (not sure if that one will last.) Mark REALLY likes movies (and I do also, but not so passionately). Esme watches bits of movies that probably would not be considered 'kid fare', but she does not watch them all the way through and tends to ignore all but the most harrowing and exciting bits. A good while back she watched bits of Men in Black, and Percy Jackson - and was asking me about both Medusa-like characters. I told her that is what happens when you don't wash your hair - it gets snakes and spiders and bugs in it. She does NOT like bugs - wants to 'make bug flat' with fly swatter when she sees one etc... and well, who can really truly blame her? There are worse things to be afraid of and at least she is 'active' in her fear (make bug FLAT, get rid of bug) and not up on a chair crying for me to get it away etc etc...

So.... I'm capitalizing on her sense of bug vengeance. When I wash her hair she calms right down if I remind her that I need to make sure no bugs or spiders want to live there -- and washing it makes sure of that, and doesn't take all that long.... you can survive this etc. And it works - she complains, but I don't have to hold her down like a football. And the other night she caught a tiny bit of 'The Matrix' where the scorpion like thing attacks Keanu Reaves and goes into his belly button. She was, for a moment, VERY scared and checked her own belly button and told the actor that he needed to get help that his belly button was hurt and he needed to look at it etc etc.. And I calmed her down by telling her he didn't wash it and if he did - the bug wouldn't want to be there. I told her that last night when I washed under her fingernails and "checked" her belly button (she is an outie so HAHA it really isn't an issue *rofl*) and pretended to clean it. She was all wide-eyed about that - oh yes, please make sure of that. And she cried terrible bloody murder about using the fingernail brush on her fingernails... until I told her I had to get that dirt out because bugs would like to live in there - and then she calmed down and made tiny 'ow' remarks but didn't twist and try to get away. They are tiny white lies, right? It works. Once she is old enough to understand a bit better I can translate 'bugs might want to live there so we need to keep it CLEAN and they won't' to germs or other reasons that she will understand better then. And she won't look like she just rolled out of a ditch (so often) when I take her to Grandma's or to town. **still haha because she is an outie and now she agrees she needs to keep her belly button clean**

Other things I need to work on with her - she has a very 'equal' sense of justice. She wants equal treatment for everything... which is good and bad in a way, because she can be a benevolent dictator! It is good and sweet because she tucks her toys and her kitten into bed with her 'tuck tuck tuck' into her blankets everyone together equally etc. She will share a bowl of leftover cereal milk spoon by spoon one to every animal in the room until it is all gone. Those are very sweet and almost sappy moments. It's bad when her sense of justice means she thinks she can tell us we are 'bad mumum' and 'bad daddy' for doing something she thinks she shouldn't do - like take her food/lollipops etc when they are getting cold/dirty/nosed by animals and she takes it as US ruining her good time. She tells me I am bad mumum for making her go get changed when she told me she didn't need to... IE: she can't drag me somewhere, why can I drag her there? Because I'm the MUMUM, that is why.... It hits me somewhere deep down that she has such a natural sense of 'If I can't do it why can YOU do it' that she waggles her little finger and tells us so etc... I love it, but I hate it in a way too... how do you explain inequality of privileges to a three year old? Why do I feel like I should? (yes I am the MUMUM, I do know better than she does, but she asks for PROOF and sometimes I would like to be able to explain... she is understanding so much more, she can actually 'get' some of these ideas now and once she does - things are so much easier.) Maybe I'm just a silly goose... It's in the back of my mind lately - maybe I'll click with some better answers.

The language has moved up one more small step. She is telling me things she did during the day and I am understanding what she means.. and that it was earlier.. even though she isn't using past tense. There were also a few 'I want' sentences tonight that were quite complicated compared to recent terms. She had 'babble lengths' in both of them - but I understood her. The first one was she wanted me to find milk and a spoon and put coffee and the milk in a yellow cup (one we have and I've done it before) so it would be the hot and she could drink it. She didn't drink it.. she played in it. But I was willing, and she was excited, and I drank my coffee and it wasn't a terrible waste. She drank a tiny bit, three times... and felt 'big and in the know.' She wanted to play 'wordworld' on pbskids and see 'the one the girl the sheep, the sheep the hat, the sheep wears the hat, that one, yea that one'.. (the game where the girl sheep wears a hat=Alphabet Falls game on the left hand side of this page). The other one was we had purple food coloring in the bathwater and she wanted me to 'make the purple toes'... so I was ?? for a few minutes thinking she meant the bathwater was MAKING her toes purple. Until, she said 'over there - the purple toes' pointing at the sink across the room and touched all of her toes one by one. She wanted the purple NAIL POLISH from the vanity sink back ledge... and the purple water was reminding her of it. So we did the purple toes ;) And she sat so still and was so good, and then ran off to show Daddy her purple toes.