"I love you"

This morning, my daughter comes to me and says - I love you, before giving me a hug. I love you :-). She did say that when she first started to talk, but back then it was more of a parrot, not sure how much she really understood what it meant. Since then - nothing! And I tell her all the time how I love her and all, but she just wouldn't say those three words. Oh she is very affectionate and gives hugs and kisses all the time, it's only the words she doesn't say :-). But this morning she did!!

And talking about love, we had a bath together the other day at my mother's. So before the bath, when we were undressed, I looked at us in the mirror. I will just note that I don't have a mirror at my place. No real reason except I never bothered to get a new one once the mirror I had broke, and hey, I'm doing fine without looking at my fat cells! So, the bath.. and looking at us together naked..and looking at her little image and me, all I could see was how much she loves me!


If I am writing, I must write about how lately it seems like she is in this achieving mode. She is suddenly capable and able to do many things, like suddenly she knows how to use scissors (and also cut a bit of her hair off, lol), or climbing like the big kids like to do in the playground (that is, around and above the regular playground equipment..), etc. She just seems in the last week or two to have outstretched herself. She is just over a month shy of her third birthday, but she definitely is a three year old...

play

Now that I'm an adult, I love watching kids play, mainly free play. Because as a child (and even today), I had no idea how to free play. I mean I knew things like board games, and if some kids gathered and wanted to play hide & seek or the likes, then I could do that... But just to run around and have fun? No, that wasn't so much part of my childhood (perhaps because I was not sociable and stayed a lot at home or in the class room during the break by myself). So watching kids run around in the playground, just having fun with no specific purpose, that fascinates me!

And or But I want to be playful with my daughter. So I bought a book - Playful Parenting and..... well at least I bought it! Anyway the other day I decided it was time I started reading the book, and so I have (and to be quite honest, I'm still at the beginning, but I felt I just had to share..)

The author talks about how it is important to play with your child, not just to let them play, but to actually play with them. It fosters closeness, confidence, connection. In addition, he talks about the importance of play for children, as this is how they learn and explore and make sense of their world. Also he mentions how play, even the simple casual play, has layers of meanings to it! Etc, I won't copy here all what I marked lol. He also talked about how adults should get down to the floor when playing with their kids. Sigh of relief. This is one thing I do do! I'm not good at playing blah blah I I really am terrible at this playing thing), but yes, I have no problem sitting on the floor, on the carpet, on the earth etc and playing with her!

He then went on to a point where I have just read the bullets before he elaborates on them, because it got me thinking.. Well one specific bullet. The usual scene when I go with my daughter to the play ground is - first I have to swing her for a very long time on the swings! [unschooling as I am, I will not teach her to swing alone until she is ready for it. And I do not push once or twice and leave her like I see some mums do. No, when I swing her I swing her]. Then I go to the bench for a few minutes, hoping to get some rest.. until she calls me to play with her. [writing this, I think it is a bit better at the homeschooling group where we also eat and also she does know a bit of the kids, not so much when we go in the afternoons to the local playgrounds]. And I want to sit and rest, I want to watch children, and mainly my daughter, playing, but mainly I fear that if I play with her, then she won't be playing or even socializing with other kids.
Well the bullet that got me, about a child's need for playing with the adult they are closest to, was the one mentioned how children need more play time with the grown ups "when they are having a difficult time connecting with peers or adults". As I said, I haven't yet read his elaboration, but yes I can see it now.. she was needing me while I was pushing her away.. Anyway I am learning and hopefully one day not too long, I will be a better playing parent!

learning to read

I still really don't know what approach I want to take as for Butterfly and learning how to read. On one hand I do love the idea of letting her teach herself at her own pace, when and how it fits her. On the other hand, all those posts I read (mainly for the art stuff for kids they have) where they show these wonderful things they do with young toddlers to teach them letters! (plus I do fear, people [especially my mother] will see that Butterfly is 'not advancing in her reading' and will push teaching on to her [they already think that homeschooling is wrong..).

Anyway, while I continue to ponder on the issue, I would like to tell you about our little advancements in the literacy world. It started some time ago (maybe a month or two ago? don't really remember..) when I opened a book to read to Butterfly and, as this was a book that I bought her, plus pages from paper and not board or plastic, I had [once, many moons ago] written her name on the inner side of the binding. So I open the book, see her name written, and mention to her that this is your name. I had no intentions in doing so, but ever since she's been asking me many times to write down her name (in fact, every time she sees me with a pen in my hand..), sometimes pointing at letters and either telling me or asking me if it's her name written there. And no, mostly it is not her name that is written, but I am very happy for her recognition of these being letters [just reminding you that she doesn't even know the ABC song, let alone letters etc] that are read into something.

In the last couple of days she started asking me once or twice - what is written here? Noticing letters all around her and wanting to know, to learn. It does make me happy to know that even if I'm not too sure what is our path as regard reading, that nevertheless, we are on the right one!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And now to a little rant in the same subject of learning to read. As I've mentioned, one of my fears is my mother. My mother is very old class - she is the teacher, so she is the one with the knowledge  and her job is to pour that knowledge onto her pupils. She teaches my almost 6 year old niece to read and write in English [The girl is in last year of kindergarten and will start school (1st grade) next year*]. My mother has a few workbooks that she uses in the lesson, jumping from one to another. The girl on the other hand, you can feel that she is not too enthusiastic about it, she wants and she doesn't want (more doesn't). And I can see from the side how it's a lot of "school work" and not really anything else. A kid that age needs much more, because learning from books can get really boring. So I quickly googled up and found some sites with ideas for her, like preparing very big outlined words, and the girl has to glue  sweets or cheerios etc on them - fun, tactile, yummy; or another idea I really liked was preparing cloth pegs each with a letter  on it, as well as word cards, and the girl has to go through the pile of pegs searching for the right letters for her word - again fun, tactile, active. So I send my mother the list, trying to gently tell her the girl needs a bit more in the lesson. My mother's response? "some of the sites require paying, others aren't suitable" and she went on to print a bingo game which is the nearest thing that was to what she was doing so far (child reading from a worksheet, so called a game). Errrrrr!

[as for her claim - a big err as she completely didn't get my message! I was just sending her ideas she might want to try, not what she should teach or sites to print from]

* In school of course she will be learning to read and write in Hebrew, my mother is just giving her an enrichment..

P.S
That Bingo game - had my mother just printed the paper and the rest (gluing onto construction paper and then cutting out the grid itself and the words to be put on the grid) left for the lesson - that would have been something else!!

picture

As you can see very clearly, the drawing above is my soon to be new tablet!*&**
But more than being a picture of my (or her) tablet, this is the first! (well technically the third as she drew more of these in the last two days) picture she has drawn FOR ME! "here mummy, this is your tablet" she told me. That makes me so excited. I mean I've been around other kids drawing for their mothers, never really doing a picture for me unless told/asked to, because as much as I might be close (and even if the kid did often refer to me as "mother"), I am not his mother! And this is my daughter and she drew a picture FOR ME! (a dream come true:-) )



* I'm planning on getting one for my birthday, instead of the one she dropped.. (and more than once). I think it's a great tool for such young hands plus I would have fun with it too..
** and please don't be like my mother who couldn't see a tablet. it's the thought that counts! (Butterfly came up with saying it's a tablet all on her own)

The Challenge

I hate it when I shout at her, I really do, but then I loose my temper and shout at her again. Okay, not that often, but still - a shout is a shout. I do notice that mostly when I loose it, it's about me, about my fears or phobias. For example, when we come back from our homeschool meetings we need to cross a bridge. I'm afraid of heights, and this bridge really scares me. It doesn't (and shouldn't!) scare her. So she walks slowly, goes to one side or another (logically I no that's safe, it's not like she can lean over or something..) and my inner self who is scared shouts or talks nasty to her to just quickly walk it [specifically in this example I am now better, tell her before we cross that I am scared, just like she gets scared from loud noises...].

I want to do better! (don't we all :-)). I have learnt about the Orange Rhino's challenge - not to shout at her kids for one whole year (she actually is already 422 days without shouting!) and am taking the challenge. The Orange Rhino has a yelling meter of 7 scales (7 being screaming mad at your child, I don't think I do that.). I don't think I will adopt that. Also I would like to add talking not nicely.

I did try to start a few days ago, but just a little raise of my voice and.. Oh, shouting brings me back to day 0! I am now on day 2 :-). [for the record - 6.4.13 is my first day..]


Other news. No, I am not pregnant, even though I had a good number of eggs harvest (and I had the retrieval with no anesthetics - I really hate that part of the procedure [that is, the anesthesia] . The procedure itself was okay, but afterwards... I don't know if because I "was awake" immediately afterwards [usually my body would be slowly recovering] or because I had a good number of eggs, but I was in real pain..).
I also had to give a small talk in class on any subject - I chose fertility treatments. And then this cycle and I should have gotten my period right at the time of my lecture, which would totally suck. Well even though I had nice embryos, I knew it was no good as I didn't feel any symptom and mourned before the 2 week was over. Even so I was lucky that I got my period a bit early, and so I was after it all (even my period) when it was time for me to lecture. Don't know when I'll cycle again (money.... ) but I am not ready to give up the dream of more than one child (I know it sounds selfish when others don't even have that one child).

pictures

Modeling plaits/braids :-)

me, at 2.5 - no resemblance :-)

Purim - my Shapes girl. I was sick so costume not all that good.. [circle in the front, in the back - square. hat was supposed to be a triangle, and she has shapes dangling from her waist (made it too long...) Somehow I wanted to do stars in her shoes, but didn't get around to that]

Holding a worm (for the first time..)
I LOVE her expression!

We were at the playground, when I saw Butterfly needed to pee. Rewinding to just before we left when she asked me to go to the playground and I really didn't feel like carrying the potty so I asked her if it will be okay if we don't take the potty and she said yes. Ha. So I see she needs to go, but nonetheless she refuses to go on the grass etc only to pee in her trousers. This phase is so so so frustrating! and annoying. So we headed home, me now carrying her bike (because she can't ride with her wet clothes [going to the playground was spontaneous so we didn't take spare clothes]).

Anyway that's just as a background.. So we are nearing home. She is happily climbing the wall she always likes to climb, we might have cut the playground short (but it was really getting dark, so anyway we would have been heading home shortly after) but we were fine. So we were nearing home when she spots some puddles and... goes running straight in. Yes she loves splashing in puddles (who wouldn't!), but... please not with those shoes! Our kind of last pair for now as the other pairs of shoes have also seen their share of mud. Errr... I also have the knowledge of us needing shoes for tomorrow* morning. So I flipped. I really did. I run up to her and violently pulled her out of the puddle. Yes, I was embarrassingly too violent. She was crying. Damn. I don't want to be that kind of parent.

* tomorrow morning. sigh. wake up early, go and have an u/s and a blood test to see that I haven't yet ovulated. It's will be cd23 and while writing these lines I do know I haven't ovulated. This is so! not typical of me, because I usually ovulate very much on time. But then being sick this week (I've been going to sleep while breastfeeding B to sleep, only to wake up next morning - that is so not me) was not typical, and maybe the egg feels that something is not right and so won't let go. [oh, feeling now much better!]

Lately I am just feeling that I'm too cross at her. Yes, she is at that age (amazing but at 2.5 something does switch and they do become so much more difficult). She's defiant, wants to do things her way, by herself. She is strong and very much has a will of her own. Yesterday not wanting to give me a hand to cross the road because she wants to do it herself, folding her arms**. She's becoming really not easy. Or maybe it's me with the pressure of those papers I need to hand in, and then not being myself this week. Anyway I am really not pleased with my parenting lately. I need to find other ways to cope.


** she started folding her arms when going on the bus, so I don't hold her, because she wants by herself! Too cute. But one thing is a bus (worse  case, I guard her with my body), the road is something else, and no you can not cross the road by yourself.

P.S
On a positive note - she loves counting and many times I would hear her "counting" this or that. counting correctly from 1-10 only skipping the four [doesn't every child have a "favourite" number they skip? lol].
She is also so much more talking. And singing! She sings almost non stop :-).