Yesterday Big A turned 6 and tomorrow is her party for her friends. She originally said she wanted a small, low-key party at home with no more than 5 guests, but we now have 13 kids coming!!! I think Adam and I are going to be in bad shape at the end...most parents drop-off their kids at this age, so we are going to be hugely outnumbered by kids.
Hopefully the kids will be kept occupied with our planned activities: t-shirt decorating and Twister. Yep, low-tech, old-fashioned fun. They'll either love it or hate it, and if they hate it, we'll have over a dozen hyper, crazy children tearing our house apart. Good times!
At least we were smart enough to enlist my in-laws to help out by taking Little A off our hands for the afternoon tomorrow. The last thing we need is to have to deal with 3-year-old tantrums on top of the rest of the mayhem that is likely to ensue.
What is so surprising to me is how much of a "tween" Big A is already. No more TreeHouse Television. She eschews Dora, Caillou, etc, and is now into iCarly, Victorious, and (gulp!) Barbie. She likes to listen to a lot of the same music as Adam and I! When did this happen??? I can't imagine what things will be like once she has raging hormones going on...
Speaking of which, she has her first crush, since the boy she was infatuated with at her old daycare when she was 2. She doesn't seem to like boys her own age. The first one was 6 when she was 2, and this little guy is just 4! I worried, at first, that his parents would think she is some sort of predator robbing-the-cradle, but fortunately, they think it's cute. She writes him love notes on a daily basis and says they are going to get married. The little cutie is coming to her birthday tomorrow, and I just hope he isn't intimidated by her older friends.
Little A, our newly minted 3-year-old, is still giving us the run-around on the potty training. She has proven herself physically capable and aware of what it takes to potty train, but she is deliberately resisting. Not even letting her watch the Elmo potty training episode on YouTube over-an- over has been able to increase her interest and willingness to give up her diapers.
Last week my mother-in-law experimented with the Smartie-Bribe method, something Adam and I had discussed, but did not feel ready to try yet. It worked like a charm at the beginning but then the novelty of getting one little treat every time she went wore off, and she began to try and exploit the system. The rule was: one real pee or poo on the toilet and she gets one Smartie. She quickly began to fight for 2 Smarties for each successful deposit (inflation, Adam said), and then started to argue that she should get a Smartie for each DROP OF PEE that comes out. She has also started handing out the Smarties to everyone else who makes a pee or poo in our house. At least she shares...
Yes, yes, I know bribing kids isn't a great idea and bribing them with junk food is an even worse idea. I know, I know! But it has gotten the ball rolling in the right direction anyways.
Her daycare teachers have warned us not to push too hard as that can lead to complete resistance. The fact that she is physically capable but generally unwilling, they said, suggests that she is using this as a power struggle. Adam and I already worry she will still be in diapers when she begins kindergarten, but her teachers said that there is still plenty of time (over a year) for her to be toilet trained.
Ah well, tomorrow will mark the end of birthday season in our house for a while. I will post photos of the cupcakes I made for tomorrow, but after that I think I will take a break from cake and icing for a bit. With spring finally here, I am looking forward to all the fresh, seasonal fruits and veggies that will soon be available.
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