Robin Hill Gardens – Page 112 – Be joyful though you have considered all the facts

Real and Fake

Amie has been having nightmares about a dinosaur coming into the bedroom at night. It has spurred us to investigate whether she understands the difference between what is real and what is not, or “fake”. It is a good idea – we agree with several child developmental specialists – to make sure she does understand.

Baba was convinced she knows the difference already, but I wasn’t so sure. It’s not because she knows the words that she knows what they mean. So he asked her.

– Baba: Amie, is Monsters, Inc. real?

– Amie: Yes.

– Baba: Okay, yes, the movie is real. But is what happens in the movie real, or fake?

– Amie: Fake.

– Baba gestures triumphantly: See?

– Amie adds spontaneously: Boys are fake too.

Ha!

The next morning at breakfast we broached the subject again.

– Baba: Amie, am I real, or fake?

– Amie: You not real and you are not fake, you are just a boy.

We have a lot of work ahead of us and I so look forward to it!

Tadpoles Also Have Hands and Feet

Amie took special care with this one: it’s for a friend who is ill.

We talked in advance about the plan to put two figures on the page, and how it would be best to turn the page horizontally (landscape) so they would fit. She began with the head of the left figure, taking care to place it sufficiently to the left so there would be room for the other figure. She also spontaneously drew the head up on the page, but I don’t know if she was aware of the fact that it wouldn’t have to lie on its side that way.

To my surprise, she gave the first figure ears. She also suggested she give it hands, only she seemed at a loss as to where to put them. I helped by saying: “Look, Amie, where is my hand? At the end of my arm, yes?” And she got it right away, even glancing over at my arm and hand again to make draw the other hand. Same with the feet.Â She got the hands and feet right straight away on the drawing to the right. Their mouths are still hovering underneath their chins, which we think is supercool.
Amieâ€™s tadpoles 12 Jan 2008 (c) Katrien Vander Straeten

Tadpoles Smile Too!

Amie has been drawing her tadpoles consistently, but for one major change. A week ago she started drawing their mouths underneath, that is, outside the head. Consistently. I asked her one day, when she was about to put down the mouth:

“Amie, look, where is Mama’s mouth? Is it inside my face or outside?”

I even pointed at my mouth.

“Outside,” she said, and she drew a biiiiig smile underneath the head.

Strange, no? I am thinking of two possible and related explanations. 1. Mouths and especially smiles are very important to her, the most important facial features (the eyes and nose are three hurriedly placed dots). So they deserve a special, separate place. 2. She may not have drawn a circle (head) big enough to contain that all-important mouth. So it needs to go outside it.

It makes her drawings look very funny, since the legs are still attached to the “chin” and are now drawn through the mouth.

Amieâ€™s tadpole drawing mouth outside face, 9 Jan 2008 (c) Katrien Vander Straeten
The above represents Number One from the movie Monsters Inc. Number One, or Roz, is a snail, so perhaps the wavy line underneath is her slimy trail. Amie couldn’t enlighten me when I asked.

She drew the next one in the same session:
Amieâ€™s tadpole drawing mouth outside face, 9 Jan 2008 (c) Katrien Vander Straeten

They often get to lie on their sides because she draws the circle for the head first and she doesn’t yet think ahead to the legs. It doesn’t really bother her, though.

For the next one, also from the same session, you don’t need labels.

Amieâ€™s tadpole drawing mouth outside face, 9 Jan 2008 (c) Katrien Vander Straeten

She isn’t exclusively drawing tadpoles, however. There is still her ongoing experimentation with color and the sheer motor experience of drawing:

Amieâ€™s crayon drawing, 10 Jan 2008 (c) Katrien Vander Straeten

Amie Plays the Memory Game

Turns out Baba is just as much a softie as I am. When we went to bed after yesterday’s ordeal, I found Amie had finally fallen asleep in her own little bed. We lay there on our big bed for a minute or two, then I whispered: “I wish she were here with us…” He said, without hesitation: “You pick her up and I’ll get her pillow.” Soon we were all snuggled up together. Back to normal.

And today, this:

Amie playing Memory 7 January 2008 (c) Katrien Vander Straeten

She calls it “Membery” or “Rememory”. It’s the first and so far only board game Amie has played!

Someone gave it to us. I am not fond of Dora – I don’t like the art (call me a snob), and while reading a story to another child I found careless gaps in the plot, while it was supposed to teach logic! So I hid it.

Unfortunately, Amie’ discovered an episode of Dora on the plane to Singapore, and during that ride she must have watched it 20 times (curiously, she didn’t want the headphones). Not since then: not on tv or in books – I’ve managed to keep Dora away.

Of course Amie found the game in my “squirelly cupboard”, where I keep books and games that are too old for her still. She wanted to know what it was.

I told her: it’s a memory game. With Dora.

“Let’s play it!” she called.

I was skeptical about whether she would be interested in anything more than the cards, and if so, whether she would get frustrated because it is too difficult for it. But it was worth a try.

I told her the rules of the game – so simple: “Find the match and you get to keep the cards!” Then I taught her to point to each card in a pair, naming them (“Dora, Dora! Monkey, monkey! Chicken, chicken!) and then to take one last hard look before they are turned around. I ask her: “Ready?” She looks with burning concentration, then says: “Yes!”

First we played with 6 cards – 3 pairs in 2 rows. Way too easy! Soon I added a pair: 8 cards – 4 pairs in 2 rows… Well, you know the rules are that the youngest begins each game and that she loses her turn only if she makes a mistake. Let’s just say that in the end, she had nearly all the cards (of which there are 72) in her box.

Then she got careless – we had been playing nonstop for over 30 minutes – and didn’t get the match. She gladly let me take my turn, but when I found the match and wanted another turn, oh no!

Funny how they dazzle you with their intellectual skills, their fabulous memory, intense concentration and grownup language at the age of two… but they fall apart when such little things don’t go their way. It truly reveals how there are so many sides to a child’s development, not just if she knows her letters or can draw between the lines. As for the matters of the will, or emotional development, or character: aren’t they matters of experience, of maturity?

Amie has been around for a little over two years, how could I expect her to be mature about it? I gave her a big hug, let her take over again, and we decided that, for the time being, Amie has all the turns in Memory.

Live Blogging: Amie wants Mama

I’m sitting in the living room, it’s 9:30 pm. And I am listening to Amie screaming that she wants Mama to lie next to her and that she wants to go see Mama.

DH has been ill for a week so he has been sleeping in the guest room/study and has also not been putting Amie to bed at night – I usually do the nap. This evening is the first time he is putting her back to bed and she is hysterical.

The first time she climbed out of the bed I heard him say: “Mama will be angry with you.” This seemed to stall her – the thought of angering me?! – and she stood in the corridor, at the bedroom door, screaming pathetically, not knowing what to do.

I went to her, gave her a hug and explained calmly that it was Baba’s turn to take her to bed and I was right nearby. I carried her to the bed and she resumed her crying. Baba was a bit upset that I hadn’t been angry like he had said.

I felt I shouldn’t be angry with her. I wanted to be supportive (“I know you can do it”) and sympathetic (“I know how you feel”), but also decisive (“I am not coming to bed, you have to go to sleep with Baba”).

I feel Amie and I have become very close this last week, perhaps due to Baba’s semi-absence, perhaps due to her having a high-fever flu over the weekend and spending a lot of time close to me. She comes to give me hugs and kisses more often, more intensely too – harder squeezes, bone-crushing snuggles, softer kisses, the expression on her face always almost one of pain and worry. I hadn’t thought she would also have separation anxiety. Her babysitter came this morning and she let me go off to work without a thought…

Now she is coming out again and I am resolved to sit here in the sofa and not give her a hug. Can I smile

…

I didn’t give her a hug, kept a neutral face, and told her to go back and no, not climb onto the sofa next to me. Baba was right behind her and for a moment we were at an impasse. Amie sobbing in the middle of the living room, me on the sofa trying to keep my cool, Baba in the corridor looking in not knowing what to do.

I could tell he didn’t think I was being firm enough. I told him to pick her up and hug her – as I was evidently prohibited from doing – and to carry her up and down the corridor a couple of times.This seemed to work: she calmed down, probably because she could see me each time they passed by the living room. But then she began to insist she sleep next to me on the sofa – which she did when she was sick – and we were back at square one.

Baba carried her back to the bedroom and closed the bedroom door. She is now screaming even more hysterically and I heard her pulling on the doorknob but Baba must have brought her back to the bed.

Now it’s 10:10 and she is still crying, but calmer, or more exhausted. It reminds me of along period months ago, when she was having such separation anxiety it was almost debilitating to herself and all around her. She screamed when she was dropped off at daycare, when Baba tried to put her to sleep, even when I left the room, and we couldn’t get a babysitter…. She screamed so badly at nap in daycare that we changed her to a mornings-only schedule, which helped tremendously (sleep seems to be a factor here). We stopped the Baba every-other-day bedtime to an only-Baba-bedtime, and after a couple of bad evenings (never as bad as this), it became her routine. We went to Singapore and India where she was kind and open to so many people… When she came back to daycare they called her “a different Amie!”

She needs to be up early to go to daycare. The practical part of me says to just go in and take over and, exhausted as she is, she will be asleep in 5 minutes. The wife part of me feels for Baba – though it is also somewhat upset at his berating me for being too soft – and wants to respect Baba’s belief that if I do that, it will give her the message that screaming will get her what she wants. That’s a belief I subscribe to… but in this situation? The Mama part of me says: just go, go! Then: no, wait! If you go you might precipitate another bout of separation anxiety…

Now she is quiet. Is she asleep?

How to love and nurture your child and also make sure that her love is not so exclusively of you? I want her to love others, for their sake, of course, but for hers first of all. Because what if something happened to me? What if one day I’m not there for her, and the only way she could stop crying is from exhaustion? I think of that possibility every day. I know it happens. But why do I feel that I have to be prepared for that – that I have to prepare her for that?

Why is it is so damn painful! How can something so soft be so damn hard!

It’s 10:20 now and still quiet. Can I go in yet and hug her?

Big Screen TV and Beads

We were on the phone with my parents-in-law and I or DH made a passing reference to watching movies on a big screen tv when at our friends’ place in New York. Amie had been eating her O’s peacefully (more or less), but when she heard that, she piped up:

“We’re gonna need a big screen tv at some point.”

Me: “Where did you get that idea?!”

Baba: “Good girl.”

Really.

The place with the big screen tv also had a three-and-a-half-year-old who received a set of beads for Christmas. Amie with her attention and occasional reverence for what the bigger kids do, was immediately into it.

Amie Beading December 2007 (c) Katrien Vander Straeten

I got her the same set today and she has the patience for stringing about 15 beads. I am so amazed at her little fingers working like busy bees, the intense concentration on her face!

Amie Beading jANUARY 2008 (c) Katrien Vander Straeten

There is something about this picture… I feel I get a glimpse here of what she might look like in a few years time, maybe even in a decade or two…

Anyway, Amie doesn’t however get the point. All the beads need to be taken off the string and be returned to the box at the end. It’s a relief actually: that one box will last a long time!

Manush House finished, entirely (*) out of trash

In the meantime the Manush House is finished. I decided not to glue the bathroom/kitchen and the staircase onto a cardboard sheet. It would make it more difficult to move the doll house around and take it places (if ever Amie wants to do that).

Here’s the whole house (so far), with some of the proud owners taking advantage of the new facilities (note the Mama in the bathtub, the Baba in the kitchen!) and their guests, Mickey and Minnie, asleep in the living room/bedroom.

Amieâ€™s doll house finished (c) Katrien Vander Straeten

Reader Anja had suggested I send a little story about the doll house to Mothering Magazine. I was considering it when two days later said magazine arrived in my mailbox and there already was a story about making a fairy house out of trash. What a coincidence! It’s great to know more people are doing this!

In the meantime I had also sent word to Annie’s HomeGrown – the staircase is made out of three of their boxes. They loved it and guess what: they will feature the house in their next newsletter! Everyone sign up!

(*) I am happy to have made this doll house almost entirely out of trash: boxes of all sizes, aluminum foil, plastic containers and styrofoam, as well as some pictures out of magazines all bound for the recycling bin. Only the paint, glue, staples, tape and ink were new.

You can review the progress on the doll house (in chronological order) here, here, here and here and lastly here.

More pictures:
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That’s it for this installment of the Manush House. Amie is already lobbying for another addition: a bedroom. I am thinking: a piano! The living room needs a grand piano. I’m on the lookout for a good box.

Manush Bari finally finished (almost)

Some scissor work on the IKEA catalog and the Manush kitchen and bathroom are fully equipped and ready for their new occupants. But where are they? Oh, they’re at the zoo.

the Manush house almost finished (c) Katrien Vander Straeten

Yes, there are even curtains!

the Manush house almost finished (c) Katrien Vander Straeten

What remains is fixing the whole thing – kitchen/bath unit and staircase – together onto a large cardboard sheet that will give it some stability (right now the box falls over too easily). Once it’s totally done I’ll try to take some better pictures.

Zoo-ing in the New Year

Happy New York*, Everyone!

Amie went to bed a bit later after a sumptuous feast of Indian take-out. DH and I watched a crummy movie over a crummy internet connection – it felt like our old graduate student days! Only Amie woke up twice with nightmares.

Today it is snowing again, of the kind in between sleet and snow, so no walk outside as planned. But there are plenty of indoors activities, like setting up a zoo complete with a train and holding pens and zookeepers (the Manushes: they’re jacks-of-all-trades).

Amie plays at Zoo, 1 Jan 2008 (c) Katrien Vander Straeten

(*) Last year Amie mixed up “Happy New Year” with “Happy New York” because we happened to be in New York at the time. So that’s how we greet the new year now.

The holidays and progress on the Manush Bari

We’re not really into big festivities round here – it comes with being far away from family, and Amie isn’t into presents and all that (yet). We spent some lovely days with friends in NYC. They’re into big get-togethers with hour-long conversations, heaps of good food and frequent bursts of laughter any time. You find yourself in the middle of that wonderful city but you just can’t make yourself get up and go places!

Perceiving a definite slow-down on other blogs, I decided to take a little time off too. The free moments here and there I devoted to the “bari” or “badi” – as Anja called it, in Bengali: the little house I was making for Amie, I mean the Manushes.

I spent more time on it than I planned to, for several reasons: the paint was such that it needed several coats, I changed the colors and design midway through, I got very, very into it and, much to my surprise, Amie let me work on it once in a while. It was very relaxing, in the evening after she had gone to sleep, to spend 15 minutes with it. I’ve never been a knitter, but I guess this comes close.

Baba Manush proudly surveys his domain from his new steps.

I used two Annie’s Homegrown boxes: Cheddar Bunnies and Mac’nCheese. Seeing how heavy-footed those Manushes are, I made the staircase very strong, with reinforcements and lots o lots of cellotape!

Then I decided to change the color scheme

It needs a little more work, some finishing touches. Hope to report back on that soon!