Three, a review

The girl is about to hit four so now's as good a time as any to go through the past year. Every child is different so none of this is likely to apply to anyone else. This is more of a general note since I've hardly blogged at all here this past year.

The biggest event was her starting nursery. She really liked all the books and toys and playing with other children. It made me feel less guilty the lack of arts and crafts I did with her at home. On the other hand... It's not the physical viruses that went around at nursery that were a problem, it was the memes. Princesses, fairies, Frozen, gender, bad grammar and cockney accents. I'm hoping once she starts real school the latter two will go away. But I suppose the rest will get worse over time.

The other affect of nursery was having to change her bedtime. Before she was in bed by 2130, but when she dropped her nap plus being at nursery at 8, meant moving bedtime back to 1930. Rather more traumatic since it meant dinner at 1730 or so. It was really hard at first to get dinner so early. It'd mean stopping work at the most productive time and figuring out what to make that she would eat. Which was always changing. Eventually we just had to give up eating together altogether and we'd just do child dinner and parent dinner 3 hours later. At least it meant us adults be able to eat food we liked again. And now the girl could eat fish fingers and sweetcorn.

A couple of weeks before she turned 3 she suddenly became insolent. It was a surprising personality shift where suddenly she'd be argumentative and refuse to listen or do things. Before that everything seemed so exciting to her. I suppose at 3 she realised what she didn't like and had the language to say so. She must have started to notice there were boundaries and that she could push them.

This was the part that drove me the most mad. This all happened before she started nursery so I can't blame this on other kids. I don't know why it started but I hope it ends with 4. Or at least changes to something more manageable. Otherwise I might end up with blog posts all a variation of Today we argued about something she'd never explain what. She'd just say Stop doing the thing I don't want you to do.

Three was also the year she stated asking for a brother and a sister. It's hard to explain to her that were perfectly happy as a trio. And impossible to say out loud that her behaviour is ensuring she'll be an only child. So instead she'll just pretend she's got invisible siblings around her when we go out and about.

The best parts of 3 were all the conversations. She's now eloquent enough to express what she's thinking and has come up with some really witty things. Pretend play was more exciting. We'd pretend to be at cafe (she even picked up the bill once). Or pretend we were fairies with magic wands transmuting things into other things. Or we'd build a Lego spaceship and take her toy animals into outer space and back. She's reconciled fantasy and science fiction in her head and is happy saying fairies are from fairy planet and aliens are from Jupiter.

Even playing Frozen was fun at first... until she literally didn't stop for 8 months. Now she just occasionally plays Rapunzel, but often conflates it with Star Wars. Well sometimes spar with inflatable Light Sabres and she'll say I cut off your head. But it's ok. I've replaced it with Rapunzel's

On that note we get to play Star Wars a lot. My parents gave her some of my old toys. It gives us something we both like to do together. She enjoyed it so much she wanted her 4th birthday party to have a space robots theme (she loved the R2-D2 cake)

She's still reserved in some ways but still rather outgoing at the same time. She's happy being on a stage (real or makeshift) and singing at the top of her lungs or telling a story. But she won't ask another child their name to start taking or playing with them. That said she does still find smaller kids on the playground and take them all over the place.

So that was 3. She'll be 4 in 2 days. I'm looking forward to seeing what it's like and how things will all change all over again. And I'll just try to keep up.

Trying a new hope

Today I introduced the girl to Star Wars. She's a little younger now than I was when I first saw it, but I know many of per peers have already seen it and enjoyed it, so I figured it was time.

I tried her on Star Trek last a fortnight ago, but she was having none of it. At first she was It's got rocket ships! Yey! and then she realised it was people standing around on a spaceship talking to each other, which made her very bored and she demanded I turn it off.

That made it much harder to convince her to watch Star Wars. She refused at first, saying It's not for children. I want to watch something for children

It is. Don't you remember all the toys you played with at my parents' house?

Those were toys. I want to watch something for children. Not something with Grrr Argh at the end.

That's Firefly. Star Wars is very different. I'll show you.

I put up a still from the Clone Wars cartoon with R2D2 and a number of other droids. There's robots?!

Yes. And aliens.

Ok. Let's watch it

The movie had the right combination of action and exposition to keep her entertained throughout, as I suspected. Fortunately I remembered all the bits I found confusing has a child and was able to explain things before she hit bewilderment. We also had the advantage of being at home, not a cinema, so I could answer all the many many questions she had.

They're called Jawas.

What are they doing?

They're doing their job

Carrying robots?

Collecting. They collect robots.

What are they doing with them?

You'll see soon.

Are they aliens?

Well, sort of. I mean they don't think they are 'cause they live on that planet. But, let's just say yes, they are aliens. For us.

Unfortunately the sister-in-law already ruined the big reveal of Luke and Leia and Vader. The girl kept mentioning how she'd seen them as kids living together with the black thing in the book at her auntie's house. Oh well. Jeffrey Brown!

Some other selected highlights

Every now and again while watching she'd pipe up with the random punctuation of You have that toy!

She kept calling Chewbacca Chihuahua. Eventually she gave up and just called him the fluffy thing. You have that toy too.

I'd forgotten how surprisingly reasonable Leia is as a female character for a sci-fi movie from the 70s.

This. This is the kind of princess you can emulate.

How old is she? I think she's 10.

Ummm... about 20 I'd guess. About the same age as Luke, but she's clearly done much more with her life.

But she's bigger than Luke in [auntie]'s book.

That book is a bit... hyperbolic.

Yes his name is Jabba, not Jawa. He's not a Jawa. Not the same thing at all.

What did yo like most?

Running. jumping. running jumping.

What did you not like?

Stormtroopers.

On seeing Alderaan destroyed: Oh no! Her planet broke!

On the Mos Eisley cantina scene: That's an alien. And that's an alien. And that's an alien (repeat × 8)

What's the empire?

They're an evil political organisation that keeps the population in line using fear, intimidation and violence. Kind of like Tories.

All in all I think we both really enjoyed the experience. I think I'll try her on some of the other films. And probably some of the less intense episodes of the Clone Wars series as well. I'm mostly looking at it as something I liked from my childhood that I still like that we can both enjoy an get excite about together.

Now we are two

We decided to try an experiment. We went to visit the family in the US. And then we left the girl with her grandparents. She's been there almost two weeks and she comes back tomorrow.

A bit of background. Life's gotten quite busy here. A planned visit to the States was to end with us coming back at the start of half-term. A magical period where not only schools are out, but so is nursery (because why would you need extra childcare then?). So zero free time has turned into negative free time.

When we mentioned this to L's mother she asked Why don't you just leave her with us for a while? You can change her flight home and I'll come back with her. Which we though Ha ha ha. That's silly — Wait.... why not?   Hey, what do you think about staying in the States with you grandparents for a week?

Yeah!

And that was that. Actually not quite. We were quite hesitant. But with her excited about it, we could at least take it seriously. I know we'd always expected for her to spend a summer or other break with her cousins or grandparents, but at 3½... we'd not expected to get the chance so soon. So to make sure we were doing the right thing, we did a number of tests.

Test One: The Sleepover.

The girl had never spent the night away from us. She'd recently gotten to sleep for a sitter, so we knew it was possible. But we'd never tried. So, with her assent, she spent a night a friends house. It worked. She had dinner and went to bed and eventually got to sleep and woke up without freaking out. Score.

Test Two: The Flight.

After staying with the grandparents she has to get back home. Which means a 7 hour flight. Her grandmother was going to fly alone with her, and the girl had to be trusted to behave for the duration. In other words, not run up and down the aisle into first class like last time.

Not an issue, if her flight over is any basis. she spent the entire time engrossed in the entertainment system. Hours of Doctor McStuffins and various other children's shows. She had to be bribed to leave the seat and go to the loo. So this would not likely be a problem.

Test Three: The day with the grandparents

She's a lovely lass, but can be a handful if you're not expecting it. So we had to be sure the grandparents knew what they were getting into. On the first full day we were in the States, we got up early and left the girl with her grandparents while we spent the entire day shopping and seeing friends, with the plan of returning after she was asleep in bed. We had a lovely time. She had a lovely time. She was actually asleep when we got home.

With all those tests passed, we still had one final challenge

Test Four: The airline tickets

We had to change the girl's ticket to a new flight, and get her grandmother on the same flight, and get them linked so they could fly together. And agree on a day with the grandparents. Not trivial but also not a big deal. Except to save like £100 per person we went through one of those cheap ticket resellers. Over email, resellers told me they can make the change. Good. But then they say on the phone only the airline can do it since it involves the grandparent's ticket. The airline, on the other hand, says only the resellers can do it since we bought the ticket through them. Back and forth few times til we learned the grandparent had to buy the ticket less than 24 hours before the child ticket was changed. During the back and forth we had to cancel the grandmother's ticket just so we'd have another 24 hours to resolve it. Finally, after a bit of escalation, a manager at the resellers says Look, only the airline can do it. If you don't believe me, call them. Then call me back on a three-way-call and I'll talk to them with you and we'll sort it out together.

So I gave the airline another call. After being on hold for 30 min. I got through and they, as chipper as can be, said, Of course we can help you with that... huh, there's a funny grinding noise on the line. Is that teeth?

I do understand why they initially denied it. Even with things going smoothly it took another 45 minutes of changing flights, changing times, moving seats, breaking up bookings, regrouping bookings, and so on and so forth. Until finally, everything was in order. The seats were booked and all was set in stone for the girl to stay.

As we stayed there we all became more and more comfortable with her staying without us. At one point when she was sleeping in another room, she got up in the middle of the night and walked to the room sister-in-law was sleeping in, and crawled into bed in between her and her infant daughter, and went back to sleep. In the morning when we spoke to the girl she said I thought you went back to London. Given how blasé she was about it, we figured she'd be just fine.

Our flight back by ourselves is where it started to hit us. First time in ages going through security without the child and her accoutrements. It was pretty easy. And on the plane L and I had a row of 3 by ourselves. It was too uncomfortable to sleep, but I had the luxury to find out, which was nice in itself. And when we landed we could go through the e-passport queues, so that took no time at all getting out, getting baggage and getting home.

It's been weird not having her around the house. Part of it is reverting to how life was before, when L & I were just a couple. So weird in that it's completely not weird at all. Though I do like being able to make the food I like to eat without worrying about spices or avoiding certain foods. La la la, let's just put a quarter cup of chilli peppers in here. Oh crushed chillies, I missed you. Let's be friends again. For a little while.

Another part of of the weird is recovering from the exhaustion of the past 3.5 years. So far I've twice slept in 12 hour chunks. I once went to bed at 7am and still got some sleep afterwards.

And there's the part where we can finally do the things that we've been putting off, like moving heavy furniture. I've been able to clean and hoover the house, and use caustic chemicals without putting them away immediately. I've done two years worth of shredding. We've 5 full recycling bags with just shredded paper and boxes we no longer need.

L on the other hand is taking the opportunity to let her attention drift. I suppose not having a child around lets you just sit and vegetate. That plus a phone with games and internet means you're not there when you're there. I found earlier that in order to keep her attention for the full duration of a conversation, I had to phone her despite being in the next room.

We've been getting reports from the grandparents about how she's doing. The first week seemed fine, though it looks like she's starting to wear down and tire of all the uncertainty and how different everything is. We've been doing Skype calls every 2 or 3 days, It's been lovely seeing her. Especially when say says I miss you dad. She's so much more rational on the calls than when she's with us talking to her grandparents.

Anyways, she's back tomorrow. We'll just have to see how she comes with this change and all the rest that's in store in the next month.

Dinosaurs

I wanted to expose the girl to dinosaurs a bit more. I really liked them as a kid, so I figured she might enjoy it. Since we don't have any books I decided to show her Walking with Dinosaurs clips on YouTube.

She said she'd seen dinosaur videos before, and seemed really keen on the idea.

But when I showed her the videos she got really bored quite quickly. After a bit of probing it turned out she was disappointed from the lack of dancing and songs.

I hate you CBeebies. You ruined dinosaurs.

Now we are frozen

I assume she's been talking about Frozen with other children since she started nursery. Because in the past fortnight she's declared her name is Anna and I am Elsa.

It was fun at first. We had pretend snowball fights and made pretend snowmen and bunnies and mice and elephants, and even a pretend ice castle in the living room. She'd declare Now you're Queen Elsa and Now you're little Princess Elsa.

I found her singing Let it go very loudly in public toilets a bit disquieting.

Then on day two she decided her mum was Other Elsa.

On day three I was demoted full time to Princess Elsa and her mum was Queen Elsa. It felt like my old job all over again. (I'm sorry, you're not Scandinavian enough to do your job)

Now she's still demanding we call her Anna. Whenever we call her by her real name, she says Say Anna. Every. Single. Time.
She even introduces herself to people as Anna. I suspect she likes it better than her actual name since small children have an easier time pronouncing it.

She's seen the movie, in full, once, plus that time on the plane when she saw half of it. So, good for her with the good memory.

She told us this will last for several weeks. It can't be over fast enough for my tastes. I'm a bit tired of the whole princess thing, but I am more sick of being introduced has her sister.

The sparkle in your eyes keeps me alive

It's kind of weird how songs take on a completely different meaning once you have children. You'll just never hear them the same again, and after a while you'll start to question if you ever actually knew what the song was all about. Is it a love song, or just swooning over an infant? Is it about dancing, sex or just playing in a bouncy castle? At this point I can't hear the lyric baby in a song without picturing it being sung to a toddler.

I pick up my daughter at nursery pretty much the same way each time. It's just after lunch. I come in the room and see her playing. Eventually she looks up at me and her eyes just shine and she smiles. And to this day the lyrics the sparkle in your eyes keeps me alive have taken on a completely different meaning. It’s shocking how much peace and solace your child can give you. Turns out that kiss-it-all-better works both ways.

Anyway, not to belabour the point, here's a smattering of lyrics and I can no longer hear without thinking about my child:

You think you're tired now, but wait until three

All I ever wanted, all I ever needed Is here in my arms

Destroy everything you touch today, destroy me this way

Oh you've got green eyes, oh you've got blue eyes, oh you've got grey eyes. And I've never met anyone quite like you before.

Grabbing hands grab all they can all for themselves after all

And that's just off the top of my head. I could probably list dozens of these here.

3 is a magic number

Within moments of turning 3, her personality took a shift to the difficult. It's one of the reasons I've not posted here for ages. That and work sucking up every waking minute not spent with my daughter.

Anyway, to the topic at hand – she's not become malicious or evil or anything, it's just a number of things are now harder. Obstinate. That sums up much of it. She has enough mastery of language to explain what she wants but not enough to be able to be reasoned with.

The troublesome threes have begun.

Not everything is harder. I've gotten her to go to sleep something like 4 times in the past 3 months, which is a record for me.
Once she even fell asleep while I was reading to her. And this was a short picture book, not a 100+ page novel like last time.

That and today, a few minutes ago, which is how I have time to write this. She's been zombie-like all morning with her eyes little more than slits. I asked and she told me she wasn't a bit tired. Well, you're clearly not feeling quite right, so why not take a toy and have a wee lie down on the sofa? She took her slinkies and was asleep in 2 minutes.)

Other inconveniences are her wilful regressions. She can go to the loo by herself. But, when we're around she doesn't want to. Same with dinner. She can focus and eat a whole meal by herself, but she won't with us. It's like she's learned a skill, mastered it, and found it to be easier to not do it if someone else will do it for you. The only way I can think of solving this is to buy a new house with a different toilet and dining room.

And then she started nursery.

We're doing 3 days a week, 8am-1pm. Getting her up and out for 8am was a scary shift. For all of us. I've managed to get myself to bed by 3am most days since we started this, so that's a plus. But her sleep still hasn't got on track. She's mostly dropped her nap, and often misses her new earlier bed time, which means sleep deprivation might be cause of some of her 3-related personality shifts (she can join the club of overtired mood swings – I founded this local chapter).

Nursery has done a lot of good for her. She's hanging out with other children her age on a regular basis, and loves it. When she leaves nursery at the end of the day, it sometimes turns into hugs-for-everyone time.
It's like she's just discovered that there's this thing called "other people" and you can do things with them. On friday, on the way home from the park she just walked up to a couple at a bus stop, introduced herself and told them she was three. Every time we've been to a park for the past month she picked at least one smaller child, befriended them, and took them all over the playground Come, come, come, let's play!.

She also eats far better at nursery. It's the combination of someone besides us feeding her, her getting stuff we never cook at home, and them having a dedicated member of staff whose job it is to make a variety of foods for a shedload of picky babies and toddlers.

On the other hand, the grammar of some of the staff at nursery is horrendous. While I can find it hard to complain about having east-end accents in a Hackney day care, I'd at least expect better conjugation of "to be". The only think that consoles me is that the girl used "yourself" correctly in conversation the other day, so all must not be lost.