Bethanyology

This morning I stayed half-asleep as the kids stood in the hallway negotiating (part playing, part arguing) about the magnets on their chore chart.  Colin came in eventually and woke me up the rest of the way so that I’d have time to get ready for the day, and I discovered that they’d been making pyramids of the round colorful magnets.  In color patterns.  I didn’t ask, but I think they were negotiating the color pattern of their building material.  By the time I left my bedroom and made my way to the hall to appreciate their masterpiece, Heidi had mischievously knocked all the magnets off the boards, ruining all their hard work.  Of course, Heidi was sincerely pleased with herself and grinned as she ran away, grinned as she ran back when I threatened a counting-to-three, and grinned as she picked up all the magnets and refused to apologize because “I have to pick these up first!”

Now Maggie has taken on her favorite motherly/teacherly role with Heidi and is carefully writing (with much better handwriting than she does her Kindergarten homework) labels for everything in the house on pink Post-Its because she’s “teaching Heidi to read!”  This process involves a lot of questions for me.  ”How do you spell ‘microwave’?”  ”How do you spell ‘Jesus’?”  That last one was the baby Jesus in a manger in our nativity scene.  Heidi just asked Maggie to spell a gibberish phrase.  ”Can you spell ‘magnet adkhadkjwei’?”  Maggie said “no, I don’t know how.”  Being a teacher of smart people is tough, I tell you.  They ask questions you don’t know the answer to!

Maggie has a strange combination of hating getting dressed, being extremely opinionated about what she wears, and loving to accessorize.  Every morning and every evening we have an all-out brawl where I wrestle her out of her current clothes and force a new shirt or nightgown over her head.  She hates all of her clothes until they’ve been on for 45 seconds, then she doesn’t mind at all.  I guess it’s just the transition.  When I figure it out, and figure out how to make it a more peaceful process, it’ll be a great day.  In the mean time, Maggie loves to wear scarves and jewelry, and the last couple of days she’s been playing around with her socks.  On Sunday she wore three full pairs, only partially matched, and got upset when I didn’t want her to wear a pair of Heidi’s tights as a finishing touch.  She said she wanted her feet to be warm (it’s really not that cold here in California, but it was cool out).  And she wanted everyone to notice how beautiful they were together.  When we got to church, all the socks came off at once, tossed carelessly to the floor, and I had to carry six socks in my purse for the rest of the day.

This morning when I got up Maggie had dressed herself.  Wow.  This is a big deal.  I told her how great I thought that was.  Then she showed me her socks.  Two socks on one foot, none on the other.  That’s the plan for the day at Kindergarten.  I asked her to go get matching socks for the other foot.  She eventually agreed, but I haven’t checked on her progress yet.

Heidi just brought me “a present,” as she calls it.  ”Four presents!” she corrects herself.  A diaper, a container of Costco-brand wipes, a Heidi sized-shirt, and a pair of 2T pants.  Then she walked away.  I gotta go help her get dressed.  :-)