Day 13 of Lent

Felicity's cough is better, but she is still sort of runny and gross.  I wonder if she'll ever just be better, but maybe not.  Maybe she has allergies or something?  I don't know, at this stage I'm just hoping she doesn't have to have her tonsils out on my time.

She was kind of rough this morning, she wants to do exactly what she wants to do exactly when she wants to do it and sometimes that just isn't reasonable.  If I start to say no to her she starts crying and screaming immediately and I can't stand it so I just DO what she is asking if I can and I am aware that I am creating a monster but also?  I am so tired and so sick of screaming, and she knows it.  This morning Mike took her to preschool, and when they were walking out she said she wanted to go in the car, so he tok her out to the car and moved the car seat and then she said she wanted to go in the van, ugh!  Mike said you just said you wanted to go in the car and she folded her arms and grunted in this very low tone, VAAAAAANNNN.  So he took her in the van, I mean, what else can you do?  I just hope she outgrows it, this personality flaw, because I don't know what we'll do otherwise.

BUT I want to say something nice about Felicity.  Um.  Oh she is a great dancer!  Last night we were listening to Taylor Swift's Shake it Off before bed and she was dancing around, singing, it was super cute and adorable.

Day 9 of Lent

Felicity has a terrible cough.  TERRIBLE.  She has a tiny runny nose but she doesn't seem to be sick in any other way.  But last night and the night before she has awoken and demanded to first come into our room and then to go downstairs.  Mike was up with her until 5:30 Sunday morning and I was up with her from last night at midnight, ugh.  But last night she slept a lot better, I think maybe she is more comfortable down here, it's airier and she can sit up better.  Isn't she smart?

She is plucky as can be, especially considering how sickly she has been for most of her short time on earth.  She definitely hasn't been SICK, for which I am grateful, but the ear infections and fevers and runny noses, oh my!

Today Mike said to her "are you going to see Miss Judy?", and then he blanched.  She calls preschool Miss Judy's House but her teacher is Miss Sara, Miss Judy was her teacher when she was two and she still misses her.  But we have told her enough that she was able to parrot back to Mike, "No, Daddy! Miss Judy's room is for little kids, I a big kid!  I go see Miss Sara!".  We were both relieved.

She has a great memory, she sings every single song she's learned in preschool.  I don't think anyone else has done that and I find it charming.

Day 5 of Lent

It's not really Day 5 of Lent but there are really like 46 days of Lent and I am only doing 40 days of this so I am confident I can get it done.  I don't really know why the thing about the 40/46 days, although some people say that Sundays are not really days of Lent.  One Episcopalian priest I knew told me that technically, every Sunday is a feast day, so you shouldn't really not celebrate them, I don't know.  Mike and I have given up sweets for lent but we are not having sweets on Sundays, because Mike says and I agree, it's easier to give up sweets the longer you've given them up, so why mess with yourself every week?  Anyway.  What's So Great About Felicity?

• One thing that's really great about Felicity is that she is great about going to school.  She loves her preschool, which I think speaks to how great her preschool is but also how great and flexible she is.  She went last year to the Twos Class and she was good in there, took a nap every day, never one time cried when I left her, and now this year in the Young Threes she never cries, eats all of her lunch, has friends, and sometimes naps and sometimes doesn't, just like every other kid in there.  
• Later this year, she will go to St. Joan of Arc preschool, but she's going five days a week.  The hours are from 8-3 and now she goes 9-2, but only three days a week, so it will be a different.  I'm guessing she'll be fine, I think she'll love it, it's a great program.  Plus Veronica and Maria will be there too, and sometimes they go downstairs and they will just bump into each other in the hall and I think that will be super fun for them.  Everyone keeps asking me what will I do with my time while everyone is in school and I always answer the same way, I guess I'll get a job to pay for their damned school but honestly I don't know what I'll do.  
• Felicity is very good at trying to fit in and acting more like the older kids in a group.  This summer, she was all about keeping up with the older girls, Maria and Veronica and also Carlotta and Maddelena, she came to the pool with us, creek stomping, to get ice cream, to the movies, all kinds of things I wouldn't have taken any other 2.5 year old to do.  But it made her kind of bored with me this fall once the girls went back to school, so I think that it will be good for her to go to preschool every day.  BUT it doesn't mean that I'm not sad that we can't have time together like I did with the other kids, because I am, a little.  I'm not sad that she is growing up or getting older or whatever, but I feel kind of bad that she can't have the same kind of young childhood that Maria or Veronica did.  But I guess that's birth order, right?  She is definitely a little tougher than the other ones, I know she'll be fine, and I'm grateful that we can be so confident that she'll be happy.  

Day 1 of Lent

Today I was in church for Ash Wednesday, which, by the way, is NOT a holy day of obligation but which Mike was saying today he bets is the third most widely attended day in the Catholic church, after Easter and Christmas.  He's probably right but why?  Why do people go on Ash Wednesday and not another day all during Lent until Easter, or not on Sundays?  Is it to get ashes?  Or do people honestly think they are going to give it a go and try to get back to the Sacraments?  I don't know, I am trying to think better of people so I will reluctantly say yes, that's it.

Another thing I was thinking of doing for Lent is what I started to say up there, which is that I was in church today and I thought maybe I'll write a blog post about one of the kids every day.  I used to do a feature on their blogs called What's So Great About _________ and maybe I'll bring it back for Lent.  Because it's so easy to get bogged down in the awfulness of life, when, like today it is 14 degrees out and tomorrow the HIGH is ZERO degrees, and Anthony comes home and takes off his pants and poops on the floor, I thought maybe I should concentrate on how great they are, at least for Lent.  Who knows, maybe it will renew my faith in my vocation.

Anyway, I thought I would start with Felicity because she is the hardest to like all the time.  Today at preschool she fell asleep for naptime, but late, so she was still sleeping when Mike went to get her and she screamed like she was on FIRE when Mike brought her home without stopping at Dairy Queen.  So.  Without further adieu or talking MORE bad stuff about her, I present, What's So Great About Felicity.

• She is super cute.  Her hair is getting really long and she is the only one out of the four who has any kind of curl to her hair.  
• She loves to play games, especially hide and seek.  It's easy to play with her, you just have to count to 10 and yell here I come! and then she will bring herself to you.  
• She loves to sing songs and she has a great memory.  The other night she sang a "crying version" of Itsy Bitsy Spider where she cried all the way through it, kind of big boo-hooing, ig was hilarious.  She loves to make faces, sad, mad, funny, silly, happy.  
• Her preschool teachers love her, especially her main teacher.  She's always asking if she can do an extra day per week.  
• She is the only one who has ever slept in and even though she hardly does anymore, I know she is at least capable of it.  
• She loves to cuddle and 'take a hug' as she calls it.  
• She seems super smart, she has an excellent memory.
• She's polite, she is always about the thank you (fanks!) and please (puh-wease!) 

Back at It

Felicity is back at preschool, thanks GOD.  She definitely had the hardest break, Lord, she was sick every other day, it seemed like.  The problem with someone being sick so much when they are just three years old is that anything can become a bad habit so quickly.  Like she has been fine for days in a row but last night at 2:30, 2:30 this morning, she was up screaming and wanted something to drink.  We ran in there so she didn't wake up too much and thank God she went back to sleep but then of course Anthony's school district called at FIVE THIRTY to say that he had a delay, he of course will not be attending his school today as it's a Little Star day so it ended up that we slept like we had a newborn or something.  A not very good sleeping newborn, ha!

Anyway, back to Felicity.  She is better, she is happy to be back at school.  She didn't even say goodbye today, she just bossed me around and took off into her classroom.  "Put my lunch they-ah!", she said, and took off.  Ha, she is funny.  It snowed a lot last night and when I opened the door this morning, she said "would you LOOK at all the SNOW!  Would you LOOK AT IT!".  I keep forgtting how little she is because it seems like we have been hanging out since I was in KINDERGARTEN or something, but she is in fact only three years old and everything is new to her all the time, she doesn't remember from last year.

She doesn't eat much.  She eats all her lunch at preschool but she is terrible about eating breakfast and dinner.  Yesterday she had chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream and a pancake for breakfast and I don't even know what for dinner.  Oh, she ate pasta-YELLOW pasta.  I remember now because I made one pot spaghetti, which is delicious and tomato-ey and Felicity demanded YELLOW pasta, which meant I had to make some farfalle separate and put butter and cheese on it for her and then she ate it.  I wish she would eat a meatball or something but what can you do.

Here's a cute picture of her napping the other day.  Mike says if he sees her napping again during the day he's going to slap her awake, but of course he is kidding.  It is just a NIGHTMARE when she naps because then she stays awake hours after they go upstairs, keeping Maria and Veronica awake.

Holiday Fun

Yesterday the girls and I went to the Eiteljorg Museum, here in town, to see their Jingle Rails exhibit.  The Eiteljorg is a Native American and Western .. something museum, and this exhibit is super cool.  It's 1200 feet of train track and they go up over head and from Indianapolis to .. the West (I should work in Marketing, ha!) so you see renderings of Indianapolis, downtown, the State Fairgrounds, and then, like, pueblos in Arizona, and New Mexico.  I will make a link so in case anyone wanted more information about it, they could get some actual information and not the bumbling that I am doing here.  Here.  Anyway, it is super cool and of course the girls had little to no appreciation for it.  I took Veronica to the Eiteljorg last year and she remembered the super fun stuff downstairs at the museum where you can go in a stagecoach, get dressed up like a cowboy, shop in a Chinese shop, etc., so we whipped through the Jingle Rails so we could go down there and it was fun.

The day before yesterday I took them to the Children's Museum, which was fun but hard, like every other damned thing.  Felicity's skirt fell off her as she walked into the museum, so I had to buy her some too-large and too-expensive pants, and she didn't want me to ride with her on the Carousel, but you *have* to ride with your three year old, so I had to stand two horses behind her, with some other family, who thought I was crazy.

People are nuts.  Here it is, the Christmas season, and I am smack dab in the middle of the Friendly Hoosier State and I swear to God, not one person looked me in the eye yesterday.  I would have loved to have shared that Felicity wanted me to stay back, I thought it was funny, but nobody would make eye contact with me!  I didn't want to be their best friend (GOD KNOWS) but I just wanted to speak to someone, what the hell?  After we got off the Carousel, Felicity was eating all this fake food at the fake ice cream shop, and this mom and I commiserated about how gross that was and how dumb it is to do, but I think that is the only person I talked to all day.

Anyway, we have been trying to have Christmas Break Fun but it's challenging because everyone keeps getting sick.  Felicity was sick early last week and she has actually been okay ever since but God knows how long she will stay that way, because since she's been sick, and missed her last two damned days of preschool before her two week break, Maria was sick, Veronica was sick, Anthony was sick, then Maria was sick AGAIN and Veronica woke up sick this morning, so who the hell knows what will happen.  So far, so good, with Felicity.

She is still impossible to take anywhere.  I mean, I have to take her everywhere because she wants to go but she still, like, refuses to leave her damned shoes on.  Yesterday I was talking to my friend Adam when we were at the Eiteljorg, I had placed myself so I could see all three girls, and I looked over in the shop they have set up, where they sell like dry goods and also Chinese slipper and there on the shelf were Felicity's shoes, ha!  Right now she is standing in front of me, mad and crying, because she has one arm out of her nightgown but she still wants to wear her nightgown.  Or something.  She is infuriating, she never seems to know what the hell she wants but she is very serious about it, whatever it is.  But she's so cute and when she was sick, no matter how she felt, when I said "how are you feeling?", she'd say "bettah".  I hope she has a Merry Christmas and I hope that 2015 is her best year yet.  For all of our sakes, ha!

Almost Christmas

A few weeks ago, when the girls had off from school the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, I took them all three bowling with another friend of mine and her charge, who is 12, and a friend of hers who brought his two kids, who were like eight and six.  We all had a really good time, Felicity "bowled", where you put the ball up on a ramp, for most of the first game (we played two) and then she got really over it, but she spent the rest of the time looking at this Christmas tree that was set up in the bowling alley.  She was so intrigued by it, she just kept walking around and around it, she was so into it.  I wondered aloud what she was doing and my friend Jill pointed out that she probably didn't really remember the tree from last year, which is true!  Lord, it is so complicated, I feel like every day I'm going to lose my mind with this kid and she will never remember it!  She probably won't even remember standing there looking at the tree for so long, but she is clearly really happy in the moment, so is that good?  Does that matter?  I do not even know.

We are home now, on Friday afternoon.  She and I went to ballet this morning, after a two week break.  A two week break, I found out this morning, was way too long, no one could even remember what to do in the recital and Felicity especially wanted nothing to do with it.  She was upset that I was there, it got her all messed up and she ended up barely doing anything but whatever.  She is only three, it's no big deal.  Then we went to Chic Fil A and met Jill and her nephew Max, who is just her age, a few months older, but he is completely potty trained, which is a whole nother thing for us.

She refuses and I mean refuses to potty train.  This week she has started to - well, say she's naked, which she is a lot, she will have to go, I will SEE her realize she has to go and she storms over to me and says I NEED A DIAPER!  I say, you don't need a diaper, you need to sit on the potty, let's sit on the potty and Go!, come on, it will be great!  And she freaks out and screams and cries and eventually I'm afraid she's going to lose her mind so I put a diaper on it and she fills it right up with pee.  It is beyond infuriating.  I am so, so sick of telling people what to do with their waste and having them DISAGREE with me!  I'm 46!, I want to tell her, I know what you should be doing!  Mike says that it will get better, he says she is doing all the steps except, you know, actually going on the potty, and he's right but ugh.  As I said, infuriating.

She likes to stick her fingers in my mouth and count my teeth.  She likes to make shapes with her hands and make me guess what they are.  Today I guess "rectangle" and she told me with a withering stare, "no!  oval!".  Right now she can't find a drumstick and she wants one so I have to go but that's your update.  She is fine.  Adorable.  Infuriating.  Won't remember a bit of it.