But my sewing machine refused to work.

Meanwhile, my thumb sucker had completely broken down one day about how much she wanted to stop sucking her thumb, but how impossible it seemed to her. There were many tears as she described being teased on the bus, and feeling ashamed and frustrated and helpless when it came to this issue.

After calming her down and getting her to bed, I grabbed an old swimsuit and made a thumb guard that we had seen on the internet a year or so before. It looked sort of like this:

but only covered the thumb. Instead of being a half glove, it had a band that wrapped around the wrist to hold it in place.

Maggie was thrilled when she woke up and I gave it to her. This, she was certain, would help. And her teacher emailed me that it did help… while she wore it. But it came off easily, and once it was off, she had a tendency to “lose” it. It lasted a few days before she lost it for real. And then the next couple each lasted a few days. Finally, I got tired of making items that were destined to be “lost” no matter how much she told me she wanted them.

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I’ve shown her how to use the power sander and let her sand, telling her that she can choose the paint color and paint them before they are put up in the garage for storage. (She picked out paint chips at HoDe yesterday, and Stagg was horrified with the options. He looked at them and was trying to wrap his head around the idea of having a white garage with brightly colored cabinets hanging from them. Live a little. It’s a garage.)

Powertools + Maggie = Fun!

She is loving it. Maggie also learned to use the push mower this weekend. She was very excited about that until Stagg said it was going to be her weekly job to cut the grass. Then she decided that mowing the grass is really, really hard.

Katie, on the other hand, has pretty much headed for the hills. She doesn’t like loud noises, so almost everything has made her cringe and search (in vain) for a quiet part of the house. I’m so happy we have neighbors with kids now, because she has spent a lot of time running over to there house, where you can only hear muffled sounds of our destruction.

She did, however, use a screwdriver to help take off the hinges and knobs from the cabinet doors. Maggie offered her the cordless version at one point, and she tried it, but decided it was just too loud to be around.

There have been years I have not looked forward to summer vacation. The thought of having the girls home for so many unstructured days made me feel uneasy and wonder what I was going to do with them to make them not fight, to occupy their time, to make sure that TV didn’t end up being their main source of entertainment for the hot, hot summer days. Not much is different this year, but I am really looking forward to the break.

I’m looking forward to sleeping in a little bit and not having to rush anywhere in the mornings. While there is swim team, I don’t have to be at the pool until 9am. And while there are some days I’m sure I’ll need to be there at 8:30, that is still such a change from being out the door by 7:01. Sure, there needs to be a little work done to make sure that all of our pre-swim team hours don’t get spent in front of the TV where the girls end up surprised that they are hungry when it is time to walk out the door because they “forgot” to get something for breakfast, but I feel pretty confident that we can do that.

I’m looking forward to leisurely afternoons at the pool where the girls play and swim and dive to their hearts content. While I keep a watchful eye on what they are doing, I will admit that my eye is not as watchful as it once was. I can read and chat with friends while they amuse themselves, knowing that they are strong enough swimmers that I can tone the worry down to a steady simmer.

Maggie has her first week long sleep away camp this summer, and I’m actually looking forward to having her enjoy that and me enjoy some one on one time with Katie. I’m sure she’ll keep me busy and entertained.

Maggie also has a lacrosse camp. She’s nervous, but excited. She is looking forward to playing lacrosse in the fall, and this will be a great way for her to learn the sport so when she goes back to Kelsey to learn more, she will have a basis to ask questions.

Other than a week of VBS, Katie is not doing any camps this summer. She considered a few, but decided she wanted her time to be free formed so she could do with it what she wants. I’m hoping this will give her some time to work on some friendships with girls in the neighborhood.

And, of course, the new kitchen is coming this summer. Only 9 years of waiting and planning and hoping and wishing. I can hardly wait!

Maggie and Katie were 2 and 3 when the movie Curious George came out in theaters. We took them to see it, and even though they were still a little young for a full fledged movie, they liked it. Maggie really enjoyed that there was a character named Maggie in the movie, and who doesn’t love a monkey? It also helped that Katie’s favorite color was yellow, and there was lots of yellow in the movie. Stagg and I enjoyed the movie, and I loved the music, too.

One night not long after we saw it, I brought the CD home and slipped it into the girls’ CD player as they were going to bed. We had tried other music to help calm them when they were getting ready for bed, and the results were hit and miss. Dave Matthew’s Band did well for short periods, as did Enya and The Beatles. But what seemed to calm them down one night agitated them a few days later, and we looked for something that would last a little longer.

The Curious George CD, Sing-A-Longs & Lullabies for the Film Curious George by Jack Johnson and Friends worked the first night. The girls liked the new music, asked if it was from the movie, and fell asleep. A week later, they were reminding me to put their night time music on so they could listen to it as they were falling asleep. A month later, they STILL wanted to hear their songs. It seemed we had found a winner.

Five years later, the girls still listen to the same songs every single night. We’ve tried switching things up a couple times. John Mayer made an appearance for a couple nights, and when Jack Johnson came out with a new CD, that got played for a couple nights. But they came back to Sing a Longs and Lullabies because it is their music. For 5 years.

It is hard not to love these songs. Since I sit in the special chair in their room at night while they are settling down, I hear the songs every night, too. My first favorite was “We are Going to Be Friends” about friendship and generally having fun. By now, they are all my favorites. It makes me happy to know that the messages being sent into my children’s ears as they are falling asleep are so positive and uplifting.

It is hard for me not to think of that when I make cookies for an after school snack and ask them about their day. And I can only hope that this message has cemented itself into their subconscious:

They get excited when they hear Jack Johnson singing on the radio in the car when we are driving around town. It almost always means a few minutes of driving that are just a little bit quieter. Sometimes they sing along, sometimes they just take a little break. Every once in a while, they continue chatting and bickering about whatever was happening before they noticed who was singing on the radio.

The thing I find most amusing, though, is how possessive they are about these songs. Each year, I make the girls a CD of music to hand out at their birthday parties. They feature the songs they like, both old school songs of my own youth (MMMBop and Jessie’s Girl are surprise favorites), and newer songs they have found on their own. There have been times when I have suggested including a Jack Johnson song on these CDs because they are such a fixture in their lives. Both girls are adamant. No way, mom. Those are our night time songs. They do not go on the CD. In their minds, at least, Jack Johnson belongs to them.

Apparently, the other day, the school administration decided there would be no more recess until after CRCT tesing was over.  I suspect this was a construct, but Maggie believes it to be the unvarnished truth.  Her letter persuading the principal and assistant principal to change their minds came him the other day.

Dear Mrs. Frost,

In my opinion, recess is the 2nd most important part of the day specials be the 1st. But still, why recess?  Why not 1/2 of it?  Mrs. K. says we need to get all of our energy out, and even 5 minutes will be enough. But please, please, please, not the entire 30 minutes!  I am pretty sure that I’m gonna blow my top if I don’t get at least 10 minutes at least 3 times a week.  4 days and I’d be giggling like a girl that has’just mewt Justin Beiber (just as an example, I don’t really like him.)  But that’s besides the point.  Maybe just take away 15-20 minutes.  That would probably be enough.  I mean 30 minutes is still a short amount of time ompared to 45 minutes, and I really like my 30 minutes of playing!

Yours truly,
Maggie S.

Recess has officially been reinstated.

Maggie had been harping on Katie about this particular issue for a long time. Katie, who is not a morning person, had a morning habit that was gross and got on Maggie’s last nerve. Maggie was right, Katie was wrong, and I made it clear that I was completely on Maggie’s side on this issue. There were consequences in place for Katie not doing what she was supposed to do. But, dealing with issue calmly and quickly was not something that was happening in our house, and the morning arguments were wearing on all of us. Screeching, name calling, yelling, whining and more yelling were a part of the morning routine that, in addition to being a lousy way to start the day, were just taking too much in a morning routine that needs them out the door at 7:01.

Lately, however, there have been fewer of these arguments, and I thought that Katie was doing what she was supposed to do. It had been wonderful to have fewer arguments in the morning, and I thought we were over the hump.

Until yesterday, when I cleaned their room.

Maggie typically comes downstairs first. She likes having the time to eat a good breakfast, and she knows that if she is down, or at least well on her way to coming down the stairs with enough time, I’ll make pancakes and even talk to her for a few minutes while she’s getting her things together. Katie saunters down a little later, willing to eat the pancakes that have already been made, happy to eat in silence while she finishes waking up.

It seems that Katie has been using her time alone upstairs to up the ante on the issue between herself and Maggie. Rather than simply continuing the behavior Maggie (and I) are so opposed to, she found a way to make it even more offensive, while at the same time hiding the evidence so that Maggie had no idea it was going on. She did it calmly, quietly, and over time.

When I moved Maggie’s bed to clean under it, I found myself staring at half a dozen dirty pull ups stashed under the head of the bed.

In time, though, she started sleeping through the night, and actually turned into a pretty good sleeper. She woke up when she needed to use the bathroom on her own, and then went back to sleep in her own bed without waking us up.

Now, she is usually a good sleeper, but is occasionally plagued with bouts of insomnia. There are nights when she settles down to sleep, visibly tired, even admitting that she is exhausted, and just cannot put herself to sleep. In an effort to put her mind to rest, she has learned prayers, said the rosary, memorized her multiplication tables and planned family vacations. She has grown fond of warm milk and championed the benefits of exercising during the day to help her wear herself out. Most of the time, it works well. But there are still nights she (and we) struggle.

More troubling are the nights she wakes up in the wee small hours of the morning and decides she can’t get back to sleep. Being 8, she has determined that this is her own problem that she should not bother me about. She knows how much I love my sleep, and loathes the idea of waking me up to tell me she can’t do it. So she has gone downstairs and watched TV for hours or read a book, quietly staying awake on her own.

I’ve told her that she needs to wake me on these mornings, and that I will help her get back to sleep. Often, it just takes a warm bed and a tired body to coax her back to sleep. But my girl, she is stubborn, and she seems to “forget” about this process on occasion. And then we get caught in a horrible pattern where she is completely spent during the day, unable to think straight, tantrums running into one another, suffering from stomach aches by the evening because her body has learned this is a way to remind her that sleep is important.

We’re just working our way out of one of these patterns right now; one that I had a hand in setting in motion, albeit inadvertently. It amazes me how much disruption a little too little sleep can bring to our lives: early mornings, late nights, middle of the night wake-ups, missed practices, arguments between sisters, friends, parents and children, forgotten assignments and after school activities. Frayed nerves, upset tummies and short tempers don’t help matters, either. And it seems that once these symptoms hits one of us, they spread like wildfire through the family until we have an inferno of discontent on our hands. It reminds me of the months we spent wishing her to sleep for more than a couple hours at a time. And it makes me long for the days when she was little and getting her to sleep was the biggest issue we had.

I’ve told them that I think I’ve seen an elf running around the house at night. Katie was so sad when I told her because she thought it meant that the elf didn’t like us, since he didn’t hang around to cause mischief and generally be seen by the rest of the family.

I explained that he has to spend all night outrunning Lucy and the cats, and then after that he has to make it all the way back to the North Pole to tell Santa what he’s seen in our house. After all that, I imagined that our elf is probably so tired out that he just falls asleep and recharges during the day.

The thought about this and decided it sounded ok. But then Maggie wanted to know about the mischief and why our elf wasn’t doing anything fun in our house when other elves do so many naughty and silly things in their friends houses.

Stagg piped up and mentioned that our house is usually a little messy, so he suggested that it probably wasn’t the best environment for mischief. He suggested that if they helped clean up the house a bit, the elf might start doing a little more around the house that would entertain them. They’re still thinking about that.

This year, Halloween was all about the hair spray. Maggie wanted red, Katie got the green. They were bright and vivid and loved every second of it. Maggie’s biggest disappointment was that we forced her to wash her hair on Sunday night. She really wanted to be a red head in school on Monday. Man, I’m mean.