4.5
Last but not least, an Ingrid update! She had been our most challenging kid for awhile but seems to be breaking out of it. Hooray, sister!
She has been sweet lately and generally a pleasant sidekick, especially when we can give her opportunities to help out by doing things she loves. When we needed to clean the house and then pick out decorations for Grandma Joan's 90th birthday? This girl was all over it. She mopped the floor and picked out matching tiaras for herself and Joan. A modern-day Cinderella. I've never seen anyone so excited about Target. Rainbow plates and party hats all around!
She has also showed renewed interest in cooking with me after many months of checking out during meal prep. It's fun to see her competence increasing. She can level a measuring cup like a pro, and she can make real hot chocolate with me or coffee with Karl with minimal direction as to the amounts. Hot beverages are important in Minnesota.
Cuddles McGoo finally sensed that Karl and I could not handle any more nighttime wakeups and quit coming in to our room at night. But she still swoops in to fill any available cuddling opportunities. How perfect is this pillowcase I found for her?
The dog shown here is Bruno. After four and a half years, she finally got attached to a lovey. We must have him for bedtime and he follows her around for much of the day.
We've been trying to eek out some one-on-one time for each of the kids. It's not easy with four of them. Ingrid and I snuck out during a rare Heidi and Frederick synced naptime last weekend for some fancy ice cream. Then we found some last-minute tickets for Disney on Ice today. Karl got to have a solo date with his girl for ramen and figure skating princesses. We both noted that Ingrid loves these outings and seems happier after some attention but doesn't want to interact much while doing it. We try to talk and draw out what's been going on in her world, but she doesn't want heart-to-hearts. She's happy to sit just quietly and smell the hipster fruity pebbles ice cream. I try to be an understanding mother, even though I am a cow.
Our sweet middle child is still the best at entertaining herself, so she gets ignored the most. Ingrid's response is simply to take advantage of our negligence. She doesn't act up or badger us like certain of her siblings; she just quietly goes off to do all the things we don't let her do when we're paying attention. We saw it this winter with the iPad. She and Henry reversed roles and Ingrid is now the screen-obsessed child. Our screen policy has been to focus on quality instead of quantity; we curated the kids' watching pretty carefully and didn't worry too much about how much of it they watched. While we were busy moving and surviving a newborn, Ingrid learned how to operate the iPad and our strategy went out the window. She discovered the abomination that is the Barbie show, closely followed by the horror that is the modern My Little Pony show. Ingrid started talking like a Valley girl (oh.my.gawd), giving me eye-rolling attitude, and demanding a bigger closet. I would tell her to turn it off and ten minutes later I would hear the bedroom door slam and the sounds of vapid plastic people coming from upstairs. Then she would shamelessly lie and say she was watching something else. A bit of a devious streak, this one.
On that note, she's alternately super sweet and outright cruel to her siblings. Some days she plays so patiently with Heidi, directing their pretend play and giving thoughtful extension activities to her Montessorish materials. But then Heidi puts one sticker on Ingrid's calendar and Ingrid throws her to the floor and pulls her hair. She and Henry run around and have a great time together in the afternoon and talk endlessly in their room before bedtime. But one day Henry handed her one of his lovely notes and she literally crumpled it up before his eyes and threw it on the floor. Henry cried for half an hour.
[I thought Ingrid was being a complete sociopath, but on further reflection, I think perhaps Barbie bears the blame for that incident. Ingrid was probably mimicking how those girls behave and thought she was being funny. It's a *cking horrible show. WHY, Netflix, will you not let me remove a show from my kid's queue??? Anyway, we have finally put the kibosh on it.]
She still enjoys school but it's a total black box. I ask every day what she did and she always says nothing. Good thing her teacher occasionally posts updates and photos to Facebook.
She's a bit of a delicate flower but not at all intimidated by things that scare a lot of kids her age. Preschool had some animal visitors from the zoo. This girly-girl was the first one in line to pet the lizards. So far she's our most likely candidate for medical school. Though she wails over every bump (and she gets a lot of them -- she's still prone to walking into walls and falling off chairs), she's remarkably calm about blood and guts. Henry gets a shot or a tick or a cut and loses his mind, but Ingrid is all steel. One day she came over to me in the living room and very calmly said, "I'm bleeding," and I look up to see blood gushing from one of her hands. It was really a tiny cut but there was a LOT of blood. She was totally cool as I cleaned her up and put a band-aid on it. And when Izzy went rogue and ate two bones, Henry panicked and asked 400 times, "IS IZZY GOING TO DIE?!?!?!?!" Ingrid was just really curious about what the bones would do. Will she poop them out? Will they poke the insider of her stomach? How does the doctor take a picture of the inside of her stomach?
This month was kindergarten registration. I almost ignored the notice because it seems impossible that she should be so old. Four and half means she's a quarter of the way to going to college! The kids are all giving me panic attacks this quarter. But it's true, come fall she'll be trucking off to the bus stop with Henry. She came to Concord for registration with me to scope out all the kindergarten classrooms and requested the one with the largest dollhouse. She and Henry will be at such different stages in kindergarten; Henry was ready for reading and math, Ingrid will still gravitate to the toys. I'm glad our kindergartens will still let her be a sweet babychild if she wants to.
She has been sweet lately and generally a pleasant sidekick, especially when we can give her opportunities to help out by doing things she loves. When we needed to clean the house and then pick out decorations for Grandma Joan's 90th birthday? This girl was all over it. She mopped the floor and picked out matching tiaras for herself and Joan. A modern-day Cinderella. I've never seen anyone so excited about Target. Rainbow plates and party hats all around!
She has also showed renewed interest in cooking with me after many months of checking out during meal prep. It's fun to see her competence increasing. She can level a measuring cup like a pro, and she can make real hot chocolate with me or coffee with Karl with minimal direction as to the amounts. Hot beverages are important in Minnesota.
Cuddles McGoo finally sensed that Karl and I could not handle any more nighttime wakeups and quit coming in to our room at night. But she still swoops in to fill any available cuddling opportunities. How perfect is this pillowcase I found for her?
The dog shown here is Bruno. After four and a half years, she finally got attached to a lovey. We must have him for bedtime and he follows her around for much of the day.
We've been trying to eek out some one-on-one time for each of the kids. It's not easy with four of them. Ingrid and I snuck out during a rare Heidi and Frederick synced naptime last weekend for some fancy ice cream. Then we found some last-minute tickets for Disney on Ice today. Karl got to have a solo date with his girl for ramen and figure skating princesses. We both noted that Ingrid loves these outings and seems happier after some attention but doesn't want to interact much while doing it. We try to talk and draw out what's been going on in her world, but she doesn't want heart-to-hearts. She's happy to sit just quietly and smell the hipster fruity pebbles ice cream. I try to be an understanding mother, even though I am a cow.
Our sweet middle child is still the best at entertaining herself, so she gets ignored the most. Ingrid's response is simply to take advantage of our negligence. She doesn't act up or badger us like certain of her siblings; she just quietly goes off to do all the things we don't let her do when we're paying attention. We saw it this winter with the iPad. She and Henry reversed roles and Ingrid is now the screen-obsessed child. Our screen policy has been to focus on quality instead of quantity; we curated the kids' watching pretty carefully and didn't worry too much about how much of it they watched. While we were busy moving and surviving a newborn, Ingrid learned how to operate the iPad and our strategy went out the window. She discovered the abomination that is the Barbie show, closely followed by the horror that is the modern My Little Pony show. Ingrid started talking like a Valley girl (oh.my.gawd), giving me eye-rolling attitude, and demanding a bigger closet. I would tell her to turn it off and ten minutes later I would hear the bedroom door slam and the sounds of vapid plastic people coming from upstairs. Then she would shamelessly lie and say she was watching something else. A bit of a devious streak, this one.
On that note, she's alternately super sweet and outright cruel to her siblings. Some days she plays so patiently with Heidi, directing their pretend play and giving thoughtful extension activities to her Montessorish materials. But then Heidi puts one sticker on Ingrid's calendar and Ingrid throws her to the floor and pulls her hair. She and Henry run around and have a great time together in the afternoon and talk endlessly in their room before bedtime. But one day Henry handed her one of his lovely notes and she literally crumpled it up before his eyes and threw it on the floor. Henry cried for half an hour.
[I thought Ingrid was being a complete sociopath, but on further reflection, I think perhaps Barbie bears the blame for that incident. Ingrid was probably mimicking how those girls behave and thought she was being funny. It's a *cking horrible show. WHY, Netflix, will you not let me remove a show from my kid's queue??? Anyway, we have finally put the kibosh on it.]
Fritz still gets only love.
She still enjoys school but it's a total black box. I ask every day what she did and she always says nothing. Good thing her teacher occasionally posts updates and photos to Facebook.
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| Nothing happened today. |
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| Maybe a tiny Aunt Amy in the making? |
We started skating lessons in January. They're going....ok. Some days she complains and cries the whole half hour. Some days she skates the whole time. She isn't gliding yet but she can shuffle around without falling too much.
This month was kindergarten registration. I almost ignored the notice because it seems impossible that she should be so old. Four and half means she's a quarter of the way to going to college! The kids are all giving me panic attacks this quarter. But it's true, come fall she'll be trucking off to the bus stop with Henry. She came to Concord for registration with me to scope out all the kindergarten classrooms and requested the one with the largest dollhouse. She and Henry will be at such different stages in kindergarten; Henry was ready for reading and math, Ingrid will still gravitate to the toys. I'm glad our kindergartens will still let her be a sweet babychild if she wants to.
I am on the same page as you with respect to Barbie! Yuck. Ellen was very unhappy with me last week when I wouldn't let her buy a Barbie book from her school book fair, or check a Barbie movie out from the library. Too bad kiddo, we're not bringing those inane stories into our household! I agree that My Little Pony is bad too but doesn't inspire the same level of outrage :)
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