This, my friends, is how she watches television.
Category: Neko
-
Zoo
I thought I’d try my first solo outing with all three kids. I decided the zoo was my best choice. It’s winter, which means that the museum is crowded, but the zoo is deserted. It seemed smarter to brave the cold, but have less of a crowd in which to lose the kids.
Susie decided to join me with Chris and Alex. And then Nancy jumped in with Griffin, Will, Chloe, and Sarah. So if you haven’t been counting, we’re now up to nine kids under the age of four. Okay, two were stroller-bound, but I’m pretty proud of all of us completing a successful outing. We left with the same number of kids we arrived with, there was no blood shed, and the melt-downs only began as we approached the parking lot.
-
Clearly headed for Harvard
Neko spent the afternoon in the shop with Tom and Chris. Amidst the t-shirt printing, she spent time solving quadratic equations.
Okay, maybe what she really did was draw space slugs on a box and then walk around with it on her head.
(Thanks to Chris for the photo.)
-
Painted
Susie took Shep for the afternoon, so Neko and I had a little time just the two of us. She suggested we paint our toenails. I was in charge of the purple coat and Neko was in charge of the very special glitter topcoat.
If I ever manage to unstick my toes from one another, they are going to look fabulous.
-
Infiltration
Today we had a full day to kill, so we ended up going to the Big City. We decided to stop by our favorite independent toy store, and give Neko a chance to spend her $9 she’s saved from her allowance. In a store chock full of wooden, classic toys, how could we go wrong?
Well, I’ll tell you.
There was the full-on temper tantrum that began when we pulled up to the store and she realized she was not at “the star store.” Our logo-aware child identifies Toys-R-Us by the star around the backwards R. We convinced her to get out of the car and go in amidst cries of, “But will Ariel stuff be there?”
Um, no. But she did manage to find the one little corner where they’d crammed in two or three Barbies and those stupid Disney Polly Pocket ohmigod-if-we-lose-that-microscopic-shoe-one-more-time-I’m-going-to-jump-into-heavy-traffic dolls.
And this is the part of the story when we realize, in case we had any doubts, that she totally has learned the concept of saving for a certain item. And has a will of steel. We relented and went to Toys-R-Us, mostly out of curiousity about what this item was that she couldn’t stop discussing…something about a chair and dolphins and blahblahtackyblah.
And we found it. She sunk to her knees as if praying at the holy grail of all things Disney, and whispered, “There it is!” And, as you’ve seen from the photo above, it’s really…something. It also costs $35. This will take her six more weeks to save for. And she doesn’t seem bothered. There was not a mention of purchasing any other item.
We are in big trouble. At least Ariel’s chariot doesn’t have disproportionately large boobs and ridiculously thin thighs.
-
Back from the brink
Today was one of those hard days. We hosted playgroup and Neko whined and cried up until the last five minutes where she became a glowing happy kid. Ridiculous. Then no one ate lunch, and everyone went to nap/quiet time crying and angry.
The afternoon didn’t go much better. Everyone was needy and grouchy.
By dinner, Tom and I were tapped out. I declared it was time to take drastic measures…the kids would be allowed to eat dinner propped up in front of the tv while they watched Pocahontas. They loved it. Then we told Neko she could take a shower instead of a bath, and to our surprise, Shep (who up until this point has been terrified of the shower) joined her. Fresh and clean, we dumped everyone into pajamas and into bed. And now it’s 8:30pm, both kids are in bed, and there’s 1.5 hours of awesome tv on NBC.
Bad day…saved.
-
Making fairies
Since we made the Cowphabet shirt, Neko has been clamoring for another one…a fairy shirt. We figure she knows her market, so we’re launching that shirt as well as a dinosaur and train. They should all be up in the next week or so.
Anyway, she desperately wanted to be a part of the process. Tom and Chris brought her out to the shop for an afternoon of child labor, which she loves.
Thanks to Chris for the photos.
-
Child labor
It’s cold and snowy outside, and as much as I’ve been wishing for this all winter, I now realize when you’re two weeks away from giving birth, the last thing you want to do is run around after children in the arctic. So we spent a day inside yesterday. All day. Recipe for disaster.
Strangely, it turned out okay.
First, I brought the water table inside. We filled it with warm, bubbly water and I put the kids to work, telling them they could clean all the plastic dishes. Soon they were busy pouring, funneling, and having a great time. This kept them busy for close to an hour. When that grew old, Neko got out the mop and started mopping the floors. This is where my OCD tendencies usually get the best of me, as she was using way too much water, and “cleaning” wouldn’t really be an accurate description of what was going on. Shep had out the broom, and was within inches of knocking half our possessions to the ground.
But, you know, it all turned out okay. Between the water table and the “cleaning”, we managed to kill the entire morning. I even cleaned a little and did a few loads of laundry. Granted, there was that extra load of towels I had to do after I put the kids down for nap, but it was definitely an activity we’ll do again.
-
We’re a couple of misfits
Okay, Christmas is way over, but Neko is still a little obsessed. She really loves those Rudolph characters.
We got a Dora book that folds out into a stage as a gift. Neko set this up on the mini-tramp, gathered together her cast, and as the movie played, she re-enacted the entire thing on her small stage. The WHOLE MOVIE.
Just as I have cemented the ADHD diagnosis in my head, she goes and does this 1.5 hour focused activity and blows the whole theory to bits.
