So We've Reached That Stage

Ellie is very advanced.  Or I am lazier than I was two years ago.  See, it took Margaret until the middle of February to figure out how to create a whirlwind of mess.

Anyway, yesterday Ellie got into a box of something that could be taken out and scattered to the four winds.

And, when I looked at her and said "Ellie" in a slightly firm voice, she seemed to think that it was pretty fun.

The No-Nap Club

This is the name of the nightclub that my children would open if they were in the habit of a) opening nightclubs and b) able to stay up past 6 pm.

Anyway, I think that I have complained at great length about Margaret's refusal to nap, and the reign of terror that unleashes on the household.  We've stopped fighting it at this point, and we put her in her room for quiet time.  She goes to bed by 6:30 pretty much every night, and she's good.  Ish.  I mean, she's not terrible.  Mostly.  She'll grow out of it.

Ellie, however, has never been a problem.  She's been really great about going to bed when she's supposed to and sleeping and not fussing and putting herself to sleep and all has been wonderful.  And predictable.  And just grand.

But yesterday, the first day that Margaret went to a full day of preschool, young Miss Ellie decided to assert herself.  She took a morning nap.  But then she decided that she wasn't playing that game anymore.  And she refused her afternoon nap.

Arg.

And honestly, she's the age to be giving up one of her naps.  But the first day?  Come on.

So while she was supposed to be having a nap, she partied.

This is not okay, Ellie.  But it means that she is just going to have to have one nap a day, and it will be in the afternoon, and so we will come home from getting Margaret from school, feed them, and put Margaret in for quiet time and Ellie down for her nap.  But I would have really liked a week where I had some mornings to myself, you know?

Humph.

Growing up is annoying sometimes.

Ideas Above Her Station

We went to the park this afternoon, because the sun was shining, and the temperature had crept up into the high 40s, which felt positively warm.

I bundled the children up, and off we went.  We had a minor disagreement when we got there, because I wouldn't let Margaret have her mittens.  She felt that this was an affront that needed to be wiped out in blood.  I felt that she shouldn't have them because she wanted to go clambering all over bars and things, and it's really hard to hold on to playground bars with knitted gloves.  She didn't see it my way, but we eventually reached the compromise solution that Ellie would wear mittens, and that would somehow make it all right that Margaret wasn't.

I don't ask how her little mind works.  I just take what I can get.

Anyway, we went down to the playground, and Margaret took off running.  Somewhat surprisingly, so did Ellie.

It's amazing how quickly they grow up, isn't it?

Anyway, Ellie seemed pretty pleased to be out exploring the world, if a little astonished by what she found there.

Margaret, ever keen to show off the monkey-like skills she has mastered while playing at the playground with her father,* showed me how she can walk all around the playground on top of the wall.

So, you know, there's that.  And then while Margaret was parading around, Ellie decided to start climbing as well.  Luckily for my peace of mind, there's only so much she can do in the climbing department, and it really only means that she can stand up.  But she did that, and she was very proud.

Margaret descended from the wall and decided to join Ellie.  It was very cute.  

But it didn't last, because Margaret needed to go and scale some large rock formations.  Because, you know, she's almost 3, and that's the sort of thing that she should be doing.

And that was fine.  She climbed up that and went down the slide and climbed up and went down the slide while I help Ellie.  And then Ellie started to squirm and thrash, so I put her down.

Then this happened.

Ellie is not big enough for that, so all of us went over to the swings.  Margaret was completely on board with Ellie not being allowed to climb, because Margaret does not approve of Ellie trying to do big kid things.

I swear they had a blast.  But Margaret wanted to go back to the slide, and I said she could.  And then this happened.

She just doesn't give up.

And for those of you who read these posts in order to nitpick my narration of the events, you can see Margaret in the background of the last picture, but that's because she is looking at her rock formation which she was climbing up to get to the structure that the slide launched from.  But she had just come down the slide, and that was why Ellie was climbing it.

Sheesh, everyone's a critic.

*I admit that I am a sissy, but it gives me the willies to watch her climbing about all over the place.  I agree that she needs to learn sometime, but it makes me cringe.

Look What She Did At School Today

Margaret went to school again today, and it was the first day that she went for the whole three hours (last week was orientation, and only lasted an hour and a half).

When I went and picked her up, she was very excited about what she was bringing home.  I asked her what she had done at school, and she told me that she colored a picture of an apple (very school-like) and she had cut paper up with knives.

Knives?!?!

Knives.  Two knives that go together like this, Mommy, like the ones that you have.

Scissors, it turns out.  They gave her scissors.  Which is bad enough, but at least they didn't give her knives to career about with.

Anyway, we brought her picture, and her envelope of sliced-up paper home and put them on the fridge, like so.

Knives, indeed.

She's Onto Us

Saturday night at dinner, Margaret looked at me and said "Take my picture."

"Why?" I asked.

"I want you to take my picture and put it on the computer for Nana."

So I did.  I'm not sure what it was about the way she ate her eggs and biscuit that she felt was particularly important for Nana to see, but I do what I'm told (within reason).

So there you are, Mom.  Margaret wanted you to see her dinner, and here it is.

But it does mean that she's becoming conscious of the fact that her life is being shared with an audience, and she's becoming interested in curating her life for that audience.  I'm not sure how I feel about this.  I mean, I'm the person who imagines and frames her life for an audience, not her.  Seriously, I would have had much more interesting things to say about the pictures of her eating dinner if I had planned to write the post.  But she made me write it, and I don't have anything to say about them, beyond pointing out that this is dinner, and she is wearing her pajama shirt because she wanted to, and Leo was working all day Saturday, and I didn't have the energy to fight her on it.

Humph.

Dancing Margaret

Margaret decided this morning that she was going to wear boots.

She has a pair of pink rubber boots, because I got them for the snow, continuing my streak of refusing to buy snow gear for the children until such time as the snow is actually on the ground.  And when you do that, you can't exactly choose colors.  So they are leopard print and pink and have Hello Kitty on them.

I despise them.

She adores them.

And this morning, she put them on and asked me to take her picture in them.

So I did that. But she was so excited that she couldn't stand still, and danced around the dining room.

It was something to see, certainly.

Attack of the Ellie

Ellie, like Margaret, has become quite possessive about our phones.  She has not gotten quite as obsessed with phones as Margaret did, considering that I distinctly remember Margaret answering her cheese sandwich at lunch, but she certainly feels that they are her property that she allows us to use very grudgingly.

And when she decides that she wants them, we should turn them over immediately, and not waste time doing silly things with them like taking pictures.