I have a screamer. If Thing 2 doesn’t get her way, she screams. I do not know how to deal with it and it’s starting to cause problems.
When she started, my response was “That’s an outside voice so you get to go outside.” I would pick her up and plop her outside the back door. She got a blanket to wrap up in (she started when it was cold) and her binky if she wanted it at the time, though sometimes it took me a minute to go find it…
It got to be kind of amusing. She’d just sit out there in the cold on a little kid lawn chair. She’d usually immediately stop crying and screaming the minute I put her out there, sometimes she’d holler but not usually for very long. I’d give her a couple of minutes I’d pop my head out the back door and ask if she was ready to come in. most of the time the initial response was to bellow at me. I’d do this a time or two. Eventually, I’d poke my head out and she’d be waiting for me, all smiles, and say “yes, mommy, I’m ready to come in now.”
So it seemed to work for a while.
Then it seemed I was hardly ever putting her out there anymore, and when she did scream and I’d turn to her and say outside she’d turn on her heel and sprint off in the other direction screaming “I don’t want to go out side!” If I did chase her down and catch her, she wouldn’t just sit and scream or sit quietly like before, she’d open the door and come in. So I started locking the door. She’d then throw herself at the door and scream “Let me IN!”
Okay, so that wasn’t working anymore. But I’ve kind of been left with no options. She can let herself out of whatever confinement I’ve given her. We haven’t tried to time her out with no real boundaries, the uncooperative chair or whatever, maybe that’s the next step… but it’s just such a punishing scream. She’ll either let loose with this oncoming train blast, or sometimes she’ll just start screaming and crying and she kind of gets hysterical and can’t seem to stop herself.
There was one night in the bathtub she slipped into that mode, for whatever reason she wasn’t getting what she wanted and started screaming and wouldn’t stop. I pulled her out of the bathtub and quickly dried her off (still screaming) and popped her outside the bathroom door. And locked it. She continued her hysterics, kicking the door and screaming. She’s screaming she’s naked and cold. I got her into her pajamas, and I get fuzzy on this point, but the screaming didn’t stop and she ended up outside the bathroom door again screaming. You can come in if you stop screaming. She didn’t. Then she starts screaming “I’m done!” I open the door and say “Well stop it, then!” and she pushes herself into the door and into the bathroom where she continues crying and screaming with me saying “Stop it.” Finally. I turned on the shower (separate shower and tub in our upstairs bath) and plopped her into a cold shower. She really started screaming for a minute, she was very upset that her pajamas were wet, but she did stop after a couple of seconds under the cold water. So I got her out and she whined that the ONLY pajamas she wanted to wear were the wet ones, no others would do.
So, short of plopping her in a cold shower, I don’t know what to do with her. And I’m kind of saving that for those “I’ve gone hysterical and I can’t stop” moments.
She started on it today. She was eating lunch with Thing 1 and my niece who we had over. I was in the other room going through some mail, and next thing I know Thing 2 is in the kitchen screaming. I come into the kitchen to see what’s going on and she runs out the other door. Thing 1 and Niece are sitting at the table looking stunned (Thing 2 has one hell of a scream.) Long story short when she did come back to the table I told her she needed to apologize to Thing 1 and Niece for screaming at them. “I wasn’t screaming at them.” You weren’t? who were you screaming at? “I was screaming at you.” Me? Why were you screaming at me? __Insert wild contrived fantasy here about I was at the bottom and she was at the top and on and on about something that sounded vaguely like something that had happened a couple of hours ago on the stairs. Whatever.
About once, maybe twice a week, she does this. Her temper has always been on the explosive side, and in less time than I could say “Thing 2…” she’s gone from calm to hysterically screaming.
Last Saturday as we were getting ready to go to breakfast and then the zoo it started up again. It’s kind of amusing to me to watch Jeff try to handle it. A long time ago he chastised me for raising my voice to her when she started getting hysterical. I agreed it was ineffective and worked around to find other ways to deal with her (I think that’s what started the thing about putting her in the back yard.) And last weekend I got to watch him get increasingly frustrated with her and start to raise his voice. And yup, it was just as ineffective when he did it as when I did it. A couple of weeks before this he’d watched me lock her in the back yard and seen how ineffective that’s gotten, and pointed that out to me, so we’ve stopped doing that and now we’re kind of left with no real response. He was trying to get her attention to even begin to make her stop… My response was to say Daddy and Thing 1 are going to breakfast and the zoo. When you stop, we’ll go too. Then I tried to get him to go.
He didn’t want to go. He got as far as the garage, then came back and tried to reason with her some more. He’s home for 22 hours and he doesn’t want to spend it with just Thing 1 and leave me and Thing 2 home screaming. So he comes back in and tries to reason with her.
I don’t remember how it finally ended… I thought I had been doing pretty well, she’d stopped screaming and moved to begging that she wanted to go when he came in, and she’d immediately escalated it up a notch and started screaming again.
It’s just hard to watch her not seeming to make the connection between her screaming and her getting into trouble. You scream and the world stops being nice for everyone. What about this don’t you get?
She did it to me again today. I bought them a computer game when Thing 2 was with me at Costco. It’s really for Thing 1, it’s a little advanced for Thing 2, but she sure as heck wants to do it. She griped at me while I was installing and registering it to hurry up and get out of the way. Then it stalled several times, and when I’d try and intervene she’d gripe at me to get out of the way and let her play. We did get it to move forward some, but it doesn’t seem to be working quite right, and she was having trouble with the mouse moving off the edge of the table. I’d try and show her she just needs to pick up the mouse and move it to the middle of the mouse moving space, and you’d have thought I spit on her or something, she was so angry at me for interfering.
My patience is just about at its end with her. I told her I wasn’t helping her anymore because I don’t like being screamed at. Her response? A very confident “you’ll forget.”
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Waxing poetical
You’d think it would kill me to get to bed before midnight. It helps that my folks let me sleep in in the mornings while they entertain the girls… I just come up here and collapse.
Hubby called from DC where he is attending the Agile Alliance conference to say that he received the very prestigious Gordon Pask award. Yippeeee!!! What it means for us: it looks great on his resume, and on the back of his book, free marketing, and a travel award for him to attend two international conferences at their expense. Since we are now paying for his travel, this is a good thing. At this conference he learned the scuttle butt around ThoughtWorks is that he separated from the company to do his own thing. Most people who have separated from ThoughtWorks have, from what I’ve heard, gone out with more of a bang. He kind of quietly slipped out sometime last March or so, but they’ve just finally noticed that he’s gone and started to make it official.
So as I’m talking to him on the phone, it’s pushing 10:30 and Thing 2, who took a long late nap today, came upstairs again. I hung up to go put her back to bed and as I’m trying to politely convince her of her need of sleep, out of the blue she asks me “Who brings us the night?”
I was speechless for a moment… what poetry! What a beautiful line coming from a four year old! I asked her where she’d heard that… she kind of mumbled and made some reference to hearing it at a friend’s house, but I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask her friend’s mother, but it sure was poetry out of the mouth of a baby to me.
So I wrote a poem around it.
Who brings the night? My daughter said,
As I kissed the top of her small blonde head.
And tucked her, again, into her bed…
Why does it come, to close my day
And bring an end to all my play?
And send the sunlight on its way?
Why is it dark, she asked me, why?
Why are the lights not in the sky?
I’m scared of the dark and want to cry.
I whisper close to her small curled ear
The dark is your friend, my darling, my dear,
Like a big warm blanket, pulling near.
The dark is here so you can rest,
And cuddle the teddy you like best
And dream your dreams curled in your nest.
Tomorrow we have things to do
And you’ll be tired before it’s through
And glad your bed is waiting for you.
So rest your head and snuggle down tight
Let your imagination roam all night
Your dreams can gallop out of sight.
Hubby called from DC where he is attending the Agile Alliance conference to say that he received the very prestigious Gordon Pask award. Yippeeee!!! What it means for us: it looks great on his resume, and on the back of his book, free marketing, and a travel award for him to attend two international conferences at their expense. Since we are now paying for his travel, this is a good thing. At this conference he learned the scuttle butt around ThoughtWorks is that he separated from the company to do his own thing. Most people who have separated from ThoughtWorks have, from what I’ve heard, gone out with more of a bang. He kind of quietly slipped out sometime last March or so, but they’ve just finally noticed that he’s gone and started to make it official.
So as I’m talking to him on the phone, it’s pushing 10:30 and Thing 2, who took a long late nap today, came upstairs again. I hung up to go put her back to bed and as I’m trying to politely convince her of her need of sleep, out of the blue she asks me “Who brings us the night?”
I was speechless for a moment… what poetry! What a beautiful line coming from a four year old! I asked her where she’d heard that… she kind of mumbled and made some reference to hearing it at a friend’s house, but I’m not sure. I’ll have to ask her friend’s mother, but it sure was poetry out of the mouth of a baby to me.
So I wrote a poem around it.
Who brings the night? My daughter said,
As I kissed the top of her small blonde head.
And tucked her, again, into her bed…
Why does it come, to close my day
And bring an end to all my play?
And send the sunlight on its way?
Why is it dark, she asked me, why?
Why are the lights not in the sky?
I’m scared of the dark and want to cry.
I whisper close to her small curled ear
The dark is your friend, my darling, my dear,
Like a big warm blanket, pulling near.
The dark is here so you can rest,
And cuddle the teddy you like best
And dream your dreams curled in your nest.
Tomorrow we have things to do
And you’ll be tired before it’s through
And glad your bed is waiting for you.
So rest your head and snuggle down tight
Let your imagination roam all night
Your dreams can gallop out of sight.
Monday, July 30, 2007
Bear Lake
We got an invitation to go to Bear Lake with my brother's family. It is funny that if you asked me ten years ago what my favorite thing in the world to do was, I would have told you waterskiing, but life kind of took me in a different direction, and that direction isn't really involved with watersports. Life does funny things. So here we are bumming a ride around the lake from my brother.
This is my brother sitting at the steering wheel.
The girls had a great time - this is them on the tube with their cousin.
They loved just riding around in the boat.
This is my brother skiing - he's pretty awesome. Yes, I hate that word, but yes, it applies in this case.
Grandma even came out for a ride in the boat. I decided not to put in the picture of my brother giving her a piggyback ride out to the boat that was anchored in the lake. You can picture that one in your head.
This is my brother sitting at the steering wheel.
The girls had a great time - this is them on the tube with their cousin.
They loved just riding around in the boat.
This is my brother skiing - he's pretty awesome. Yes, I hate that word, but yes, it applies in this case.
Grandma even came out for a ride in the boat. I decided not to put in the picture of my brother giving her a piggyback ride out to the boat that was anchored in the lake. You can picture that one in your head.
Friday, July 27, 2007
Thing 2 turns 4
It was Thing 2's first time for a friend birthday party. She wanted to have it at our house, but I didn't. It's awfully hot, and unfortunately the only place for us to do anything with the kids - any crafts or eating or anything, in the coolness of the house, is sitting right in front of the swamp cooler. If you turn off the swamp cooler, so the kids aren't blasted across the room, the temperature rises swiftly. So I copied someone else who recently invited us to a party, and we went to a swimming pool and had watermelon and chips on the lawn afterward. Then I took the kids over to a nearby kiddie ride place and bought them each a couple of rides.
The theme she picked was Hello Kitty. I made a cake, copying the picture on the invitation, and was quite pleased with how it turned out.
The theme she picked was Hello Kitty. I made a cake, copying the picture on the invitation, and was quite pleased with how it turned out.
Catching up
Busy busy month.
We spent five days in Jackson with my family and had a glorious time. It was nice to see Jeff, after his week in India he was home for about 18 hours then went to North Carolina for a couple of days, was supposed to be back the night before we left for Jackson but his flight was delayed and he got stuck in Cincinnati for the night and ended up getting back to Salt Lake about 2 hours before we left for Jackson. He realized he’s slept in his own bed four nights in the past month.
We hiked a couple of days, and ran the river, and then spent an extra day playing by the pool with the kids. All in all we had a really nice time.
Grandma’s story is that once when she had the grandkids at the pool while Jeff and I were somewhere else, the kids in the kiddie pool, including Thing 2, were pointing out their parents to each other. Thing 2 pointed out my mother to the other kids and said “You see that Old Lady over there? That’s my Grandma!” Mom said she felt rather exposed, she’d never been called that before.
Jeff was in town for part of a week, then left for a conference in Chicago. We celebrated Thing 2’s fourth birthday on Sunday before he left, we had a really nice spaghetti dinner (her choice) and had a pony shaped cake from Sydney, the lady I know who makes the fabulous cakes. The girls and I had a quiet 24th, trying to get ready for her friend birthday party on on Wednesday. We met at the Liberty Park Pool and it was very nice, she just had a couple friends and my cousin Wendy and her three kids were in town. We swam until lunchtime then had watermelon, and I had made a Hello Kitty cake for her the night before which she was quite tickled about. When we were done swimming and eating I popped for some midway rides at the little park next to the pool for all the kids. Since I hadn’t been able to get Dominos to deliver to the pool, I had more cash than I had intended. I think Thing 2 had a good time overall, despite the few moments of being upset that Maxine (her friend) said she liked Thing 1 better than her. Thing 1 and Sophia (Thing 1’s friend) were playing pretty happily together… Thing 2 seems quick to take offense sometimes.
Later I hosted Wendy and her family and Janet and Gary for dinner – this basically doubled my usual contingent for hosting people, what with a birthday party and a dinner party all in one day.
We came up to Logan the next day. Thing 2 had a fit during breakfast because I asked her to take her Little Ponies off the table, then asked her to not throw a fit at the breakfast table. Her options were to eat without a fit, or to go outside with her ponies and her breakfast and have a fit. She took the third option, stumble around the kitchen screaming like a banshee. I got increasingly frustrated at her blocking my attempts to have a quiet breakfast. When she finally did calm down she insisted she was crying because I gave her too much cereal. Sigh.
When we were in Jackson Dad had a sty on his eye he was having trouble with. Apparently Mom told him to put Neosporin on it, that’s what she does with hers. Kristin and I expressed our surprise at that, and told him we heard you should hot pack a sty, slathering it Neosporin sounds counterproductive. I thought it looked better after he’d started hot packing, but he kept up with the Neosporin. Well, after a couple of weeks it wasn’t really getting better, and in fact on some mornings it was quite a bit worse. Finally one morning it was really awful. He says he’d gotten kind of sporadic about putting the hot packs on it because it was time consuming, and then woke up one morning and it was really awful. He finally went to the doctor, who was somewhat alarmed and sent him to an eye doctor because he thought they’d need to lance the infection. The eye doctor asked him what he had been doing to treat it… then told him the problem was he was having an allergic reaction to Neosporin.
I just find this so funny!
I had lunch with Sandra and Jill (old high school friends of mine) and some of their kids today. Jill’s 10 year old daughter Jessa came, and all of Sandra’s kids with her visiting Japanese student who was very sweet and handing out little presents to everyone with surprising frequency. Sandra’s kids didn’t have a very high tolerance for McDonalds and we didn’t stay too long there. It was awfully noisy and cold, too. So we went to Sandra’s house. When we were getting ready to leave, Sandra’s daughter Anna, who is a little older than Thing 2, went sprinting over to the neighbor’s house. Then when we left, Thing 2 completely came unglued because Anna wasn’t there to say goodbye to. I completely intended to stand firm and get her in the car and go, but she finally stopped screaming and sort of asked without crying if she could go say goodbye. I caved and let her go over to the neighbor’s house and say her farewells properly. It really ticks me off that she gets what she wants by having a royal hissy fit. What happens is I get outrageously angry at her for screaming and then give in just so I can get on with life. It still pisses me off to think about it. I feel bad that someday when Thing 1 and Thing 2 are reading this, a lot of my stories now are going to be about Thing 2’s fits. My quiet, compliant little Thing 1 doesn’t cause these kinds of problems that prompt me to vent my frustrations on the computer. Bless her little heart.
Thing 1 is finding herself at loose ends at Grandma’s. She has decided that what she needs to occupy herself is to dye some Easter Eggs. I keep reminding her that it’s not time for easter eggs and I don’t have any dye, but she has come up with a neat new scheme on how she was going to color the eggs and drew many diagrams showing us how she was going to decorate these eggs. She is very persistent about it.
We spent five days in Jackson with my family and had a glorious time. It was nice to see Jeff, after his week in India he was home for about 18 hours then went to North Carolina for a couple of days, was supposed to be back the night before we left for Jackson but his flight was delayed and he got stuck in Cincinnati for the night and ended up getting back to Salt Lake about 2 hours before we left for Jackson. He realized he’s slept in his own bed four nights in the past month.
We hiked a couple of days, and ran the river, and then spent an extra day playing by the pool with the kids. All in all we had a really nice time.
Grandma’s story is that once when she had the grandkids at the pool while Jeff and I were somewhere else, the kids in the kiddie pool, including Thing 2, were pointing out their parents to each other. Thing 2 pointed out my mother to the other kids and said “You see that Old Lady over there? That’s my Grandma!” Mom said she felt rather exposed, she’d never been called that before.
Jeff was in town for part of a week, then left for a conference in Chicago. We celebrated Thing 2’s fourth birthday on Sunday before he left, we had a really nice spaghetti dinner (her choice) and had a pony shaped cake from Sydney, the lady I know who makes the fabulous cakes. The girls and I had a quiet 24th, trying to get ready for her friend birthday party on on Wednesday. We met at the Liberty Park Pool and it was very nice, she just had a couple friends and my cousin Wendy and her three kids were in town. We swam until lunchtime then had watermelon, and I had made a Hello Kitty cake for her the night before which she was quite tickled about. When we were done swimming and eating I popped for some midway rides at the little park next to the pool for all the kids. Since I hadn’t been able to get Dominos to deliver to the pool, I had more cash than I had intended. I think Thing 2 had a good time overall, despite the few moments of being upset that Maxine (her friend) said she liked Thing 1 better than her. Thing 1 and Sophia (Thing 1’s friend) were playing pretty happily together… Thing 2 seems quick to take offense sometimes.
Later I hosted Wendy and her family and Janet and Gary for dinner – this basically doubled my usual contingent for hosting people, what with a birthday party and a dinner party all in one day.
We came up to Logan the next day. Thing 2 had a fit during breakfast because I asked her to take her Little Ponies off the table, then asked her to not throw a fit at the breakfast table. Her options were to eat without a fit, or to go outside with her ponies and her breakfast and have a fit. She took the third option, stumble around the kitchen screaming like a banshee. I got increasingly frustrated at her blocking my attempts to have a quiet breakfast. When she finally did calm down she insisted she was crying because I gave her too much cereal. Sigh.
When we were in Jackson Dad had a sty on his eye he was having trouble with. Apparently Mom told him to put Neosporin on it, that’s what she does with hers. Kristin and I expressed our surprise at that, and told him we heard you should hot pack a sty, slathering it Neosporin sounds counterproductive. I thought it looked better after he’d started hot packing, but he kept up with the Neosporin. Well, after a couple of weeks it wasn’t really getting better, and in fact on some mornings it was quite a bit worse. Finally one morning it was really awful. He says he’d gotten kind of sporadic about putting the hot packs on it because it was time consuming, and then woke up one morning and it was really awful. He finally went to the doctor, who was somewhat alarmed and sent him to an eye doctor because he thought they’d need to lance the infection. The eye doctor asked him what he had been doing to treat it… then told him the problem was he was having an allergic reaction to Neosporin.
I just find this so funny!
I had lunch with Sandra and Jill (old high school friends of mine) and some of their kids today. Jill’s 10 year old daughter Jessa came, and all of Sandra’s kids with her visiting Japanese student who was very sweet and handing out little presents to everyone with surprising frequency. Sandra’s kids didn’t have a very high tolerance for McDonalds and we didn’t stay too long there. It was awfully noisy and cold, too. So we went to Sandra’s house. When we were getting ready to leave, Sandra’s daughter Anna, who is a little older than Thing 2, went sprinting over to the neighbor’s house. Then when we left, Thing 2 completely came unglued because Anna wasn’t there to say goodbye to. I completely intended to stand firm and get her in the car and go, but she finally stopped screaming and sort of asked without crying if she could go say goodbye. I caved and let her go over to the neighbor’s house and say her farewells properly. It really ticks me off that she gets what she wants by having a royal hissy fit. What happens is I get outrageously angry at her for screaming and then give in just so I can get on with life. It still pisses me off to think about it. I feel bad that someday when Thing 1 and Thing 2 are reading this, a lot of my stories now are going to be about Thing 2’s fits. My quiet, compliant little Thing 1 doesn’t cause these kinds of problems that prompt me to vent my frustrations on the computer. Bless her little heart.
Thing 1 is finding herself at loose ends at Grandma’s. She has decided that what she needs to occupy herself is to dye some Easter Eggs. I keep reminding her that it’s not time for easter eggs and I don’t have any dye, but she has come up with a neat new scheme on how she was going to color the eggs and drew many diagrams showing us how she was going to decorate these eggs. She is very persistent about it.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Another day in the neighborhood
Thing 1 and 2 are in the other room watching TV. I can hear their conversation through the open door. Thing 2 becomes inordinately upset and is wailing about a line on her foot. Thing 1 looks at it and says it’s just a line, just a wrinkle on your foot. Thing 2 says but I don’t want a line on my foot! Why is it there? Thing 1says “It’s just the way Jesus made you.”
For anyone else this would be normal, not particularly noticeable conversation. But for me, who has too long ignored my children’s religious upbringing, this brings joy to my heart. Somewhere along the line, from Church, from reading, or from me, Thing 1 has indeed picked up a little bit of religion.
This morning Thing 2 was quite excited about breakfast. She grabbed the Nestle strawberry milk powder from the pantry and galloped with it to the table. However the lid was not snapped on tightly and in her galloping, she was exuberantly tossing the container around as she galloped, the lid flipped off and about ¼ of a large container of pink powder went all over the floor, which she skidded on, and all over her clothes. Her response, not too unexpectedly, was to start to wail. No matter how many times she is encouraged to not wail as a first response, it is still her first response to anything the least bit negative.
Hubby came back from Italy on Sunday. The girls and I spent most of the previous week in Logan, culminating in a couple of days on Bear Lake with my brother's family. The girls had a fabulous time, I think their favorite part was riding on the chariot innertube thing with their cousin. But they really enjoyed jumping on the trampoline, riding in the boat, and playing in the water. We wore them down to the nub and even Thing 1, who isn’t much of a napper, fell asleep in the boat for a couple of hours. All in all they just had a fabulous time.
Speaking of which, when we were in Logan my uncle Glade and Aunt Vicki came up for a reunion the next day and since we were looking for a babysitter so I could go to the play with Kristin that night, we asked them to babysit. They said everything went well, but thought the girls exceptionally funny and cute. Glade was particularly amused when something happened that pleased Thing 2 and she said it was Fabulous. Apparently they’re not used to three year olds calling things Fabulous.
I came home and put up the 2nd tarp on the fort, so now both sections have shade. This was a no-question requirement for me, as the sun beating down really warmed up the decking, and from about 10:00 a.m. on the higher slide section was directly in the sun, and as the sun moved across the sky, the too-hot-to-stand-on section just got bigger and bigger. Yesterday we all had lunch on the fort about 2:00 pm. before Hubby left, and the whole deck was in the shade. I am very pleased with how the fort turned out. There are about three things left to do: We need to buy and dump in three or so more bags of sand. The two person swing needs to be put on, but I’m not sure I’m going to get to that. The rails are half nice redwood posts, and half shanty-looking cedar planks, but I don’t know if or when that will ever be taken care of. We do what we can...
For anyone else this would be normal, not particularly noticeable conversation. But for me, who has too long ignored my children’s religious upbringing, this brings joy to my heart. Somewhere along the line, from Church, from reading, or from me, Thing 1 has indeed picked up a little bit of religion.
This morning Thing 2 was quite excited about breakfast. She grabbed the Nestle strawberry milk powder from the pantry and galloped with it to the table. However the lid was not snapped on tightly and in her galloping, she was exuberantly tossing the container around as she galloped, the lid flipped off and about ¼ of a large container of pink powder went all over the floor, which she skidded on, and all over her clothes. Her response, not too unexpectedly, was to start to wail. No matter how many times she is encouraged to not wail as a first response, it is still her first response to anything the least bit negative.
Hubby came back from Italy on Sunday. The girls and I spent most of the previous week in Logan, culminating in a couple of days on Bear Lake with my brother's family. The girls had a fabulous time, I think their favorite part was riding on the chariot innertube thing with their cousin. But they really enjoyed jumping on the trampoline, riding in the boat, and playing in the water. We wore them down to the nub and even Thing 1, who isn’t much of a napper, fell asleep in the boat for a couple of hours. All in all they just had a fabulous time.
Speaking of which, when we were in Logan my uncle Glade and Aunt Vicki came up for a reunion the next day and since we were looking for a babysitter so I could go to the play with Kristin that night, we asked them to babysit. They said everything went well, but thought the girls exceptionally funny and cute. Glade was particularly amused when something happened that pleased Thing 2 and she said it was Fabulous. Apparently they’re not used to three year olds calling things Fabulous.
I came home and put up the 2nd tarp on the fort, so now both sections have shade. This was a no-question requirement for me, as the sun beating down really warmed up the decking, and from about 10:00 a.m. on the higher slide section was directly in the sun, and as the sun moved across the sky, the too-hot-to-stand-on section just got bigger and bigger. Yesterday we all had lunch on the fort about 2:00 pm. before Hubby left, and the whole deck was in the shade. I am very pleased with how the fort turned out. There are about three things left to do: We need to buy and dump in three or so more bags of sand. The two person swing needs to be put on, but I’m not sure I’m going to get to that. The rails are half nice redwood posts, and half shanty-looking cedar planks, but I don’t know if or when that will ever be taken care of. We do what we can...
Saturday, June 9, 2007
Jim Bridger would be proud
We spent the WHOLE day working on the fort in the back yard.
It started several months ago, my sister brought her truck, her husband, and her stepsons and they helped us clear off a foot of topsoil off the top back bit of our yard, to level out the ground for the fort. They shoveled off a ton of dirt which we wheelbarrowed through the garage - the cedar shingled structure on the right - out the alley to her truck. She took the dirt home to put in her corral. Thanks so much to them!!!
The next step was to begin the building process. The fort will be on the left, out of the picture here.
Our postage stamped sized grassy area has been turned over to the girl’s fort. We’ve spent several half days, and two full days working on it.
The ironic thing is how much time we’ve spent ignoring the girls and getting them to entertain themselves while we were working on this fort we’re building to make their lives more magical and fun.
It has since been finished, with a tarp roof and rails on the sides.
It started several months ago, my sister brought her truck, her husband, and her stepsons and they helped us clear off a foot of topsoil off the top back bit of our yard, to level out the ground for the fort. They shoveled off a ton of dirt which we wheelbarrowed through the garage - the cedar shingled structure on the right - out the alley to her truck. She took the dirt home to put in her corral. Thanks so much to them!!!
The next step was to begin the building process. The fort will be on the left, out of the picture here.
Our postage stamped sized grassy area has been turned over to the girl’s fort. We’ve spent several half days, and two full days working on it. 
The ironic thing is how much time we’ve spent ignoring the girls and getting them to entertain themselves while we were working on this fort we’re building to make their lives more magical and fun.
It has since been finished, with a tarp roof and rails on the sides.
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