We just posted the February 2009 photos.
Over the last month since we posted the January 2009 photos, the kids have had their emotional ups and downs. When Eleanor gets particularly frustrated, she loses her ability to say something coherent and usually comes up with “glah-glee!” We asked her what it means, and she says, “It means nothing.” We tease her about it, and she understands that it doesn’t really help to say it.
Earlier this month, we went to Legoland for a second visit. We had leftover tickets from our trip over Christmas, and they expired at the end of March. While we were there, Eleanor had a meltdown over lunch. I think it had something to do with not splitting her banana precisely down the middle of the tip (which is next to impossible to do without a knife). Actually, she melted down more because she was overly tired and hungry, but that wasn’t the trigger. I was ignoring Eleanor and letting her cry on the floor when a woman came by and asked if she had to listen to “that”. She said that our daughter was bothering the people around us. I took Eleanor outside after that, and a few minutes later, another woman came by and said that we weren’t bothering them and that she had no idea who the first woman was. I was a little surprised by both women. Usually people leave you alone to be a parent in whatever way you see fit.
Over the last week or so, Eleanor’s been doing much better though. Miranda, on the other hand, gets into moods where nothing satisfies her. We find that we just need to ignore her until she settles down again.
Eleanor and Miranda have learned to play rock-paper-scissors this month. You can rely on Miranda to almost always choose rock, and Eleanor to almost always choose scissors. After figuring this out, Agnes started routinely beating them. Eleanor tries to delay choosing by just a moment, but it doesn’t seem to help.
The girls also learned to play tic-tac-toe, but they have no ability to plan ahead. If they win, it’s because they stumbled into it. They seem to enjoy it though. If they start to recognize how to plan ahead, we’ll introduce them to Connect Four.
We’ve been trying to guide the kids towards asking for things and using “please” rather than saying “I want…” It’s working for the most part, but they still require lots of reminders. There are also times when their words just come out strangely and you wonder how to ask them to reword it. Recently, Miranda asked, “I want help for zippiny this please”. She was asking for help in zipping her jacket.
We’ve continued to let the girls play computer games after dinner. Eleanor has become particularly proficient at them. She can play a Yo Gabba Gabba game that uses the keyboard to move back and forth and jump. I don’t think she would be able to play a Mario Bros game though–she would get too rattled if she were under pressure.
We also recently bought a wall clock and we use an analog clock display on the computer. While the kids can’t tell time, we let them know how long they can do something by telling them that we need to do something else when the long hand reaches a particular number. It seems to work well enough, and it’s starting to address issues we previously had with transition where either Eleanor or Miranda wouldn’t feel like they had enough warning about a time limit.
Hopefully, the March pictures will be up shortly.