10:00 I put away laundry from yesterday in the bedroom while C continues playing in her room and DH sits at the dining table paying bills. C comes in periodically to involve me or ask for help with her pretend play.
10:15 I look for my brown flip flops that I misplaced yesterday and C helps me look. "I know where they are!" she says, and runs for the shoe shelves in my closet. Didn't find them, but while we’re at it I straighten my shoe shelves a little. I tell C a different pair of shoes will work just as well and put them on.
10:20 I go to the kitchen and get a glass of water and take my vitamins and sit at the table with DH. C brings over a puppet and asks me to make it talk to her. It’s a dog puppet so I have it sing all the songs I can think of involving dogs: BINGO, How Much is that Doggy in the Window, Where or Where Has My Little Dog Gone?, A Great Big Dog Lives On My Street.
10:30 I fix a snack of orange and apple slices; DH is still paying bills. While I’m fixing the snack, DH says “Here,” and tosses me a crumpled piece of paper from the bills for me to throw away.
When I have my back turned, C says “Here” and throws my empty cup of water into the kitchen! “Did Daddy set a bad example for you?” I say.
When we start eating our snack, I tell C in 15 minutes it will be time to go potty and find shoes so we are ready to leave for the library.
10:45 spend time on GCM and Facebook instead of getting C ready. C goes back to playing in her room. I hear some loud noises from her room that sound suspiciously like dumping out all her toys.
11:00 Decide to get off the computer to move C through the steps we need to get out the door.
I go into C’s room to find that she has indeed dumped out four bins of toys. I tell her we need to tidy up before we go to the library and sit down to help her. I do some of the work and hand her things to put away to keep her involved.
11:15 We go potty before heading out the door. Instead of just pulling her pants down, C takes them all the way off and requests the skirt instead. I help her put on the skirt.
11:20 DH is about to go too so C and I wait a little so we can all go out together and wave goodbye. DH is getting a Band-Aid for a sore on his elbow and C requests one too. He puts one on an old scab on her foot. DH asks me if I will go to the post office for him while we are out, and I decide to take a stained and torn dress of C’s to the dry cleaners for cleaning and repair.
11:25 We make it out to the car. As I’m buckling her in, C says she is hungry and asks for more apple slices. I go inside to get them while DH finishes buckling her in and then sits in the car to talk to C until I get back.
11:30 C and I depart for our errands. I listen to the radio for a while then C says, “Talk to me mama.” So I turn it off and talk about what we’ll be doing on our errands. I tell her that first we’ll go to the post office, then the dry cleaners and then the library. We go over it several times with many questions why about each step followed with questions why to each answers. Whenever I get tired of answering “why?” I say, “What do you think?” or “What did mama say?”
We drive by the mailboxes outside the post office and drop the bills in the slot. On the way to the dry cleaners, we pass by Aero Dogs, a hotdog stand in an old silver airplane that some friends of ours just took over. I ask C if she’d like to stop there for lunch. "First we’ll go to the library, then Aero Dogs for lunch!” I say.
“No, first the dry cleaners,” she corrects me.
At the dry cleaners, I carry C in and rest her butt on the counter and keep my arms around her while I talk to the clerk. While we’re waiting for the clerk to check with the seamstress if she can handle our requested repair, C pushes her foot against my stomach, trying to get more space.
“I don’t like you kicking me,” I say, “that hurts.” I attempt to give her space and move out of range of her foot while still keeping a hold of her on the counter.
“I’m not kicking. I’m pushing you with my foot,” she replies, and pushes with her foot one more time to demonstrate or get more space.
“When you push with your foot it is called kicking, and it hurts,” I say. I take her off the counter and put her on my hip to change the situation.
I decide I will let her get down. I say, “You may walk around on this side of the counter,” and guide her back away from the entrance to the work area that she was curiously gaping at and walking toward. “That is really interesting, isn’t it?” I say. "Here, I'll hold you up so you can see better." I pick her up again and talk with her for a little while about all the different types of clothes we see.
The clerk comes back and takes my information and tells me the dress will be ready in a week. I ask her if she can give me an estimate of the cost. The clerk says it will be just a moment more while she looks it up.
So I set C down again and she goes over to the two candy vending machines. “What’s this?” she asks.
“Looks like candy,” I say. She hasn't yet learned that money will get the candy out of the machine and doesn't know she can ask for it. She does want to know the names of the types of candy, so I tell her.
Then the clerk tells me the price, which I think is fair, so we head out the door and get back in the car.
The whole drive to the library (all one block :p) C repeatedly asks me why we went to the dry cleaners and why the dress was dirty and needed to be fixed. As soon as I finish answering she starts the series of questions again*.
*I answered the questions straightforwardly but now looking back on it, it was our first trip to the dry cleaners. Maybe she wanted to talk more about what she had seen there and "why" was the only way she knew to express her curiosity about questions like, "What happens at a dry cleaners? How does it work?"
I really enjoyed this series. I wanted to suggest that you include a link to the next part here. It looks like you had planned to but might have forgotten. <3
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reminder!!
ReplyDelete