Month: September 2008

Potluck with Delfina

Sunrise Sept 10

Leilani is in a really bad mood. She hardly ever smiles, and is unsocial with other children, grabbing things and refusing to play with them (she still plays nicely with their toys…). She does not talk on the phone, neither to Andy nor to her friend Raya. I feel sorry for her and cut her a lot of slack, but she still throws horrible tantrums, and seems to be generally on strike – mainly a I’ll-waste-mommy’s-time strike. Today it took us more than 2 hours from her getting up (breakfast was on the table already, the breakfast I had picked out that is… not the beets with ravioli which she ultimately ate) to getting into the car to go to Joys… yesterday was not much better. We arrived at Tutu and Me at 9am.

Snacktime. Children learn to pour liquids and eat very nicely with spoons.

Leilani is figuring our a 7 piece stacking puzzle

She really likes to glue and make crafts

Here she is doing more puzzle, first one is probably for the 1 year olds but she really likes to do easy things. The other one is hard, because it involves quarters versus thirds of a circle, and this is the first time that I saw Leilani do this one fast – less than one minute.

Cleanup and tumbling on the floor

After that it’s story time:

And then we hug the aunties!

Leilani: “You stay here very quietly and don’t move.
I’ll bring you a map so you can remember where we live.
[runs off and brings shiny blue paper and points to the middle of it]
Here.
[She also brought her sticker book with her]
There is my book. Do you know this princesses’ name? ”
S: “That’s Aurora”
L: “Good job!”
She then continued to quiz me about the names of more princesses than you care to read about (and I got them all right :)

The last weekend Andy was here we spent on the Big Island. We watched the Hula, visited the crater and Lava Rock state park as well as Waikupanawa where the lava enters the ocean, visited Serge, and several parties.

I think Leilani’s main reason for not sleeping is fear of abandonment. She also still has a little cold, that is very stubborn, and coughs a few times per night.

Yesterday I laid down with her close to 90 minutes again – every time I wanted to leave she cried (loud enough to wake the neighbors) and every time I fell asleep she poked me and whispered “Wake up Mommy…”. After 90 minutes I just left. The howls of protest were surprisingly short, maybe less than a minute, and she slept from about 10:45 to shortly before 7am. That was slightly better than most of the week.

Today I did a timer evening. She wanted to watch Snowwhite, and agreed to obey the timer – set to 30 minutes. After 30 I let her watch another 5 minutes, because she had been to the potty twice during the movie. When the timer went of again I turned off the movie. She screamed, yelled and stomped for quite a while, I told her to stop or she’d go to bed alone again – she remembered from 3 days ago and immediately was a lot quieter – still sobbed and cried for a little while. She was very tired and went to bed almost right away, and I kept the timer, set to 15 minutes, and although she tried to start a discussion when it went off, (“Please 5 more minutes, Mommy please stay with me…”) fell asleep surprisingly fast after that, and I left after a total of 25 minutes – no more crying.

She still wants almost 100% attention, and is especially unpleasant when I am on the phone. Andy and I hardly get to talk, during the day he is at work, and in his spare hours Leilani is demanding all my attention… I also worked on 2 web projects (one done now and one at 90%) and a movie and while I tried to time it so Leilani is in preschool, sometimes there are business phone calls while she is not.

I also found tenants that I am happy about, they’ll bring the deposit check tomorrow. I had successfully dragged my legs with a dozen or so of other people that I felt were unsuitable (Coconut wireless said “No can do 1650” or whose mother thought that it wasn’t a good match or who asked on the phone if Wailua was close to Princeville or if it was further than 150 ft to the ocean…) It is a big relief now that I can slack off a little now about the level of cleanliness and neatness, I showed the house a few times on short notice, not easy with a Leilani… I should videotape the house as long as it is still in such a great shape…