Cooperation. And lack thereof.

My threat of no dessert seems to have done the trick - at least for the time being. For the past two nights, Julia has not come down out of her room repeatedly after we put her to bed. She listened to Ethan's suggestion that she flip through some books if she can't fall asleep, and both nights when I went in to check on her I found her like this:



She was not, however, quite so cooperative at the pool today when we went for swim lessons. It had rained earlier in the morning, and even though the rain had stopped by the time of her lesson, she was in abject terror of going in the water in case it started to thunderstorm. I got to be the mom trying to coax the screaming, sobbing child into the water, with absolutely no luck. Instead we sat on the bench through the duration of the lesson; I insisted on staying despite her refusal to go into the water, so she could at least watch the lesson. I'm sure she was really able to take in what the instructor was teaching amid her wailing demands to go home. All in all, a very successful experience.

And finally, an example of the fact that you never know quite what is about to come out of that kid's mouth:

JULIA: Mommy, I thought you were going to help me put this puzzle together.
ME: I'll come over in a minute. Why don't you start collecting the pieces?
JULIA: But I don't know how.
ME: Sure you do. Just start looking for the pieces to the puzzle you want to do.
JULIA: No, that's not how you do it. How about you just make a bowl of chili?

Yeah... okay. I'll get right on that.