Busy morning

The morning started off nicely, with Julia benevolently deciding to give her sister two gifts: a plaster circle that Julia had painted at some event or another, and one of Julia's Polly Pockets that she doesn't often play with. Madeleine was so enthralled with the gifts that she played with them all morning, labeling the plastic circle "Moon" and naming the Polly Pocket "Alia."



As you can probably hear from this video, Julia has a bit of a cough and a cold. She has been well enough to go to school all week, and really isn't feeling that under the weather, but I decided to let her watch an extra half hour of tv this morning so she could rest. In actuality, I was hoping to get a little more down time to drink my coffee in peace, but because Julia is such a rule follower ("But, Mama, I already watched my two shows!") I assured her that when you're sick, it's okay to have a little more couch time and to watch a little more tv.

The special treatment caused a bit of a moral conundrum for Julia after her show was finished, however. Not wanting to get herself caught for not being sick enough to warrant the extra tv time, she found a creative way to ask permission for her next activity.

JULIA: Mama, um, sometimes when you're sick, it feels really good to warm yourself up, because when you have a cold, you might need to make yourself warm by, like, moving all around.
ME: Julia, it's okay if you want to do Gallop Time. You don't need an excuse.
JULIA: (relieved) Oh! Okay. (taking off at a gallop through the various downstairs rooms, a look of far-off wonderment in her eyes.)

Her very compliant behavior lasted through the rest of the morning, which was spent at the eye doctor, thanks to Julia's failed eye exam at her 5-year checkup. Fortunately, she passed the exam today, impressing the pants off of the optometrist with her wonderful behavior. Don't worry, I won't get too smug here; Madeleine more than made up for Julia's docile accomodation during the course of the hour and a half long visit. Whether she was crawling around under waiting room chairs, opening other exam room doors and climbing into the examining chairs where she didn't belong, grabbing items off of the examining room counters, or full-out wailing while Julia tried to recite letters and numbers, she certainly made a different sort of impression on the optometry staff. Not that she gave a hoot about making a good impression. An excerpt from her time-out in the waiting room:
MADELEINE: (wailing) I want to get DOOOOOOOWN!
ME: Are you going to be a good listener, then?
MADELEINE: (defiantly) UH-uh!

As the doctor very kindly put it, "Every child is different." Very, very true of my two.

Thankfully, my little Cranky-Pants is now up in her crib getting a much-needed nap, Moon and Alia tucked safely away in her room, awaiting her pretend-play games once she awakens.