Leaves fall, pumpkins pump up the autumnal jam, and we find ourselves settled into something like every day living.
A month in now and I feel like a thorough Rentonian. Go 'hawks. Yeah Jimmi Hendrix. Um, actually wow dang downtown Renton is amazing and holy crap all the Southeast Asian fare and East Asian and pub food and and and this is a culinary heaven... Despite my typical reticence to think about moving before we've even sold our last house and settled into this one, I've definitely started looking into making Renton a more enduring home. The schools downtown kind of suck but the neighborhoods are really cool and the commute would be a breeze so... maybe Chaya could transfer to the fancy one on the hill with the excellent ratings? We'll see.
Yeah the old house still sits in our name and mortgage account. The house actually is being worked on. Only a few little surprises so far and all worked out. Might be on the market in a few weeks. Then fingers crossed.
And here we are. Making a home. Starting to recognize the attendants at self-checkout. Smiling at semi-strangers with familiar faces. Feeling here.
Our schedules haven't shifted a crazy amount. Until preschool and Andrew's work were established we had no idea, but turns out to be pretty close.
On the one hand, having a half hour to 45 minutes (oh Everett, you suck) back from each leg of a roundtrip commute is obviously huge and life changing. On the other, it's a half hour. Mostly Andrew and Chaya both sleep a half hour later. I sometimes take a shower in the mornings or just have more time to myself to not stretch or meditate and/or whatever other salutory but not immediately compelling thing I could be doing in my morning. Music. To listen to my tunes and flirt with the Duolingo owl (ooooh tell me more about sheep playing violins in the lake, baby! Oh yes, yes I did have dinner with the balllerinas and the king last night. Or was I having dinner with them? Oh whatever, gimme some more lingots so I can dress this dude up in a funny superhero suit).
Andrew often gets back within the same range of time that he used to, except that we don't have the random bouts of terrible traffic shoving that back an hour. Preschool stars an hour later than SAP mostly did (we actually started out with a 9-12 schedule, but it didn't last long). The 9 a.m. start is a huge fat blessing AND we're still sometimes rushing to get there. It's fun because you can't arrive more than 5 minutes early, but you don't want to be late, BUT traffic is a giant crapshoot so the commute can take anywhere between 15 and 30 minutes A little logic puzzle every morning trying to find the right moment to leave.
Otherwise, the ebb and flow mostly abides. The church I'm thinking about has the inconvenience of being either at 8 (too early) or 10:30 (kind of late). The shabbot service we're thinking of attending will actually fit pretty well with Chaya's schedule other than being a slightly later night. Otherwise things seem to layer onto a bit of a consistent rise and fall of activity.
Within a few days of moving, Chaya set about burrowing into her morning routine and making sure it includes at least a few minutes of "songs" (youtube vids which were so named because originally she watched collections of chidren's songs) in the morning and a longer chunk in the afternoon.
We've branched out from past obsessions to Micky and Minnie in Spaaaaanish (Chaya's emphasis). That was originally my little touch of "well if you're going to demand painfully insipid and banal screen time of me, at least we can both learn a little something." But currently this is also the way she prefers it. Me too. It hurts less when your brain has to actively work to understand what stupid thing is being crooned.
No, she doesn't speak any Spanish. Less than me, and my Spanish is basically a patch-work of present tense jumbled gender-confused (I'm just linguistically non-binary thank you very much) semi-song-lyrics that occasionally draw in a special guest language (Chinese or French are irresistible) and abusively fling prepositions at sentences hoping something sticks. Her Spanish is often just a ton of nonsense syllables, which I really try to discourage, but in fairness her English often is a series of invented words as well. She's a hep cat. It's jazz. We're scatting.
At any rate, I like that she's comfortable around it having grown up playing with bilingual kids. She did name her bunny Conejita and can count to diez, which is probably all anyone needs to understand Los Cuentos de Minnie.
It's an interesting show for being both painfully regressive on some gender elements and kind of progressive in others. I mean, I don't really follow the stories too hard, but basically Minnie and Daisy own a Bow Boutique that sells exclusively bows. BOWTIQUE. Not sure if the original English just goes for that pun but I imagine it has to. So they're all ultra femme. Big eyelashes. Silly voices. Teeny waists and fairly obsessed with prettiness and cuddly animals and parades and flowers and pretty dresses and the like. And they're generally incompetent. On the other hand there are NO major male characters. There are no romantic plots or subplots The only male characters are children or very distant background characters and the chicas never talk about dudes. They get into wild situations and have their own physical comedy and create their own solutions and make their own way in the world. So... a little of both. At least it's in Spanish. Thanks Chaya.
This is not the majority of our lives, but it's a time for ... contemplation so my opinions on Chaya's shows runs deep.
She also draws, stabs paper for artistic effect (and violence), climbs everything, glitters everything, runs around the house pounding on a drawer she's ripped from her activity stand banging on it and screaming I'm a thunderstorm!!!!, and reads roughly a hundred books a day. You know, all the magic. Oh and wrestles like a GLOW pro. Often and mercilessly.
Chaya loves her preschool still. And according to her she has all new friends. Some of them might actually exist (though there is no Jonathon in her entire preschool so that friend who plays the drum either exists and has a totally different name or is all Chaya's creation)
I love the way she makes friends.
At a field trip this week there was a great seesaw play structure that allowed for several children to climb on. All the moms hovered around, sometimes shuffling children to hit equilibrium. Sometimes helping move the seesaw when the balance was off. The kids ignored each other crawling from seat to seat in and out. But every single kid is now Chaya's new friend.
So she's good. Also she keeps bringing home funny crafty construction paper food made up of the shape of the week (star and oval pineapples, triangle and circle pizza, circle donuts...). She also sings various alphabet songs and quite confidently understands the letters A and W and a few more at random.
My little girl is growing up. Mostly.
So... potty training. Um training is a bit of a misnomer. Potty nagging. Potty pleading. Potty "oh screw it, they have adult diapers, can you just learn how to change them yourself."
Chaya has come *this close* to being potty proficient a handful of times since she was an early toddler. We'll get her in underwear. She'll use the big toilet. We can even use toilets at other people's houses (though maybe still have to bolt from a party a half hour away from home so that Chaya can pee in peace).
... And then...
And then...
As if we're playing a video game just shy of beating Boss Mode, donkey kong hits us on the head and back we go to the beginning. But with a larger, more stubborn child with a far far fuller and more dangerous bladder.
Just before the move, Chaya had started "holding it." Also a misnomer. Chaya decided that she wasn't going to pee in her diaper. AND not in the toilet either. She would just never ever pee. Turns out that's not humanly possible so it would just spray everywhere eventually. Or she'd fall asleep. Whichever. We went back to diapers. As a person with a bad childhood history of UTIs and a cursory awareness of voiding dysfunctions that can develop over longer term holding, I'm in the "JUST PEE NOW" camp. A few times now shes gotten back in diapers and stops the hours of uncomfortable squirming and understandable angry that comes with it. (Is there a portmaneau a la hangry for the bad mood one gets trying to hold one's pee? Pissy perhaps)
Andrew suggested a sticker chart. That motivated for... three days. Maybe four even. Then she started just telling us the chart was for everyone and mommy and daddy should get stickers. After which she decided she didn't really want stickers. Sometimes I do, I absolutely do give myself a friggin' sticker.
And back to holding and laughing and screaming NOOOOOO if somebody suggested she might need to pee. Then leaking. Then SPRAYING (usually all over daddy, so welcome to the bonuses of living closer to home!) and soaking. Randomly volunteering to use the toilet in between. Often when she'd just peed herself, so not 100% successful.
Hell, her creative Daddy even tried leaning into her "I'm a kitty" mode and encouraged her to "use the litter box." I'm not sure if Andrew would have actually gotten a real litter box, but after being peed on that many times, I bet he'd have considered it.
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| Ok, this time she's actually getting dressed to go out |
It all well-complements her recent infatuation with nudity (well she has to keep a diaper on for reasons stated above). Dinner time is definitely semi-nekked time. It's also "shriek like a deranged monkey claiming your's a mouse, run around and hide in small boxes and containers about the house" time. Bedtime is ... interesting.
This said, we got rid of Chaya's old potty (more like I finally gave in to my impulses and tossed it in the communal dump after repeatedly getting Chaya's go ahead) and we bought her a new Ikea potty seat for the big toilet. This has resulted in a rekindling of interest and a whole sticker on the sticker chart..Andrew idly promised that we'd get Chaya a new potty seat more in line with Chaya's demands ("I want a musical toilet that sings!!!") if she got 100 stickers. We'll start looking into attaching some horrible noise making toy to a potty seat just in case. I'm not holding my breath. Not my first day at the potty training rodeo, kid.
She'll grow into it all. Surely peer pressure will kick in at some point. When she's a big kid who rides a school bus and goes to Kindergarten. When she's five she'll rule the world. And when she's fifteen she'll want braces so much she'll put them in her mouth herself. She said so. I believe it.
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