A month of ups and downs. For a week or two Ingrid was sunny and happy; then she became moody and whiny again like she was last month. There is a lot of complaining about “why do I have to do everything”.
I wrote the above about Ingrid last month, but it applies equally well to this month. There is an awful lot of complaining. Especially any time we ask her to do something. “Do I have to? Why do I always have to… It’s unfair!” even when all she needs to do is pick up her sock from the floor and walk three steps with it to the laundry hamper.
Mealtimes bring out the worst in her: the food is wrong, the plate and the cup we’ve set on the table for her are wrong. If we don’t set the table for her she complains about that. She complains even before she knows what she is complaining about: “I don’t like this food. What is it?” She complains about having to get her own yogurt from the fridge and about having to take her plate off the table after the meal. Even the most basic requests are delivered in a whine. Basically she’d just like to sit there and order us around, and have us satisfy each of her wishes immediately.
Interestingly, she doesn’t seem to understand how her whining and complaining affects us. We do ask her to please speak nicely to us, we tell her that we don’t like it when she whines and orders us around. After enough whining I tell her she has to either stop whining or leave the kitchen so the rest of us can eat in peace. She has on occasions whined until both Eric and I are so fed up that we physically lift her up and carry her away from the kitchen – or tell her to just leave me alone because I do not want to be with her when she’s like that. And then she suddenly realizes we mean it, we’re annoyed for real, and gets all upset because I’m annoyed with her and don’t want to hug her.
For a while, earlier this month, she would end each mealtime with “Tack för maten den var god, mitt i maten stod en ko. Kon heter Kajsa, hon stod o bajsa’.” And every time she joked, she’s finish with “Jag skojar, jag skojar, du är en papegoja!”. Now that’s passed.
She likes the playhouse in its new pink incarnation (and new location) and uses much more than she used to. She especially likes sitting there with her friends and eating her afternoon snack.
Ingrid is still very fond of the iPad and wants to watch movies or play games on it every day. Her favourite game is Plants vs. Zombies. I had already played through the whole game so she can pick and choose between all the levels, and the mini games. She especially likes to play it together with me or Eric. I wouldn’t have expected her to like this game because in the past she’s avoided games where she can fail or lose, but I guess she is getting used to it.
She continues to practice reading, slowly and steadily getting more comfortable with it. It used to take all her concentration, dragging a finger along each letter. Now she has no trouble reading/recognizing familiar short words, especially words that she herself has written. Sometimes I hear her mutter words that she’s reading off the page that I am reading for her, so she can do it while she’s doing other stuff with part of her brain.
She has acquired a tendency to pose, in a stiff and silly way, when she notices me taking photos of her.
The current favourite movie is Tangled. Favourite food is, I think, soft tunnbröd with liver pâté and sliced apples. She seems to be going through a growth spurt just now – she’s much hungrier than normally.
Oh the moaning and the whineing – we still get to “enjoy” it from the 6-year old, but it only seems to be limited to weekends when days are less structured than during the week. The 2-year old walks around every day saying “mida voin teha?” in the most “I’m bored out of my brain” voice, even if you’re at that moment playing a game with him :|
So we have two more years of this to look forward to?
Towards being a grown-up: I remember very clearly some steps on the way to my being a grown-up, and that I, at those moments realised that this is how grown-up-life is going to be, and my inward reaction ”oh noooo. . . ” 1) when my father told me that he would not be able to carry me anymore because I was getting too heavy 2) when I first did something not accepted and was told so, kindly and calmly, and then, with no intention at all from my side it ”happened” again: then my father informed me, still kindly and calmly ”you should not only not do this, you should see to that it does not happen”, and I understood. . . – I feel for Ingrid on her way towards becoming a grown-up – eventually she will realise it is worth it; the right to decide and perform authority is so well worth the price of work and responsibility of a grown-up. Best regards to all!
Thank you for stopping by!
What I also frequently forget is how not-grown a 4-year-old really is. She is so verbal and generally appears so like us adults that I fall into the trap of expecting her to think like us, to understand things like us. But of course I know that cannot be the case.