Time flies

I happened upon an online journal entry from almost three-years-ago to the day. 

The growth of my girls - July 9, 2007

"I didn't want to have my face painted today."

"No?"

"No. I was scared."

"Oh, I can see how that might be scary."

"Nobody else, just me."

"Nobody else was scared?"

"No."

"How did that make you feel?"

"Sad."

Devyn's aware of herself in the context of others. She compares herself to others.

She's also shot up another two inches in the last couple of months. She has a tiny waist, so her pants are long enough but she needs to wear a belt. (It's surprisingly difficult to find a belt for a preschooler.)

At her last Well Baby appointment (June 29th), Molly was 10lbs 8oz (I won a bet with K about how much she weighed) and 23 inches long. Funny, we didn't know how long she was at birth because that measurement isn't routinely sought.

We've had a difficult month, I'd say. Devyn's feelings about having a sibling aren't always positive and this is to be expected.

She's told me that she's disappointed that I can't spend as much time with her, so I spend as much as I can.

She's told her father that she doesn't always like being a big sister.

She's asked if we have to take Molly along on drives, etc. One day last week or so, while at the kitchen table, she asked:

"Why do we have to have Molly?"

"Because she's part of the family," I struggled. Begging the question, I know.

"Why was she born?"

So, she's struggling with big questions, too.

This might explain why, a couple of weeks before her 4th birthday, she is extraordinarily defiant, argumentative and generally difficult. This makes for long days.

One funny expression lately: when asked if she's ready, Devyn will say, "Ready as a liver bee!"

At least, Molly sleeps through the night. The breastfeeding clinic told me a few times that she's too young to miss feedings and that she needs to be awakened in the middle of the night. Everyone else, including my family doctor, told me to allow her to sleep and that demand-feeding is perfectly fine at this age (10 weeks). I've stopped going to the clinic.

We're continually amazed by Molly, just as we have been amazed by Devyn. She's started kicking and making sounds other than crying. She smiles easily and raises her arms up and down quickly when she's pleased with her toys, etc. She kicks now, lifts her head (but she has since the first week) and always has a pacifier in her mouth.

She's so calm, never cries anymore unless we let her go beyond the hand-sucking stage of hunger. Colic only lasted a few weeks.

Finally, my concentration has returned and I finished reading the first book since becoming pregnant (I'd been averaging about one per week prior to pregnancy) on July 7th.

Purple Hibiscus by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. I haven't collected my thoughts about this coming-of-age story set in a strife-ridden Nigeria. I do know that it made me long for some fiction by Uwem Akpan.

Pregnancy -- and then sleep-deprivation -- really affected my concentration and made reading impossible.  Considering thatI was on bedrest for much of the latter part, this was a problem. 

Devyn is now very comfortable with being a sister and they're usually the best of friends.

What a pleasant surprise it has been to look back!

Strangers and . . . other animals?

My four-year-old has been told not to talk to strangers for a couple of years now. Lately, she has been asking just what a stranger is. Oftentimes, after speaking to an acquaintance of mine, I'll feel a tug on my shirt: "Is she a stranger?"

What a difficult question!

"Yes," I answer. "But, as long as you're with Mummy, you're safe." She cuddles closer to me.

When I received the Scholastic package that I'd ordered from her supplemental Junior Kindergarten programme last week, I looked for two titles: Never Talk To Strangers by Irma Joyce (illustrated S.D. Schindler) and Don't Talk To Strangers by Christine Mehlhaff (illustrated by Kathi Ember).

I read Never Talk To Strangers first (before the other book and before reading it to my daughter) and my first impression: lt would have been better marketed with a don't-approach-strange-animals message:

If you are hanging from a trapeze

And up sneaks a camel with bony knees,

Remember this rule, if you please --

Never talk to strangers.

I just wondered how a preschooler would abstract from the pictures of animals the idea that people are strangers and that they are dangerous (especially when some of the animals are rarely perceived as dangerous and because children of that age range have difficulty defining "stranger"). Granted, it was written in the 1960s and the author laboured under different social constraints.

Still, I had just started to read when my daughter quipped, "Hey, a giraffe isn't a stranger!"

And that's just about what I'd expected. So, the intended message is constant but lacks, well, meaningful content which makes it less of a message than a . . . slogan. I guess. (Oh, dear, that's probably another post: "Are slogans meaningful?")

Mehlhaff's Don't Talk To Strangers is much more direct and it hits all the right points about stranger safety: don't talk to strangers, don't help strangers, don't accept rides from strangers or acquaintances, etc. It even includes an Internet safety message.

Oh, yes, there are animals -- a family -- but, in this book, they're friendly and they're the main characters.

Understandably, neither book directly addresses possible consequences of disobeying the safety rules and I'm not the only mother trying to figure out how to answer the inevitable "But, why?" question. I suspect that answers are produced and nuanced by each particular parent-child relationship that engages in this dialogue. So far, for me and mine, the books' implied -- and my explicit -- answer suffices: Because it's dangerous and you could get hurt.

I do hereby swear to post interesting and meaningful links about these titles. At some point.