It's my fat girl

Kate no longer takes a nap.

So, to say that the past couple weeks around here have been rough is probably an understatement.

Most of the day goes by in a bit of a whirl wind - trying to keep the kids active, busy, entertained and from trying to kill each other and of course all the other stuff that goes into the day ...

And, most of the day goes pretty well. We have the occasional melt down and they still do take the occasional nap.

Most of the day until dinner.

Dinner is usually the worst part of any day. By 5:30 - 6pm David and Kate (and Mike) are usually exhausted and short fused. They are also fantastically picky eaters, so, trying to figure out something for dinner and getting them to eat it isn't fun.

I don't want to two meals at dinner. But, I have to be realistic - do I really expect them to eat steak fajitas? I try to get them to at least try whatever it is that Mike and I are eating. But, even that some days turns into an ordeal - David crying, Kate crying ... And, I don't want that either. I don't want dinner time to be something negative.

But, tonight. Tonight was different. Tonight was fantastic.

Dinner went well, David even tried the sweet and sour chicken I made. We talked about our days. And laughed.

At one point during dinner, Kate started yelping. We reminded her that there was no yelling at the dinner table.

"It's my fat girl. It's my fat girl."
more screams.
"It's my fat girl."

Oh, Kate ... it's your echo.

I don't know how I got echo from "fat girl", but sure enough, that was what she was trying to tell us.

After dinner, we played hide and seek, cleaned up and got ready for bed.

I know it seems trivial. Maybe even a little silly.
But, a nice stress-free night after a couple rough weeks felt so comforting.

a bit of bad parenting

David is still obsessed with dinosaurs.

Almost every day, at some point, he and Kate pretend to be dinosaurs.

Some days David is a meat eater and I am his prey.
Some days he is a brontosaurus trying to make friends.
Some days he is a pteradactyl looking for fish.


Yesterday, was his most creative day.

He and Kate were pretending to be Allosaurs. They were looking for some meat to eat, because, as he explained to Kate and I, he had a nest filled with babies that were hungry. He was going to kill another dinosaur and bring it back to his babies to eat.

I was actually pretty impressed.

It's hard to explain unless you see him do it, but David does a fantastic job pretending to be a dinosaur - he moves his hands like claws, arches back his head when pretending to takes bites out of another dinosaur, rocks back and forth on his legs.

So, where do you find yourself asking, does the bit of bad parenting come in?

Well, at one point he yelled to Kate, "C'mon Kate (because he was yelling to Kate), there's a baby brontosaurus over here. It's parents left it alone. Lets kill it and bring it to our babies."

And, I told him that maybe killing babies wasn't such a good idea. And, that I think he and Kate
ought to play something else and take a break from dinosaurs.

(See, just a bit of bad parenting.)

I don't know why it bugged me so much. Don't I "kill" meat and bring it home for my babies to eat? It's not like he yelled, "C'mon Kate, lets kill this baby dinosaur and watch it bleed all over the carpet, suffering."

Part of me was very surprised and impressed. David can do some mighty good pretending.

sigh. But, I think part of me was embarrassed as well. Not of David, but for David. Kids can be cruel. And so can other mothers. What would the moms and kids say at the playground at preschool when David was pretending to kill some baby dinosaurs? Do he or I really care? And why would I ever try to stifle his creativity?

I guess I don't know the answer to the last part yet.

I can, at times, be a very insecure person. Am I projecting that insecurity on to him?

Of course, David was really confused. I am sure he didn't understand why I asked him to stop playing. I wasn't sure why I asked him to stop playing.

We talked the next day about it and I apologized for confusing and told him that he could keep playing it. He told me he was glad because he really liked playing it.