Week 260: Independence, Games, and Apple Seeds

Sam has definitely started to hit upon an age where she wants to do things for herself. A lot of times, this is welcome, since it pars down the number of things in the universe that I’m responsible for. Other times, it’s much less of a relief and more, what’s the word? Panic inducing. Here’s a handy chart that converts things to point values:

My attempts at converting Sam to a gamer have perhaps gone too well. Right as I type this she’s standing next to me holding my old Game Boy Advance and playing her Disney Princess Jamboree or whatever it’s called. All I know is that she keeps asking me to unscramble pictures of Ariel because that part’s too hard. And all the reading.

Sam’s other great passion at the moment is Feeding Frenzy, a little “big fish eats the little fish” game on the Xbox 360. Unless she is actually playing this game, she’s asking if she can play it. I’ve had to explain to her that YES, I totally get what she means, I’ve got a similar monkey on my back demanding that I scour the post-apocalyptic D.C. Wasteland in search of Nuka-Cola bottlecaps and Supermutants, but that I sometimes —sometimes— have to punch that monkey in the nose and do things like interact with my family. We’ve learned to use this passion as a lever against her, though, so all we have to do is promise her 30 minutes of playtime at 7:00, but she has to have everything cleaned up and she has to behave, else we have the fish killed and she can’t play. It’s been working miracles. And come to think of it, I guess that’s pretty much how Geralyn got ME to install that new medicine cabinet in Mandy’s bathroom this weekend.

Mandy seems to be gearing up for some kind of growth spurt. She had been birdlike in her appetite before, but in the last couple of days she’s been eating like less of a sparrow and more of an ostrich. The other day we gave her a whole apple and she started gnawing on it. I turned my back and hard a sound like someone taking a chain saw to a sack of wet noodles. When I turned around to look at her, she was just holding a palm full of apple seeds. She’s eaten with similar relish at other meals, and I’m more than a little confident that I’m going to go in to get her out of bed tomorrow morning to find that she’s five feet tall.

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4 thoughts on “Week 260: Independence, Games, and Apple Seeds

  1. You know what I’d really like for Annalie (same age as Sam) to be able to do for herself? I’d like her to be able to look at the clock and say, “Oh, it’s far to early to wake Mummy yet, I’d better return to my bed for another hour or two of slumber.” That is my wish.

  2. Yeah, we’re not there yet, either. Sam got an alarm clock for Christmas and she always wants us to set it for her, but it’s not like she won’t come in until it goes off if she wakes up early.

  3. Hi Jamie, a tip on the waking up early thing…hook up a small nightlight to an electrical timer. Nightlight on = stay in your room. Off = OK to wake parents up. I started that when my daughter turned 4, and it’s earned me a lot of sleep. Oh, and a penalty for interfering with the device is a good idea.

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