Mommy's Pen

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preschoolers

Kindergarten Yogi

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Somehow, Nora and I have fallen into the awfully good habit of doing a bit of yoga before bed. It may have started as a stalling tactic on her part, but it’s backfiring on her, because she’s been falling asleep much faster lately.

Lest you imagine the two of us locked in a synchronous Vinyasa flow, let me give you a glimpse of what our practice actually looks like.

“Mommy, we need to do our yoga.”

“Well, we’re running out of time, do you want to do yoga and skip story time?”

She nods vigorously.  We head to the living room and I light a candle and place it in the middle of the room then switch off the lamp.  I try to get her started with some breathing exercises and she cuts me off.

“Mommy, you showed me a lot of poses, so now I’m going to show you some, alright?”

She is seated cross legged and she places her hands on her ankles with her elbows pointing out and grimaces. Like a yogic body builder showing off her biceps.

“This is called ‘muscle pose.'”

Now she lets herself fall on her side and places an arm under her head and the other hand is curled on the floor in front of her. I follow along.

“Mommy, see how your hand is flat?  You need to curl your fingers so your bones strengthen. If you don’t curl your fingers your bones won’t strengthen.”

Still on her side, she stretches her arms and legs out at a 90-degree angle from her body.

“This is called ‘crinkled dog’ pose,” she calmly explains.  “And you know what else doggies do?  When they wake up, they do this –” she smacks her lips repeatedly, “–they do that because they’re trying to clean their lips. They got dirty from the carpet.”

I nod as I smack my lips, thinking that an imperfect yoga practice is the most beautiful thing that’s happened to me today.

 

Well Done

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It’s pretty normal for preschoolers to get stuck in gender stereotypes. Nora gets the giggles when she sees a man wearing pink and a few weeks ago, she was giving me some crap about women not being able to be farmers. Just farmers’ wives.

So we work on it; addressing gender bias each time it comes up in conversation or books. Watching Mary Poppins, I had to explain what a “suffragette” is. Try breaking that down for a modern four-year-old.

Whew.

During our morning drive yesterday, we saw a construction worker standing in the street.

“Construction guys are important, right mommy?” (Ben’s in construction, so we’re trying to train her not to resent the folks who maintain our infrastructure.)

“Yes. Very important. And construction women, too. Women can be construction workers. Did you know that?”

“Right!” she says, and breaks into song, “We’re clearly soldiers in petticoats!”

Oh, yeah. The message is getting through…

Ambush!

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I am not safe in my own home. 

I can be standing in the kitchen chopping vegetables, or sitting in the dining room, sipping coffee and filling out the tax planner — and suddenly — ambush!

The blurry things behind her back are pillows moving at an incredible speed

I feel the terrible force of thousands of feathers slam into my thighs.   Or, if she can’t get enough momentum on her swing, I watch the pillows pull her backward onto her tushy.

I never know when an attack is coming.  Sunday morning, she enlisted her father to distract me with some nonsense about a flying squirrel outside, so she could launch a sneak attack. 

She is a master strategist, make no mistake. 

I must remain vigilant.

What She Comes Up With

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Child development experts tell us that preschoolers best carry-out tasks when you are near to guide them through. 

For example, I can’t tell my three-and-a-half-year-old to go clean her room and expect results.  I must be there, assigning straightfoward tasks: put all the dress up clothes in the pink tote, find all the socks and put them in the laundry bag, put all the crayons in the tray of the easel.  

Same goes for getting ready in the morning. However, every once in awhile it’s fun to say, “Nora, go get dressed for school,” and see what she comes up with…

A cycling cap, a bathing suit and a purple tulle skirt.

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

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Nora, should we decorate the Christmas tree?  Okay!  Let’s bring all the boxes down from downstairs and you can hang the ornaments.  Oh, I forgot about all these glass bulbs.  Yes, they are pretty.  Okay, now, the thing is, some of these ornaments are breakable.  See this one?  If it falls on the floor, it will break.   So, be really careful.  Okay, maybe don’t try to hang three at once.  Maybe one at a time with the glass ones.  Really, they will break.  They are breakable.  Yes, they are.  Even though you haven’t broken any yet, they are in fact, ridiculously breakable and will break.  You don’t remember that bulb you broke last year, when you were two?  Of course you don’t.  Your little corpus callosum wasn’t fully formed, making episodic memory storage and retrieval well nigh impossible.  Yes, yes, they are breakable.  Not that I really care about them being broken.  What I’m mainly worried about are your feet.  Little, infinitesimally small shards of the thinnest glass in your soft pink foot skin.  I don’t want glass in your feet. Or my feet.  Or daddy’s.  Or Hoover’s.  Because it would hurt. It’s really hard to clean up all the glass when the glass is thinner than onion skin.  Okay, maybe hang some all around the tree, hanging five ornaments on one branch, well, one might slip and fall to the floor breaking into a gajillion pieces.  Okay.  Nice job!  The tree looks so pretty.  Oh, you want me to hold this?  Okay, are we taking all the ornaments off the tree now?  Okay, maybe just the ones that won’t break.  How about you point to an ornament and we’ll tell you whether or not it’s breakable.  If it’s not breakable, you can take it off and play with it.  Um, that one’s breakable.  Yeah, that one too.  No, that one’s not breakable.  Oh, okay, I can hold that for you.  That’s breakable. Breakable. Breakable.  Not Breakable. Breakable…