Discipline?

The other morning, Magdalenne was intent upon pulling Juliette's hair (which, much to Juliette's credit, actually didn't seem to bother Juliette as much as I would have thought considering how sensitive not only she can be, but also her head when it comes to even brushing her hair).  Nevertheless, I wasn't going to let Magdalenne push our luck with her sister, so after several yanks, and attempts to yank, I finally removed her from the bed (where we were all hanging out) and put her on a "time out" in the corner.  She responded, as she so often does when reprimanded, by instantly flailing herself to the floor -- at which point it occurred to me to videotape her:

I'm not real sure how effective that time out was... but that was classic Magdalenne there.  One minute getting disciplined, the next off on a mission to do who knows what. 

The other day, I reprimanded her for something while we were in Juliette's room -- I may have taken something from her that she shouldn't have -- and in response, she went tearing into the kitchen where Chen was cooking and stood beside him and just started going off on a tirade in utter baby gibberish to him.  She wasn't crying but she was clearly ticked off and obviously needed to tell someone about it!

Meanwhile, Juliette has begun to learn to defy our discipline as well.  The only thing I've found that works is to threaten to take things away from her.  The other day, though, I told her she had to stop doing something (amazing how quickly you forget what it was that they were doing wrong) or else I'd take whatever stuffed animal was the craze of the day. Instead of stopping, she just handed me the stuffed animal.  (!!)

Lady love

From all the ladies at the Casa de Chenhalls...

Have a great weekend everyone!

Much love!

Juliette at work

Magdalenne at work

Magdalenne is typically our girl of smiles and reckless abandon.  In these shots, though, she's all business.  By the looks of this, maybe we'll finally have someone in the family who cares about gardening!  Lord knows I haven't been keeping up with it... and Juliette has (with my admittedly grateful permission) turned one of our flowerbeds into her sandbox!  That leaves the one and only Magdalenne Sanne with the task of taming the wilderness in our backyard...

And does she look up to the task, or what?

Ah the Mary & Martha syndrome -- one sister does all the work, while the other has all the fun...

Magdalenne surveys the land, trying to decide where to even begin.

Aha!  A stick!  It's a start, anyway.

Thoughts of sticks, however, inevitably lead to thoughts of Duncan and he is far too great a distraction for our would-be gardner.

And of course he doesn't mind!

This is Magdalenne's subtle way of telling us to check her pants:

¡Gracias, Papá!

After the diaper check, Papá stops for a quick twirl of Juliette

Magdalenne looks on appalled at their utter lack of helpfulness.

And finally has had enough.  "I'm outta here!"

Papá and Juliette don't look too remorseful at her abandonment of the mission.

Juliette, in her own little world as usual, continues to flit, to float, to fleetly flee and fly....

And Magdalenne?  Well, she's still working on her exit...

In her mind she's racing away in defiance...!

Park glee

Yesterday we crashed my mom & dad's campsite in Kettle Moraine for a quick visit.  I didn't get any pics of the campsite itself, just our little visit to the playground -- which by Juliette's standards, was really the only part of the trip worth mentioning.  The girl does love her parks!

 

Although, Juliette wasn't the only one totally getting into the park scene this time.  Miss Magdalenne was all about the slides!

I even got a couple videos of her going down them:

In this next one, you can really see the utter glee on her face:

And speaking of utter glee....

You gotta love 'em! 

Smiley face from The Lettered Cottage

Candyland run by a bureauCAT

This weekend, Juliette's friend Claire Peters is coming for a visit.  I've been talking to her about sharing and being nice, and the other night I thought we could brush up on our Candyland playing skills since Juliette is still a little rusty on the concept of "rules" per se.  She usually just likes to make the little men roam around the luscious land at will, following no color codes, and only the whims of their fancy.  Well, this just doesn't fly with a rule-abiding lawyer-for-a-mom like me!  So I tried to tell her we need to follow the directions and play the game the "right" way.  To which she turned all bureaucratic on me and demanded that we she read the rules first. 

To make matters worse, she also seemed to embody a certain Dr. Evil as she busted out a Golden Mr. Bigglesworth as her sidekick in her dictatorship over the land of sweet and honey!

Image from here

You think I'm kidding about a Golden Mr. Bigglesworth, don't you?  Well, take a look for yourself and see!  Here's the footage of how bureacracy and autocracy just don't mix -- particulary under the watchful gaze of a Golden (slightly Egyptian-looking) Mr. Bigglesworth:

Methinks Candyland will be in need of a revolution to free itself from its lackadaisical leader.  Then again, who knows -- maybe the little happy "guys" prefer to be led by a free-wheeling three-year-old and her golden cat.  Meow!

Tiny Dancer

This past Saturday, Juliette had her first ballet class.  I signed her up through the Milwaukee Rec Department, so it wasn't a major financial committment.  I just thought it might be kind of a fun thing to do.  (And, yes, I will admit that I may be living a little vicariously through my daughter, having often wished that I would have taken some sort of dance classes -- there was always a part of me that wondered if it might have helped with my chronic clumsiness and desire to be even a little bit more graceful!)

But back to Juliettita....  We got her dressed and ready in her leotard:

And as a mother who has never taken a day of ballet class in her whole life...you can see how well I did at that very first step.  That's right, I put it on backwards!  Unfortunately, this realization didn't strike me until we were actually in the class.  Nope, it didn't occur to me with the near cleavage shots in these pictures we took before we left.  Also didn't occur to me when we got out of the house and I realized I never made her put pants or a skirt on over her leotard, so with her jacket on it looked like she was walking around in just a pair of tights!  Doh!  (Again, even then I thought it was strange that her underwear peeked out from the leotard, but nope, still didn't dawn on me that the thing was on backwards!) 

Juliette, you have the right to look at me like this: 

But we made it to class, and she still looked absolutely adorable:

Yet another mommy-mistake I made:  taking those pictures above.  In order to take them, I had to get a lot closer to the girls (the other parents were on bleachers off to the side).  Here I was, trying to improve my photojournalism skills, and what did it get me?  A suddenly needy three-year-old who only wanted Mommy and nothing more to do with ballet class.  Barely 15 minutes into the class!  Doh again!

I was so surprised by this behavior.  I thought with being a daycare baby, that she'd have been totally comfortable joining other kids and participating in a class.  I tried not to be mortified as she was the only little girl who bailed on the class.  But as I watched the class proceed, with a much contented Juliette at my side, munching on the goldfish crackers I brought for Magdalenne (who had a much different view of the class -- which I'll relay in a minute), I realized that ballet is actually pretty boring!  They didn't get to "do" a whole lot.  I mean, they're THREE!  What do they know about holding their feet in the right place?  They just want to twirl and be silly.  I quickly forgave not only Juliette for bailing, but also my own mother for not having ever signed me up for such insipid girliness.

(Regarding Magdalenne -- she sat well with me for a couple minutes, looking at books, eating snacks -- but then she realized that there was a whole gym in front of her, and where there is room to roam, roam she must do!  So before Juliette had brought us to the group's attention by bailing out, Magdalenne had already made a spectacle out of me by constantly squirming out of my arms and dashing across the gym floor toward the group of miniature ballerinas, forcing me to get up and chase after her.  She thought this was a great game.  Meanwhile, I, having only had 3+ hours of sleep and a little too much wine the night before, was less than thrilled at having to constantly run after my determined little midget.)

After the class got over (we stayed for the whole thing -- I kept asking Juliette if she wanted to go back to join the group), everyone else cleared out of the gym pretty quickly.  Being the Chenhalls, we moved at a slower pace, and we were the last ones to leave, which was great for my girls.  They both delighted in having this whole gym to themselves and they ran and ran and ran -- looks of utter glee on their faces.  Do you think there's an open gym class I could sign up for at the Rec Department?  Screw ballet -- my girls are going to be runners!

On a somewhat more serious note... Chen and I were recently talking about how much we tend to forget that Juliette is still a very little girl.  She talks so well, acts pretty mature in a lot of other instances, and looks so big to us next to Magdalenne, that we tend to forget that being three is still pretty little.  So when I look back on it now, I don't feel so bad for letting her need me in the middle of what I later deemed a pretty boring class.  She's still my little girl and I'm going to just let her be that for a while.

And hopefully she'll be okay letting me be the naïve Mommy I tend to be, and not condemn me too badly for letting her leave the house sans pants, leotard on backwards.