Alice in September

Our sweet little Alice seems so big now that she has a little sister. Alice loves loves loves having a baby sister but she is definitely going through an “adjustment” phase to be euphemistic. Bryan and I predicted that Alice would have the easiest time adjusting to having Baby Freya and that Norah would struggle because Norah has typically demanded a lot of attention and Alice loves babies so much. We were totally wrong. Norah has had no trouble. Maybe its because she’s at school all day living her own life whereas Alice has to compete with the baby for attention most of the time? Maybe its because Norah was already the “big” sister whereas Alice is now no longer the baby? Whatever it is, Alice is for sure under extra stress. She’s been waking up at night more often than Freya and wants to sleep in our bed. Sometimes random little insignificant (meaning they seem insignificant to me) frustrations will just set her off and she’ll just scream. We call this train wrecking. Alice will then scream “No train wreck. I not a train wreck.” She has increasingly strong opinions on all sorts of things and has demonstrated quite clearly that she is a force to be reckoned with. Alice also vacillates between wanting to be treated like a baby, held on my lap and rocked, and wanting to be completely independent, shoving us away saying “I do it.” I think she’s still trying to define her place in the family. She often asks me questions like “mama, I big? I’m a big sister. I big right?” and then just a minute later she’ll ask “Mama, I still little. I little right?” haha. The poor girl seems very confused and conflicted. To add her stress, she is considering potty training. We haven’t wanted to push it because again, she’s “adjusting,” but she asks us to teach her to to go pee pee in the potty so I think she gets that it’s what the cool kids do. I have no doubt that this period of angst and identity crisis will subside soon (at least temporarily) and in the meantime its been interesting and amusing seeing different sides of her personality emerge.

Through all her inner turmoil, Alice has managed to have a lot triumphs. She can mostly get dressed all by herself and insists on doing so. I just had parent teacher conferences at Alice’s preschool and her teacher said Alice enjoys school and loves to participate in circle time and is very willing to repeat words in Spanish. She also commented that her fine motor skills were advanced. She loves going to “escuela” and has zero separation anxiety there. On the way to school she always tells me “mama, I not cry at escuela.” Sometimes she’ll elaborate and say “I love escuela. I play with toys. My teachers love me at escuela. I have amigos.” This brings me to another big area of growth: She talks and talks and talks now. I feel like all my friends have suddenly been commenting about how much her speech has improved. A year ago I worried she was behind in her vocabulary and now she’s speaking in complex sentences and repeating new words all day long. There are a few words she has a particularly hard time saying – one is “Favorite.” She loves to tell me what her “favorite” things are but she pronounces it more like “pavebet.” For your information, her pavebet color is purple and her pavebet food is pizza. Her pavebet animals are constantly changing but she often says zebras and she always loves kitties – kitties are really in a category all of their own. I think her obsession of kitties is so cute that I impulse bought her a kitty purse (and I really rarely buy them anything if it isn’t their birthday or Christmas) and she takes it everywhere.

This is a phone pic I snapped of her with her purse when we were taking Freya to her doc appt. Alice is also in her “pavebet” outfit here. She calls it “my cute outfit” haha. Whenever she tells you she’s looking for “my cute outfit” she specifically means this one. “Mama, have you seen my cute outfit?” “mama, you take a picture of me in my cute outfit?”Alice looks out for Freya. If Freya cries longer than a minute and I haven’t attended to her needs she’ll come and nag me saying “baby Fweeya (sometimes it sounds more like ‘'Pweeya”) wants you mama” over and over till I go hold her. Alice may pick fights with Norah but she also hero worships her. She wants to do whatever Norah does and be wherever she is.On Krispy Kreme’s “talk like a pirate day” Bryan came home around 5 after being gone three nights in a row at 5 and I had dressed up the girls like pirates so he could take them right when he got home.But then Alice decided “I no want to be a pirate. I want to be lady bug!” We tried to explain that it was pirate day at Krispy Kreme’s but she wasn’t having it. Her train derailed and she screamed “I NO WANT TO BE PIRATE!!!!! I BE LADY BUG!!!!!” so she went as a ladybug and got her donut anyway.