Outfitting Pinky Bear
Since the last posting, we’ve now added yet another pink bear to the family….Pinky Sarah Bush (e.g. Allison’s Pinky Bear not to be confused with Pinky Irene Bush). It became very clear that Allison really liked Katherine’s bear and that Katherine wasn’t excited about sharing her new bear with Allison, “That’s MY bear!!” To alleviate this issue, we went to the mall last weekend and applied Allison’s gift card to another pink bear. I held Allison up, showing her the different stuffed animals and asking which she wanted. She confirmed her desire for a pink bear, we waited for about 15 minutes in line for stuffing. Allison did surprise me by reaching for her own red heart from the bin to insert in the bear. Before handing it to the sales person for insertion, she held it between her palms (without any prompting) – just like the bigger kids. Then, she watched as the sales person closed up the bear, we paid for it, and Katherine lugged the large box thru the mall for her.
We told Katherine that she could choose one SMALL item from the store for her bear. She vacillated between a sparkly sweatsuit, a pair of Sketcher sneakers, a pink backpack and then a bear fake pink fabric makeup kit – eventually settling on the last item. For two days, she was in makeup heaven, applying pretend rainbows (like face painting) and such to anyone who would sit down for her. Katherine calls it playing “perfume.” Then on Day 3….tears….more tears and buyers remorse….”I really wanted the backpack, and it’s going to be ALL GONE by the time I get there next time….NO…I should have gotten Pinky a STROLLER…” This went on for at least half an hour before we figured out that we could put this to good use.
What’s the deal we struck? If Katherine could sleep in her bed, with no screaming at night, no waking us up for bathroom trips or for any other reason for FIVE straight nights, she would get ONE small item from Build-a-Bear. She wasn’t wild about this, telling us that we had to get in the car and go now to the store, but we held firm. Steve’s rationale – that five nights of uninterrupted sleep was well worth a $10 stroller at the store. Katherine’s made it through four nights, and with one more night under her belt is heading back to the store for her well-earned reward. I hope this sleeping thing sticks because we’re feeling a lot more rested than we have in a long time.
More Development Milestones
Allison continues to express herself with more and more words, saying sentences like “I read Dora book,” “May I have some?” or just “I want it!!” She becomes very obsessed with certain activities, things or events that she sees:
- Her tie-dyed shirts – well worn and now far too small for wearing in public
- The next door neighbor’s new washer machine – “washing machine, truck go bye bye, water go down drain!!”
- Marble run…arriva!…go Go GO!!”
She’s learning her lower case alphabet thanks to an enormous wooden alphabet puzzle with both lower and upper case letters. It takes her a couple sittings to finish this puzzle, and she gets a bit confused with lower case b, d, p and q – since the pieces all look alike – but we’re making progress.
Allison’s spatial skills now extend to the wooden train puzzle (with small red pegs) that she can do easily. She can do the Lauri rubber train puzzle, but struggles with pushing the rubber pieces into place. Next step is to find our old small floor puzzles for her. I also bought a pretty cool product a couple weeks ago, called Wedgits. They’re like plastic squares that come in different colors and sizes. They can be assembled into different configurations, without requiring much finger strength, and the product really scales up for older child use too. Both kids like to play with them, in different ways though. Allison puts pieces on top of one another, takes them out, puts other pieces on top, takes them out – a very iterative process. Katherine strives to make patterns with her squares or to make objects. That all said, it’s a very cool toy.
