December 28, 2012

  • Definitely A Chewlee Day

    TALES FROM THE BRAT FARM

    When Chewlee was dropped off, she headed right into my room after stopping at the love seat just long enough to drop off her two small shopping bags from Christmas.  She had a set of clothes to change into after her bath in one, crayons, markers and her little jewelry containers in the other. 

    She was chatty.  She was funny and she was also GASSY!  OMG!  I asked her if her mother fed her gas bags for lunch and she got this really dumb look on her face, like, *What?*  That made ME laugh and then she started laughing and got hiccups.  Between her hiccups, she was yelling at me because *I* made her laugh.  I've explained before that she gets hiccups every time she laughs deeply...from the belly, as some people say. 

    Some days she says so many things that make me laugh, I've often thought I should write them all down or, better yet, record them.  She also gets so excited at times that she runs up to me and wants to drag me here or there to show me something.  Tonight, when I was trying to get rid of a headache (wonder where I got that from?), she decided to make up our bed while Grandpa was looking something up online.  Then, when she was done and had inspected her work fully, she ran in to make me come and see what a great job she had done.  Guess what?  She really HAD done a great job.  It surprised even the Beast.  She must have beamed for a full half hour from the praise she got.  She sat down in my recliner (my headache had departed) and said, very seriously, *I did it good because I have LOTS of practice.* 

    When I said, *Oh, you make up your bed?*, she said, *Yes, and mommy's, too.  I even clean up all the rooms....sometimes.*  I acted surprised (I was) and said, *Is this pretend cleaning?*  She got indignant and said, *No!  Not all the time....but I help.  I really do.*  Since she even helps me at times, I was sure that was the case.  She then said, *I wanted to make everyone happy like a family.*  She then told me that everyone needs to work together to be a family.  She made me wonder if that was something she garnered from a talking to or one of her programs she watches.  There are times she astonishes me with what comes out of her mouth.  Even some of the phrases she uses make your mouth drop in surprise.  It's not at all what you expect to hear out of the mouth of a five-year-old.  You would feel, if you overlooked the youthful voice, that you were talking to an adult.  Extremely surprising even to me and I see and talk to her almost five days out of seven.

    She will say, *Grandma, I need to talk to you about something.  This is extremely important so please listen and then tell me what you think I should do.*  OR....*I was thinking about something today, Grandma.  I'm really not sure what I should do about this...problem.*    And they ARE usually problems she has with a classmate.  They do or say something that she's not sure how she should handle.  I usually ask her a few questions, then ask her what she's done when the problem first happened.  She'll say it was the first time or she saw it happen to someone else...that kind of thing.  So I ask her what SHE thinks she should do and why.  I really DO try to get her to come up with a solution she can actually remember to do.  I've found that usually works best if it's a GOOD solution. 

    Today she just wanted to be helpful.  It was adorable.  But she exhausts me some days and today happened to be one of those days.  I'm going take some of the liquid meds that the Beast brought me home and get some really decent, hours in a row sleep tonight.

    Love you all much.  Hope you had a great week and an even better weekend.