Never ending winter

I really don't like winter. When Jeff retires and our kids are grown, I don't plan on sticking around for winter. We will either travel somewhere warm or we will be snowbirds in St George or Arizona. Or both. Preferrably both. But for now, we just bunker down and hope to endure.

We spend a lot of time indoors. Big pregnant mama isn't taking the kids sledding or skiing or out to play in the snow. Especially when the temperature is well below freezing. It just isn't something that sounds fun at all to me. So the kids have to use their imaginations, and I have to use my patience as they find things to do.

One night, they were playing with some boxes that had yet to make it to the recycling, and decided to create some camping equipment for their bears. This one is Allie's.

And this one is Kyla's. It makes me laugh. Apparently, Kyla's bear is homeless, and hoarding trash. And making a hat out of paper.

But this is pretty much the norm. The kids are excellent at making messes. I mean, gold medal worthy. If only their ability to clean could catch up to their ability to make messes. Then we'd have something we could take on the road.

In other, less depressing news, Allie lost her first tooth. It has been loose for weeks (months really) and suddenly became extremely loose while she was eating. I told her I wanted to take a look and popped it out with very little effort. She was as excited as she could possibly be until she noticed a trickle of blood. Then she went into panic mode. Allie doesn't do well with blood. Even a tiny amount that oozes from her own mouth. She refused to let me take a picture for several minutes until the blood had all dried and she had cleared her mind of that fear.

I was remembering back to when Damon first lost a tooth (and before) when he was afraid of the tooth fairy. You can read about it HERE. He was quite afraid of losing a tooth, and even let Allie put his first tooth under her pillow and collect the money. Funny.

Allie has been having emotional issues again lately. I had kind of thought she had outgrown them, but it doesn't appear to be so. She has been waking up with bad dreams again and really having a hard time communicating when she is upset. She just shuts down when she doesn't want to deal with something unpleasant. Jeff and I are really trying hard to get her to talk about things, but she can be completely unreasonable. Last night she woke up crying and I went to see what was wrong. She said she couldn't go back to sleep. So I told her to lay down and close her eyes. It was great advice, really.

This only made her mad and she proceeded to cry more and more until she was screaming, waking everyone up (but Carter, thankfully). I went in again to talk to her, but she could neither tell me why she was crying or what I could do to make it better. So I took Kyla into our room and shut her door, which of course only made her MORE upset. Finally, after letting her scream and cry for a few minutes, I went back and tried to be a little more understanding. I laid next to her and tried to get her to calm down, reminding her of some of the things we have talked about in the past when she is feeling anxious (breathing, imagining things that make us feel calm) and she started to calm down and said she was ready to go back to sleep.

This morning when I was asking her about it, I asked her how she felt (bad). I asked her why she was feeling scared. She told me she felt like there was dirt all around her (I don't know if this was true or if she was just trying to think of something to say, but I acted like I believed her). We talked AGAIN about ways to calm down and I had her go through an exercise where she tightens all her muscles, one group at a time, and then lets them relax. She didn't act like she cared that much about it. But I hope, with time and more practice, I can help her deal with some of her negative emotions. If only she'd talk to me about them! That's the most frustrating part.

One more thing about Allie: every story she tells me lately starts like this: "a boy (or girl) in my class..." and then she goes on to tell some outrageous story (like "a boy in my class tried to dip his chicken nugget in ketchup but instead dipped it in soy sauce", or "A girl in my class has a baby brother who fell off the tub into the trash can)". It's getting a little old. I mean, if she were to be believed, she is part of the most fascinating class in the history of public school.

Maybe I'll use it against her. Have her describe how someone in her class feels when they are scared. We'll see if that gives me any insight into her...