We were in the food court; there was/is a small corner near its entrance that has a play mat – you know those jigsaw foam thingies that assemble into a mat. Caitlin was already eyeing that when we entered, insisting to go play there even though there really isn’t anything there to play with- maybe only a small table and chair(s).

During dinner I had noted a couple of boys, very likely brothers, walking in towards their table, where their mum was already seated when we arrived. Presumably the boys had finished their meals and went out wandering whilst mum was still chowing down her meal. I noted their entrance because one of the boys was kicking his sneakers on the floor while he walked, making loud squeeks along the way….. brat.

It was after Caitlin and I had finished our dinner, and whilst our helper was still feeding Caleb, that Caitlin insisted that we moved over to the playmat. Okay what the heck, I thought.

So she was on the mat, Rather dirty one at that, playing for the sake of playing on a new someone-else’s-as-long-as-it’s-not-mine mat. The brats came over. One of them nonchalantly lay on the floor mat, not that far from Caitlin. Then the other lay down too. Caitlin didn’t think anything of it, continuing to reach for stray pieces to assemble on the floor. The younger brother grabbed some of the stray jigsaw squares pieces threw up in the air, probably hoping that it’d land on my daughter, and probably would continue throwing each time getting closer, just to get some kinda reaction from someone.

I knew this was going to be bad news. “Put your shoes on darling, we are going”. Not very reluctantly, Caitlin started getting her shoes on. It wasn’t really a fun place- these weren’t fun toys anyway; not because of these brats.

The younger brother, still lying on the ground / mat, started kicking the furniture; kicking and kicking that it started edging and pushing into Caitlin. Caitlin looked at me. She had a WTF look on her face- if 5 year olds can muster a WTF gesture that would be it.

I grunted at him. But- yup, you guessed it, he didn’t care. Like I wasn’t there, like it’s all fun and games still.

What he did next really took the cake. Earlier he had come over with a mouthful of ice, from his cup from the table where his mum was. Here, he took out pieces of ice from his mouth, and threw them across the court towards the far wall. If you were seated in that area you wouldn’t have missed it- the action of someone throwing something would easily catch your peripheral vision, if the smashing sound of the ice didn’t.

Repeatedly.

I saw this, and looked over to his mum. She didn’t care. I am sure she saw. I couldn’t believe it.

Another smash. I looked over to the mum again. She saw me. I looked over to her kids, and back to her, and shook my head. She looked away, arrogantly.

Caleb turned 2 this January. But this post isn’t about him.

Last night I smacked Caitlin- the grab-her-arm-so-she-can’t-run-away smack; the night before Hot Mummee smacked her too.

I have had long car-ride talks with her about being the big sister to Caleb- she snatches from him, does dangerous leaps; how he looks up to her and mimics her not knowing right from wrong yet; and so, telling her that what he does is generally her fault (on this I had clearly highlighted both the good things he mimics as well as the bad things).

But last night she was just plainly defying me.

Hot Mummee says I have always been too lenient: I believe in a couple of warnings first. Last night she was pounding an inverted empty raisin tin like a drum with some of her colour pencils, her brother copying her. After repeated and increasingly stern pleas and warnings to stop “Because it’s noisy and you will break the pencils inside..”, she still went on with it. I took it away. She went to get it back. I took it away again out of reach.

Then she started playing with her plastic childrens-table, turning it upside down and crawling under it pretending to be a tunnel, her brother copying her, when he has already cleaned up in pj’s ready for bed. Pleas turned into warnings, not heeded again.

“I said no!”

” I said yes!”

I flipped: CHASED and grabbed her arm and whipped-smacked the back of her thigh.

She bawled. It stung my fingers for a while, which I am sure was the same on her fleshy thigh. I didn’t regret it. Repeated warnings warranted it.

“Don’t you talk back to me!” and reminded her about the earlier two let-go’s before I flipped.

And here’s the potential tear jerker:
Why are you more happy with di-di (younger brother) than with me??

Fine tight rope act and speech required here.

After insisting that she calmed down, I explained; as had Hot Mummee the night before. “We love you both the same, but you just plainly do not listen!“, “.. he listens to us..”, “..but he copies what you do, especially the bad things..”, “.. at 2 he is already very polite..” etc.

Sigh.

She is a smart kid. Quite bright, observant (that’s obvious from above), and at present somewhat requiring lots of guidance. We work fulltime, Grandma can only do so much. She is still okay with her studies, but it is this kinda in-discipline that is preventing her to start being able to read, at 5-turning-6 age.

Granted it would always be the parents’ fault if children don’t get sufficient sleep/not going to bed early enough. Of late, I have found that Caitlin would still wake at around the same time in the morning, even if it wasn’t a school day (much like last week’s week-long break), even if she did not retire on time. She still gets her afternoon naps, so I am a little relieved that she would still be getting some growing-time (research says that baby lambs can actually grow cm’s while sleeping; let alone the rest the brain requires).

Still, no excuses though.

Of late on schooldays, I have also started waking her a little later than earlier this year- I have started waking her almost 30min later now. Decided on this because, other than both of us getting a little more sleep, I had also found that she used to be waiting to leave, all dressed and ready and catching a bit more of Playhouse Disney in the meantime.

Waking her this morning wasn’t as difficult as Monday morning this week (cos we were all at a relative’s wedding dinner and all retired very much later than usual). Still, being her usual self she was moping around and taking too long doing everything (getting her morning dose of milk, teeth-brushing, washing up).

Instead of grunting at her, I tried this: “You know, if you wanna do things so slowly, then Daddee will have to wake you earlier so that you won’t be late for school… Either you do things quickly and not be day dreaming and wake up a bit later/get to sleep some more, or I wake you earlier.”

Knowing that sleep is quite precious, I think it may actually work. “OKAY OKAY..”

Not to contradict myself, I didn’t have the time to go get the recent “toy” I bought her. I got her a cardboard clockface from MPH for RM6.90 (if I recall correctly) with movable hands and hour and minutes on the face. I have been trying to teach her how to read the clock.

I had wanted to show her what I meant about waking earlier. But “I will have to wake you even before the sky turns bright” was enough to drive the message home.

Let’s hope she sticks to it.

Luckily for everyone, Caleb actually likes to push from behind. But it won’t be long though, before he’d be wanting to ride.

Yes, they were still in their jammies. It’s Sunday okay- give us parents a break!

Evening came and it was time to get ready for bed.

Caleb can express his hunger quite audibly / comprehensibly now, by telling us “nan-nan”.

As you can see he’s quite comfortable on the beanbag. Quite a relief for all of us, since we don’t always have to be watching him when he feeds now.

Caitlin, on the other hand, was being rather cheeky about bedtime. Calls to her to go clean her teeth went unanswered.

We found her like this.

Now that’s one way of getting out of doing something. I gotta try that with Hot Mummee one day….

Her “skills” in improvising seems to have extended into her homework.

See, they are teaching her “long” vowels, like school, food, or, feel, reel, and using a different coloured pencil for these vowels.

You guessed it. In her homework she had decided to first write the letters of the same pencil, and then literally fill in the blanks with the coloured pencil for the vowels.

I guess it gets the job done, I just hope that she will still end up learning the actual word and not finding more efficient ways to complete her writing!

No, I didn’t tell Hot Mummee about this… She may well get Caitlin to redo the whole thing!

If memory serves me right, I would have already done this memorable (at least to me) routine with her already: HM was always working late, so it was up to me to tuck Caitlin into bed. At her bedtime, when we are both all cleaned up and lying on our bed, I’d whip out my Windoze PDA and run the slideshow of the mugshots of relatives I have saved as their respective caller ID.

We’d be lying in bed on our backs, and I’d run them for Caitlin to identify who they are.

“Yeh yeh..” (Paternal Grandpa)
“Nai nai…” (Paternal Grandma)
“Gong gong..” (Maternal Grandpa)
“Po po..” (Maternal Grandma)
.. and so on, on both HM and my side of the family.

Till today I still think that was a “nice” exercise. Our culture practises calling / addressing / greeting our elders upon meeting them. And this exercise familiarised Caitlin associating the “titles” to the respective relatives.

Caleb is 1.5 years old now. He has started calling the ones he sees everday.

“Gong gnng…. Po po….”

And yes, even “Dad-dee…” these days But alas, it wasn’t his first words.

So I reckon I’d soon start him on this exercise too. Only that I’d have to find a conducive environment; Caitlin had the luxury of being the only child at that time; now with Caleb, Caitlin being her usual cheeky self will actually be a nuisance for this…. I’d have to find a compromise somehow.

Anyway.

I see this view, and it never ceases to amuse / amaze me how the little human man can have such a “large” head on such slender necks

She’s still got some audible phlegm in her throat, though she isn’t coughing anymore, it’s still there. Apparently she had also promised Teacher Rachel a show-and-tell of her collection of fridge magnets from home. She told me of this on Thursday night when I was tucking her in.

That morning I made the mistake of reminding her that it’s swimming day. All psyched up, she had been carrying her plastic bag of swim gear all morning wherever she was whilst getting ready. HM reminded me of her still-present phlegm, that we should wait for another week before she is allowed back in the pool (the last time I forgot, her cough came back in full force after a swim with Daddee; and we know how easily she pukes when she gets into a coughing fit).

I told her “no, can’t go swimming; wait for another week”. She wouldn’t have it. Repeated Elmer Fudd vs Bugs Bunny of yes no yes no only aggravated the respective individual emotions of our positions. Of course being the Daddee I managed to almost wrestle the bag off her. Okay I did it as gently as I could.

We were already in the car, basement of our building. Every morning we’d be lugging not just our respective bags; there is also Caleb’s gear for the day, some washing to be done, and Caleb himself aided by our helper. Settled in, buckling our seatbelts, feeling pretty shitty about the whole ordeal already, and she says, between the teary jerks of breaths, “DADDEE WE FORGOT THE MAGNETS!!”

There were really 3 options to handle this: (1) Go upstairs alone. That would be the quickest. But that also means leaving them alone in the car in the basement- toddler, 14 month old, a foreigner; (2) All go up together. Safest option. But taking the longest, making us late for school and work. (3) Fuggedaboutit.

I declared option (3). Caitlin goes into a wailing fit. Feet kicking, top of voice crying protesting she wants to go back upstairs to get the magnets, why wasn’t I listening to her.

I respect that she wants to honour her promise to Teacher Rachel. She was even looking forward to this- I could tell. But either (1) or (2) would mean we’d both be late. I even twisted the argument back at her; not a very nice thing to practise on a toddler I admit; that she didn’t listen to me either that morning when we said no to swimming, that she didn’t listen to us.

I felt bad about her not able to indulge in a simple swimming activity. It didn’t rain that day and the swim session did go ahead. She would, like before, have to remain in class hearing all the cheers and splashes downstairs.

But I felt worse that I couldn’t let her carry out her simple request of going back upstairs to get the magnets. This wasn’t something bad at all. For the longest time I had been instilling in her to honour her word/promise, and this was one example- that she wanted to show the magnets as promised. I was consoling / coaching her to say to Teacher Rachel that she is sorry she forgot to bring the magnets, but that she would be late if she/we turned around to go get them, that she didn’t want to be late, and that she would bring them on Monday instead.

In some ways I was also just lazy.

But what would you have done?

So how was your weekend?

Mine was fairly interesting.

Saturday morning was when Caitlin’s school scheduled the year’s first parent teacher meeting; the weekend before the week-long school holiday. After that there was a lunch appointment organised by my dad for my 3 nieces; which my eldest brother didn’t attend. Then, it was all the way to the KL International Airport to send off these kids- I shouldn’t call them that anymore; but which the same brother couldn’t “avoid”, nor be devoid of emotion either (the reason why he skipped lunch).

If you had been “following” since this year, you’d know the story behind why Caitlin jumped Pre-2 and went straight from Pre-1 to Pre-3 pre-school, and to a whole new language medium for her too. At that time we knew that the first parent-teacher meeting would also be time for evaluating this decision and Caitlin’s progress.

Throughout the last couple of months you’d also know that Caitlin had some problem with school. That seemed to be a cause-effect of unfamiliar with a particular teacher’s methods thus lagging behind in her schoolwork, leading to a general but persistent “I don’t wanna go to school” worry for us- this is her second year in school and the whole of last year there were absolutely no problems, right from day 1.

So Hot Mummee and I went to the meeting; being somewhat familiar with the whole event already after last year. Last year it was generally discussions surrounding her motor skills of writing and colouring, not knowing her ABC’s well enough, and generally a stickybeek in class! ie nothing major. This time though, after having seen Caitlin teary about going to school given her almost perfect record last year, we were somewhat weary that perhaps the teachers would have more-than-negative things about the last only 2+ months.

Caitlin has been able to keep up with the older kids and syllabus

We met with the 2 teachers, as usual- last year too we met with the class teacher, and the additional Mandarin-class teacher. This time, since she is actually in a Mandarin medium class, there was no extra class. The teachers were/are the class teacher (who teaches everything in Mandarin) and the Bahasa Malaysia & English teacher.

They both shared the same sentiment, with the latter having only that to share and that Caitlin’s writing needs more practice in that her letters are not uniform in sizes.

I don’t fault her for that, after all she’s only been doing her last-year’s homework in box-lined paper, not horizontal-lined (notes) paper. This is the first time she’s had to write between the lines.

The class teacher, Teacher Rachel however, being the one with the most contact hours with the children and thus closer, had more to share.

She assured us that Caitlin’s slow start to the year has passed now- that she is coping just as well as the others who are up to 2 years older (remember this being Pre-3 when Caitlin ought to be in Pre-2, and that she is a November child).

Caitlin is also the stickybeek that she was, and she is well received by her new-this-year peers, and Caitlin is therefore comfortable, now.

I have to hand it to teachers like Teacher Rachel. These are the rare teachers who genuinely care for their students. In our meeting she was advising how we ought to spend more time with our kids; that Caitlin only mentions me and little of HM. She knows that these are days of double-income households but we should prioritise our time for our kids. She cited Caitlin’s classmate as an example of neglect. The child is somewhat defiant and rude, and not all that close to the parents.

Teacher Rachel also shared how Caitlin’s general development is going. My takeaway from this meeting was largely that Caitlin has adjusted well largely due to Teacher Rachel’s efforts. Caitlin’s peers are aware that she is younger than them. Teacher Rachel has addressed this very well with the class, making them understand that she is in fact younger and sometimes requires a little more attention. Attention in a little less homework, but that HM and I quite quickly suggested otherwise- Caitlin can handle it. Caitlin’s peers have also jointly praised her new jacket (of grey with bright coloured polka dots) with Teacher Rachel (spurred on by her?) making Caitlin very happy showing up in class these days.

This is confirmed when I ask Caitlin if her friends are nice, in trying to ascertain her reasons for “I don’t wanna go to school”. It’s never been about her friends.

The highlight for me was when Teacher Rachel shared her surprise at Caitlin’s maturity just a few days before the meeting:

Caitlin was aware that I had signed the form indicating that we’d be attending this meeting that weekend. At school, she handed the form to Teacher Rachel.

Later, she went up to Teacher Rachel on the pretense of showing her her new pencil case.

“Nice or not?”

“Nice…”

Inches towards Teacher Rachel, elbow to elbow now.

“What are you going to tell my Mummee ah?”

So anyway, that’s why I was kinda rushing the bring-home-work in order to still catch some school-holidays with Caitlin before the week is out…

Oh I will have to come back about the other events of the weekend another time!

The flight from Melbourne arrived KL at 5am local time; I booked the overnight one to save a day(light) for when we arrived, but didn’t realise till later that it actually arrived that early.

But in any case, we did “gain” a full day despite my suffering a massive headache due to lack of sleep and/or dehydration.

But it’s good to be back. The daughter was very pleased to see us, and had many catch-up stories to share.

But seeing the son was a more significant event. It seems he has picked up some new skills of “standing up” on his knees, arms up like a “Yay” stance, just because! And much to our dismay he’s also a lot more cry-baby when he is not picked up / carried!

Today (Monday) was (also, just like in Australia) a public holiday. We spent a lot of time with the kids, and it was during this time that these antics of his were evident. It’s funny, when it was just Hot Mummee, Caitlin and I around, he’d whimper at first but soon dies down with only a very inquisitive what-the-heck-are-you-adults-doing look on his face. But as soon as our helper turns up, he starts whimpering “needing” her to pick him up.

So it’s no surprise who’s been spoiling my son.

We will need to break him of this habit; managed so with Caitlin that even though she asks to be carried sometimes, at least she accepts quite readily that we cannot anymore; only when we visit my brother’s house that I do still carry her- they have 2 dogs and one of them is a (albeit friendly) doberman!

More “bad” news is that Caleb has also gotten back into the habit of waking up at nights! Since his flu is over, he’s a lot more alert now!

ARGH!

But one doesn’t have to be kings to be able to eat like this in mostly all Australian cafes…..

Okay okay, this may not be a big deal for some of you guys, but it is for me; cos it’s not always that we get real bacon at home… You could find them in Malaysian supermarkets, but I don’t think I’d be able to get a “complete” meal like this!

And this is only for breakfast

Heh….

The school had suggested we check out a neighbouring suburb’s franchise which is offering the Pre-2 Chinese medium, that we could transfer Caitlin to that school if we choose to.

After “spying” on that school / class and knowing that they still conversed in English in that class (whereas the present one they speak in Mandarin fully), the two ladies decided to let Caitlin remain.

After informing the principal of the decision, the two ladies were in the vicinity of Caitlin’s ongoing class.

Hot Mummee’s remark to me that night was something like this:
“.. she’s actually quite disciplined…”
“.. she saw us from the class, and only smiled and waved a little wave. She didn’t run out crying “I want Mummee…” or anything like that ..”
“.. she was even behaving when the class was let out to wash their hands; not recess time yet. It was only on Grandma’s insistence that she came over for a hug, and one for Mummee too..”

Reminds me of her first day at school. Walked straight in. Never looked back.

Recent scalding accident
Despite the I-can-only-imagine pain from the accident, she’s actually been quite steady about the whole thing. Sure, she was sobby on the same night, being “banished” from her usual arrangement to sleep in the other room / bed cos of the medication / cream (we did keep her company). But she didn’t really complain.

The next days she was very conscious of the burn site, heeding our advise to watch our for small accidents that may rupture the blister. She had to wear only shorts, folding up the right leg to keep it exposed / uncovered, being very careful when going to the toilet. She walks with a limp, right hand holding up the folded shorts; which we are not sure if it’s put on or that it does sting from the impact of foot / leg connecting with the ground. In any case it was quite amusing / cute / heart wrenching to see this.

Other than these physical quirkiness, she was / is her usual happy-go-lucky self.

Update on the scald site
This morning after she was ready for school, I applied the SSD again. This is the second time she exclaimed it was ticklish rather than painful; I think the first ticklish time was last night but she still say it hurt.

It also felt harder, like soft scabby, under the pad of my finger. Meaning the site is no longer raw. Which to me is good news.

Last night, as usual, I headed over to Grandma’s after work, for dinner and the trip home with the kids to call it a night. While I was there, Grandma said Caitlin hadn’t pooped yet, again. We were talking about it and her diet during the day and the day before, and how else to ease the problem for her. Caitlin, in her time with her grand parents, has actually picked up some Cantonese being spoken and also from the Chinese serials on tv, that she can actually understand most of what is being discussed between the adults; only that she may not be able to speak it, yet. (We exclusively speak to her in English, though I’ve started practising Mandarin with her from her classes).

Sometime after dinner then, Caitlin, being the monkey that she is (born under the same animal year too) was being cheeky and was rude to Daddee. She wanted to be carried, I refused and she grunted / growled at me pulling her lips back. For the rest of that time / the night, I declared to her that I wasn’t going to speak to her at all and wasn’t going to friend her because I was both sad and angry at her, and also that there was not going to be any tv or Sesame Street podcast watching for the night, as punishment.

It would have been over an hour between that and the time we got home. Almost time for bed and she says to me she needed to poop. Knowing that this was more important, I carried-put her on her toddler-toilet-seat on the dunny, and kinda forgave her and sat by the door keeping her company; chatting and encouraging / supporting her knowing that it was likely going to be painful pushing out her hard stools.

In all, we sat there for over 45minutes, passing her usual bedtime. In that time, she says to me that there was a total of 3 plops; our reference to poop-progress. Knowing that usually the first plop would be the hardest, the rest of the “session” should be smooth sailing, pun intended.

In between there were the somewhat expected sobs of pain, and she used the toilet tissues to wipe her tears, dumping them into the toilet.

Since there was already 3 plops, I was getting impatient in that it was taking too long and she really already needed to be asleep. I asked her to start pushing, despite her refusals.

Then she tells me she is done. I can’t remember the exact conversation but when I already had some drops of soap ready to wash her bits, she tells me that she didn’t poop at all in all that time.

I couldn’t believe my ears. Initially I didn’t realise that she was lying. I made her repeat herself and what she did to confirm. I couldn’t check the toilet ‘cos there was dumped tissue floating on the surface. I specifically asked if any of the 3 plops ever occurred. She shook her head.

After washing her up, I took her out of the toilet and sat down face to face with her. I reminded her of the evening’s events, that she was rude to me, I was angry at her, but that I had forgiven her; and then she downright lied to me within minutes of that.

I smacked her on the ass. Twice. She knows we don’t stand for lying, and she should be reminded of it.

In choosing my words carefully so that there wasn’t going to be a repeat, I got her to recap what had transpired and to explain her actions.

She tells me that she lied because she didn’t actually have any (ready at the time) poop. Somewhere in there, it dawned on me that she had simply wanted to please me.

In all the adult conversations she has learned that we were concerned about her bowel movements. In the time leading to the lie, I was mad at her. This, apparently, was an attention seeking move, to “wag the dog”, to either possibly to get me to friend her again, AND / OR that I would be relieved to know she was free of her alimentary knots.

In a twisted way, she had my interest at heart.

It bugged me the whole night what had happened. I replayed and weighed the whole incident, her’s and my thought process, rationale, approach. Yes it is wrong to lie. But she lied not so much for her own interest because I said I forgave her after we both sat down to chat (her on the dunny and me on the floor just outside)- she said she needed to poop when I was still mad at her and hadn’t forgiven her yet. She knows I could very well leave her there and be on about my usual evening business at home.

It also occured to me that she may have confused her own body signals. It was knocking at the door, but not quite ready to come out yet; and she thought it was. But since it wasn’t ready after all, to please me she said there were 3 plops already, to follow through with the whole act of now-that-Daddee’s-put-me-on-the-toilet-I-had-better.

Something in me made me think I wrongly smacked her; after all she did cry her usual pain-in-the-ass-cos-of-hard-stools cry. A voice was also telling me that this whole thing is warped, twisted, about how she approached and dealt with and followed through with the whole incident, the way she thinks, the way she felt she had to follow though a possible mistake (knock-knock but no one’s there mistake) by covering up with lies.

That she woke up about 30 minutes later with real poop didn’t make my state of mind any easier. I seem to be as confused as she might have been last night…

In it are 4 character kids who fly (Red) Rocket that seems to have a personality of its own. Together they go on their respective episodic adventures. The whole show is based on music, using snippets of classical music such as from Mozart, Bach, etc. They use big words like allegro, and… drats, they escape me. It’s all got to do with the speed or tempo of the rhythm… Ok I’ll go Google it.

As part of its regular feature, the characters have to speed up their hand-tapping as encouragement for Rocket to fly faster, for whatever the objective was for the mission. Leo, the presumed leader of the band of kids, starts off by tapping his lap going from adagio, then tapping their tummy going faster, then shoulders going moderato, then going all the way to allegro with hands raised and legs kicking.

And Rocket extends this rocket booster thingie out of its fuselage, defying all laws of physics and conservation of mass, and the whole thing propels forward fast and doesn’t break or compromise on its structural integrity.

We were running late tonight; got home from Grandma’s and was running behind our usual night schedule after fuming at Caitlin for dilly-dallying (not) completing her homework. It’s amazing how un-urgent kids can be and find stuff to fiddle, look at and around, scratch, stretch, position their pencils on the workbook and then not do anything…

We got home, semi-rushed to make her milk- want her to be in bed early enough so as to be awake enough for school tomorrow. I was still a little mad at her, and she knows it. Yet, she STILL dilly-dally’s with drinking her milk, sipping at it only.

Then she puts down her cup and stares at the TV.

I go over, trying to look as menacing as possible. “What are you doing?? Why aren’t you (continuing) drinking your milk??”

“I wanna fly super fezz….” with those puppy eyes I know you are still mad at me look.

“Huh? What??”

Just then I hear Leo starts uttering “Come on! Wave your arms to make our ship fly faster!“, and Caitlin raises her arms still looking at me the same.

I couldn’t hide the smile creeping in.

Something akin to a guard dog who would bark and bite anyone but would like down exposing his belly to you*, ‘cos he thinks the world of you.

* If you know dog behaviour, you know that dogs show you their belly because they “submit” to you by showing you their most vulnerable side.

…. Sorry, this is the closest analogy I can think of for now.

Anyway, over the weekend I dug out my old camera again for Caitlin to fool around. Since I haven’t been taking many pics of Caleb I thought I’d do that. So we were taking pics of him etc.

Then for some reason, Caitlin decided to do a trade. From the first day I allowed her to use the old camera I had told her that she would stick to that one, and I would be using “mine”. But that day, she insisted that we swapped. I said “no”. Like a Bugs Bunny / Daffy Duck dialog, we were going yes/no a good few times, each time she was reaching for my camera, and each time I was getting more stern.

Then she got hold of my camera’s strap, and hung on to it.

We actually got into a short tug-of-war. She actually wouldn’t budge, and was actually “fighting” with Daddee.

That was the first time Daddee had experienced first hand the defiance exhibited by Caitlin. I gotta say I am actually still feeling rather sad and disappointed with her behaviour, even after 2 days now.

I think I am because I thought I was “held higher” in her eyes, that I was her best friend, had a higher standing or status in her world. The fact that she would declare “No” to me this defiantly (of course she’s said “no” before to “smaller” things like “No, I don’t wanna go brush my teeth / can you wash away the tooth paste first”) was something that surprised and quickly disappointed me.

Perhaps she has inherited some of Hot Mummee’s characteristically fierce independence- the I don’t fear anyone nor hold anyone in that high a regard, doesn’t matter if it’s Daddee, I want means I WANT.

Sigh…

I know she trusts me more than she trusts her Mummee, in that she knows I have less of a temper. But to know that she was pushing it with me was quite disappointing. Maybe she already knows that she is also my fave human on earth, and that she knows the concept of spoiling, that I would (have been?) spoil her and give in…

Anyway, I didn’t, nor would I- It’s not a cheap camera!

So anyway, here are the products of the day’s “shooting”. Enjoy!

I took these three shots…

And Caitlin took this one, being the “best” of the lot!