Jenna and Sarah

I guess I wanted to be nice on my last post since it was about Jenna turning 4. Maybe I wanted to sugar-coat it since I was celebrating her 4 years, but this girl has been testing me. Testing. Me. She knows how to get under our skin. Not just me–I’ve never seen Jay so angry in our 12 years of marriage as I have when she pulls her crap. I let a lot of things slide. I am pretty laid back about certain things, but there are 3 things I cannot and will not tolerate. Lying, ignoring me, and blatant disobedience. Lately, she has decided all 3 of those things are just fine, and they have gotten out of control. I blame myself for the listening. I feel like I have trained her to only listen to me after the third or fourth time I’ve asked her something, when I raise my voice. That’s how it started. I would ask her a question or ask her to  do something, and she would completely ignore me and go on with whatever she was doing. So I would ask her again, and usually she would respond. But I guess then it go to the point of asking her more than twice, and I realized I let it get too far. Now I’m working with her on responding the FIRST TIME. We are constantly telling her that, but now I have to show her. I just make her quit what she’s doing or go to her room. We’ll see how that goes.

Blatant disobedience–I am not so relaxed on that one. If I ask her not to do something and she looks me in the eye and does it, she gets a spanking. No debating. I hate spanking. I always said I didn’t want to do it, but it’s the only thing she responds to. I have decided I’m going to start taking her dresses away if this continues though. Sweets and dresses are her favorite things now, and I don’t want to use sweets as a reward or punishment. So we’ll see how that goes, too.

Lying. Oh, the lying. That’s a tricky one. Sometimes I don’t really know if she’s old enough to fully comprehend what she’s saying, but sometimes I know without a doubt that she is knowingly telling me a lie and she doesn’t even care. That’s what I can’t tolerate and I haven’t figured out yet what to do about that one. When I punish her for lying, I try to be clear that it’s not about whatever she lied about. It’s not about coloring on the table or not eating all her dinner or not washing her hands. It’s about telling me she didn’t do something, when clearly she did. I know all kids do it (or, most kids?) but don’t they eventually admit it?

Here’s what else she does–she has this smug look that she gives me. When she gives me this look, I want to slap it right off her face. But of course, I would never do that and I don’t even like to think about it. So usually I grab her jaw and tell her she will not look at me like that. I can’t descibe the look and chances are I’ll never get a picture of it, but it’s a look that says “yeah, I’m not listening. What are you gonna do about it?” Frustrating. Infuriating. But I just have to deal with it.

Whining. That’s another thing. And crying. At least once a day, she will start crying about something stupid, and not let up. So I’ll tell her to go to her room until she’s done. Sometimes I’ll just send her to her room if she doesn’t answer me. I’ll tell her to go sit there until she’s ready to answer me. Usually that sets off a tantrum. When it stops, I’ll go in her room and see if she’s OK and if she’s ready to answer or stop crying. That’ll set her off again. And sometimes she gets SO worked up, she can’t even stop crying. She’ll say “I c-c-c-an’t s-s-s-stop c-c-c-c-ryinggggg,” between sobs. I actually do feel sorry for her, and usually I just hug her and tell her to take deep breaths.

I try. Really I do. I try not to get frustrated, I try not to yell, and I try not to let it get to me because I know she can sense that. It’s getting to where I don’t even want to (or am afraid to?) be around her for any length of time. Like now. I have to pick her up from MDO in 40 minutes. I’m thinking what are we going to DO? We can’t come home. She will whine and Sarah will scream and try to climb all over me and it will be miserable. If I go to a store, Sarah will scream and writhe around and not want to be confined to a cart. We can go to a park. Then what? Jay won’t be home until after dinner/bedtime. I haaate getting dinner ready when Sarah is crying and stepping all over my feet the entire time. Then what will we do after dinner? Another park? A walk?

So, there it is. My complaining. I want to remember this. I want to remember everything good, but I want to remember why I wanted to work part-time and why I don’t smile a whole lot and why my neck and shoulders ache all the time from tension and why I feel like a new person when Jay & I get 2 hours to go to dinner by ourselves. Ah, to ourselves. I’ll hang onto that thought a while.

My Jenna Benna is 4 today! I guess since I’ve been anticipating it for so long, it doesn’t seem like a big deal. Her first birthday–huge. Second, pretty big too. Third, not quite as much, but I still stressed about the birthday party. This time, I guess since we had Sarah’s first not so long ago, it didn’t seem as dramatic. How sad is that? I hope they don’t overshadow each other like that their whole lives.

We had Jenna’s birthday party at her favorite gymnastics place, and she had a blast. Sadly, I didn’t get many pictures of her playing on the gymnastics equipment because she NEVER STOPPED RUNNING. At least I got her favorite part though. The girl still loves her sweets. 🙂

She also loves dresses, bows, lipstick, princesses, and having her fingernails painted. She is very much obsessed with picking out her clothes, and she usually doesn’t like to be bothered wearing the same clothes for a whole day. She loves playing outside, Angelina Ballerina, and flowers. Oh, how she LOVES to pick flowers. Unfortunately, she loves to pick them all, and she gets herself into trouble by picking the ones she knows she’s not supposed to. Usually it’s followed by a lie: “I didn’t pick it. It was on the ground.” Or if she’s with a friend, “I didn’t pick it, Luke did.” Little devil, we’ve been working on that lying thing, too. She loves to go on “family walks” after dinner. With the nice weather, we’ve been doing that a lot, but she rides her trike and Sarah rides in the jogging stroller. Jenna doesn’t know it yet, but she’ll get a big girl bike today and hopefully she’ll be as excited as I think she will.

She loves to eat (mostly snacks), gets super excited if she gets a “special treat” after dinner, and right now her favorites are chicken nuggets, pizza, and grilled cheese. Yeah–typical kid fare. She doesn’t eat nearly as much as she used to though–unfortunately, she doesn’t like to eat much else. Though I did discover that I can make fish sticks (more like fish nuggets) with frozen tilapia fillets, panko breadcrumbs, and parmesan. Both girls love them. Yay! She loves to color and is into drawing stick figures of her family. She loves to make necklaces, and she’s getting into pretend play (things they do in school) and playing with her sister! They both like to play on the playground and swing, but I couldn’t get a picture of her on the rope swing at her birthday party. I did get one of Sarah with her daddy though.

Jenna is such a sweet big sister. She definitely has her moments (hitting!) but she likes to make sure Sarah has everything she needs, and a lot that she doesn’t. She likes to pick out her clothes, help get her food ready, and check for dirty diapers. Too bad she doesn’t want to change them! She likes to make sure Sarah always has a toy to play with–even if she really doesn’t want one. 🙂 I love when both of them play together in the playroom for a few minutes.

Like any 4-year-old, Jenna often causes me to lock myself in the bathroom, pull my hair out, and wonder what my life has become. But she is such a special blessing! I love the things she says, I love that she says grace every night, that she loves to help, and that she has such a caring heart. I wish I could spend more time coloring with her, reading to her, making necklaces with her, or painting her nails without Sarah standing there screaming to be held, but I love that she is sweet enough to understand. I don’t want to look back on these sweet days and forget what she was like, but I hope that sweet spirit never changes.