Learning to do stuff

Imogen has this fabulous determination to learn things. Her piano teacher gave her a difficult (for her) piece recently. The music covered two pages (one side each page) and must be played with both hands, switching back and forth often. She was expected to know the first line and a half the first week. She had some kind of mental block on this music and it was very frustrating. She cried, she stomped around in frustration, she made me promise that she didn't have to play it at the recital if she hadn't learned it in time. It took two weeks to learn the first section, but after that the rest of the song has been easy for her.

Whistling was the same way. She's wanted to whistle for months. She's puckered up her lips and squeeked as high as she could to imitate the sound of whistling. She cried about it. She tried to get me to commit to an age when she would magically be able to whistle. And finally, within the last few weeks, she actually learned to whistle, a real genuine whistle.

Incidentally, a couple days later, Genevieve learned to whistle as well. That's Genevieve: two days later, eighteen months earlier.

Imogen's next project is learning how to snap. She keeps track of which of her classmates can snap their fingers (or have convinced her that they can snap their fingers). Sometimes she comes home and tells me that her classmates' older siblings can snap as if this is some kind of evidence that she is failing dreadfully to do something that obviously a multitude of people can do.

She's got a bit of a competative streak.

It's all in your head

I was peacefully painting at the dining room table when a shriek from outside told me that Genevieve was once again calmly handling her self inflicted injuries. Now, this is the child that Jeremy offered to throw a party for if she would go an entire week without hurting herself to the point of leaving obvious wounds. This includes both scabbing and bruising. This is a child that I'm half afraid to take out in public lest someone call family services on me for my obvious abuse of her. She is the single greatest consumer of bandaids in our household, by a lot. Her day care repeatedly sends home accident reports in duplicate for me to sign and send back as if it's such a unique occurrence that a single copy of the form would be insufficient to detail it.

Unfortunately, not only does she inflict bodily harm on herself with alarming frequency, but she's never been one to downplay these incidents. Screaming bloody murder as if one's fingers have been removed by a hacksaw is certainly not an overreaction for a splinter.

So perhaps I can be forgiven for my complacency at the gasping sobs as Genevieve made her way inside while I continued to paint calmly. When she sputtered out "I fell!" I noticed that her knee was actually bleeding quite a bit. Knowing these things really can hurt I was all sympathy as I cleaned up the knee and covered it with a bandaid. I examined the palms of her hands carefully. They were red, but no scratches, so I cleaned them, kissed them and sent her on her way.

Well, that wasn't going to cut it. Sure, the knee was fine, but the hands were grossly neglected and the screams were unabated. I checked once again to make sure there were no open wounds with bone shards poking out that I had somehow missed in my negligence. My sympathy was evaporating fast. "What do you want me to do?" I asked, through gritted teeth. "MY HAAANDS HUUUURRRT!!!" she suggested reasonably, shattering several windows. "Fine," I said, "you want some medicine?" She nodded.

The bathroom where most of the medicine is kept was occupied, but I didn't really care. I don't have any topical painkiller unless you count the sunburn ointment which was nowhere to be found. I grabbed the nearest thing I could find that didn't seem poisonous, which was Vick's vapor rub. I made a production of wiping a thin layer on the palms of her hands, and the crying ceased immediately. The potent odor proved... something or another. "They feel better," she informed me. "They smell better," I said.

Perspective

To Genevieve, french fries and chicken nuggets are simply the tools one uses to eat katsup. No part of getting dressed is too insignificant to draw the battle lines and prepare for war over, from the color of one's panties to the choice of shoes. And life gets really good when you turn four and can consider yourself a "big kid" instead of just a "little bit big".

Genevieve alone

With Imogen at school till 3:30, I have afternoons alone with Genevieve, and it's been fun to get to know her better. When Imogen is home, Genevieve willingly lives in her shadow, following her lead, or fighting with her. Genevieve alone is different though.

For one thing, she's very easy to be around. Imogen is the extrovert in the family. Genevieve has her parents' ability to be alone with her thoughts. Whereas Imogen relies on the people around her for conversation and to keep her occupied, Genevieve has a rich fantasy life and I find her having conversations with her toys constantly. Imogen has a mad desire to classify everything around her, to bring all objects and behaviors under the domain of some rule or another so that she can order her life accordingly. This results in more questions than I ever knew existed. Genevieve asks questions like a normal child, which seems very rare compared to her sister. Genevieve isn't curious and is willing to have mysteries in her life, or willing to make up answers to whatever questions might occur to her.

Today I discovered that Genevieve is the perfect shopping companion. For one thing, you almost can't lose her. At her age, Imogen was trying to go home with other people at the park and last year she lined up with other classes at school. She regularly gave her teacher a heart attack thinking she'd been lost for good this time. Genevieve trails along behind me or holds my hand, always aware of where I am.

But also, Genevieve is actually enthusiastic about shopping. We wandered into the lingerie section today. A Mecca of femininity. She helped me pick out bras, fingering the silk and lace and gushing at the bright colors and the pink all around her. She even got excited at the shoe section, pointing out several pairs that she liked.

Speaking of the pink obsession, it's getting worse. Today in the bathroom she was extatic that the soap that I squirted into her hands was pink. "I LOVE pink soap!" she said.