Evie the bored.

Not all of my bargain shopping works out. I pulled three shirts out of the closet that M has worn either once or not at all. The problem with them? They were so unflattering in design and color and fit that when he came home from work wearing one, I nearly burst into tears at the thought that we have SO FEW GOOD YEARS LEFT. So, I think I'll be getting rid of those. They were cheap at less than two bucks each, but one should not wear clothes that make them look that much older than reality no matter how cheap they were.

And speaking of sales, I am just so excited today because eBay is allowing its sellers to list UP TO 50,000 auctions with no listing fees today! And with twelve hours left in the day, I'll need to get cracking in order to put up 4166 auctions per hour. That works out to 69 per minute. I mean, I think they were really going for "as many as you want" with a ridiculously high cap, but still. I am amused by silly things.

My child is bored. I'm not entirely sure what to do with her. See, a few months ago, she Discovered computer games in a big way. I mean, she would sit at her computer all day if I would let her. We didn't let her play all the time, of course, but we did let her play more than she probably should have been allowed. She almost completely replaced television with it--she'd only watch TV for a few minutes at a time when she was doing something else. This allowed me to say that she didn't watch much TV, which feels good in a parenting sort of way, but the truth was that she was only watching so little TV because she had moved on to another sort of screen. And, on one hand, I was sort of okay with it as long as she did get some non-computer time in during the day, because she was sincerely interested, she was learning stuff like crazy (including how to work with computers) and because I've been there. She comes from a family of computer people. Also, I could get a lot of stuff done, I'm not too ashamed to admit it.

Two or three weeks ago, though, she started complaining about her games. She wanted a different one all the time, and yet wouldn't play the new ones we'd find for very long. There are not a limitless supply of new games suitable for children of that age, you know, and I had pretty much exhausted my supply. She didn't realize it, but I could tell she was getting a little bored with computer games as a concept. Which.. is fine! Great! Because I knew she was playing too many of them, but I also felt like it was a phase and not something I wanted to do battle over on a daily basis. She's just like we are. We both get really into something, and we are really into it until we are... well, not. But, she is now done with that phase. There have been several days now that she hasn't even turned it on. The problem is that she is now bored all the time. To my great sadness, she is not hugely interested in crafting with me lately--or rather, she is excited about crafting, but it ends badly enough of the time that I am not interested in doing it too often. I can't stand getting everything out for her, only for her to.. I don't know. Put six foam stickers on another piece of foam and then wander off. Half an hour of prep and clean-up for three minutes of not-much-fun? No thanks. She rediscovered TV, but I don't want her to replace computers with TV again, plus, she's not interested in spending all day with that even if I was interested in letting her.

We have ballet on Tuesday evenings--and even that, which she previously loved, is met with resistance when I try to get her up and out the door, and last week, her teacher told me that she wasn't listening to her in class and making angry faces about everything she was told to do--VERY unlike her at ballet. We also started back at gymnastics after a couple of months off, on Thursday mornings, and she is still interested in that--she even said she liked it better than ballet (before she got grumpy about going to ballet). However, there is a full class at gymnastics right now, and all of the other kids are much smaller than she is. I think one of them *might* be her age, but I only think that because she has what I assume is a younger sister in the class as well. Remember that Evelyn is really tall for her age anyway, but she is head and shoulders taller than the next biggest kid in the class, and none of them have been to gymnastics before. Well, one of them has been, but he is a little boy who JUST turned three, so he's all over the place at the best of times. So, the last few sessions of gymnastics was just her, or her and the boy, and there are two teachers, so she was getting a lot of special attention. I had been planning on dropping out of gymnastics, actually, but then she suddenly started being much much better than she was, and taking it very seriously, and I want to encourage her to stay with things if she takes it that seriously. Anyway, these kids have changed the dynamics of gymnastics. They've had to go backwards to teach them things that Evelyn has been doing for a long time. That's FINE, as far as the class goes. It's just less fine for E, because I don't want her to get bored with something ELSE that she enjoys. Currently, she's liking it a lot that they're using her as the example of how to do things right, but I'm not sure I really want to pay $30 per month for them to have a role model for the other kids?

That was a complete tangent, except that it's sort of part of my current dilemma. I realized recently that I only have a matter of a few short months left at home with her before she goes off to kindergarten. (Ack.) We desperately need a new routine and I'm not even sure what to put in it. I'm sure she would love it if the new routine was thusly:

9:00-11:00: play with Mommy.
11:00-11:30: eat lunch. watch television.
11:30-5:30: play with Mommy.

But honestly, I just do not have that much play in me. M is great at playing with her. That's part of the evening routine, playtime with Daddy. He'll come up with weirdo voices and make her Barbies do outlandish, rude things. (This got him into trouble recently, as she started begging to only play Barbies with Mommy..haha.) I can handle a few minutes of Barbies at a time, or a board game, or something but then I go nutso, or I accidentally end up starting some weird organizational project. ("I know! I'll dress all these Barbies, fix their hair and separate all of these accessories in this huge box by size, function and color!" I won't even realize what I'm doing until I'm half done because in my head I am still just playing Barbies. etc. This is a true story except perhaps for the size function and color thing. I do spend unreasonable amounts of time putting clothes in the right box and furniture in the right place and brushes and hats and other accessories into the right place. She totally spends all her time making sure to maintain that system when I'm not there, of course.) I'm better at activities than free play. Sometimes she'll help cook, or we will do housework in a fun way, or crafts or a science project or something like that. But, there are only so many activities that I can think of to do.

And I just realized that today was storytime at the library and I forgot about it. She has missed every single storytime this month, which is unfortunate because it's a FREE activity that gets us out of the house, and also, I'm in book crisis. M has said since I got my book reader that he'd like to borrow it to read a book sometime so he could see if he would enjoy having one himself. I am all for that except if he is using it, that means I can't. He's at work during the day, so sure, I could read it while he's gone, except it doesn't really work out that way very well, as we have now found. He is reading Wheel of Time, having given up on it back in the day at around book 10ish. I only have the last two books in electronic format, so now he is reading a WoT book, ten minutes at a time in the bathroom. So, I SEE the thing all day long, and yet, I can't read it. I was in the middle of reading Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series when I had to relinquish the book reader. I tried to NOT relinquish it, and just share it? But that inevitably led to the book reader not being where he needed it to be and therefore having nothing to read while he hibernated in the bathroom. (Why do men do this?) So finally, I finished up the book I was reading and then set it down and walked away. I'm rereading Harry Potter now, in PAPER FORM. It's bizarre. Anyway, I have been meaning to pick up the WoT book, or the next Outlander in paper for me, for weeks now and I keep missing storytime and then thinking, "oh, I'll get it next week." Or not. Last week we were out of town, the week before, it was snowing and I felt no desire to trudge down there in the snow, and this week I was just completely spacey.

On top of that--or maybe because of it--she's been tired and kind of fussy and demanding, more than usual. She's sleeping later but not complaining as much about going to bed. I think she's going through a growth spurt but sometimes I'm almost worried about her because she's just not acting like herself all the time. BUT, did I mention that she's reading? She's sounding out words and we're reading Dick and Jane (which--ROFL! that is some comedic gold, right there. Very hard to listen to a child reading, "Come, Dick, Come!" without snickering out loud.) and she's putting a lot of things together in her brain right now, I think, and I know that is big work for little kids, and it's likely to leave them tired and out of sorts. So I think that may be the root of it (or maybe I just read Ask Moxie for too long and buy into the "everything is caused by a developmental stage" thing.) Friends who read parenting books? Something going on with them at 4.5 or 5? I don't know if it's this underlying issue causing the boredom and whining, or if it's just a convergence of a bunch of different things, but I think she's bored with life right now and I would rather see her more happy and engaged. I was happy that she didn't start preschool this year, but now I am thinking maybe that's the sort of structure she is searching for right now.. not that I could or would start that now, anyway.

I guess this post is a really long, typical-me, roundabout way to ask: what the heck do your kids do all the day? Or, what did they do before they started school? And oh, don't forget that she is completely in a scaredy-cat phase (started at the same time) where she does not want to be in a room other than the one that I am in. So, I can't just leave her playing in her room. If she's going to play Barbies on her own, I have to be sitting there, too, and I really like to get things done upon occasion myself. Blah.

Oh, and she has also gotten tired of every single food that she previously loved at the same time. WTF. It's like she's a teenager reinventing herself all of a sudden.

Honestly, I had no idea I had so many words about this subject. I didn't even mean to write about it when I sat down here. It's not like it's a huge deal, but apparently I have been thinking about it more than I thought.