Friday 12 March 2010

My Funny Valentine

One of my favourite songs to sing to Pearl is by Kimya Dawson, it's from the childrens' album she made and is called "Little Panda Bear". (Kimya's daughter is called Panda).



I love singing the line "...and there's no other one like you". Cos particularly at the moment I really feel like there is no other one like Pearl. She's always been a very definite character but lately her personality is literally exploding out of her. She's so funny! Like, proper makes me crack up funny.

She's discovered that shopping can be fun if there are things for Pearl to choose. Finally, shopping without a meltdown at the end of every aisle! At Sainsbury's yesterday she chose a punnet of strawberries (flown all the way from Egypt, ack!) but because she never really used to like fruit, and because she'd chosen it herself I obliged and bought that strange out of season food. By the time we got to the till she also had some flower and cupcake hair clips, a CBeebies magazine, some cheese and some bagels. She was SO pleased with herself and has since told everybody we meet about what she chose. How empowering for her to realise what she can do, how she is able to communicate! But she also understands if we can't take things home (or, "paaaay", because I explain to Pearl that we can't take it because we haven't paid for it, so it has to stay in the shop). In Tesco she wanted to pick up one of those childs' digital cameras, but was perfectly fine about saying "byebye" to it when we had to move to the next aisle. In that same Tesco trip I got her her very first dressing up costume, a Woody outfit from Toy Story. She's been wearing it at every available opportunity since then, I think I tweeted a picture a few days ago and can't figure out how to post that twitpic here, so have a look in the twitter feed over there ---->

For the past few days she seems to enjoy using the word 'no'. She's said 'no' before, but I don't think she really understands what it means because we try not to use negatives when talking to Pearl. For example, instead of saying "No, don't tip your water cup onto the floor", I'd say something like, "Water stays in the cup for drinking, please keep the cup held up". For a while she liked putting her hand in her drink and licking the water off her hand. I didn't stop her because it doesn't really hurt anything, but I would say that she'd get more to drink if she used her hands to bring the cup to her mouth and drink water like that. Of course I'm not perfect and today I did yell "Nooooooo!" when she knocked 4 raw eggs onto the floor! But on the whole we try and keep it positive, and I really think it shows in how Pearl behaves. The times when I'm tired, or haven't quite got my brain in gear, and I just go into auto-pilot saying negatives, it really affects her behaviour immediately. Like if I give her a positive explanation about changing what she's doing it goes down way easier. Today she also tried to climb up and pull down the television, and once I'd uttered the immortal word "don't", it became climbing city!

But yeah, the past few days she's been loving saying 'no'. No to lunch, no to nappy change, no to going, no to staying, no to sling, no to a drink, no to pushchair, no to puzzles, no to taking shoes off, no to mummy going for a wee.... the list is endless! If you phrase your question differently (or just don't make it an option!) you'll usually discover she does want lunch, and she does want her shoes off. She is the funniest lil creature.

Twwly recently blogged about changing tactics, and it made me realise we'd gradually stopped using distraction as a tool because it often just made things worse. It almost highlighted the thing she was doing, like bringing negative attention to the situation. I've found that letting her work through her emotions, and acknowledging them by saying we know she is sad for whatever reason really helps. We went out with her grandparents last week and when we were in the cafe she wanted to get down and run about, but it was very busy and I just didn't feel it was safe. Not to mention we still had plates full of food. She got upset but somehow when I said to her calmly, "Pearl, I know you are sad because you want to run around, but it isn't safe, and Mummy is still eating her lunch. When Mummy has finished eating we can go and play together". She did a little bit more crying but I didn't try to shush her like I might've done before, and she then settled down happily to eat some of my cake! It was nothing compared to previous outings where in a similar situation I'd try to distract her and everything would escalate so quickly.

Oops this is a bit long, particularly with not much in the way of visual stimulation. I got all carried away typing, if you read all of that you may have one of these Lindt chocolates I'm eating right now. I'll send it through the power of internet magic... pahaha sorry. (Especially sorry to Alex, know how much you love them!)

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