phew. the school is going to stay open. a monumental effort by parents, teachers, staff, alumni, parishoners, and kids and we did it. raised enrollment by 25%, and raised a lot of money.

anna continues to talk up a storm, and will talk to anyone or anything. i finally got her a play-yard thing, so she has a safe place to roll around in. apparently they are not for keeping kids confined, but rather for keeping them safe from marauding bands of older siblings.

carter is now completely obsessed with superheroes, and now that ava learned that there are women superheroes, she is getting into the act. today, she wanted to dress up like wonderwoman. i sort of hedged on showing her a picture of wonderwoman (they know about all of the superfriends only from me talking about them in the car -- i have been reciting the plots of as many 1970 saturday morning shows that i can remember), because i knew we had very little that could pass as a wonderwoman costume, since all of ava's clothes are pink, white, and black. finally she bugged me enough that i showed her a picture.

note: do NOT image google "wonderwoman" "batgirl" or "catwoman" with the kids around. i leave it to you to figure out why.

i found a pg-rated image of wonderwoman, and she studied it very carefully. then she pulled out a pair of navy tights, cut them so that she had short shorts, used the remaining legs as wonderwoman's boots (never mind that hers were really red, navy was just fine for ava). then she found a red t-shirt, tucked it into her navy short shorts, then drew white stars on her "shorts" and a yellow eagle on her t-shirt. no, she did not ask if she could do that, but i decided not to say anything at the destruction of the shirt in the name of creativity. then she got a lasso. all in the span of 10 minutes.

i could not believe it. if she could have figured out how to make an invisible airplane, she would have.

and even better: she appears to be growing out of the 5-year-old behavior that has been causing me to pull my hair out. all year she has been overreacting, getting very very instantly jealous or mad or or sad or frantic or whatever--if something wronged her, she would leap to the most extreme emotional state she could muster. which is typical of most small children, however, ava would then add fuel to the fire by getting even more worked up when people justifiably reacted negatively to her behavior.

for a solid year i have worked very very hard at staying calm and saying to her something like "that is a completely unacceptable way to speak to me...." or something along those lines. a clear disapproval, a statement of what was not ok, and a suggestion of a better manner of speaking or acting. i did not always succeed, but generally i managed to stay calm.

(it was a very challenging year).

now, the overreacting has not stopped, but she has stopped the snowball effect of reacting to everyone's reactions--for example, today she was sweaty and hungry and had to go potty at the rink and she came off the ice and started barking at me--just uber-grumpy. i said very little, but took her to the bathroom and then when she came out i said "ava, you can skate, or you can go home, it is entirely up to you, but i do not want to hear you speak to me like that. i did not come here to be barked at."

she looked at me and said "mommy, i'm sorry for speaking to you like that. i don't want to bark at you."

and that was the end of it.

YIPPPEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!

another example: the other day, despite tons of things going her way, she was whining about everything. nonstop misery. i was extremely irritated, and it was all i could do not to launch into one of those "don't you know there are kids starving in this world? kids who have NOTHING?... " and so on. finally, in the car i turned to her and said "for the love of god, what is wrong?! because as far as i can see, your day has been pretty darn good. perhaps not terribly exciting, but not bad by any stretch!" and she looked at me and said "i'm sorry. i don't know why i am crying and whining. there's nothing wrong. for some reason, i think i just need to cry." and she did, and then it was over. i said "now i understand. i get like that too sometimes."

yesterday, carter was crying and she said "carter, please stop crying, you are making me want to cry." -- i nearly jumped with joy over that one. a clear articulation of empathy.

watching your children grasp empathy can be a very tortuous process. i think the rumblings of empathy are there very early, and you can see it often. but not always. and when it appears to be absent, you start to fret. but there are so many competing thought processes and emotions in a young child's mind, it really is no wonder that thinking about other people gets abandoned at times. it is becoming clear that as she gets older, it is getting easier to do some parallel processing of all those thoughts and emotions.

in short, it is pretty cool to see her taking shape as the person she is going to become. it is almost like she is emerging--well, i hate to use the obvious butterfly analogy here, but frankly that is sort of appropriate. as an infant and toddler, she was completely attached--practically still a part of me. then the preschool and kindergarten years have been this long, arduous process of figuring out how to be separate and independent, yet not isolated. i think (and i may be wrong here) that she is just starting to become self aware and confident--pleased to be a distinct person, and not afraid, yet still very confident in her closeness to me.

at least i hope that is what is going on.