onetiredmama: 'Tis The Season Not To Reason

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I usually resolve not to resolve anything for the New Year, but this year, I'm looking to save my sanity.

So I've decided to quit trying to reason with my children, unless it involves fire or permanent marker. Like Riley's insistence that she is a kitty. "You're such a pretty girl Riley," you might say. And she will reply, "I'm not a girl, I'm a kitty. Meow-meow!" We laugh at her little game and then say, "Riley likes kitties, but she's a little girl."

And she'll just look at you and meow. I showed her a picture of her and Daddy when she was first born and she said, "I used to be a baby, but now I'm a kitty." She'll crawl around the floor and meow, and sometimes even lick your face if you're lucky. (Or unlucky depending on how juicy it is.) And yes, she will at times eat her food out of the bowl using just her little tongue.

Of course she's always playing with kitties, with 3 or 4 little plastic ones clutched in her hands at all times. If she does stray a bit to play with a giraffe or a bear, it's a kitty-giraffe and a kitty-bear, and she babbles and meows to them in her secret kitty language. Sometimes when I talk to her on the phone at work, she will only meow at me.

Even when she is not acting like a cat per se, she's thrilled to declare her cat-likeness. "I'm jumping like a kitty!" she'll say while bouncing on our mini-trampoline. "I'm swimming like a kitty!" she announced at the beach. And don't try to argue with her. She'll only get angry. You know how cats can be. I just wish she knew the part about how much kitties enjoy their frequent cat naps. This little blonde fur ball is still waking to screech at the moon.

Don't try explaining to Riley that you can't find "mommy kitty." She needs her -- now!

And that's Jack's big issue at the moment -- the moon. Yes, the moon. Ever since we turned our clocks back for Daylight Savings Time, he gets very upset when the sun goes down. It does get dark early, like 5:00 these days. Every day around 4:30 he gets nervous. "Where's the sun going?" he demands. "It's going down honey, it's going to sleep and the moon is coming out," I try to explain sweetly. "Aghhhh -- I hate the moon," he'll reply with a scowl. "We don't say hate." "I don't like the moon at all!" "But it would be hard to sleep if it wasn't dark." "I want the sun to stay up!" It goes on and on like this, ultimately as pleasant as someone trying to pull the nail off your baby toe.

Nothing strange about a 5 year old reading the grocery ads in the tub