Fairyland

Sometime in February, I got fed up with Grace refusing to dress herself.  She is more than capable of it, but every day would insist that she needed "help".  Then, she would refuse to brush her hair until after breakfast, and every morning we would have a chaotic "hurry up, shoes/socks, brush hair, brush teeth" rigamarole right before leaving to catch the bus.  I think that part of the getting dressed issue was more about her confidence level in being able to do it herself than unwillingness so I created a three-week star chart (oh yea, with glitter and everything) for getting dressed, brushing hair, and brushing teeth.  The deal was that as long as she missed only one star each week, she would get to go to Fairlyand in Oakland at the end of the three weeks.

A little incentive goes a long way.  Turns out, she DOES know how to put her pants on.  Her shirt, too!  She does need a little help with tights (frankly, I could still use help getting tights on), but she did great and got enough stars for her trip.  We invited our friends to join us, and let the girls loose.  They had so. much. fun.  (just realized, though, that there are no pictures that include Mia's parents)

Fairyland is perfect for kids this age.  It's probably almost as thrilling as Disneyland.  It's pretty small so they can run around without parental worry, and there are lots of different fairytale houses to play in - from a Peter Pan-inspired pirate ship play structure to an Alice in Wonderland "through the rabbit hole" slide that ends with a tea party and human-sized playing cards and many other tales.  There's also a wild west play area, farm animals, and a bunch of small rides, many for kids only.  It's hard to believe that just a year ago, Grace was too small for some of them.

The only flaw in our plan for morning routine independence was parental follow-through... we easily lapsed back into our habit of "helping" Grace when she could do everything herself.  I realize she's growing fast and the time goes so quickly.  I really don't mind helping her when we're not in a hurry, but sometimes I can't help her and need to be able to rely on her to do it on her own.  And with her it sort of needs to be all or nothing - if I help her one day and not the next, there's a fight.  If I don't help her at all, she will consistently do it herself.  We really felt like we needed to get this under control before the baby is born because we don't want it to feel like one more area in which she's being shunted to the side.  So, now we're using a chores app on the iPad - it's really for the gratification of getting to check off what she's done with bells and whistles from the app, there's no big payout this time.  Hard as it will be when we're not trying to get out the door during the summer, we're going to have to maintain this because there is no way I will manage to get two kids out the door on time in the fall if Grace doesn't do some of her own grooming independently.  Even if she does, I can't picture how I will pull it off!