Alivya

From Best of 2010

Everyday Jon and I find ourselves commenting on how grown up Alivya has become.  I can't put my finger on an exact date or even month, but recently she looks, sounds, acts, and breaths grown up.  What do I mean?  Well, let me give some classic Livi examples.  

TV/Movies- Livi has a less than healthy obsession with all things TV.  If we let her, she would sit and watch it from the moment she got up until the moment she went to bed.  She prefers cartoons on PBS or movies from our collection (mostly Pixar and Disney-and yes I realize that these are now one in the same, but were not always that way), however, she is content watching nearly anything. Jon recently tried to watch a movie called "Spirited Away" with her, but she wanted nothing to do with it.  She insisted that it "was just to scary" and she was "afraid of this movie".  She was not however afraid of the first Lord of the Rings movie, Harry Potter, or Titan AE.  She also seems to have a real understanding of the movie's emotions and thematic underpinnings.  I was watching "You've Got Mail" a couple weeks ago and caught myself watching Alivya's facial reactions to the movie more than the movie itself. She expressed sorrow and joy and confusion in all the appropriate places.  Taylor is starting to do some of this too, but its different with Livi.  When the movies end now, Livi brings me the remote.  Her logic here is that if I have the remote in my hand, then I will start another movie for her to watch.  She also "reminds" me nearing the end of the movie that I have agreed to let her watch "two movies", whether I have or not... and if I do let her watch two movies, it does not follow that at the end of the second movie she is done, no... no... it actually means that I have agreed to let her watch two MORE movies...  She is very persuasive.  

Bedtime- Livi lives on the principle that bedtime cannot happen before 7pm, in fact, it can't happen anytime outside of the seven o clock hour.  If the clock turns eight, then we somehow missed bedtime simply because it is not seven o clock.  Livi doesn't really trust that we understand this precise timing of bedtime, and therefore insists upon "checking the clock" before agreeing to go to bed each night.  

Sharing-  Taylor and Livi have a very unique (or not so much) opinion of what it means to share.  That is that if she is playing with a toy I want, I simply take it from them, then I am playing with the toy, and she can't have it.  So Jon and I instilled a four minute rule.  Four minutes because they are four years old.  When they fight over something, then they have to give it to the other for four minutes before getting it back.  Occasionally we actually do back and forth play this way, in four minute increments, however, most of the time they forget that they were fighting over it and find something else to play with.  In the last couple weeks however, Livi has decided to enforce this on her own.  She will walk up to Taylor and inform him that in four minutes he has to give something to her.  Since I have never seen Taylor actually give anything to her after any period of time in this manner, I wonder how she feels about this authority.  

I could go on, but I think you get the idea.  My eldest daughter is becoming a four going on fourteen year old.  She is developing the skills to deceive and control and testing all the waters.  And this is probably why she is "just not hungry" every time I make something that she just really doesn't care for.