GRAMA PLEASE COME SIT WITH ME.

At breakfast at the hotel one morning, Annalie brought her dry-erase tablet with her and was busily writing and drawing when I glanced over and saw that she’d written something like: “Grama plez cum sit wi th mee.”

“Annalie, that’s a sentence! You just wrote a sentence!” I told her.

“It is?” she asked, pleased.

“Yeah, and it’s spelled almost right! I can tell exactly what you meant, which is fantastic!”

She immediately said, “Well, how do you really spell it?” I helped her correct her spelling, then kicked myself for not taking a photo of it before we corrected it. Oh well. I’m still proud. And so was she.

The other day, Annalie and I went to a Chinese place for lunch. Annalie usually likes Chinese food, but she was stubbornly insisting on this day that she wanted nothing to do with rice or broccoli or water chestnuts. So I ordered her a bowl of egg drop soup.

When our food was brought to us, Annalie cautiously sniffed the soup. “It smells good, but it looks kinda gross. Hmm, maybe if I can’t see it then I’ll like it.” She slapped her hand over her eyes and brought a spoonful of soup to her mouth and took a tiny sip.

“Hey, I do like it! This is pretty good, as long as I’m not looking at it!”

“Mom, I have an idea! You should take a picture for Daddy, since he always eats egg drop soup. He would be so proud of me that I tried it and liked it.”

And then I got a great fortune in my fortune cookie. It’s really more of a truism than a fortune, but I liked it so much I didn’t care. I brought it home and taped it up in my kitchen so I can read it often and think about it.

Only you can change your life. No one can do it for you.

Annalie is going through a bit of a testing phase right now, as kids do from time to time, just to make sure the grown-ups are paying attention. Lately she’s been testing the rules, testing the boundaries of good behavior, and testing my patience. It’s frustrating but normal.

Considering the testing, I shouldn’t have been that surprised the other day when I found a smiley face the size of a quarter drawn on our couch in marker. I was surprised, though. Annalie has been using washable markers since she was a toddler, and she’s always been pretty good about using them only on paper or other approved surfaces. Occasionally she goes a bit crazy and draws all over her legs or arms, but that’s generally allowed in our house because hey, washable.

After I saw the markered smiley face, I called Annalie upstairs and asked her to tell me about it. She admitted to having done it almost immediately. I told her I was disappointed because she’s old enough to know that drawing on the furniture is never okay. She shrugged and said she was sorry, but the flippant way she did so only made me hotter under the collar.

I struggled to maintain my temper as I had her help me clean up the marker. I also explained that the consequences of not remembering the rules about where to use markers meant she was going to lose her markers for the next couple of days. She wasn’t very happy about that, because I had just bought her a cool new marker set, but she sighed and said she understood.

Then I told her, “I’m really quite upset about this, Annalie. I don’t understand why you deliberately did something that you know is against the rules. I think you might have an extra punishment, but I’m going to have to think about it for a while.” Again she shrugged, before asking if she could have something to eat.

After I fixed her a snack, I emailed Troy to tell him about the Markering Incident and to ask if he had any ideas. I didn’t really expect to hear back from him anytime soon, since he’s basically on the opposite schedule from us on the other side of the world right now, but I felt better once I wrote it all out. Then I took to Twitter and asked if anyone had any thoughts or advice for me.

Almost everyone who answered me suggested that I have her clean it up and take away the markers, both of which I’d already done. At least I felt reassured in those actions. I still felt like this was something that warranted further action, like it was a no-brainer rule that she had to have deliberately broken. After consideration, I decided to have her go to bed an hour early. Annalie hates going to bed early, so I thought it would have an impact. Also, she’d had a busy couple of days and I figured she probably did need the extra sleep.

When I told Annalie that as punishment for markering on the couch she would have an early bedtime, she immediately wailed, “Oh, WHEN will you stop PUNISHING ME!?” I stifled a laugh at her melodramatic response and told her that we’d still read and cuddle before she went to sleep, it was just going to be an hour earlier than normal. She grumbled a bit, but when we finished a chapter of Little House in the Big Woods and I turned off the light, she curled into me and was fast asleep in about two minutes flat.

Yesterday I gave her the markers back and reminded her of the rules. She immediately said, “I know, only on paper. I’ll remember this time.” And she did. She was drawing on her little pad of paper on and off all day yesterday with those markers, and we never had a problem. I breathed a little easier.

This afternoon Bonnie had invited us to a homeschoolers’ knitting group/playgroup. We were both looking forward to it. Annalie had been sniffling and sneezing the past couple of days with a little cold, so we’d been sticking close to home. Today she was feeling much better and we were both looking forward to getting out of the house. Annalie was excited about seeing M and E again, and making some new friends. I was packing up a crochet project to bring with me when I turned around and saw that Annalie had used a marker to draw on the front of her dress.

“Annalie, did you just draw on your dress with a marker?”

She glanced down at her dress, then looked back up at me sheepishly. “Yessss…”

She knew she was in trouble. I sighed, then told her to gather up all her markers and put them in the zipper case. When she was done she handed the case to me, and I told her the markers would be off-limits for a few days again since she had forgotten or ignored the rule to only draw on paper.

Annalie’s response was an almost-jaunty, “Okay, mom!”

I hesitated for a moment. I knew what I had to do. I wanted to get the message across to my little boundary-tester that it was NOT okay to marker on anything but paper. The most immediate way to do that was…

“Annalie, I’m really sorry, but we’re not going to be able to go to the playgroup now.”

Her face crumpled. “What!? But I wanted to go meet some new friends! I haven’t gone to a playgroup since we lived in Maryland and I really want to go to this one!”

That nearly broke my heart. Sometimes I hate having to be consistent. Especially times like this when punishing Annalie meant punishing me too. I’d really been looking forward to that knitting group. But from her reaction I knew I’d done the right thing. I told her that I knew she really wanted to go, but I also knew that she knew the rules about markers. I said I hoped that the next time she was tempted to draw on her clothes or the couch or anything else but paper, she would remember how sad she was to miss out on the playgroup this week. I assured her that we could still go next week.

Annalie’s sadness quickly morphed into anger. She stomped off to her room, declaring her need for private time and her intention to never ever go anywhere again with me. I rolled my eyes and privately debated keeping the markers put away at least till after next week’s knitting group.

A few minutes later, Annalie called to me from her room. I went downstairs and stood in the doorway. She was busy playing with an electronic game and didn’t even notice me at first. When she did look up, she asked if I could bring the book down to her room and read to her for a while.

We spent an hour or so lying on her bed, me reading the rest of our book out loud while she quietly played, occasionally snuggling up next to me to study an illustration of Ma and Laura making cheese, or Pa watching a doe and her yearling fawn from his perch in a tree. When the book was finished, Annalie asked if she could swim, so we filled up the pool and she swam and splashed for a good hour while I read and made notes on something I’m editing for a friend.

We ran some errands: the craft store, the grocery store, Starbucks. Back at home Annalie put on her pajamas and brushed her teeth, and we watched an episode of Chuck at Annalie’s request. We sat on my bed as I read two chapters of Little House on the Prairie while Annalie pretended to wash and cut my hair. I turned out the light and Annalie twined her legs and arms around me, her head pillowed on my arm, just as she’s done since she was a baby. She requested sleepily that I sing to her.

Despite the Second Markering Incident, it was a good day.