We’ve had a rather rough few days around here. It hasn’t been all bad, we’ve had plenty of storytelling and tickling and other pleasant interactions. But we’ve also had way more than our usual share of time-outs and dicussions about why it’s not okay to disobey your mother, or to speak rudely, or to throw books, or to hit. We’ve talked about how it’s okay to be angry, it’s okay to say, “I’m really angry about this,” but it’s not okay to lose your temper and take your anger out on the people around you.

I don’t think there’s any particular reason Annalie has been testing limits lately. She’s been eating and sleeping normally. Our routine is settling back down after travels and houseguests and sickness, so that’s probably part of it. I think it’s mostly just one of those things that kids do from time to time, checking to see if all the rules are still the same. Or maybe God thought I hadn’t been challenged enough lately. Who knows.

In any case, today was Annalie’s half-birthday—that is, the day she turned 5 1/2. My piano teacher’s family used to celebrate half-birthdays with half a cake, just for fun. Troy and I have celebrated each other’s half-birthdays a few times over the years (mine is 9/11, which has a whole new meaning the past eight years), when we’ve been apart on our actual birthdays. Today I decided to surprise Annalie with a half-cake because I thought we could use a fun surprise.

I tried to be sneaky about it. When I was in the kitchen cleaning up and Annalie was upstairs drawing and watching Cyberchase, I whipped up a small one-layer lemon cake as quietly as I could. I didn’t use my big stand mixer because I figured Annalie might hear it. While it was baking, I went back upstairs and played a game of UNO with Annalie, then went back downstairs to take out the trash and recycling, and take the cake out of the oven and make some frosting.

I discovered I could not make the frosting without using the stand mixer. Sure enough, within two seconds of turning it on, I heard Annalie jump off the couch and come clattering downstairs. I flicked the mixer off, met Annalie in the kitchen doorway and said, “You can’t come in! It’s a surprise for you and it’s not ready yet.”

Annalie grinned and asked, “Is it cake? It smells like lemon cake!”

“It’s a surprise, that’s all I’m saying. Can you please stay upstairs for a few more minutes? And not try to sneak into the kitchen? I really want it to be a fun surprise,” I answered.

Annalie, still grinning, replied, “Okay, Mama! I won’t try to sneak down, I promise.” Then, true to her word, she went back upstairs and stayed put till I was done assembling and frosting the cake. I was quite proud of her for that.

When I went upstairs to tell her she could come down and see her surprise, she fairly flew down the stairs, then giggled with delight when she saw the cake. I asked her if she knew why I made her half a cake. She didn’t, so I told her that today was her half-birthday, that today she was officially 5 1/2 years old. She laughed, then ran to get plates and forks.

We put candles in the cake, I sang to her, we took a photo for Troy, and she blew out her candles. We had tall glasses of milk and lemon cake with lemon cream cheese frosting for dinner. Annalie smiled and chattered nonstop the whole time, and gave me about 17 hugs and kisses while we were eating and talking about the fact that now she’s closer to being six than she is to five.

After dinner we turned on the Christmas lights still strung on our house and in the lemon tree, and went outside to play a game Annalie invented, called “Look, Gramaw sent me a care package!” Annalie put a bunch of stuffed animals and her Halloween candy in a big box, wrote “Gramaw” for the return address and scribbled fake cursive lines for the delivery address, and set it outside the sliding glass door. Then we came inside and went back outside, pretending to be surprised by the big box on the patio. Annalie spent a good 15 minutes exclaiming over the box’s contents and naming each of her “new” stuffed animals. She put the candy back in her Halloween pumpkin, saying she didn’t want any candy right then, since she’d just eaten cake. Very sensible of her, I thought.

Right before bedtime, Annalie almost lost it because she wanted to take a shower upstairs, not downstairs. I’d already switched from a bath to a shower because she insisted that she’d told me she wanted a shower (even though she had told me she wanted a bath), and didn’t feel like switching bathrooms. I told her that she could have a shower upstairs tomorrow, but tonight we were staying downstairs. Oh, the drama. Then she yelled at me because I grabbed the wrong cupcake pajamas from her dresser, she wanted the shorts ones, not the stupid long pants ones! Cue me counting to ten under my breath and saying a prayer for patience.

Compared to the defiance I’ve been dealing with in the past few days, this evening was actually pretty mild. I stayed calm and offered Annalie the choice between downstairs shower or going to bed early, and she backed down, grumbling, and even offered an apology for yelling at me. After her shower we were talking about the fact that when a grown-up says, “This is what we’re doing,” it’s not okay for a kid to yell just because they don’t like what the grown-up said. I asked Annalie why she thought she’d been having so much trouble controlling her temper the last few days, and she shook her head and said, “I just don’t know, Mom! It’s a mystery.”

Maybe it’s just because she’s 5 1/2 now. Life does get more complicated as you get older. I won’t make the mistake of thinking that a 5 1/2-year-old can’t be troubled or worried. I remember being 5 1/2, and in my experience childhood was not all gumdrops and roses. I guess all Troy and I can do is love her, teach her, guide her, give her as much freedom as we safely can, and surprise her with the occasional half-birthday cake.

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.

My mom flew back home a couple of days ago. It was wonderful to have her here for so long during the first part of Troy’s long deployment. After a farewell lunch at In-N-Out, we took her to the airport and hugged and kissed her good-bye. Luckily her flights home were uneventful. We miss you already, Mom!

As I mentioned before, when Joe & Kassie were here, Brenda and I took them to paint pottery. Kassie requested a dottery lesson, which was kind of funny, because Brenda and I had been scheming up a How-to-Paint-Dottery post, complete with step-by-step photos. That’ll be coming soon, I hope.

Joe used masking tape and created a pretty cool—and very manly—mug.

Kassie did a great job on her dottery mug, I think! As she said, it sorta looks like fireworks. I love the colors.

Brenda painted this little bowl to use as a water dish when she’s painting. Adorable.

I, on the other hand, had the weirdest day of painting ever. For some reason, everything was just slightly off with me that day. I had the idea to paint this little bowl like an orange, and it wasn’t working like I’d envisioned. I was struggling with the paint (my pottery studio recently switched brands of paint, and I’m still getting used to the new stuff which just acts different than the old stuff) and getting all frustrated. I jokingly called it “the doomed orange.”

Brenda had already finished her pieces, so she offered to finish the last coat of orange and paint the details in for me. I gladly handed it over to her. (It turned out better than I expected it to, mostly because of Brenda’s help, I’m sure.) I decided to paint some dottery. At least there, I know what I’m doing. Right?

Hmm, not so much. I chose pinks and oranges, but these new paints are slightly different colors than the old ones. And these new paints are funky before they’re fired…two of the pinks I used looked decidedly purple as I was painting, which was weird. Then I made a mistake on one of the circles and decided to just go with it, switching up the design and then ending with random dots in the remaining white spaces. Now I know there’s a reason I stick with the same design over and over again, because I do not like the way it turned out at all. Like I said, it was a weird day. Oh well, next time will be better.

At least my crocheting’s going well! I made this green, turquoise, and blue blanket for Erin’s brand-new nephew Christian. Isn’t he cute!?

Christian’s parents are Erin’s big brother Shawn and his wife Carissa. Here’s a funny story about Shawn: I transferred to North at the beginning of 10th grade and didn’t really know anyone. Erin and I had the same homeroom and the same lunch period, so we ended up eating together with two or three freshman girls…and this guy with long black hair and a scraggly mustache. I had no idea why this guy was eating lunch with a bunch of 9th- and 10th-grade girls, but everyone seemed to know him, and he was nice enough if a bit gross, so I just went with it. About two months into the school year, he was messing with Erin one day and she said, “Man, you’re gonna be in so much trouble when I tell Mom!”

Suddenly it all clicked and I blurted out, “Oh! Shawn is your BROTHER!” I got identical weird looks from Erin and Shawn before they started laughing. Shawn said I must’ve thought he was some kind of perv, eating lunch with a bunch of girls four years younger than him. I still laugh when I think about that.

And now that I’m done with Erin’s nephew’s blanket, I’ll be starting another. My brother and his fiancee are expecting their first baby in mid-November…my very first niece!