Vent update

For now at least the storm seems to have passed.

Gracie has had a very busy week. She has had VBS at a friends church every morning this week. She loves going to VBS and in the next couple of weeks she will be doing it again at her church and her friend will be coming with her. She is such the little Evangelist. Speaking of that, cute Gracie-ism that happened the other day. Gracie was discussing the days learnings with her BFF and classmate Kaitlyn and the subject of the day was Adam and Eve. Both girls are a bit ornery more often then not and are used to being told they are being 'disobedient'. Gracie likes the word and was explaining to Kaitlyn that:

"Eve was being disobedient to Gaaawwd."

Note the spelling, its not God, or just God, but rather Gaaaaawwd. The only thing missing was the 'Mah" at the end of it. One of those things you just had to hear for yourself I suppose.

Thursday and Friday have been melt down free days. Wednesday night was a sizable melt down, but by and large this week hasn't been nearly as bad as it could have been.

Angie took a break from her Tuesday night women's bible study group to take Gracie to see the Kung Fu Panda movie. It was girls night out, just what the doctor ordered it would seem. In the movie the panda is adopted, by a duck. This allowed for explanation and reinforcement of the word 'adopted'.

Gracie, besides VBS had Cheer leading, Kids night at skyline, two play dates and a host of other less complicated activities. She has also had some shopping adventures and tomorrow morning is the parade. She is in a fourth of July parade with the other members of her squad. Kindergartners on parade, should be, well, interesting to pick a word. I think her social schedule is more involved than mine, actually, I know it is.

Another Gracie-ism Evangelical moment. She picked up her cell phone, (plastic one with princesses on it, no she doesn't have a real one yet, she needs to be able to add and spell first) and began talking to her Aunt Carol. She was overheard to have said, Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John, those are the Gospels. After hanging up, Angie asked her about her call, she said she called Carol to tell her about the Gospels, cause she thought Carol needed to know. (Hmm.....) Angie asked if she learned that at VBS, and Gracie said no, it was from Rock and Roll church. Our new church has contemporary praise before worship that is somewhat jam session like. Its a bit loose and free, and loud, and most importantly, honest praise. Gracie loves it and she even likes to dance with mommy. She hasn't gotten brave enough to head out into the aisles with the other kids, but she is watching them and will join them someday I think.

Much time was spent this week talking with Gracie about her being adopted. Kung Fu Panda provided another opportunity to explain that its okay to not look like your parents, the bears mom is a duck, and try and introduce the word adopted as a good thing. We have spent much time talking about the Chinese mommy this week as well. I think Gracie would like more answers to her questions other than we don't know, but to these questions, we don't know is the truth. We offer possible explanations, which Gracie appreciates, but I think she is still processing it all. Gracie made some comment this week about liking having two mommies.

Back to the Wednesday melt down. This melt down was caused over something silly, a drink of water, but I use the term melt down because its an accurate comparison, nuclear melt down. The trigger was a drink of water, the cause was over stimulation, exhaustion, and emotional stress leftovers from earlier in the week, in my opinion. Melt down is an apt comparison because, first of it has a cascading, self feeding effect. It starts with a trigger, and once the reaction starts, it feeds off itself, growing larger and larger until its out of control and raging. The amount of anger that blows out of her 30 something pounds is something that must be witnessed to be believed. Mom and I have different methods for handling these melt downs. Neither of us are right or wrong, we just have different approaches, which cause a little friction between us but we have learned to work with each other. The standard rule is, who ever provided the trigger is the one who takes the primary role in dealing with the radioactivity. We then share our opposing opinions once the blast has been removed from our vicinity. Mom looks at it like this, she lets it go and by and large ignores it, letting it consume all the fuel it has, hoping the damage can be contained, and once the heat dissipates some, she will go in as a mop up operation and clean it up then. This is when she goes after the apology, teaches the lesson, makes up, whatever is required. This requires a skilled level of timing, too soon and you just add more fuel and it starts all over. I prefer to brave the nuclear tan method. I go after it right then, getting irradiated all the while, but trying to cool it off and remove fuel to minimize the damage and re-establish a more controlled environment faster. I try to teach the lesson in the midst of the storm of atoms, seek the conciliatory apology while she still is involved in the situation. This is a logical approach to end it sooner and minimize the trauma and the drama, but logic is also my fatal flaw. The logic of a four year old is limited to start with, the logic level with anyone, four or forty, fades fast with emotions such as anger and frustration, so an angry frustrated four year old has about 10 seconds of logic to work with so I am swimming upstream in the cooling tower from the beginning. I guess this is why parenting works better when you have two people doing it.

I will try to get some post worthy parade pics tomorrow, and some of her in uniform as soon as we have them in.