Elaina

Elaina finally turned 3 on 18 March. The day when I hoped that she will step out of her terrible two stage finally came… but it didn’t quite happened the way it did for Matty. She is still a diva like she had always been before 18 March 2010. We had the usual 3-cake repertoire for Elaina – a 3kg castle cake loaded with marzipan, a Minnie Mouse cake for her school celebration and a Hello Kitty cake with compliments from her maternal grandpa. Fortunately the leftover cake for this year wasn’t as bad as the last… at least I didn’t feel that I had cakes coming out from my ears.

Unfortunately for Elaina, she was confirmed to be down with Mycoplasma few days after her birthday. Actually she has been coughing since Chinese New Year and had been toeing in between “getting better” and “getting worse”. There was a period when she will only cough in the morning and not a squeak for the rest of the day making the GP conclude it as a backflow of morning sinus (since there is a family history of people who suffer from that). The haze situation made the real condition even murkier for us to decide if the haze is making her cough or is there another reason behind it.

The whole family was in denial for a while of her getting the dreaded Mycoplasma. I suppose that is understandable knowing that getting Elaina to take the blood test will be a test of patience and the antibiotics is not going to be very agreeable to Elaina’s palate. In the end, the mummy had to play the bad guy and take her in for the blood test despite some sounds of protest from the rest of the family. A mummy has to do what a mummy has to do. I won’t want Elaina to cough for 4 months like what happened to Matty. I rather she bite the bullet, suffer for 2 weeks and get it over and done with

The road to recovery has been dramatic for Elaina. She had a bruise on her right arm from the blood test, she will kick, scream and cry when she knows that she needs to take the yucky antibiotic. She will cry for no reason and begged us to bring her to Disneyland (because we threatened her that she won’t be able to go on the holiday unless she recovers). Obviously, Elaina didn’t take the threat very well and we were sorry that she was traumatized by it.

Four more days to go for the antibiotics and I am keeping my fingers crossed that her cough will leave her alone after that.

Kicking the Habit

Despite the bloody incident, Elaina has never been deterred to stop her thumb-sucking business. Our hope that she will kick this bad habit once her teeth pushes through didn’t happen either... the moment of ecstasy is more important than any discomfort or pain she will feel from the indulgence.

As her parent, I cannot deny that I haven’t been doing enough in the past to break that bad habit totally, except to remind her that she is going to have an ugly finger or that the finger is going to drop off one day. Whilst we have been able to make Elaina stop sticking her thumb into her mouth during the daytime, it was almost impossible to keep pulling her thumb out in the middle of her sleep. She does it subconsciously in her sleep and it is hard to tell her off for that. And of course, the sucking motion has always been what lulls her to sleep. For that we have to take the entire fault for not stopping her. It was just an easy way out for everyone during bedtime.

I finally harden myself and bought an applicator for putting on Elaina's thumb nail and when sucked on will leave behind a bitter taste in the mouth. We prep her last night by telling her that the applicator will make her thumb and thumb-nail prettier (we are not lying because those years of sucking has left behind a big scarp on her left thumb) but will taste yucky if she puts the thumb her mouth.

Not surprisingly, she instinctively put her thumb in while trying to fall asleep. It was equally not surprising that she ended up crying. But the surprising part is the reason why she cried. It was not because of the after-taste but she is upset that her nail is no longer pretty now that she has licked off the application and even asked for another coating to be applied to her nail.

The Definition of Evening

The other day I was trying to explain to the kids about the difference between night and evening, and that the evening is basically the transition from daytime to nighttime.

Matty was able to grasp it quite fast and even gave a very funny definition – “evening is when the sky gets really squeezy with the moon, the stars and the sun up there”.

Enough is Enough

Barely 2 years into being part of the education system, Elaina has decided for herself recently that she had enough of school. Each day she will cry when being dropped off at school and come back declaring that she is not going back to school ever again. The initial enthusiasm burning in her seemed to have dissipated overnight, one would have thought that something bad must have happened to her thus resulting in that reaction. In fact her teachers were extremely worried of the change in her attitude and scratched their heads over what could have caused it. We were even called in by her English teacher for a discussion.

Truth be told, there is nothing abnormal in her behavior. She was just finally “showing her true colours” now that she has grown comfortable with the environment and the people around. She was just like a little walking volcano that will explore a few times a day and mostly over insignificant events. The best advice to her teachers was to totally ignore her and exclude her once she gets to the point of being ridiculous. When she realizes that nobody is feeding her the attention she is craving for, she will naturally stop.

Chances are that her teachers might have been firm towards her bad behavior causing the repulsion she had towards school. Now that she knows the teachers have been talking to us about her has made it harder for her to change her mind that school is not where she wants to be. I am still keeping my fingers crossed tightly that this is just part of the Terrible Two stage and it will blow over soon once she blows the next candle on her birthday cake just like Matty.