This was almost as exciting as when they first were potty-trained…

The other night, I awoke to the sound of the kids’ bedroom door opening. Then, the bathroom light turned on. After a few moments, the flush of the toilet. Then, the sound of the bedroom door again.

The next day, I asked them, “Did someone go to the bathroom in the middle of the night?”

ELEANOR: “I didn’t”.
MIRANDA: “I did! And I didn’t even tell Daddy!”

A bit of background–Bernard tends to them if they call out in the middle of the night. We decided this in advance for two reasons: 1. Bernard stays up until 1 am or later normally. 2. Since the kids are really clingy with me, we thought that my responding to them at night would give reinforce the “secondary gain” of seeing Mommy in the middle of the night. So, usually, the kids lie in bed and cry out, “I NEED TO PEE!” Then, Bernard has to get up and escort them to the bathroom. So Miranda was proud of her “not telling Daddy”. I gave her a high-five.

Miranda described what happens at school:

“First, we finish breakfast. Then we go upstairs and take off our shoes and put on our slippers. Then we do our work. Then we go outside and eat lunch. Then we sleep. Then we wake up and go outside. Then we go inside. Then you come.”

From Twitter: Miranda tried to sound out how to spell magnet: “M-N-K. Magnek.”

Miranda had udon, tempura, peach juice, and chocolate milk–and then threw up.

Eleanor skipped her swim lesson today. She’s getting over being sick, but I think she also doesn’t like it. We’ll make her go next time.

Eleanor had a fever last night. She said she doesn’t want an octopus, mommy and daddy are on the ceiling, and that “we passed it”.

Eleanor: “Barney doesn’t have five fingers. He only has two.”

Two weeks ago, we went to the Farmer’s Market, and when we bought some flowers at one of the stands, the guy selling flowers handed me a closed lily flower and said that if I put it in a cup of water, it would open. I showed it to Miranda and Eleanor and explained to them that we needed to be careful with it, and keep it safe until we could put it in some water.

When we got home, I put it in a glass of water. Nothing happened that day. Nothing happened the next day. I think it was the fourth day that the flower suddenly opened all at once. We showed the kids how the flower finally opened.

On Wednesday this week, after the kids got home from school, Miranda picked a closed dandelion flower from our yard and asked Agnes if she could put it in some water to see it open. We weren’t sure it would work, but Agnes put it in a cup of water.

The dandelion opened and went to seed overnight. This is a picture from the next day. I’m impressed that Miranda made the mental leap that the same technique should work with other flowers.

Last night, about fifteen minutes after we put the kids in bed, Agnes and I heard their bedroom door open. Neither of us got up to see what was going on. We didn’t hear anything more, which was a little strange, but we figured we would hear something if there was anything to be concerned about. We both commented that it was a little weird, but didn’t really think anything of it.

Even after moving the girls from cribs into beds, neither of them have been getting out of bed until we get them in the morning. Miranda even yells in the morning that she needs to pee until we get her. We’ve been telling them that they can get up to use the bathroom, but we didn’t think they had started. Anyway, it was our theory that Eleanor finally listened to this, used the bathroom and went back to bed. Eleanor seemed like the more likely of the two since she got up at least once last month saying she couldn’t find her sister.

About an hour later, I was doing some cleaning up around the house, and I saw that the kids’ door was still open. I didn’t want to disturb them, so I went to pull it closed, and when I looked into their room, I noticed Eleanor’s bed was empty. It didn’t seem likely that Eleanor had been wandering around downstairs quietly for an hour, but I also had no idea where she was. I finally checked the guest room and found her asleep on the bed. No one regularly sleeps in the guest room, but sometimes we put Eleanor in there if we need to separate her from Miranda during weekend nap time.

Several more hours later, I was turning off all of the lights in the house, and I heard Eleanor yell, “It’s dark!!” I was pretty sure she was asleep, but I guess she was still sensitive enough to the light to notice. I took the opportunity to bring her back to her room and put her back in bed.

This morning, I said that Eleanor had gone to sleep in the guest room and asked her why she did it. She seemed reluctant to answer. She said, “’Cause… ’cause… ’cause…”. Then, in a tiny voice, “I don’t like my bed.” After a moment, in an even smaller voice, “I like the pink bed.”

I’ve been writing about Eleanor’s changing tastes in colors for the last two months or so. Her sheets are currently all blue, but I guess she’s decided that she doesn’t like those any more. I told her that she needs to sleep in her own bed, and maybe we could go shopping this weekend for pink sheets.

Last week, in the middle of the night, Miranda woke up crying. When I went to check on her, she couldn’t initially say what was wrong. Finally, she said, “It hurts,” and had her hand on her ear. She didn’t feel warm, and it was possible that she had just slept on the side of her head in the wrong way, but I still brought her over to Agnes to see if she wanted to do anything about it. Agnes got out of bed, and was checking Miranda out, when I noticed Eleanor walk by our bedroom door.

I went out to find Eleanor at the top of the steps. When she saw me, she started crying. I picked her up and asked her what was wrong. She wouldn’t say. Finally, I asked if she was looking for her sister, and she nodded. Agnes wrote last month that Eleanor checks up on her sister.

I’m not sure where this new fear is coming from, but it may have something to do with my false threat to leave them behind if they’re not getting ready to go out quickly enough. I don’t ever mean it, but I think it’s time to stop using that tactic. I guess I also need to be more careful to let Eleanor know if I’m taking Miranda out of their bedroom at night.

By the way, Miranda seemed fine, and she went back to sleep with no further problems.