We’ve asked the girls not to come into our room at 5 in the morning. Siena will try to physically restrain Thalia or keep their bedroom door closed as Thalia tries to open it if it’s early, and the end result is quite the opposite of what we were aiming for, namely an amount of sleep that reasonable, sane people might assume they should be able to get with kids these ages. Instead, we get Thalia screeching at the top of her lungs as Siena tells her she can’t leave their room.

Or, Siena will pick out two sets of clothes for Thalia to wear in the morning, and Thalia will hate both of them, and then both girls will get upset: Thalia because she doesn’t like her options, and Siena because she’s only trying to help and she can’t stand it when her sister is upset.

We are now telling Siena to just try to worry about herself, and let us be the parents. “Some kind of help / is the kind of help…”

The night before was an unusually tough one. Siena came it just before four because she’d had a nightmare, and I soothed her and sent her back to bed. Shortly thereafter, Penny got feisty and jumped on my dresser twice, the second time knocking most of the contents off, including my MP3 player, my Flip video camera, Mama’s Kindle, and a bunch of gift cards, business cards, and other knick knacks I had moved there from my office in order to clean up that room for Siena’s cousin to sleep there. The girls were up around six, and even though they bugged Nonna and I didn’t get immediately up, I was still awoken by Thalia’s loud responses to whatever Siena and their cousin were saying to her. So by lunch time, I was tired, but I’m not sure I can blame a dropped glass entirely on exhaustion.

Nonetheless, the glass was down, the floor was wet with sixteen ounces of tea, and I was frustrated. This mess was going to require a mop to clean up.

Thalia was asking something like What did daddy do? And Siena was answering her, He spilled his water. Now, Siena knows a thing or two about spilled liquids. And most significantly, she knows just how mad and upset I can act towards her when she spills her milk after all the times we’ve told her to be careful with her cup. You can see it in her face and in her eyes when she knocks over her cup and milk is flowing across her plastic place-mat and seeping into the cloth ones we use that she knows I’m upset with her. Sometimes she’ll freeze and go into a shell, which only exacerbates the problem, because what we are then loudly commanding her to do is get up and get paper towels and clean up the mess before it gets any worse. In other situations when she’s done something wrong, I have observed her trying to hide what has gone wrong from me, or to see if she can get away with me not finding out, which I can see through in her face and the way she acts usually, but she cannot hide spilled milk or water, and she knows she has displeased me when that happens. And despite my best efforts to not be too harsh with her–she usually is careful, it always is an accident, and she is just five–I’m not sufficiently good enough, not sufficiently even-keeled enough any more to not let it get to me and not express my frustration with her through a raised voice and stern glares. And it’s times like that I think, despite all the things I am able to do for her, I’m still not being as good a father as I had wanted to be.

As I stooped down to survey the extent of the ice tea lake spreading on our floor, I was thinking of whether I really was tired enough to just drop a glass, of being tired enough that I wanted someone else to clean up the mess. But no one else could clean this up: I had to set an example that we clean up our own spills. I was thinking how much I wanted to just pick up the glass and throw it against the floor until it did break, but I couldn’t demonstrate such force and violence with the kids, let alone our guests. I was thinking whether I should get a bunch of towels from upstairs or go and get the mop from the closet first. Paralyzed by my thoughts, I knelt while the liquid kept spreading, and Thalia kept asking what did daddy do, Siena repeated that I spilled my drink, and eventually Mama told them both to stop it since I didn’t need to hear about it any more and they were just making it worse.

Then Siena said, “It’s ok daddy. I’ll always love you no matter what.”

I had already decided to get the mop first, but with the combination of my exhaustion, my anger, and this, I had to staying kneeling at the floor for a moment longer to fight back tears. I know that Siena is paraphrasing something Mama says to her when she’s has been upset with something Siena has done. But that Siena thought to say it when in the reverse situation she is presented with admonishment instead of such unconditional compassion, and that it came so quickly and easily to her, made my heart big and break at the same time. Of course you hear this from every parent, but we are both constantly amazed by and proud of our girl, with her sweet and caring nature.

Cleaning up the spill after that was no longer an annoying chore, and I sat down for lunch next to Thalia and we had a delightful time. Which means that Siena’s comments, most likely unbeknownst to her, had exactly the necessary effect.

And I hope Siena will always know that we love her forever, too, no matter what.

Merry Christmas, Siena.

P.S. As usual with these kinds of ramblings, it’s late and I’m sentimental. Time to go check on the girls and give them quick kisses while they sleep.

Here she is banging out a variation of Twinkle Twinkle:

Picture was 25 seconds at f/11 with ISO 400. Go go tripods and relatively silent cameras! Zoom in to the original size and you can make out her face pretty well in the dark.

Here’s another sequence we took while Thalia was napping, and the dog was locked up in her crate since she too liked to participate.

Cowabunga!

And where’d Siena go?

I see some hair and a foot!

Finally, to get a sense of the size of the pile, it was nearly as tall as Siena:

It’s nice to have such a willing and patient subject!

I did manage to get a few pictures during one of the colder games of her going after the ball and taking a shot on goal:

The main problem Siena has with soccer is that she seems to think that if someone else has the ball, then it’s their turn to have the ball and it wouldn’t be nice of her to take it away. I told her many times that if that “someone else” is on the other team, it’s never their turn to have the ball and she needs to be not nice for a change. But she’s just such a sweet, considerate girl that this is a very hard concept for her. We think that she’ll be better suited to sports where she’s competing a little less directly with opponents, like golf, marathoning, archery, or javelin throw — sports where one acts individually and is then compared to other contestants.

Thalia loved her butterfly outfit:

Siena was a snow princess, ice princess, or eskimo, depending on her mood. She certainly was properly attired for trick-or-treating when the snow hit on October 29th:

It looked kind of like this:

On Sunday, when things didn’t seem so bad yet, we had a relatively normal day, except the girls romped in the snow on October 30 and we had to wear coats inside. Siena did her homework while Thalia crafted some. (Siena’s homework in this picture is to write her address and draw a picture of her house. Our house is not actually as colorful as she makes it seem.)

We discovered that we actually can get to sleep in a house that is 53 degrees *inside*, though it’s not easy. We all wore two or more layers of clothes and had multiple comforters and blankets piled on top. Siena slept with me and Thalia snuggled with Mama so that we could make sure the kids kept warm. Every morning we would get up, get quickly dressed, hop in the car, and drive to Thalia’s day care to have breakfast there. The teachers were very understanding and accommodating in allowing us to camp out at one of the toddler tables. (Some of the teachers were without power for a few days as well.) Fortunately, both the kids’ schools were open on Monday so we were able to drop them off in a warm, lit environment for the days, while I was able to go into work to shower and have internet access. Mama’s work was closed, being tied to the same trunk line that our town is powered on, so she was stuck either in the cold with the dog or driving around trying to find places to get warmth, light, food, or all three.

On Monday, I ordered one of the few generators from Amazon.com I could find that could be delivered next day for an additional $3.99 (we are happy, loyal Amazon Prime members). I also picked up a small space heater. Once we got the generator all sorted out on Tuesday afternoon, we found we could run the fridge or the freezer or the space heater (on low), but not any two at the same time. We consolidated the remaining good foodstuffs into the fridge, and kept that going most of the time along with some lights and power strips upstairs to charge our phones and provide some night lights for the girls.

One evening we went to Lowe’s for a pre-dinner activity, and went to the mall after dinner to pass time until bed time. We even put the girls in their halloween costumes and let them ride the merry-go-round in our mall’s food court, which they loved. We aimed to get home a little after normal bed time and just pop the girls into bed, get things in order for the next day, and go to sleep ourselves. Two of the evenings some friends of ours in town hosted us for dinner and kid baths, which was a huge help.

Thursday we finally saw the utility company trucks pull into town, and by Thursday evening at 8 PM we thought they’d be restoring our power, but they didn’t; they just restored it on the street next to ours. We were disappointed, to say the least. Friday morning, I followed a utility truck from Virginia around our street like a stalking paparazzi, asking them how things were progressing and when power would get restored. It turned out there were some branches hanging on the wires at the end of our street, and those had to be removed. The workers from Appalachia Energy were very friendly, and about 10 minutes after he told me that they were just about to “make us hot” again (presumably not any sly innuendo there), our lights flickered back into existence, all our thermostats clicked, and all the baseboards got to work.

Two hours later I was on my way to the airport to go to Georgia for my grandfather’s funeral, and Mama had to go pick up Thalia from day care because she had a fever, which turned out to be bronchitis or pneumonia, the doctor wasn’t sure which, and she was home through Tuesday the following week. What a week!