We group won a stuffed panda thanks to my husband who shot the water into the target hole faster and more accurately than the other competitors. We ate the largest biscuits I remember ever having seen and had some of the mini donuts we like to get each and every time we visit the fair.
My children rode some of the rides they liked from their earlier visits and added to them with new ones before it got too busy. My daughter had a very difficult day with the, “it’s not fair” and “but I didn’t get to” or “but I wanted to” comments. This is in significant part related to her vision but is also based on where she is developmentally. That and the combination of parenting responses we’re giving her (faulty at best) isn’t helping. So she got in trouble several times and my husband’s and my tempers were strained and subsequently lost.
As I was taking my daughter to the bathroom during a break she stopped me and wanted to show me something on the concrete. She’s able and enjoys following painted lines but this was something new. She said, “that’s a ’T’ and that…is a ‘3’. What does that mean?” She was correct in what she saw and I told her it was a number of a parking space.
For the rest of the time we were there she was looking for these same types of markings. Number letter combinations that looked like this:
She had a hard time with the number ‘1’ at first because it had an addition on the top and a line at the bottom she wasn’t familiar with. My mother-in-law said she noticed it was easier for my daughter to see in shade versus when sunlight was on the markings. So not only can she write the digits zero through nine, she can recognize them, provided they’re large enough.
We left the fair by taking the sky car (horizontal ski lift) across the fairgrounds back to the entrance. Every year my children talk about going to the fair multiple times during the following twelve months and always look forward to the week when the fair finally arrives.
The Big Boy Update: My son asked Nana to buy him something as we were leaving the fair today. I knew he had wanted it because he’d been asking about it for the last two trips there. He and Nana got the item and they got it at a dollar off because Nana was out of cash. She told him, “okay, but this is the last of my money.” My son wasn’t overly fooled though as he said, “you mean the last of your money you brought with you today”.
The Tiny Girl Chronicles: I made a mistake today and told my daughter the ferris wheel was ahead. She said she wanted to do that for her last ride. We get on and I realized it was the carousel, not the ferris wheel (terminology mistake on my part). She complained bitterly and loudly for two-thirds of the ride and my attempts to a) console her, b) commiserate with her, c) apologize to her, d) distract her and e) ignore her all didn’t work. So I went with f) snap at her. I was upset because a mother and her daughter were beside us and my child was ruining their ride because she wasn’t having the exact right kind of fun she happened to think she should be having at that very moment and it just wasn’t fair. What I didn’t know was if that one ride was the only one that mother could afford for her child and they’d looked forward to it for weeks. I unceremoniously pulled my daughter off the ride and forced her to walk quickly to a bench by our final stop, the Sky Car. I told her if she didn’t shape up and start being grateful she was going to have to walk the entire way back to the car…and it was a loooong way. I know there are other things in play going on in her mind. I know this because she is normally a very grateful and happy little girl. We’re working on figuring it out. I hope for her we can figure it out soon because I hate to see her upset so often for such little things.
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