The Old House

My daughter knows we lived in another house before we built this one.   She also knows my son came a few weeks early and as a result he lived in our prior house for one week before moving in to this house.  The house is close to where we live now at about two miles away and over the years we’ve driven by it a time or two to show the children where we used to live.

They’ve never been that interested before but for some reason the other day, my daughter wanted to know about that house.    She wanted me to verbally walk her through the layout of the house while we were going somewhere in the car.   I described the house starting from the front entry and gave her some descriptions of what rooms were where and what items were in the rooms.   Some of those items are in our house now, but in other locations.

I tried to relate it to locations she knows, explaining how that house was very similar to how one of our friend’s house is laid out.   Only in our living room, we had a couch and a chair whereas Eleanor’s room has two pianos in it.   That was unexpected to my daughter.   She didn’t realize Eleanor had not one, but two pianos in their formal living room—one being a grand piano.   I didn’t know how to explain a grand piano to my daughter other than it was much bigger and didn’t sit against a wall.   The next time we were over at Eleanor’s house, I told her I’d show her what the shape was.

I thought she was done asking about the old house, but I was wrong.   Later that evening, we were back home and my daughter asked me to come to the front door with her.   She wanted me to physically walk her through how that house and this house were different.  I took her hand and explained things like, “our dining room table is in the room to the left, now, but in the old house there was a room to the right whereas we have a wall here.   That’s where the dining room table was.

The similarities to Eleanor’s house helped (aside from the grand piano delta).   I got my iPad out and brought up pictures of the old house.  My daughter can see, well, we don’t know what she can see.   Sometimes she can see something if she wants to, but it’s not uncommon she’s seeing something more clearly because it’s been described to her and she’s using that information to formulate a picture in her head.   I was showing her the rooms and she mostly could see differences in dark colors.  

As she went through the pictures, gleaning little in the way of actual visual information, I would describe the rooms and pictures.   I stopped her on one and said, “oh, this isn’t a picture of a room, but of something that used to live in the house with us.   Do you know what it might be?”   I thought that was a fair give away, but she didn’t make the connection.   I was doing a little test to see if she could see what was large, taking up the full area of the iPad’s screen, but no, she could’t tell.   I told her it was Lucy, our dog who died two years ago.  

She said, “aww” and then asked me where Lucy lived in the house.   I said she lived all over the house.   She was confused and asked again.   I think she wanted to know where Lucy’s “bedroom” was but didn’t quite know how to ask it.  I told her that just as she had lived in this house since she was a baby, Lucy lived in that house from when she was a baby too.   She remembers Lucy, but it’s a fading memory.   She does remember the tree in the backyard though that Lucy’s ashes are buried under.

The Big Boy Update:  My son is in jeopardy of not having a “freedom” for tomorrow.   He has actually earned a freedom by doing things like talking respectfully, cleaning up after himself, not having to be asked multiple times to get something done, going to sleep calmly, to name a few.   What he’s not following up on is putting the checks on his chart.   One of the items he needs to accomplish to get a “freedom” (usually meaning screen time by choice) is my son has to talk to my husband or me and confirm which of the items he earned a check   He is responsible for managing his checklist.   And he’s forgetting to do so—even with reminders.   He’s just a few hours away from losing screen time for tomorrow.   And he’s been warned.   We shall see.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter is done with the ten days of high-powered antibiotics to knock out the bladder infection under the lining of her bladder.  I’ve had to talk about it several times when she was with me to explain the situation.   I don’t think she liked me talking about it though when she asked me in a stern tone, “is that appropriate to talk about?  You’re talking about down there” (pointing).