Saturday.

Sunshine has now completed four days of school. We are not doing the traditional Mon-Fri rigmarole because, well, no one deserves that. So, the school week will start on Sunday, *Monday off*, school Tuesday and Wednesday, *Thursday off*(also art therapy day), school Friday(along with PCIT) and Saturday, then the week starts over.
In Sept. Sunshine starts classes at the rec center - art, creative movement, "Funshop Kids" (basically, a class to help three to five year olds start to learn social skills and have fun).
We feel like breaking things up this way is more fair to Sunshine because five days of hard work in a row is asking a little much for her, us, and the poor pets. Breaking it up into two, off, three, off, seems more logical and fair. Any bigger breaks allow time for her to forget and us to have to reteach someone who doesn't want to admit learning. Which takes away from the actual learning. Today... even though it's Saturday, we went to the dog park and did math. Sunshine knows rectangles (oh my gosh, she defaults to EVERY shape being rectangle and having four sides, and two of the sides long and the other two short... this girl knows rectangles.), circles, triangles (a little sketchier, but she knows them), and squares (*s*pecial rectangles that have the *s*ame *s*ize *s*ides)... She decided that she wasn't.going.to.tell.me that that rectangle was, indeed, a rectangle. Instead she tried everything else. She managed to skip the number four while counting. (remember back in the day when she counted to fifty???) and decided that the "five sided" shape was a triangle, I mean, circle, I mean square, well... triangle...
We counted the sides, we talked it through, she finally decided that is was a rectriangle. I almost died laughing. I told her we both knew she knew the truth (and she fought a smile when I called her on it), so she was going to practice drawing rectangles until her hand fell off or she was ready to cooperate.
Then I had her draw a rectangle, she drew a triangle. (repeat ten times.) Then she drew an amazingly accurate square. Seriously. Fit the block she placed on it perfectly. Perfectly. After about her twenty fifth anything-but-a rectangle, one of the other dog-mommies came over with her basset hound "Molly" and asked if she would draw Molly a rectangle.
Isn't that cute???
I smiled and leaned back with raised eyebrows to watch Sunshine draw molly a hexagon. Molly didn't mind too much, she thoroughly kissed Sunshine's entire face until she had a massive cowlick, then she moved on to both of us. Molly removed more irritation than chasing aliens.
Of course, Sunshine sat and drew random shapes until she was ready and then she happily drew five clear rectangles. We raised heck over all of them. She beamed. She told me that she knew what a rectangle was the whole time. I informed her that I knew that and I knew that she wouldn't say it because she didn't want to tell me what she knew because then she felt more in control. This time she gave me the raised eyebrow, the glare, and the almost-invisible nodglare. We moved on.
I won because she completed the assignment and felt good about herself in the end.

After dinner she freaked the hello out.
Now, I know that the girl didn't sleep well last night, and she wet the bed, and instead of going back to sleep, she turned her lights back on and played until lord-knows-when. And I didn't give into her exhaustion.
She would whine that she was sleepy and I would say, "hmm, maybe, you should try sleeping, you know? at night? I'm sure you'd recognize it, it's that time when we sing to you, tell you a story, tuck you in, and turn out your lights? Sound familiar???" she whine that she was tiiiiirrrreeeeddd. I told her that "I was sorry but it was time to be awake and considering her choices. Maybe she would decide to sleep tonight because right now, we needed X(I don't remember what, but we were at the craft store!)" MommyM employed Sunshine to help her find the item. Sunshine got distracted, and mostly cooperated.
We were hungry and I had to get up every time Sunshine did, so I didn't especially want to cook. We went out to dinner at I*HOP (kids eat free, less than twenty bucks to feed the three of us giving mommies no meat and Sunshine lots of calories.), we got home, asked her to get in her vest and she freaked.out. She became violent, and out of control and wild. Definitely not the worst blow up, but she could not find control. We did the count, we ignored, we did time out, we gave consequences, finally, I told her that the ploy to avoid bedtime was not gong to work any longer. There would be no more time out, no more ultimatums, here are her pajamas, get dressed now or sleep in what you're wearing. I gave her the five count, there was no move toward pj's, so into bed she went, sans shoes. She threw a fit, jumped on the bed, banged on the window, yelled, wailed, and sobbed. I reminded her that if she needed help finding her calm, she was going to have to ask for help finding her calm. Crying that she wanted her "mommy" wasn't going to work, we weren't going in unless she was ready to ask for and get help finding her calm. Would.not.do.it.
Finally after about thirty or forty minutes of wailing, she calmed herself.
I went in, made sure she was tucked, told her I knew she could find her calm and that is why she wouldn't ask for help, because she could do it. and I was proud of her.
I kissed her little forehead and walked out.
Haven't heard a word from her since. Little one was tired.