After a full day without Jennifer and Tara, the house still stands, and Anna is doing much better than the first night. She was amazingly well behaved all evening; very chipper at school, all the way through dinner (unprecedented!), and through the evening. This has been one of those “stepford days” we have every now and then. Bedtime was still a minor struggle, as Anna seems to be very averse to certain things, and I can’t tell if it’s genuine or not. Lately, she has been going potty many many times at night. I think it’s just her way of stalling. The last two nights, I have had to show her, as she whines and watches tearfully, how to obtain toilet paper without dislodging the roll–the TP-holder in her bathroom is not very robust. I showed her how to hold the roll in place while tearing the paper off, because if you try to just yank a portion free, the roll will fall off–this is a huge tragedy for Anna who gets very upset if she thinks she has broken something. Of course, once I have her in bed, she is able to go to the bathroom on her own without any sort of TP-tragedy. Nevertheless, we’re going to Home Depot today for a new roll-holder.

Last night I also heard her doing a lot of running around until about 8:40 (a full hour after bedtime), and upon coming upstairs later, found a neat stack of some items which she didn’t want in her room. Her room is generally a mess, but for some reason, she seems to know exactly what’s in it, and has a sense of what does and does not belong. Example: last night, we considered her Dora the Explorer activity book as a bedtime story, but it uses erasable markers, and she only has crayons in her room. Thus, she immediately had to put it by the top of the stairs, because it no longer belonged in her room. Also, any extra toys or stuffed animals which make it into her room during the day must be expunged at night time.

Well, I’ve got ten minutes to take a shower before she gets up, and today is sure to be a busy day in a busy weekend…