Ritual

Like most four year olds, Olivia has her idea of how things should be done. Each morning, she starts the day with a warm bath. Once the bath is done, she sits in front of the space heater to dry. She hates being cold.

Her day continues with a three-mile drive to Gram's house and she probably spends the day jumping and spinning and prancing in front of the mirror. Since I'm not there, I can only go by my mom's reports of how the day went.

Our evenings are on the quiet side, a little tv, some dinner, a back rub as she settles in.

But...the ritual of scratching is making me nuts.

The past few nights, she's woken up between two and three am and demanded that I scratch her.

First she mumbles, "Scrath my back."

I usually mumble back, "You scratch my back, I'm sleeping."

She then sits up, which is probably what really wakes her up and says, quite loudly, "Scratch my back!"

I roll over and pull her back down and scratch her back for about ten seconds then tell her, "I'm done, go to sleep."

She rolls over and pulls her sleeve up and offers me her arm.

"My arm is itchy," she says.

I tell her to sctratch it herself.

She scratches it for a bit then offers me her thumb.

When I don't respond she actually takes me hand and puts it on her thumb to be scratched.

My mom suggested that perhaps we need to start brushing O again.

And this is a possibility. Maybe she really is itchy and brushing would help her to settle earlier in the night.

But honestly? I think she's waking up and is bored. She doesn't want to go back to sleep and is using the excuse of being itchy to wake me up to keep her company.

And so...I try to ignore her. Because what else does a bored person do at three in the morning but go back to sleep?

I remember four being tough for Alyssa. Four was when she started to realize she's a separate person from me. She realized she didn't actually have to do everything I told her to do. I think O is realizing that herself.

Aren't I in for a fun ride?