Sappy (sadly happy) Faced Stickers

There was a point when Ellie took a short respite from peeling crayons and became interested in stickers.  Happy faced stickers to be precise.  She would peel the stickers and either put them in a book I'd given her for her sticker collection or she would put them on the wall beside her bed that I had covered with felt.  There was a day I gave her a pack of stickers and went to take a shower.  I came back into her room and she had taken all the stickers and unpeeled them into a pile.  Every single sticker was stacked in the pile on her lap.  I sort of gasped because this was not what I had expected to see upon entering her room.  Which in turn sort of startled Ellie.  She inquired whether or not she was in trouble.  I explained that I was merely surprised she had gone through all her stickers, when I'd left her, she had been in the process of slowly peeling a sticker and placing one on each page of her sticker book.  It was as if her brain had a sudden glitch and could not stop itself from peeling all those stickers all at once.  At the time it was one of those sad/funny (sunny?) moments with Ellie.

Several months ago, Ben and I devised a system to allow Lotta to get more sleep.  Before the system was initiated, Ben loved to wake Lotta up so he could spend more time with her.  As I have mentioned, Ben has become interested in making money to buy himself Legos.  Thus, every time Lotta is asleep, Ben has the opportunity to earn between 1 and 3 cents.  If Ben is completely silent and non-disruptive, he earns 3 cents.  Ben is highly motivated to be quiet now and Lotta has more of a chance to sleep and I am not constantly having to say, "TOO LOUD" in a too loud and naggy voice.  Win-win-win.

The way I keep track of Ben's daily quiet-ness is through stickers on his calendar.  Lotta has noticed me putting stickers on Ben's calendar and she has become quite enthralled.  Although she thinks they are band-aids and so puts them all over her body.  Wherever her pretend ow-ees are.

Recently I unearthed the felt fabric that had been hanging in Ellie's room.  All of the stickers were still attached.  Lotta had a grabulous (great fabulous) time peeling them off and applying them to her body.  It was as if the two sisters were working together on a project.  Made me feel both sad and happy or sappy as Ellie would say.  Sad, wishing that Ellie were here to contribute to all this stickery-ness, or most likely yell at Lotta for messing up her design.  Happy, that even across the expanse of time, the two sisters could connect on this unlikely project.