Wednesday, May 12, 2010
I Guess I'm Getting Old...
Anyway. Back to Glee. The only reason it's worth bringing up is that a girl was going to sing a song with a guy, and she said that she heard he liked classic rock. So I was expecting CCR, or maybe BTO, or one of the other great acronymical bands of the 70's. Uh, no. The song she chose was U2's "One". Which was released in 1991. Since when is 1990's music considered classic rock? I guess that makes me a classic. Yeah, I'm going with that. It sounds better than "old".
Let's see...two months since my last update. What have we been doing? Mostly planting the garden, playing with the neighbor kids (we have a 4-year-old neighbor girl and a 3-year-old neighbor girl and most nights you'll find one or both at our house), and all the other things that go along with having a job, two small kids, and a very naughty dog who finds it easier to piddle in the house than to ask to go outside. Between the dog and Natalie, who has been potty-trained since January but is still "fine-tuning", I think we are going to rip out the carpet and put in hardwood sooner rather than later. Carpet is too high-maintenance with young children and pets.
Saturday, March 6, 2010
A Misunderstanding
Friday, March 5, 2010
Part III: The Wrap-Up
Part III of the awfulness of the past six months is really not so bad anymore, now that it's in the rearview mirror. But at the time, it was very stressful so I will still mention it and then I will move on.
Natalie and Sam were playing froggie in the living room. This game consists of taking the couch cushions off of the couches, whereby they become lily pads. The children then morph into froggies and hop from lily pad to lily pad. Well, on the last lily pad, the smallest froggie lost her balance and toppled forward into the couch. And this couch has a hard frame on the front part, which is normally not exposed because the couch cushions are usually on the couch. Natalie hit one of her teeth just wrong on the hard frame and chaos ensued. And blood. Lots and lots of blood. Her tooth was bent backwards at a 45-degree angle and I was sure it would come out in my hand if I touched it so I just mutely stared and ran through all the possibilities in my head. Of course I was home alone as is the case 95% of the time these days, so I didn't even have a second adult to consult with.
I ended up calling her clinic's on-call doctor, who told me not to brush her teeth that night - and NO BINKY - and try to get her in to her dentist right away the next morning. So she very abruptly weaned from her binky. Surprisingly, she accepted it very stoically when I told her the doctor said she couldn't have her binky for awhile.
Now it's fine, and even straightened out on its own so there is no remaining evidence of the mishap. The dentist warned one more blow like that would probably be the end of that tooth - and as rough and tumble as she is, I'm guessing that tooth is going to come out before its time.
Sidenote - a couple of weeks ago, I found a binky underneath the couch cushions (um, maybe I should clean more often? But then again, no). Since Natalie had been binky-less for a good three months, I didn't think she'd have any interest in it, but was I wrong. She popped that binky in her mouth and picked up right where she left off. She had a major fit when I took it away from her but luckily, she never asked about it again.
So! Enough whining and complaining for awhile. 2010 is going much, much better, I'm happy to report. Natalie is almost completely potty-trained and we are down to only one foot of snow left in our yard after the past week of melting. Hallelujah!
Monday, February 22, 2010
A Tragic Play, Act II
Remember Johnny the Cow, the hamster? It was about one year ago that we took Sam to the pet store, after he'd become successfully potty-trained, and allowed him to pick out a small, furry rodent of his very own.
For a brief period last fall, Johnny practiced his escape skills religiously. He was like a tiny MacGyver, fashioning a rope out of bits of his fur and creating little parachutes out of scraps of lettuce and carrot tops. At least, that's what I assume based on the fact that he kept managing not only to get out of his cage, but also to drop the 4+ feet to the floor without ever getting hurt. In fact, I was starting to think he was invincible. Once, he managed to escape unnoticed while I was folding laundry. Then I saw the dog start tossing around one of his squeaky toys, but upon closer inspection I realized that it was actually Johnny. I screamed and monkey-clapped my hands while Happy dropped the hamster and ran to hide under the chair, freaked out at my display. Whatever works.
Johnny was perfectly fine, in spite of his wild adventure. I put him back in his cage, and wound industrial-strength packing tape around his cage everywhere there was a seam. That finally did the trick. All else was fine until a few months ago, when seemingly overnight, Natalie took an intense interest in poor Johnny.
She'd push a kitchen chair over to the bookshelf on top of which Johnny's cage rested. Then she'd climb up on the chair, pop open the latch to his cage, and take him down to love him, and pet him, and squeeze him, and call him George.
I'd remind her that she could only take Johnny out if mom or dad were there to help. She took my advice under consideration but ultimately decided she could handle it herself. I reminded her that if she chose not to listen, she'd spend some time in her room. She took my advice under consideration and decided that she would start being sneaky about taking Johnny out.
So then. One day as I was in the office checking my email, she brought Johnny's exercise ball in to me and said sadly, "Johnny has a bad owie". Poor Johnny was lying limply in the bottom of the exercise ball, all life gone from his tiny body. Natalie told me she "squished him in her hand". I have no idea what that means, since I know she wouldn't have intentionally hurt him. My best guess is that she tripped while she was carrying him, and...well, you can guess the rest.
I'm still sick about it. He was such a friendly, trusting little thing and I should have done more to protect him. Sam took it pretty hard, too, and that night we had some pretty deep discussions about what happens when you die. I think what broke my heart the most was when he started asking where he would live when Mom and Dad die. Even though I tell him that Mom and Dad will almost definitely be around for a very long time, he continues to worry.
Since "the incident", I've been borrowing a lot of kids' books from the library on death and dying. I should be embarrassed to admit this, but there's one called A Story for Hippo that had me sobbing by the end. I hid that one away so Sam wouldn't ask to read it again. There's a reason why I've never watched "Beaches" or "Terms of Endearment" a second time, as great as the movies were. I am a mess.