A Day in the Trenches

Whew! My daughter Abby's Brownie troop is - like all of them - selling cookies this season. (I would have included more pictures but I don't have permission from the other kids' parents).

I had forgotten how much energy eight-year-old saleswoman can have. They were a whole lot of fun, and MAN do they have energy to spare! Their two-hour shift was about the outer limit of their ability (for the last twenty minutes (and packing up) they had trouble staying on track, but the next troop was very polite about waiting their turn).

The song they sang*  about the cookies was hilarious, and I'm sure it netted them more sales than they may have otherwise have gotten. We got compliments from store employees ("I've seen a lot of kids selling various things here over the years, and your two Brownie Scouts here are probably the most polite I've seen"), cookies sent to the troops through Operation Cookie Drop, and an offer of a trade of a small child for several boxes of cookies (the girls were horrified, not realizing this was a joke, so I just told the father that we only took cash and checks and did not know the exchange rate for little boys. He came back later to buy his cookies).

They had fun, they made people happy, they organized cookies to send to the troops, and they even provided entertainment for tired shoppers. I'm exhausted.


*To the tune of Frere Jacques:

Girl Scout Cookies, Girl Scout Cookies,
Yum, Yum, Yum, Yum, Yum, Yum
Eat 'em by the dozen, Eat 'em by the dozen
They're all gone, They're all gone.

HOW old are they again?

When 8yo Abby announced in the car yesterday that she and her friends "really like Selena Gomez because she's a nice person not like the girl she plays on TV, and we don't like her boyfriend so we're calling him Justin Beaver", I about choked. Old enough to understand the differences between actresses and their roles, old enough to have celebrity crushes and dislike that celebrity's boyfriend, but still young and innocent enough to think that "Justin Beaver" is about the worst insult they can think of. HOW old are they again?

Lizzy (3), when asked what we do at Friday Night Games (I wanted to see where her fantasy vs. reality line lies), she said, "Someone tells you a stowy and you tell them one back". Which is about the most succinct description of role-playing games I've ever heard. I was pretty surprised she grokked it; Abby certainly didn't at her age, and Lizzy's imagination is so varied and vivid and has such a cast of thousands (Imaginary Friends Silver Ann, The Other Ann, and Ann who Lives at Ann's House, plus their brother Andy) that I was actually really surprised (and gratified). HOW old is she again?

(As I write this, she pointed out a pyramid she built of six-sided dice (yes, it is necessary to specify six-siders in this household) and informed me that it was a "pywamid with bathwooms on the middle level". Where does she get this stuff?)

Last December Abby had the Chanukah story read to her in the library and summed it up for me by saying, "A miracle is magic when God does it for you". And AD&D isn't even the game she's seen us play. HOW old is she again?

Miss Leanna has a sprained shoulder. Her left shoulder. As she is left-handed this is a problem. Poor kid. Sso she's doing quiet activities, and she brought a library book with her this weekend, and seeing as she's ten and y'know - a GamersBabe - I expected it to be about dragons or fairies or maybe - she's our Wild Animal SME - about animals. Uh, no - it's the National Audobon Society's First Field Guide to Wildflowers. HOW old is she again?

Of Beds and Kids and Games

As noted here, we got the girls' new bed put together. Today we finished cleaning up the mess generated thereby and I'm really proud of it.

Lizzy's dresser, the toy area, the bookshelf (those books that belong to all three kids), and their TV. The little shelf on the wall is full of those trinkets that nobody wants Lizzy touching (ceramics and so forth). Off to the left is the girls' computer table, but their computer isn't working right now and we're aiming to get a new one. As you can see,  they are Powerpuff fans.

 Lizzy's bed (lower) and Abby's (upper). Note the stairs instead of a ladder; each step has a storage drawer under it. Three drawers, three kids. I love it when a plan comes together!

Lizzy's bed (pink flowers on green) and Leanna's (multi wizards/princesses/unicorns on lavender). And Leanna's shelf (that she will get to organize and decorate herself).

Hopefully some time we will get Lizzy to nap again, in that sweet little bed. Oh boy, I sure hope so. Right NOW would be good. Any time now. I'm waiting.


Tonight is game night, but we're short a couple players. We'll see what happens.  And if that room does not look like this when those gamerkids leave tonight, well... I have photographic evidence than it DID look that nice when they got here.

In spite of GamerGirl not being able to make it today, she did send her Garlic Herb Bacon Cheese Log along and it was soooooooo good.

Soon it Will be Complete

So we bought the kids a new bed a couple weeks ago and it's beautiful. It sleeps all three of them, has storage, and is all-around great.

But I totally lost the motivation to clean up the wreck of their room we made in the process... so I have set aside tomorrow morning to make it clean (to adult standards). I have to work for a couple hours but because I live at the Other End of Town from where I work, and I possess the technology to work from home, two hours' commute for two hours' work seems silly. So I'll finish my tasks for the week soon after I send the kids off for babysitting / school, and then spend the rest of the morning finishing the girls' room. There Will Be Pictures, I'm sure.

Funny Things Are Everywhere

 Today, March 2nd, is Dr. Seuss' birthday.








The title is a quote from my favorite Dr. Seuss book. But I like most of the others as well of course. A few personal notes (IMO, YMMV):

1. It's okay to buy the abridged board books if your child's motivation is more about chewing on the books than it is reading them
2. Once they stop chewing them, get the unabridged Dr. Seuss's ABC at least
3. Dr Seuss just leads to... other poetry. Ogden Nash, Shel Silverstein, et al... these are okay (except The Giving Tree, where YMMV)
4. The animated Grinch = good. The full length movie notsomuch.
5. The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That is annoying to adults ("your mother will not mind at all if you do!") but captures the flavor of the original books remarkably well
6. The Lorax is preachy about the environment, but it does it so well that you only realize it when you're done reading
7. "A person's a person, no matter how small" is not about abortion.
8. If your kids will eat ham and eggs, dye them green on March 2nd. Fun. 
9. Huevos Verdes con Jamón is surprisingly well translated for poetry. Partly because Sam-I-Am is called "Juan Ramon" for the sake of the rhyme.
10. Yes, I know the guy's been dead since 1993. He's a personal hero, okay? 

My 2nd grader loves the stuff - she can "Read it All by Myself". The three-year-old (see above) has several of them memorized, although she turns pages at the correct intervals so it seems that she is actually reading.

Seattleish

Miz Liz - recovering from her cold - now has her normal Tigger-meets-Energizer-Bunny personality, combined with Dropping her Spoon and cold-induced narcolepsy (she's like a kitten - play-cry-jump-scream-pounce-shriek-snore). This makes her a bit... difficult to deal with. Although honestly, the worst? This time last year she had croup. With steroids to treat it. Exhausted sick baby who cannot sleep was no fun for anyone.

So there have been corporate changes at work, I have five weeks to find a permanent (or long-term) job, my preschooler is - ahem! - extremely three, and it's, you know, the tail end of winter. When everyone in Seattleish just wants the dreary to stop. This winter it was either snowing (more than usual) or raining (as usual). "You know, it rains nine months of the year in Seattle." Not quite. But by early March, it feels that way for sure!

I think I just want some sunshine. I'm native to Seattleish, so this is not actually normal. The Vitamin D pills have not yet kicked in, I guess, because I have no energy now that my toddler has too much. Yay. And then I get annoyed with myself for apathy.

I think I'll go BSU. This is not Boise State University, for those non-gamers in the audience. It stands for (on this family-friendly blog) "Blow Stuff Up" and it strikes me as a good activity for tomorrow after work. Maybe it'll even motivate me to do more productive things than killing defeating video game villains. Things like getting this place cleaned up for this Friday's game.