Birthday Parties and Emergency Visits

We went to Abby's friend Greg's 9th birthday party today. It was a lovely homegrown affair - movies on Netflix with popcorn, pizza, decorating cupcakes, passing around the Giant Bow to try on, and playground play. Everything went really well and the kids were getting along great (our three, Birthday Boy Greg, and Greg's friend Sam, who kept us in stitches by asking questions like, "Who wants to volunteer for my shrinky-freezy ray experiment?" He's a hoot.). Given the disparate age range (two nine-year-old boys and girls of nearly 11, eight, and three-and-a-half), everything went very very well. Until Lizzy ran into the street on the way back from the playground. Her biggest half-sister, Leanna, grabbed her arm and her elbow dislocated. Again. 

This is the third time she's had a "radial head subluxation" (aka "nursemaid's elbow"). The medical term sounds very dire (but then so does "suborbital hematoma", which means "black eye") and the colloquial term evokes a Mary Poppins-esque (the book, not the Disneyfied movie) Edwardian-era nanny, dragging her charges down the street by main force. Leanna feels bad. I told her not to, because a) I've done it in the same circumstance, and b) most of the women in my family have very loose joints so they pop out easily, and c) I'd rather Lizzy was in the E.R. for a dislocated elbow than because she was hit by a car. This is not like the nuts (where we discovered Abby's severe allergy because she and Leanna snuck food into their room) and it's not like the purple toe Abby got a couple weeks ago (where neither of them were watching where they put their body parts). This was a purely accidental booboo that could have been much worse had Leanna not reacted quickly.

Maybe this time the "don't run into the street" lesson will stick, since she's old enough to grok the consequences somewhat.

Cutting*

Not that kind of cutting. Nor that (well, a little of that second one - hubby does that for fun).

Cutting corners. Specifically a corner between the office and the classroom at Abby’s school. You would have thought I was committing some egregious sin by the reaction I got from Abby and a couple of passing students. Telling dirty jokes in church maybe, or spitting on a baby sparrow fallen from its nest. “Mo-om,” she hissed, “You’re not supposed to cut corners!” I was a bit defensive. “But I’m an adult! and I don't even work here” She rolled her eyes, “That doesn’t matter - the rules apply to everybody!” We marched on to her classroom, where I was forgiven. But when I got back to the office to turn in my visitor badge, the secretary noted that she cut that same corner more than a week ago and the kids are still giving her a hard time.

There was also cutting of hair. Abby’s hair, specifically. It’s very fine and she has tons of it, and it tangles if you look at her cross-eyed. When she was little it was down to the small of her back, but about a month into her first year at school we had it cut to shoulder-length with thick bangs. This suited her round face but it still involved a fair amount of angst regarding its care - brushing it is apparently agony and it always seemed to get tangled into irreversible knots at about her chin. She wanted it long enough to pull back but short enough that it was not a misery twice a day, we got her dad’s blessing, and tonight Grandma took her to get it cut. An adorable inverted bob with bangs; chin-length in front (so the sides can still be pulled back with a headband or barrettes) and nape of her neck in back. I can’t wait to see it live and in person!

Lizzy was a total hoot today too. I got back from a lunch date with my mom (a kid-free lunch! Mom’s been nagging me for weeks to do it) and she wanted to use the Netflix Instant Play to watch “that angwy gween man show wight there - but you have to bundle me when it gets scawy, mom... you can bundle weally good”. Yeah, we made it about three minutes into the Incredible Hulk cartoon before the bundling her wasn’t enough and we turned it off and she went out on the porch to blow bubbles, wearing nothing but her naptime pull-up and shoes.

And apparently blowing bubbles is not enough - not when you can bathe in bubbles. And splash in homemade bubble puddles. And slip-slide through the bubbles. And make friends with random neighbors walking by (we’re on the 2nd floor, so she’s holding onto the railing yelling things like, “Hi! I’m Lizzy, spelled Ell Eye Zee Zee Wye, and I live heah! Will you be my fwiend?” through the slats.) And then she came in with her chest and arms covered in slippery bubbles and I was planning on giving her a bath but she asked to play in the sink. She loves to play in the sink. For one thing, the sink is the only place she’s allowed to spit... and we had a little issue with non-sink spitting earlier in the day. She just stands on her hand-washing stool and splashes in the water, stirring with her toothbrush and dumping water from a little cup (and occasionally spitting), shrieking with glee, until the counter-top is soaked and she’s managed to rinse all the soap off her chest in the process and her fingers are raisiny.

Tonight’s bedtime was not nearly the trial they have been recently either. The fussing and wailing lasted for less than ten minutes!

*Disclaimer ~ this post was written in GoogleDocs during the Great Blogger Downtime of May 2011, so it may be a bit out of date by the time it gets posted on Blogger

It's Not All Fun and Games

Well, much of it is. But it's not all indoor fun and games of these sorts - today after school Abby and Lizzy and I went to see Abby's friend Kiki run in a track and field meet. Abby wants to join the track and field team next year - they don't take them until third grade - and she and I wanted to see what is was about, plus we wanted to support Kiki. I took Lizzy because she hadn't been out of the house all day and I wanted to give her some outside time in spite of the weather - and let her run off some of her excess energy. When we left the house it was sprinkling. No big deal - we're Seattleites and we can cope. Maybe we wouldn't be able to play on the school playground before the meet because the slides would be wet, but no real problem.

By the time we go to the rival school it was pouring buckets. Abby remarked that even Laston - who scoffs at our Seattle rain because he's from Texas - might think this counted as "real rain". So rather than play outside at all - and Lizzy was asleep in her car seat by this point - I had Abby do her homework in the car and helped her by reading the other actors' parts in her reading homework play. 

Kiki got first place in her division (4th graders) and second overall in her race (4th-and-5th-graders). Abby was screaming herself hoarse, standing in the rain surrounded by people from the rival school, shouting her own school's name. Who knew she had that much school spirit? She was practically shouting, "Hooray! I'm for the other team!" .

When we got home all three of us were soaking wet. Hubby's computer has been in the shop all day - boot sector virus - and he went to get it while we girls ate supper. He's contentedly typing away, I'm blogging and job-hunting, Abby's watching more episodes of The Addams Family and Lizzy's in their room watching The Legend of the Volcano Sisters. 

Sounds like a nice way to spend the late afternoon and early evening on a rainy day in Seattleish.

Dark is Not Evil

We have always known this at Chez Gamers' Babes. Abby's favorite TV/Comic character is Raven of the Teen Titans after all. So we were looking for something to watch tonight - something harmless enough for Lizzy but not really interesting for her because she has been in disgrace for passive-aggressive pottying (twice today she told Gramma she did not have to go and then went on the floor deliberately). And something we have not watched a gazillion times in the past year. And I came across the old episodes (1964 - older than me!) of The Addams Family on Netflix Instant Play.

Abby loves it. Wednesday Addams is totally Abby's kind of chick, perky goth innocent child as she the character is. Mind you, this is the original series, not the older and snarkier movie version.  Abby is even enjoying the black-and-whiteness of it all (literally, I mean, not figuratively speaking. That's another post.) She has declared it "a favorite", and is snapping along with the theme song.



And I was right; Lizzy dropped off ten minutes in. Thank goodness; she clearly needs the sleep. She was acting more like Chucky than like Wednesday.

Watching with Knowledge

So I'm watching Farscape on Netflix Instant Play whenever I am kid-free and at home at the same time. This is usually after ten at night, or sometimes during the day whilst job-hunting and house-keeping.

I know how it ends.

And I am a lot more genre-savvy than I was when I was watching it the first time - episodes I videotaped off TV myself! In fact, I vaguely remember fretting at Abby's dad - "did you set the recorder for Farscape?" - on my way to the hospital when in labor with Abby. And of course TV Tropes itself has made me far more aware of the various tropes, devices, conventions, etc. in use in any given thing I'm watching.

On the other hand, Abby, age 8, is ridiculously genre-savvy. She spends a lot of time talking to the TV, saying things like, "For crying out loud, don't split up! Mom, these guys are splitting up again! You'd think after what happened last time, they'd know better by now. Phht." She's hilarious. All the more so because she doesn't mean to be.

Oh, and she hates the word "hilarious". She can't really explain why. She just says it "sounds bad". And she's seen the first three Harry Potter movies but we're only halfway through the first book in our reading, and she keeps wondering why things aren't "quite right". Mostly I suspect because I can't keep up a British (or any of the other) accents in the book and so they just don't sound right to her.

I jinxed my mom. After yesterday's post, Lizzy has refused to nap today at Grandma's. Oops.

Lizzy in Other People's Houses

Lizzy sleeps better at my mom's house, no question. She goes to sleep more easily and naps longer, and well... naps on something approaching a regular schedule as well. Part of this is the more relaxed and quieter environment at my mom's - she does not sleep nearly so well at Mom's when Abby is there too - and part is simple family dynamic. Mom's a lot more no-nonsense than I am, and they watch "gwown-up shows" (aka soap operas) while Lizzy is dropping off. Apparently my grown-up shows are just too exciting to let her sleep, and when I try to do nothing so there's little stimulation for her, she makes her own stimulation; she giggles and flips around and cries and fusses. Occasionally we've tried holding her still, knowing that if she would just stop moving for a few minutes she'd drop like a stone. That rarely goes over well; she hates being restrained and it gets quite loud (and we live in an apartment). We've started putting her to bed early - if her dad puts her to bed she is far more likely to stay there - and there has been much drama thereby, but it's gotten slightly less each night. Eventually it will get to where it is down to book-brush-bed without angst, but we need to be consistent for several weeks, I expect.

Of course, Lizzy is ah... energetic under most circumstances. When she's one on one she is the sweetest child in the world - affectionate, kind, generous -  but the moment a third party comes into the mix she becomes a wild animal. This is more marked if the third party is a child or a visitor; less so if it's just the adults - me, my mom, Lizzy's dad - who are her regular caregivers. The last couple holidays have been exciting - her baby cousin is now big enough to play, but not yet big enough to hold her own against Excited-Lizzy. I'm not sure Abby is big enough to hold her own against Excited-Lizzy.

Heck, I'm not sure I am.