bodacioussylph

Maggie: Can I be one of the Presidents one day?

Me: Sure! You'd have to work VERY VERY hard, though. It's not easy to become the President.

Maggie: I will. I will work VERY HARD. I'm so excited! I'm so excited to have everyone see my face on a dollar bill!

Me: Well, only the very best Presidents get to be on money.

Maggie: I will be a very good President.

So, I guess it's B---- for President in 2040 or so. And aiming to take over Lincoln's spot on the penny.

Ivy, holding a toy fork: "Me dot a fuck, Mom."

Ivy: Time-a eat, Mom.

Me: (11:45, sure!) What would you like for lunch, Ivy?

Ivy: Meat out!

Me: Potstickers? Okay.

(Because whenever we have potstickers, she only wants the pasta-y outside, not the meat filling. Go figure.)

Maggie's school district had an H1N1 clinic last Tuesday, so now I'm immunized, Maggie has had both shots and is fully immunized, and Ivy has had the first shot and is partially immunized. Big, big relief for me.

Got my hair cut! It's now a chin-length bob. And I love it!

We have magnetic letters on our fridge. Twice now, Ivy has poked the letter D and said, "is Da-ee." Precocious little thing. :)

Ives has been speaking in four to six word sentences! "Me-a choos ON, Mom." (Put my shoes on please, Mom.) "Me-a pick dis stowwy, Mom." (Please read me this story, Mom.) "Me-a dot gween socks!" (I have got green socks.) It's so great to be able to understand her.

I now have seven girls in my Daisy troop. Got the troop number today, so we're official!

I've made homemade bagels a couple of times now. Dead ugly but very yummy!

American Idol is back. As usual, not particularly enjoying the audition rounds...if it's not someone pimped for OVERCOMING TERRIBLE ODDS or SURVIVING A HORRIFYING EXPERIENCE, it's some poor deluded soul who thinks s/he is a way better singer than s/he is.

So we all got sick on Christmas and took like a week to get over it and that was not much fun.

Moving on.

Verrrrry early this morning, like 3-ish, Ivy said this: "Fwoof soft. White face. Wed nose. Fwoof big! Moo tiny. Mommy big! Ivy tiny." Which is a pretty impressive sequence of observations, I think.

We're sitting at the dining room table, enjoying sandwiches from D'Amato's. Ivy looks up at the ceiling and draws our attention to the fact that the light fixture looks like a balloon (at least, I think that was the import of her monologue). rainfletcher looks up...and says, "you know, I think I see one of those little inchworm guys on the ceiling."

Sure enough, there's a caterpillar on the ceiling. No, two. No, three.

Ew.

I'm completely skeeved out by this. Rain deals with the critters and we resume our dinner.

I keep obsessively looking up. Irrational concern that a caterpillar will drop on me. Though actually it's not irrational to worry about falling caterpillars if you have had caterpillars on the ceiling.

We still have the question of why the darn things were up there in the first place.

"Mama, why did Thomas tell Spencer that he was going to Brendenham Docks when he was really going to go and visit Hiro?"

Well, see, sweetheart, Thomas LIED to Spencer so he wouldn't find out about Hiro. Because...ummm...lying is...okay...if you do it for a good reason...?

Gee, thanks, HIT Entertainment. Appreciate that you taught my daughter that particular little life lesson.

Ivy found a Barbie dress and wanted to put it on a Barbie. (Shocking, I know.) So I went and found a Barbie and...there is a little reddish spot at the apex of each of her breasts.

The obvious conclusion is that Maggie decided to draw nipples on her doll.

I'm not sure what to think of this.

I had always hesitated to buy a five-pound box of tangerines, for fear that we wouldn't get through them all before they went bad.

Well, so much for that worry. In 24 hours, my kids have eaten nearly half the box. And no signs of stopping...no sooner does Ivy finish one than she's asking for "Moar!"

(But zomg, citrusy diaper. Ew.)

*******

Forgot this one yesterday.

"Dah-ee. Oooo-urk."
"Yes, Daddy is at work. Where is Sis?"
"Tooool."
"Sis is at school. Where is Mommy?"
"HEAH! Ivy, me! Heah!"

1. "Moar ohnsh." "I'm sorry, I put the last of the orange in Sis's lunch today. We can buy some more at the store today though."

I bought a five-pound box of seedless satsumas at Trader Joe's. Troubled: "Seets!" "There are no seeds in this one!" The tangerines are so tiny and so sweet and good--she's eaten three of them already!

2. Ivy and I were sitting in the bedroom when Maggie walked in. "Hiya Sis!"

3. At CVS, waiting for Taurus' insulin prescription to be filled. There's a package of Power Rangers-esque action figures. "Boo. Geen. Wed. Wewwo."

4. My sister has posted a couple of youtubes of Baby P. Ivy wants to watch them over and over. "Baby P! Baby P!" And she'll specify the one she wants: "Tih-ee" for the one with a cameo of Ina the black kitty, "Buh-ee" for the one where Baby P has a bunny hat.

5. "Wead!" So I read the proffered book. "Wead adain!"

6. She removes the magnets holding the alphabet poster on the fridge. The poster falls down. "Paht!" Because it fell apart.

So it's been a busy few weeks.

The Sunday before Thanksgiving we went to the Mother Goose Parade. Maggie was absolutely thrilled and now has plans to "wide on a horse in da pawade in a wong gween dwess." Never mind that she's been on a pony once and the rules of the parade are that you have to be at least 12 to be an equestrian. Ivy loved the giant "duck!" (though technically it was a GOOSE) balloon.

Day before Thanksgiving, we went and bought a bunk bed for the girls. It's really nice, and the discount warehouse we bought it from gave us a very good price. The best part is that the lower bunk is a full, so in the event of a sick child I can stay in the room with her without being excessively squished. FORESHADOWING.

On Thanksgiving, Maggie started to cough a bit. By the next day, I had a dreadful sore throat and was coughing also. On Friday the bed was delivered and rainfletcher put it together with no help from me and great interference from Maggie, who was not laid as low as her mother.

Lots of coughing and hot tea over the next few days; Rain stayed home from work Monday & Tuesday, and Maggie stayed home from school on Monday (ironically, I had to go to school at pick-up time anyway because we had a Daisy parents meeting scheduled).

Last Saturday, Juanell took Maggie, Ivy, and me to see The Nutcracker. Ivy fell asleep before the curtain and woke up midway through the first act, absolutely enchanted. Maggie was thrilled by the whole thing, and has plans to be the Sugarplum Fairy.

Mags had her age-five doctor's appointment yesterday. She was SO TIRED and SO HUNGRY, but mean Mommy made her go anyway. Got her the H1N1 vax, so that was a relief. She missed a few of the beeps when her hearing was checked, more from being distracted than from not hearing them, I think. And she missed a few of the letters on the eye chart, so looks like she may be on track to get glasses in third grade like her Mama. At least she won't get totally dorky looking ones, not if I have any say in it.

Also yesterday I took Taurus in to the vet. His weight had dropped precipitously recently--and while he had been obese, it just didn't seem healthy. His face had changed shape; he had a weird lump under his chin. And the final straw was that he'd started drooling a lot. So turns out his blood sugar was like six times normal, and the diabetes had exacerbated his bad teeth. The lump under his chin was from an infection in the roots of his teeth. He had five teeth extracted and will need insulin twice a day. We're hopeful that getting the diabetes under control will sort out his other issues and he'll be back to normal soon.

That wailing sound that is echoing across the land is NOT a herd of elk. It is my eldest daughter.

Yesterday Maggie was playing with some magnetic paper dolls on the fridge. She dressed them in their fanciest dresses and told me "they're getting married!" "Oh, how wonderful!" said I.

And then she got an inquisitive expression on her face. "Who can I get married to?"

"Well," said I, "you have to be quite a bit bigger to get married. And you can't marry anyone you're related to, so you couldn't marry Ivy or me or Daddy, or any of your uncles or cousins. And you should marry someone you love, who loves you, and who will be a good partner to you. But aside from that, you can marry anyone you like."

She digested that for a bit and then went back to playing with the dolls.

(As a semi-related aside, directed mostly at stoneself though anyone's input is welcome--what verb or phrase should one use to express this thought: "If my small child ____ gay"?

"Is"? "Turns out to be"? "Becomes"? "Grows up and is"?

My thinking gets all muddled up with nature/nurture, biological/environmental, "what age did you know you were gay?" lines of thinking. Maybe there's no right answer, but I'd appreciate any insight.)

Haven't posted in a while. Let's see....

Maggie's birthday was pretty low-key. We had brunch as usual the preceding Saturday, then went out to dinner with Jerry & Janice on the birthday proper.

Slight snag post-birthday when she decided that all of her size 4 clothes are now too small for her.

Odd exchange: one of Maggie's classmates said to me "I can't believe she's five already!" Which, yeah, it's a bit boggling to me too, but I'm her mother and I remember when she weighed seven pounds, unlike her classmates who have only known her since August. I just said, "Well, Maggie's a Kindergartner, just like you, so of course she's going to be five most of the year." I guess it's an example of what Mrs. M was talking about when she said some of the other kids have a maternal-type relationship with Maggie. Weird to experience in situ though.

Also on her birthday was my first parent/teacher conference. Good news all the way around; she's doing great on her academics and the distractedness the teacher saw at the beginning of the year has diminished a lot already. Mrs. M says she enjoys practicing things even if she already knows them (no "sigh I already know this and I'm bored with it"). AND she's going to be put in a group of kids who will be taught all the sight words in a batch (instead of one every couple of weeks). Not that surprising, her Daddy is brilliant, after all. :)

One of Maggie's birthday gifts was a kit to dig up a dinosaur. It came with some cheapy goggles and she was wearing them one evening with a lavender princess dress. I told her she looked Steampunk and she thought that was the funniest thing ever. "Steampunk! Steampunk! Steampunk!"

"When I gwow up I am gonna be two fings. One, a paleontologist. And, two, a schoolteacher. No, wait, free fings. A paleontologist, a schoolteacher, and a guest teacher."

"What word is missin' from da fwont of Maggie?"

I look at the magna-doodle. She has written __ a g g i e.

"Wedder M!" "An' now it's a sentence."

Because a sentence is any verbal unit followed by a period. I know you were taught that a sentence needs a subject and a predicate, but Maggie is over those archaic punctuation rules.

__ a d d y.

__ o m.

So impressed.

Ivy fell asleep in her pushchair while we were walking home from school (this NEVER happens). She roused briefly as we came in the house, then dropped off again. Slept through her sister's lamentations about the lack of instant gratification she is forced to endure. Slept through being moved to a different room.

She is still asleep, three hours later. I'm stunned.

1. I did a bit of probing the other day about Maggie's lunches. And she replied that she would like more sandwiches. "Not cheese though." OK, not cheese. Jam and butter? Tuna? Sunflower butter? "Nutella."

So, in the spirit of "almost anything in moderation," today's lunch included two teeny little heart-shaped nutella sandwiches on homemade whole-wheat bread. And a mini-quiche, some edamame, bell pepper, and fruit. Your sandwich...is your dessert!

2. Ivy's decided she doesn't want to ride in the wagon to Ralph's anymore. I still bring along the wagon to transport the food home (and in case she gets tired and wants to ride). She tromps along, happy as anything. She's also been refusing to ride in the pushchair to pick Maggie up. This is more problematic, as she's often tired by that point in the day and tends to stumble...and then wants to be carried. One day she scraped her knee enough to make it bleed a little, so I had to carry home a wailing toddler while Maggie complained about all the screaming. Sigh.

3. Yesterday, Maggie told me she got her first yellow Paw Print (yellow indicating a day in which she needed to be redirected more than usual). She also said something about failing to help tidy up, so I figured that was the reason. And then at dinner, out of the blue, "I won't hit anyone ever again."

Oh.

So rainfletcher and I started quizzing her. There's a large difference between a flail that inadvertently impacts someone's arm and a punch. I don't know that we'll ever get the whole story, but it does indeed sound more like an intentional punch than an accident. We admonished her repeatedly that she mustn't hit anyone, ever, for any reason. (And this is where I'm glad that WE don't hit HER--no conflicting message there.) Hopefully we got through to her and she'll find more appropriate ways to deal with difficulties.

Local kindergartner dies of H1N1.

I'd already planned to get the kids vaccinated, but this definitely solidified that plan. However!

Our clinic has no H1N1 vaccine.

They've both had the seasonal jab, so at least they're partially protected.

It's kind of maddening to have all these public health officials urging people to get a POTENTIALLY LIFESAVING jab that is NOT GETTABLE.