Chickadee has been malingering. Except malingering is really the wrong word, because I do think she's sick... or sickISH... certainly she's just plain not feeling great; but given her bent towards the DRAH-MAH and the fact that MALINGERING just tastes exactly like what she's been doing---dragging herself around, looking all peaked and weary---I stand by my original verb choice. Last night in addition to the "my throat is sore" complaint that's been around for a couple of weeks, she started adding in "my ear hurts," and I could avoid it no longer: Today I took her to the doctor. We waited for...
Everyone is healthy and hearty and life goes on. For a short and blissful while there, Chickadee was loving and cuddly and totally a Mama's Girl. Of course, I didn't know, in the beginning part of it, anyway, that it was largely due to the fact that she was miserable at school and had decided to hate everyone and everything... but we had some truly lovely moments while she viewed me as the best thing in her life. Now that I've twisted myself inside-out and upside-down and gone to bat for her at school and the bullying situation has been (at least temporarily) resolved, however, I am back to...
Yesterday dawned and brought with it a fever and listlessness for the girlchild, so I got her brother packed off to school and her set up on the couch and tried to salvage the day. I worked, she dozed. Somewhere towards lunch I stopped to stroke her hair and prepare myself to murmur "Poor little bunny" as needed. Whether this had been brewing for a while (I think it had) or she was just miserable enough with whatever yuck she was fighting (she was) or a combination of the two (almost certainly), before I knew it I was listening to a tale of woe, a catalog of complaints that ranged from...
Halloween dawned damp and full of expectation, here, and Chickadee was up and raring to go first thing in the morning. Monkey was still asleep at 9:30 when I went into his room to make sure he wasn't dead, which meant, of course, that he was sick. "I'm FINE!" he groused, as I took his temperature. "I feel FINE. I'm not sick!" The thermometer begged to differ. It was just a low fever, though, so as the day wore on and his protestations grew louder and the fever never went higher, we made an executive decision to let him go trick-or-treating, anyway. Because I really didn't want to have to...
I haven't slept in about a week. That's an exaggeration, of course; I've slept, but not well, and not for long. There's a kind of worry that gets into my brain that makes it hard for me to compartmentalize and move around it. That worry is almost always something related to the kids; I get stuck in an endless mental loop of "But if A, then B. And if B, then C. And if C, OHMYGOD, D-Z! We're all DOOMED!" It's not particularly productive or helpful. But I haven't figured out how to circumvent it, yet. It leaves me with two choices: Accomplish nothing, so I am free to worry all day, or still...
Chickadee had a piano recital today. It's been a bone of contention around here for quite a while, because Chickadee loves playing the piano but she hates to practice. Go ahead. I'll give you a minute to puzzle that one out. (If you figure it out, could you let me know? Thanks.) So the recital pieces got handed out, and Chickadee promptly did that thing that kids do, the thing where "Oh, it's fine," is the answer to everything. It was fine that she wasn't practicing, or practicing for just three minutes at a time. It was fine that really, this was supposed to be her PRACTICE piece in...
I've had labels on the brain, this week. Go figure. The irony is that we all seem to believe that labels = organization, and when I married Otto we gained a fancy electronic labelmaker that the kids seem to think is some wondrous hybrid of the Wii and the circus. There is never a happier day than when Otto lets them take out the labelmaker and label something. So I've been noticing our labels on things. Bread flour. Wrenches. 2007 Taxes. They're everywhere. They're usually very illustrative. They add order to our world. They're supposed to make things make sense. I'm cute when I get all...
I have promised to have all manner of sticky food available for the freshly un-braced boy, this evening. Sour Patch Kids and gum and whatever else he'd like. Nevermind that Halloween is in a little over a week; he's spent two years unable to eat "anything delicious," and he has a lot of catching up to do. As he skipped out of the orthodontist this morning, still running his tongue endlessly over the unfamiliar, smooth surface of his teeth, I asked him how he felt. "GREAT!" he answered. "I feel like today is the first day of the REST OF MY LIFE!" I do, too. Thanks to everyone for your kind...
I have been know to watch reruns of Degrassi. On purpose. I'm not proud. I could tell you it's because I used to watch the original show way back in the day, but I really don't know if that's any justification. And now Chickadee is old enough to watch it (sometimes), though as a whole the show is considerably more sexed up than I remember it being when I was younger. Really, I think Degrassi reminds me of all of the teen drama shows I loved in my youth (90210, for example) crossed with those after school specials I never could stop watching. There's drama! And suspense! And kissing! And...
