Frozen

Actually, Peeper and I did go see the movie Frozen last night, as a little something special to make up for Shrike getting called in to work at the very last minute. She loved it, and thanks to a friend who unexpectedly hooked us up with a copy, she's watched it another time or two today.

But we're also pretty frozen today. It's around (below?) 20 degrees out there, with snow falling all day and several inches of accumulation. Peeper was already scheduled to be off school, for a teacher inservice, but all the other schools in the area, including the college where I work, were off too.

Peeper does love her snow. I think she went out in it about four or five times; I made her go by herself at 8 am, when the ground was barely covered, because I knew I had another trip or two ahead of me later in the day. As it turned out, I think I went with her twice and Shrike twice.

She wanted so badly to build a snowman. Light, fluffy, dry, 20'F snow is great when you have to shovel and clear off the car, but not so much for snowmen.

After we came in, I heard her in the bedroom where Shrike was sleeping. She said something to her about drying off PerfectPup, and went and got a towel from the linen closet. Then another. And another.

I went in to see what was going on, and found Shrike still asleep, and poor PerfectPup like this.

That pink thing beside her is Peeper toy blow dryer. Running.

This is what she left behind when she finally got fed up and walked off. I guess Peeper was right that she needed to be cleaned up.

Galoot on the other hand, was just keeping Mommy nice and warm.

A few more trips out in the snow, including helping Mommy shovel, and an attempt to fix up her snowman, and then we had a perfect snowy weather dinner - hot soup and hot-ish chocolate.

Peeper declared this "the bestest soup ever!" (Campbell's chicken noodle.)

Looks like she could use it.

Super Galoot

As fast as the wind, as strong as two plates!

Vampire

Finally Home

We came home from Texas today, and I suppose our day was much better than the trip down, if only for the lack of vomit, but we this one had its adventures, too.

 When I was planning our itinerary, I was originally hoping to come back on yesterday, so Peeper could go to school today, but I couldn't find any flights that would get us back to Baltimore before evening, which would put us home close to midnight, so I went with a flight that left at 6:55 am, arriving in Baltimore at 1:30 pm.

 Great, right?

 The airport is only about fifteen minutes from my parents' house, and it's tiny, so it doesn't take but a few minutes to check in, drop the bags, go through security and get to the gate, so we aimed to leave the house around six, and came pretty close to it.

When we arrived, we got in line - well, we started a line, no one else was there yet - and waited. And waited. And waited. At 6:30, a TSA agent came over and told us that, under Federal law, you can't check in less than thirty minutes before a flight, so we weren't getting on this plane.

I realize (now) that we were cutting it close, but I know that I'd been there for more than five minutes, and one of the people behind me in line said it was 6:22 or so when they walked in, but the ticket agent had already shut down the desk at that point, so we were out of luck.

After a bit of polite (sort of) ranting, and a lot of tears from Peeper, we got ourselves booked for an 11:30ish flight to Dallas, and on standby for a flight from there to Baltimore, called Anoymama and had her come back to pick us up.

Once we got back to the airport and actually got on the plane, things were fairly uneventful the rest of the way to Baltimore, but Peeper had been up since about 5 am, so she was pretty pooped. She conked out about the time we took off in Dallas, and slept almost the entire flight.

Shrike was there to meet us at the airport, and of course, we stopped at Pizza Hut on the way home.

We usually go from there to Baskin Robbins, but it was getting really cold, so I suggested that we just get a dessert at Pizza Hut instead, but she was having no parts of that, so off we went. She had ice cream, and Shrike and I had hot chocolate. With ice cream in it, because we are temperature wimps.

While I was at the counter ordering the scoop of ice cream, a fellow who'd been buying donuts left, then a few moments later, came back in and bellowed, "How's that socialism workin' out for ya?"

I'm assuming he saw my bumper stickers.

"Great!" I said, "I've got a much better deal on my health insurance now!"


He went out, came right back in and said, "You shouldn't be surprised if somebody says something. You're advertising it!"

I said, "Yes, I am advertising, I'm very proud of that."

I should've said, "But I'm still surprised when some asshole suddenly starts yelling at me in public in front if my child."

Then there was something about Greece. I dunno.

We tried to have our dessert in peace, but as you can imagine, I was pissed off and kept ranting about it, while Shrike kept trying to settle me down. She said I should just ignore, but I said (and still maintain) that you should never "just ignore" a bully, because that is tacit permission to continue. I was wishing that I'd called him on his behavior, rather than just arguing back with him.

Then he came back again. This time he started with something along this lines of "This isn't anything personal to you two, God bless you, this is a political and economical. . . " some shit like that.

This time I did tell him something along the lines of, "Stop, Your behavior is absolutely unacceptable, you don't just yell at strangers, just stop."

When he kept going, the kid behind the counter told him to leave. That part was cool.

He finally left, but of course, I was all riled up again, so you know Shrike was thrilled about that.

I will say, though, that I suppose I was pleasantly surprised at the "nothing personal; God bless you" part. I guess it says something for how far we've come as a society, especially recently, that even the raving Tea Party lunatic is okay with gay folks now.

The rest of the drive home was uneventful, and we finally got in close to midnight.

Oh, and the school thing? They went back on Thursday, were off Friday for snow, today for ice and tomorrow for expected subzero temperatures. So there's that.

Playtime

After Christmasing for a couple of days, Peeper and I took one last trip to the mall for some shopping, lunch and hanging out at the mall's play area.

Merry Christmas Eve!

Everybody came over this evening for our big Christmas Giftapalooza.

Peeper got some cool stuff, but some of it was things that we couldn't play with right away, and when she ripped through all her gifts, and her cousins still had a bunch left, because they were taking turns, and because they had two packages each from us, whereas Peeper had a tiny package with cash in it from them, it took some talking to get her back on board with the whole "celebration" thing.

She was particularly interested in one of DaNiece's gifts, so I asked her "Do you want to spend some of your money on it?" She did, so I pulled up the Amazon app on my phone, and bought it right then and there.

She cheered up later, and by the time all the kids had a "glow show" with their new light-up Pillow Pets, she was pretty happy about her stuff, and even declared that the Pillow Pet "is perfect!"

When we were making plans for Christmas dinner, I volunteered Peeper and myself to help with several things, since we were in town for a few days ahead of time. Yesterday, we made pies, and somewhere along the way, Peeper had gotten the idea that she wanted to help prepare the turkey this evening.

So, after telling Uncle BabyBro, HerLovelyAunt and the cousins good night, (yelling up from the bottom of the stairs, "Good night! Have a good sleep! Don't let the bedbugs bite!") we got started on the turkey.

I'd told her all about what was involved, to make sure she knew what to expect. "It's a big, naked, dead bird. Are you okay with that?" She was very okay with it.

She wasn't especially thrilled when I opened up the giblet bag to show her the heart, liver and something, "I'm done looking at them now," but she played with the neck for quite a while. When it was time to get the kidneys out, I was icking out about doing it with my hands, and Peeper said, "You just have to be really brave, Mama. You can do it, you can do it. "

Well, hell, now I have to do it.

Once that was done, it was time to do the buttering, and she was all about that. She buttered that turkey up, but good, saying, "I love getting messy!"

Between the butter and the turkey juice, there was definitely another late-night shower before turning in.

Tomorrow will be the the Big Christmas Dinner.

Happy New Years Eve!

Somehow I let Peeper find out about that whole "midnight" thing, so she decided to wait up. My parents' neighbors really like their fireworks, so I figured, what the hell, she'll probably get woken up at midnight anyway. So, I told her she could stay up, and I'd take her outside at midnight to watch the fireworks.

Other than that, it was a quiet evening at home with Grandma and Grandpa.

Later we watched a Curious George Christmas movie, and The Lorax (which we'd never seen.) It was almost over at midnight, and she was about to drop. I took her outside, but she wasn't really into it. We weren't able to get a good view of many fireworks, but I did see and hear what looked like quite a display not far from us, but with houses blocking the view, so if we're there next year, we'll try going over there.

So, back inside, finished the movie, and off to bed - after midnight for the second night in a row.

Well, That Was An . . . Adventure

Peeper and I are in Texas for our belated extended-family Christmas celebration, and we didn't get here without some trials.

I waited a bit too long to book our flights, so we didn't leave until 4 pm, and were due to get in to the local-to-my-family airport around 9 pm, via Dallas.

Our flight out of Baltimore was running a bit late, but that didn't bother Peeper too much.

When we got to Dallas, we were a smidge behind, so we rushed over to our departing gate, where we learned that our second flight was delayed as well, and wasn't supposed to leave until around 9 pm.

After actually speaking to our pilot, who happened to be standing there, and confirming that the flight would be going, as soon as the plane that was about to leave for Houston came back, we went and got some dinner, and planned to hang out for a while.

Peeper had spotted a play area, so we went there, and she played while I monitored our flight status online and Facebooked updates to LadyKay, to be passed on to the Anonyparents. Peeper was having a blast, running around the play area, climbing on things and jumping off, "teaching the little ones" how to play, and later, watching some cartoon that involved a lot of fighting and shooting and blowing up thing and calling the enemy things like, "You Devils!"

Great. I explained to her that I had no control over this TV, but that this was not a show that she would be allowed to watch. This little speech came after I heard her exclaim to no one in particular that, "I love this show!"

While running and playing, she was doing a lot of coughing - that damn asthma thing. I had her slow down for a bit, and take a break to get it under control, and it kind of came and went.

Finally, it was about half an hour until time to board our plane, so I called her over and had her sit down on the couch to get her shoes on. She was coughing again, and I asked if she was okay. She said she was, even though she was gagging about.

Are you sure? I'm okay.

Yeah. Not so much.

More gagging, and then she threw up all over herself. Remember how we'd just had dinner? Yeah.

As she sat there, covered in her own vomit, she asked me, pitifully, "Are you going to tell somebody?"

Yes?

Who?

I don't know!

I looked around, and saw a woman dusting some furniture, so I went over and told her (across a language barrier, I'm pretty sure) what had happened, and she said she'd be there in just a minute.

I went back to Peeper and told her, "Don't move. I'm going to run get some paper towels. Don't worry, nobody will steal you like this."

By the time I came back from the bathroom with not-even-close-to-enough paper towels, the custodian was there with a towel. Peeper told me later that, "She asked me, 'Are you okay?'" (I tipped this woman ten dollars when we left.)

I stripped her down to her panties, stuffed the gross clothes into the wet bag, and carried her to the bathroom to try to clean her up. As I was wiping her down, she said, "This is the worst thing!" and "I'm sorry this happened."

Oh, no, no, baby. I am so sorry.

I got her wiped off, and into some clean panties and pants and . . . nope, that's it. I hadn't brought a clean shirt. I couldn't think of anything else to do but to hope like hell we could find a store open, and if not, just take her on the plane like that and ask for a blanket when we get on board.

As we walked to our gate, we passed one closed store after another, just taunting us with there racks and racks of shirts, behind those metal gates.

Finally, we came to one that only had their gate half way down, so I grabbed Peeper, ducked under the gate, and said, "Please help me." I explained what had happened, and asked if they could please sell me a shirt.

There were three women working behind the counter. One started in with, "Well, I don't know how we could do that . . . ." (Of course, after tipping the custodian, I no longer had enough cash for a shirt, so I would have to use a debit card.) Then one of the other women said, "I haven't closed out my register yet."

Whew.

So, we picked out the smallest shirt they had, and put it on her, and hurried off to our gate, and waiting for our turn to board.

Luckily, this was a small plane with only two seats on a row, so nobody had to sit by us, because we were pretty stinky.

She was asleep before we even took off, and I had to wake her up when we landed.

Last trip, she was happy to sit in the car with Grandma while I waited for our bag (it's a very, very small airport), but this time, she was having none of that hanging-out-with-Grandpa business. Instead, she sat in my lap and whined until the bag came out, and then whined all the way to the house.

We didn't even stop to talk to Grandma on the way in, just went straight into the shower, and then to bed.

We are glad to be here, and are looking forward to our visit, but I could think of better ways to start it off.

Head Band Bandit

I've been really annoyed by the condition of Peeper's box of hair accessories and saying for a while that I'm going to do something about it, but nothing was actually happening.

Several weeks ago, I saw a cool headband hanger made from ribbon on Pinterest, and then someone saw that I'd pinned it and sent me a message on Facebook that a friend of hers was going to be selling them. Awesome! Except she was looking to charge $20+ for them. Um, no. 

Fast-forward a few weeks, and a very crafty, sewing-type friend was asking about storage options for headbands, this one came up, and she said she'd probably make one. 

So, I contacted her and said "If you make one for your girls, and find that it's not a $20 job, could you make me one for something less than that?" 

Long story short (ha), I bought some ribbon to match Peeper's bedroom (except I accidentally got organza for the red ribbon, and it's really going to annoy me that it's not regular ribbon), and my friend whipped up a headband holder for me in about five minutes. And she wouldn't even let me pay her for it. (Although I did insist that she keep the leftover ribbon, since I had no use for it anyway.) 

We gave it to her for Christmas, and can you believe that I've actually put it up already? 

What do you think? 

I'm not too sure about having it so close to the nightlight, I may have to experiment a bit with locations, but there's not much wall space to work with, and I'd like to keep it close to the dresser, where the rest of her hair things are. I may tack it to the side of the dresser itself.

Of course, once Peeper could see all of her headbands, she had to wear them. All of them.

The Raisin Show

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Mama-Free Bedtime!

I took a hot shower this evening, to clear my head (literally) and after I got out, Peeper accosted me for some goody. As I was lying in the bed with her, I started dozing off, so Shrike confirmed that I didn't mind falling asleep that early, and took over from there. 

She got Peeper bathed and in bed and then read to her until she fell asleep. That's a big damn deal around here for her to fall asleep without me if I'm home. And I was greatly appreciated it.

Santa's Special Hot Cocoa

This afternoon, Peeper and I made "Santa's Special Hot Cocoa" from a recipe in one of her books. In the book, Santa uses said cocoa to cure the reindeers' colds, so they can pull the sleigh. We're hoping it works as well on us.

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Christmas Countdown: Montessori Winter Program

Today was the Winter Program at Peeper's school, which is put on by the Toddler and Children's House classes. So, of course, it was adorable.

I had planned for Peeper to wear her Pretty Fancy Christmas Dress, but she told me that she didn't want to, because "it's too hard to get on and off," which she later confirmed meant, "It's too hard to go pee-pee in."

She's been having enough trouble with that, as it is, so I agreed to let her wear something else. Besides, she told me, "It's not a Christmas program, it's a snow program." So, she wore her snow shirt.

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Eat Carrots For Good Health

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Christmas Countdown: Gingerbread House

In the past, we've decorated pre-made gingerbread houses, but this year, Shrike's coworkers gave us a kit, along with some other "while you are recovering" gifts, so we've moved up to the big time.

It was a little tricky, but we managed it.