Well, We Can Check Off That Milestone

So, Peeper trimmed her own bangs this afternoon.

Sigh.

Luckily we have haircut appointment scheduled for tomorrow anyway. (Hence the too-long bangs that were bothering her.)

One side, she didn't touch at all, but the other side is about an inch long. Except for the part right in the middle that's about, oh, a centimeter long.

I took some photos (ostensibly to send to the hairdress, so she'd know what she was dealing with), but Peeper doesn't want me to post them, so I won't.

Of course, it could have been much worse; she could've hurt herself with scissors, or cut a lot more hair, so we should probably be thankful that this is something that will be fixed fairly easily.

But for now, she is really upset about it. When I told her I was putting the scissors up high, she said, "I WANT them up high!" No additional punishment needed. There's nothing we could do to her that would be worse than how she feels right now, and waiting for it to grow out.


While comforting her I said, "What if I read and find out what kinds of foods help hair grow fast?" and she said, "There's no such thing!"

I told her that I was sure protein would help, because hair is made of protein. Later, as we were googling it, and I said that again, she asked, "But how can hair be made out of meat?!"

Turns out that protein is good, and also things high in vitamins A and E and omega 3s, like carrots, spinach, citrus, salmon, and so on. So, that might be helpful.

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.

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.

Pancake Pajama Party

We kind of screwed up yesterday afternoon. Peeper and I have both been feeling lousy for a few days, and I really could use some rest, so I lay down for a nap around 2:30, and Peeper joined me about an hour later. I woke up around 5 pm, and thought "Oh shit, we're never going to get her to bed tonight!"

I woke her up and took her to pee, then we found Shrike on the couch, sort of asleep. Peeper and I sat down on the other couch - and fell back asleep. Around 10 pm, I took her to potty again, and moved her to the bed.

After about an hour of nursing and coughing and flopping and sniffling, I finally asked her "Are you sleepy at all?" "No." "Are you awake?" "Yes." "Do you want to get up?" "Yes."

And, we were up.

Shrike was awake (she'd had a nap, but nothing like ours) and we decided what the hell, we'd make the most of it and go do something. Midnight, be damned!

So, we went to an all-night diner for pancakes in our pajamas. (Actually, they had pancakes, and I had chipped beef on toast, but that's not nearly as alliterative.)

Then we discovered that Kohl's was open 24 hours, so we popped in there, looked at some Christmas decorations, and I even bought one tiny gift for Shrike.

By the time we got back home, Peeper ran right her her bedroom, stripped down to her panties and hopped in bed. I made her go pee, of course, and then she hopped right back in bed. There was still some coughing and sniffling around, but it didn't take her too long to get back to sleep.

She slept til around 7:30, which is about her normal time, and they let me sleep til 9ish. We mostly spent today in our jammies, too, which we really needed.

Whoops

Note to Self:
When making microwave instance mac-and-cheese, use water.

Farmer Girl

Although we opted to pay the full amount for our CSA membership, rather than volunteering ten or eighteen hours to cover part of the cost, I decided that I would like to take Peeper over to the farm to put in some volunteer time, just for fun, and to see what's what and whether we might be able to commit to it next year and save some money.

As luck would have it, when we were picking up last week, I saw that one of our friends was signed up to volunteer with her two little girls, so I put us down for the same time slot. When our scheduled time rolled around this afternoon, it had been steadily drizzling all day, but we went over anyway, in hopes that there would be some inside work to be done.

We met up with our friends in the greenhouse to pull some major (two-foot-tall flowering) weeds. In some major mud.

Of course you know Peeper - she didn't miss a single puddle. By the time we finished, she was solid mud up to her ankles, and her pants and shirt weren't looking to good either. Even after hosing her off, I decided the smartest thing was to just strip her down before letting her get in the car.

I do have some sense of decency though, so no, she's not actually naked. She does have panties on under her buckle.

Public Service Announcement

If you yell at and threaten your child who is small enough to sit in the built-in baby seat on the cart at the grocery store, I will yell at you in the middle of the ethnic foods aisle.

I had run into our friend D and her kids in front of the refried beans, and stopped to talk. While we were standing there, I heard a male voice yelling something along the lines of, "You sit down! Don't you sit up again! If you sit up again. . . !"

I turned to see who the asshole was, and saw a kid barely old enough to drive shaking his finger at (and possibly swatting?? I really don't remember) a kid who was in the baby seat of the cart. Not the front part like where Peeper sits, but the built-in baby seat.

I flipped out.

I put on my Teacher Voice, and said, "That is an INFANT!"

I half expected a grown woman to come around the corner and scold him for being mean to his little brother, but sadly, no. Instead, he told me, "I'm teaching my son. . . " and "Are you telling me I don't know how to raise my son?"

To be honest, I don't know if I actually said, "YES!" out loud, but I tell ya, I sure wanted to.

As D pointed out, if this idiot had strapped the poor kid in properly in the first place, he wouldn't have been leaning forward and sitting up.

Maybe  he wasn't an infant, per se, but he certainly wasn't much more than a year old. Definitely not old enough to expect him to understand and cooperate with such instructions, and certainly not when they are yelled in his face.

Perhaps (obviously) it wasn't the best way to handle the situation, but I just couldn't hold my tongue. I do wish I could have found a more constructive way to get my point across, though.

Catching Up

I'm sorry things have been so quiet around here, but I have a couple of good excuses. A - I've been having trouble getting my photos from my phone to my computer (why does it only see it sometimes?) and 2 - I'm lazy.

I've now got posts up from the past ten days that I've missed. Oh, except today (yesterday) because the damn phone isn't showing up on the computer. Again.

Skunk!

We were all out in the backyard this afternoon when I looked at Shrike, who was on the far side, near the fence, and spotted a skunk about three feet behind her, just bopping along, pretty as you please. I said, "Mommy! Mommy! Mommy!" trying to get her attention without saying what it was, I suppose so I didn't clue the dogs in on it or something. Then I realized that was stupid and just yelled. "SKUUUNK!"

Maybe my dog thing wasn't so stupid, because as soon as I said it, Galoot came running over, grabbed it up and started shaking. I didn't want Peeper to get sprayed or to watch him kill it, so I swooped her up and ran inside, and Shrike was right behind us.

The dogs and skunk all ended up in some bushes where we couldn't see what was happening, but we heard two separate yelp/whines, and knew exactly what that meant.

The skunk was actually pretty small, probably an adolescent I suppose, so I think maybe he didn't have all his stink yet, because it turned out to be not nearly as bad as we'd feared. Shrike found the bottle of skunk destink spray that she bought the first time this happened and that took care of it.

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Eyes Front

As of a couple of days ago, our bathroom scale is telling us that Peeper is a full forty pounds (the rear-facing limit of a Graco MyRide 65 carseat) wearing nothing but panties, and we need to get a carseat installed in Shrike's tiny car (more on that in a bit) so I sucked it up and turned her carseat around forward-facing.

I had planned to get a photo of her in it, but my phone battery was dead when I picked her up from school, so that didn't happen today. I'll try again tomorrow.

In addition to turning it around, I moved it to the passenger side of the car, because if she's going to be putting her feet up on a front seat, I don't want it to be mine. (Shrike rides in back with her, so it won't be hers either.)

Speaking of Shrike, I'm thinking I should stop somewhere with a car vac before she needs to go somewhere with us.

Long story short, I dropped off a form at the pediatrician's office yesterday (yeah, that was a big nevermind, but I'll explain later) so I asked if I could have a carseat tech help me with installation, or at least inspect my installation, when I picked it up. I figured that would be around the end of the week, but they said, "Sure, can you come in tomorrow morning?"

So, I talked to Peeper about it last night and again this morning, and after I dropped her off at school, I went over and took care of that before I went to work.

This morning, she expressed concern about where to put her feet, but I assured her that she'd be able to put them on the seat back.

When I picked her up from school, I reminded her again that it would be turned around, and when we got out to the car, she flipped out.

Flipped. The. Fuck. Out.

She did not like this new arrangement at all.

"I'm not ready to ride like this! I'm still little!"

I tried explaining that "Most of your friends probably ride like this. G rides like this, and C rides like this, and J rides like this," but she wasn't buying it.

I did happy her up a bit  when I played up the fact that we can now see each other, and I had her "show me signs" (most of which are just numbers of fingers, these days) and told her what they were, and vice versa. It didn't last very long, though.

I also tried pointing out all the new things that she can see now, and that she can see where we're going, and not just where we've been, but this is definitely going to take some time for her to get used to.

So much for those anti-extended-rear-facing arguments about kids being uncomfortable because of the lack of leg room, and about how they prefer to ride forward, and don't like being made to ride backward "like a baby."

Ker-Plunk

I went to check on Peeper in the night and this is what I found.

But wait, there's more. The bed was also soaked. No wonder she jumped out of it.

A Visitor

We've been chasing this little bastard for a couple of weeks now.

We've actually caught and released a couple, a while back, but then we've been seeing this one - and probably another, unless his fur gets lighter and darker - for a while but haven't been able to get him until now.

We thought that what we'd caught and released were voles, but once we had this guy trapped and could get a good look at him and take photos, to compare to other photos on The Google, we figured out that he's a shrew. Probably a short-tailed shrew.


Evidently, they are carnivorous and can literally eat their weight in insects, grubs and other rodents (or dog food?) daily. I'm a little worried about this guy, because the dog food doesn't seem to be disappearing. (We read that it was a good bait for traps, so we figure he should eat it.)

The plan is to release him to, but there's several inches of snow on the ground right now, so that doesn't seem right. At the moment, he's in a trash can in the laundry room, with (dog) food and water and some toilet paper rolls to hide in.

Yes, evidently we are fostering him until the weather warms up a bit. Which should be tomorrow, I believe.

He is kind of cute, and we've started referring to him as "squeaky" but he's a wild animal, and disease-carrying vermin - oh, and venomous. Yes. Venomous. So he is most definitely going back into the wild from whence he came.

This is one shrew who will not be tamed.

Don't worry, Peeper is only allowed to look at him, and not touch!

Don't Panic. Not Blood.

When I saw that Peeper had colored all over her potty step stool with a red crayon, I was mildly annoyed, but to be honest, I didn't think much of it, because really, it's a potty step stool. Who cares what it looks like.

Who knew that crayon is water-soluble when little warm wet feet are standing on it, drying off and putting on jammies.

What. A. Day.

The agenda for today included a trip to the dentist for Peeper, for a quick cleaning and check-up. Her office is an hour and a half from us, but that was the only thing complicated about it.

That should have put us home with about an hour to spare for an appointment with Dr. T, either for both of us if we could get hold of Shrike's parents to watch Peeper, or maybe just for me. With a list of about five different topics to discuss. Nothing major, but things we'd like her input on.

Yeah, that's not exactly how it went.

It would have been a wonderfully simply "Look Moms, no cavities!" checkup, had the hygienist not knocked the cap off one of Peeper's front teeth when she was cleaning them!

(This is the woman who, last time, when she was trying to 'be cool' I guess, said, "My sister was 18 when I was born. That was almost like having two moms." Um yeah, and I had a really good tan once. That was almost like being black.)

She said that she thought she saw "a little bit of stuff" on it, but when she started to scrape it, the whole cap popped off. Evidently, what she saw was the edge of the cap. She tried to say that "Oh, it was just a bit of veneer, just a filling," but I knew damn well that tooth had a cap on it - it was the one we did on the second go-round at the hospital, because the filling on the front of it kept falling off.

Anyway, so that had to be repaired, obviously.

We could have gone back a different day (That was actually Shrike's vote, and given the outcome, perhaps she was right.) but I thought that since it's a 1.5 drive one-way, it made more sense to get it over with. Also, without the cap, it just left this little nubbin of a tooth there.

So, at 11:30 they told us to come back at 3:30 for the repair.

It just went down hill from there.

We asked what we could to do entertain her for 4 hours, and the receptionist told us about a kid's gym (Romp and Roll) right around the corner. We checked it out, and they were having open gym from 1:45 - 4. So, we got lunch and ice cream, and still had an hour or more to kill.

Someone directed us to a cool park, and as soon as we go there, Peeper peed her pants.

(She'd just gone, before we left Baskin Robbins!) Of COURSE our "back-up bag" still hasn't made it into the car after our trip to Texas (a MONTH ago), so I left Shrike and Peeper at the park and went looking for somewhere to buy her new pants!

In retrospect, we should've swallowed our pride (as if they didn't know the kid was running around in pee pants) and ask another parent where to get pants, before I left the park.

I finally got directed to a WalMart, and when I finally found it, it had Target next door (yay!) so I got her some black sweatpants (can't go wrong with those) and too-big socks (Where the hell were the toddler socks?!) and by the time I got back to the park and we got her changed, it was 3 pm, and she was crying about wanting to go to the gym.

Oh, and while I was gone, she peed again, so even the back-up bag wouldn't have even helped. So I felt somewhat better about that, in a way..

I called the dentist and pushed them back to 4, and we paid $7 for her to play for about 45 minutes. (It was super cool, and we might plan to stop there after appointments in the future, if the timing works out right.)

Then to the dentist, where Peeper was AMAZING and just lay absolutely still on me for 30 minute, while the dentist (whom we love) fixed her up and replaced the cap, chatting the whole time, about kids and stuff.

These photos are actually from the morning visit - that's the hygienist that you see to our right - but the repair visit in the afternoon looked about the same. Just imagine her mouth wide open the whole time, with the dentist's hands and some instruments in it, and the dentist's pregnant belly up against my shoulder.

Oh yeah, that. Our dentist has two daughters who will be two and four in early December - and she's 26 weeks pregnant with twins - two more girls!

(That was news to us, as of when I checked her Facebook page to get the name of the practice. Her profile pic is an ultrasound of twins, so we were debating "should we her ask about that?" but evidently the ultrasound is several weeks old - there's no need to ask, it's pretty obvious!)

I know that Peeper has (almost) always been a great little patient, but she really went above and beyond this time. She didn't even flinch; at times I almost even wondered if she was awake! I really couldn't believe how cooperative and compliant and patient she was about the whole thing, especially given that she knew that it was only happening because the hygienist had screwed up.

And, in case you're wondering, when they showed me the treatment plan before we left this morning, and it had an estimated $62.50 copay listed, you can damn well bet I told them, very nicely, that we did not expect to be paying that. The girl up front went back and talked to Dr. C about it, and came back and assured me that there would be no charge.

There was a part of me that wanted to present them with a bill for the lunch and ice cream and pants and gym, too, but I thought that might be pushing it a bit. I was just glad we didn't have to make a second trip over there.

When we were finished up at the dentist, we decided that Peeper definitely deserved some sort of a prize for her troubles - and for handling it so wonderfully - so we gave her the nutcracker that we had sneakily bought for her yesterday at the Nutcracker Tea. It was supposed to be a Christmas gift, and was still hiding in the back of the car, but we figured she'd earned it!

We finally got home around 6:30, after a stop at Sheetz to grab some "dinner," because we'd promised her Cheese Curls on the way home, since I wouldn't let her have any when we stopped there for breakfast on our way down this morning.

She'd napped about 45 minutes on the way home, so she was going strong. Me, not so much. I conked out in the bed, while "watching" them play "baby chicken" and Shrike, bless her heart, let me sleep and just brought Peeper in to nurse when she was finally worn out, around 10:30.

I would've just as soon gotten up and nursed her to sleep in her bed, but she was all set to sleep in ours, so there she is. Hopefully not peeing in it.

And, of course, now I'm wide awake.

Staycation Redux?

Shrike's parents had an almost-Labor Day picnic scheduled for this afternoon, so Peeper and I finally got around to making a pie from some of those apples that we picked a couple of weeks ago.

We used this recipe, and a frozen crust, and I was pretty damn pleased with how it came out.

As we were getting in the car to go, though, Shrike checked her voicemail and heard a message from her parents that, oh, pretty much everyone was feeling unwell, so we were the only ones still scheduled to go, but we were welcome to "attend at our own risk."

We opted out.

Peeper was understandably upset, so we told her that we'd take her to do something else fun.

Guess what she suggested.

This guy is obviously (to us) a Knight in Shining Armor, but Peeper calls him "The Tin Man." Here, she is seen knocking on him, like Dorothy does when she first discovers him.

We also found out that, until this afternoon, she thought this was a giraffe. Okay, I can see it.

When we got there, we discovered that for this weekend only, all their Melissa and Doug items were buy 2, get one free, and some were on clearance for 25% off.

Score!

We managed to sneakily purchase three birthday / Christmas (haven't decided which, probably some of each) gifts for Peeper, and a birthday gift for a friend who will be turning five next weekend!

(Her party will be at the art studio on Saturday. Peeper's going to love that!)

Then we had some dinner at an Italian restaurant that we've visited with our MOMS Club friends a couple of times, and Peeper did some dancing on the way out.

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About then, she started talking about going to the playground, so we thought "Eh, what the hell!" and stopped at the state park for a while.

This time, though, I stayed in the car while Shrike and Peeper played, so they could actually have fun, and I wouldn't be all stressed out. I had planned to do some Facebooking or Pinteresting (this was not a screen-free day), but I wasn't getting much reception, so I mostly people-watched.

First there was the asshole yelling at, threatening and hitting his dog (I may have yelled out the open car window, "He ought to fucking bite you!" He also may have been out of earshot before I did that.), but then I got kind of obsessed with the Orthodox (Hassidic?) Jewish extended family that pulled in beside me and started setting up a cookout.

And then I took a little nap.

On the way into the park, we'd seen a sign announcing "Program Tonight!" and listing this evening's event as "Abraham Lincoln."

Peeper is very interested in presidents, and she knows about Lincoln from the penny, so we thought she'd get a real kick out of seeing "him" in "person." Okay, we did tell her that it would just be a guy pretending to be him, not the real Honest Abe.

But then we got there, and it was neither. It was a History Channel biography of Lincoln, projected on a big screen in the woods. Doh!

It was quite interesting, and I'd like to watch the whole thing sometime, and Peeper was even kind of riveted by it, but it was totally not Peeper-appropriate. It opened with pictures of dead Civil War soldiers, and talk of Lincoln's assassination, then talked about how his father beat him when he was a boy, and later of course, talked about his opposition to slavery, and the reasons, and so on.

Yeah, not issues that we really want to explore with her just yet, so we left.

She was bummed about leaving, I don't know if it was because of the movie, or because she liked being in "a dark woods," but we consoled her with a little hike from the car to the bathhouse to go potty, and then back to the car, where we loaded up to head home.

In the process of pulling out, I somehow managed to drive one front wheel off of an invisible (to me) culvert, knock something fender-ish off of the car, and require a push from Shrike to get us out and moving again.

I declared that bone-headed move number three, so hopefully that shit can stop.

When we got home, we got Peeper a bath and into bed, but not before we sampled that pie.

Oh. Yeah.

Busted!

As if I weren’t in enough trouble for the whole flooded basement thing, I got a speeding ticket today. (And a warning for my August inspection sticker.)

Actually, the trooper didn’t technically write it for speeding. Instead, it said I "failed to obey the instructions of an applicable official traffic-control device.”

It was, of course, referring to the speed limit sign, but nowhere on the citation does it say that, or make any reference to my speed. For all the judge knows, I might have made a "rolling stop" at a stop sign.

She said this offense gives me no points, doesn’t go on my driving record, and the fine is less.

Given that she clocked me going 52 in a 35 mph zone, I think I got off pretty lightly.

I suspect that she may have given me a "family" discount, if ya know what I mean.

Wet

This is the 21st Century. We have put men on the moon and robots on Mars.

Why can we not make a bathroom floor that can survive getting wet? That won't rot from repeated / continual moisture and won't allow water to pour through the ceiling below.

It's a bathroom. Bath. Room.

A room whose entire reason for existence is to house the water-based activities of the home. Is it really such an unforeseeable situation that some (or occasionally, a great deal) of that water might end up on the floor?

Especially if you have an almost-four year old in the house?

I suppose it was my fault, because I've been lulled into complacency by Peeper's habit of always letting me know when the water is "up to the face" in the tub (you know what I mean) and time for me to turn it off. And because I somehow let time get away from me, and didn't think to check on the depth of the water. (I'm right across the hall and I can hear her narrating her play, so I know she's fine. If she's quite for more than a few seconds I call to her.)

It's a teeny bit her fault, because she didn't tell me when it was up to the face, OR when it was pouring over the side, or when it was a fucking inch deep in the floor. Then she came in and said, "Mama, look!"

And as I threw every towel we own on the floor, she was stomping around in it, saying "No! I like splashing in puddles!"

And then had the nerve to say, "I need a towel to dry off!"

Well, honey, look around. There are no more towels!

(I found a towel in a basket that had just come out of the dryer. See, if those clothes had been put away, I would've thrown it in the floor with the rest of them. Good job, with the never putting away the clean clothes strategy!)

But mostly my fault because I am 44 years old, and she is not-yet-four. Guess who was supposed to be the responsible one in this situation.

Dammit, I hate when that happens.

Looking on the bright side, at least it wasn't poop water this time. And maybe if flushed (so to speak) any residual poop from last time out of the basement ceiling as it flowed through. Yeah, that's a comforting thought.

All of which is to say that I got a little distracted this evening, so this is the only photo I got.

(I do realize that this is no excuse for not getting photos earlier in the day, but just go with it.)

Ouch!

Peeper had a rather traumatic experience this morning.

We were at the McDonald's playground with some friends, and I was drinking an ice caramel mocha (of course I was). She kept coming over and stealing sips of it, until she took one sip and immediately spit it out on the ground.

I was about to fuss at her for that, when I saw a fly in the spit-out coffee. Just as I was thinking "Ew!" she started crying.

And then I noticed that the "fly" had stripes on his booty.

And had stung her "tooth."

At least that's what she kept telling me. I assume it was actually her gum.

I scooped her up and went to the counter and told them "I need ice water fast!" I gave  her   some ice to put on it, and told them what had happened.

As I was talking to the girl behind the counter, I could just see "risk management" going through her head, as she ran over and made  her  a cup of shaved ice, which worked a lot better.

Then I figured it would help if she had something yummy and cold to sip on, so I ordered  her  a shake. Did you know that they no longer serve shakes at McDonald's? Since when?

So, I got  her a strawberry-banana smoothie instead, and they didn't even charge me for it.

By the time we got outside and talked to our friends for a while, she was talking and laughing and re-telling the story, and reporting that, no,  her mouth did not "feel funny," and it was not visibly swollen at all from the outside, so I declared that she would be fine, and she is.

Shrike gave her some Tylenol when we got home, and she seemed perfectly normal after that.

After McDonald's we went to get our hair cut. On the way, I asked if she was going to tell Mrs. D. what happened, and she said, "No, she might be scared."

We did tell her, though, after telling her not to be scared.

Later, we were at the grocery store and when I stopped to get myself a coffee, she told me, "I gonna tell them man what happened," and then did.


How bad is it, that she's not-quite-four and has already had three bee stings?

Ouch!

We were in the office this morning, when Peeper wandered out of the room, I heard something make a biggish noise in the closet, and she started crying.

Turns out, she wanted a red shirt (so she could be a "giant red and blue Christmas tree," of course), so she yanked on the bottom of a red dress until the hook of the plastic hanger snapped, the dress and hanger came  flying at her, and the broken edge of the hanger scratched her face.

I guess it's time to install that Peeper-height closet rod that we've been talking about. 

In the Dark

Updated 7/7/12 to add details in photos.

Our power has been out since about 8pm. I have some photos on my camera of Peeper and me "camping out" in the sunroom, but you can't see them until we have power. Oh well.

First we went outside and chased fireflies, to no avail, and then we came in and set up our "camp out."

This photo doesn't look like we're "roughing it" much, but it was actually just about totally dark in the room, and this is all camera flash.

We dragged a bunch of pillows and blankets into the clubhouse, and she found a pail (that was her idea) and filled it with "snacks" (blocks) and we wedge the flashlight in between them to make a little "campfire," and then we snuggled and read book, and I told her about some things that we did when I went to camp. 

I realized pretty quickly that I couldn't actually let her sleep there, for a variety of reasons, but how to get her out?

Finally, I said, "Okay, now our program's over, and it's time to hike back to your cabin." Then I sang our "end of program" songs, and "hiked" her to the "bathhouse" and then her "cabin," where I tucked her in and she went to sleep pretty quickly, with her flashlight / nightlight beside her bed.

The power finally come on just before midnight.

Whew.