Swingin'

Christopher discovered our other Christmas countdown decoration, which I made with MOMS Club. Each day, we'll flip over a numbered card to reveal a letter, and by Christmas Eve, they'll spell out a message.

In the meantime, it makes a great place to just hang out.

Christmas Countdown Begins

Once again, we're using the Christmas tree advent calendar with the little drawers to count down the days of December.

Today, Peeper opened the first drawer, ate the Kiss and found a note saying "You've Got Mail."

It seems that she got an email from Santa, with a link to a video that he made just for her!

Make a video - it's fun, easy and free!
www.onetruemedia.com

Little Lincoln

Mama: Who are you?
Peeper: Abraham Lincoln is my name!

(Sorry for the crappy phone picture)

Princess Play and Another Busy Day

The college in the town up the road from us does Princess Theater performances periodically, and today's double feature was Rapunzel and another hair-related princess story, so of course, we had to go. We met up with T and her girls, who've been to almost every performance.

Sitting with T's girls, waiting for the show to start

Afterward, we all had lunch at McDonald's, and spent the entire meal telling the girls that they could go play on the playground after we were all done eating, only to discover that it was closed, presumably because it's cold.

I went to the counter and told some teenage girl who never even seemed to register that I was speaking to her, that it would be very helpful if they could put up a "closed" sign, so people know, and their kids aren't disappointed.

Peeper cried a bit at first, then got okay, until we left, at which point she freaked out because she wanted to stay and get ice cream. Well, unfortunately, as much as I would've liked to have gotten her ice cream at that point, freak out equals Mama can't do it.

So, we left and I told her we would go to something fun, because I knew she was really disappointed about the closed playground.

What I came up with was another trip to the children's art center, where we ran into two of our library mom/kid buddies. They were there because I was talking about it last night!

So, the kids played, and we chatted, and it was all cool.

Then we went to the McDonald's right by our house and bought ice cream, then played on the playground that was open. (I saw kids on it as we drove by earlier, Peeper chose art instead. Well, chose art first.)

Peeper was on the playground long enough to make one trip through the habitrail, then she came back and just looked at me. I said, "Are you cold? Is that enough for you?" and she said, "That's enough of that," and we went home.

Mama threw together some dinner-from-a-box, we chilled out a bit, tidied up a tiny bit, got in the tub at a reasonably hour, and she was asleep by 8:30 for a change!

Giddy-Up!

Busy Day

Peeper and I left for school a little after nine this morning, and it was pushing nine this evening before we got back home!

While she was in school, I drove out to. . . Oh wait, have I mentioned this? No, I haven't!

Okay, sidebar:

A few weeks ago, DoulaK texted and told me that the college (a local branch of a big, well-known state school) where she's taking courses to work toward becoming a CNM is looking for a tutor for their anatomy and physiology courses, and would I be interested?
Heck, yeah!
So, yada yada, I interviewed right before Thanksgiving, and on Tuesday, they offered me the job! I'll be a professional tutor (they also have peer tutors, who are students) and I'll work with students taking both Anatomy and Physiology (two different classes, which is unusual). I'm only dealing with the lecture portions of the classes, not lab. (No re-memorization of cat muscles! Whew!)
They've budgeted for 10 - 15 hours a week, and it will involved leading two weekly large-group tutoring sessions for each course, plus small-group and / or one-on-one sessions. I will also be working with the professors to stay up on what they're covering, communicate back and forth about how various students are doing, and so on. I think that I don't have to actually attend the classes every week, but I should probably attend some. I need to find out more about exactly what's expected there. 

Anyway, so I drove out there (about thirty minutes from home, that part's not super-great) to do my HR paperwork, then back to town for a quick trip to Michael's and a much less quick trip to Target.

Then I picked up Peeper, we stopped at the bank to deposit a couple of checks (Meanwhile, another was being delivered to my mailbox. Of course.) and then went to "The Farm in the City" for their Christmas Open House, with involved some sales and a lot of free samples of yummy things. All I bought was some apples, but Peeper and I both enjoyed the samples, and she particularly enjoyed feeding the goats and bunnies, although we were a little bummed that the donkeys, sheep, miniature horses and alpacas are on their "winter diet" and not allowed to have special treats.

From there, we grabbed a coffee at Starbucks, then Mexican food for dinner, followed by ice cream. (The Mexican restaurant is across the parking lot from Baskin Robbins / Dunkin Donuts. There's always ice cream afterward.)

Then to the library for story time, and then to the children's art place, where they were having open art and play in conjunction with some downtown festivities.

And finally, home, where we each collapsed in front of a computer and I finally got up the umph to get her to bed around eleven!

Crafty Little Fella

Looks like Christopher has left his perch in the tree.

And has been rummaging in the stash of construction paper.

Aha!

What's he up to here?

I don't guess elves spell very well.

Double Dance

Peepers dance class was cancelled a few weeks ago, the day that Hurricane ("Superstorm" WTF?) Sandy was blowing through, and tonight was the scheduled make up.

Yay, twice as much fretting and freaking out about "I'm gonna miss you!" but on the other hand, twice as much fun when she actually gets in there, and after thirty seconds, gets over missing me.

Here she is, all dressed - with warm street clothes on top - ready to go.

New Heights

I was setting up the card display on the cabinets, like last year, and I left the ribbon, duct tape and scissors out on the counter. I guess we're lucky all Christopher noticed was the ribbon!

This morning, Peeper came in our room and crawled in bed for a while. Then she declared that she was ready to get up, and left. Moments later, she came running back, saying "Mama! Christopher's not up on the shelf anymore!"


I had to help her find him - once again, she "looked everywhere" in about two seconds - but eventually she spotted him in the Christmas tree.

Later, she went in the kitchen and exclaimed, "Look what he did to the cabinets!" I felt really bad when, without thinking, I said, "No, I did that," and she said, "Oh." all sad and disappointed. So, I showed her the tape and scissors that were still on the counter, and told her he'd found the ribbon I left out, and so on, and that helped.

I'm thinking maybe we should ask him to do some decorating at some point . . . .

But I Have a Good Excuse

Yep, yet another Peep Asleep photo, because I can't get my shit together enough while she's awake to take one.

But give me a break, I'm siiiick. Officially, and everything.

Peeper and I have been dealing with cold symptoms for a couple of weeks now, but almost all better. Then Sunday, my throat started hurting. It didn't develop into a cold the next day, as usual. Instead, it hurt worse, and yesterday, it started feeling swollen back there, so I took a look with a flashlight and mirror.

Now, I don't spend a lot of time looking at healthy throats, so I'm not certain what it's supposed to look like, but I'm pretty sure that ain't it. If I had to give a description, I'd go with red, swollen and white patches.

So, into the doctor I went, where the nurse swabbed me for the Rapid Strep test, and the doctor walked in a few minutes later and said, "Guess what?" and I said, "I have strep!" and she prescribed antibiotics, after some discussion of drug allergies and breastfeeding.

Before she left the room, I said, "Oh, can I show you something else?" and told her about the top of my foot (and maybe into my ankle?) that's been hurting since I twisted it in, oh, June.

Usually, if I'm just sitting around, I don't feel a thing, but there are ways I can move it that alway hurts, and if I do much walking at all (like around the grocery store, not like a 5K) it hurts enough to want to limp a bit.

I've wondered if it's a bit swollen, compared to the other foot, and Shrike agrees that it probably is. The doctor took one look at it and said, "You know it's not normal to have a bump there, right?" and then "Yeah, I'm going to send you over to get this X-rayed," and on her way out she said, again, "That's quite an impressive bump."

As luck would have it, the pharmacy and the lab are in the same building, just up the road from the doctor's office, so I was able to go take care of both those things and still have time to pop home for a few minutes before going to pick Peeper up at school.

When we got home, I  took some Tylenol and the first dose of antibiotics, then pretty much pointed her at the computer and pointed myself at the couch, where we both stayed for a good while. I felt better when I woke up, but certainly not all better.

She let me sleep for a while, and then after a bit of a melt-down over not being able to find the right Wizard of Oz app on the iPad, she became Ms. Super Helpful Girl.

I was "cooking dinner" (preparing boxed mac and cheese) when she ran into the kitchen saying, "Oh! I want to set the table! I'm Galoot, and I don't have any thumbs!" She did an amazing job for having no thumbs.

She even got drinks for both of us, which is quite a procedure: Get a cup from the low cupboard, open fridge (that's an effort for her), fill them from the Brita dispenser, turn it off turn it off turn it off, clean up the water with a dishtowel, and close the fridge.

She brought me the veggies, and helped me serve them up (salad for me, a la carte for her), and carried her plate to the table.

Then she cleared her dishes - even putting the spilled mac and cheese back onto the plate, and helped me empty the dishwasher and put a couple of pieces of silverware in to be washed.

Of course, I had to ask her to do each of those things, she didn't know they needed to be done, but "Galoot" was perfectly agreeable about it all.

It occurred to me later that if we were doing the Elf on the Shelf in the "traditional" way, where he's a spy reporting back to Santa about the kids' good and bad behavior, Christopher would have gotten all the credit for that, and she would've gotten none.

So, point being, I didn't take any photos of her during the day. So, here she is asleep. Again.