Stick a fork in me

'cause I am done. As I mentioned in my previous post, Kiddo appeared to be starting with a head cold yesterday morning.   Well, yesterday afternoon she returned home from school white as a sheet with a low grade fever (99.2) and generally looked pitiful, so we skipped her swimming lesson and I put her to bed early with a dose of Children's Mucinex Cold for good measure.

Now, since it isn't possible for my kid to ever catch anything besides strep throat (to which I seem *knock wood* to be mostly immune) without me catching it too, of course I started with the cold symptoms myself.  I can actually tell you the exact moment they began.  I was pushing my shopping cart out of Walmart to my car through the chilly, damp air yesterday afternoon (temperatures were back down into the 30s and I was forced to reluctantly pull my winter coat back out of the closet where I'd optimistically stashed it the previous week) and I breathed in.  With that inhalation (around 2:20pm), my throat began to hurt.  At first I chalked it up to the air, to being thirsty, to *anything* other than germs.  I hopped in the car and chugged a bottle of water.  Throat still hurt.  Dang.  I chose to ignore it and went on with my day, because really, it's not like I actually had a choice.  The world does not stop because Mommy is suddenly feeling unwell, after all. I drove myself home, unpacked the groceries, herded Kiddo into the house when the school bus arrived, tended to her, etc.

By the time she was tucked into bed - 6:50pm despite DST, so I knew she wasn't feeling well - I was listless and sneezy.  I still tried to convince myself that it was nothing more than PMS.  Because PMS gives you a runny nose and sore throat, right?  Hubby got home around 8:30 and we had cold cereal and toast for dinner, then went to bed at 10, and as soon as I rolled onto my side and shut my eyes, I felt it.  That inside-the-skull sloshing of all the snot that seemingly spontaneously generated and ran down into my left side sinuses and nostril as they snuggled into the pillow.  Ugh.  I rolled to the other side and felt the sensation repeat as the tide shifted to my right.  Not.  Good.

As the night progressed, I tossed and turned and woke up to alternatively jam Puffs Pluses into my nostrils or to remove and replace them.  (What?  You've never done that?  I do it all. the. time. when I have a head cold.  I'm doing it right now, as a matter of fact.)  Around 2am, Hubby abandoned ship and moved himself into the guest room to try to get some sleep that wasn't interrupted by my congested breathing, snorting or snoring.  I took advantage of his defection by rolling onto my back so that at least the congestion could reach a state of equilibrium between my sinuses.  As generally happens when I'm not feeling well, my subconscious went all Twilight Zone on me and kept parading odd and unsettling dreams through my increasingly congested noggin for the periods I was actually asleep.

This morning, Kiddo didn't wake up until 8:35.  I would gladly have slept in even longer if I could've, myself.  Instead, I got up, swapped my normal morning attire of ratty sweatshirt-over-jammies for my ratty-fleece-with-pockets-over-jammies so that I can carry a stash of tissues and hand sanitizer with me wherever I go and shuffled downstairs.  Kiddo is home from school today (obviously) and we're both pretty pathetic.  My sinus headache is throbbing to the beat of the opening chords of Eye of the Tiger thanks to her iPod.  I'm presently debating whether to turn on the Wii for her and let her play Littlest Pet Shop so I can go back to bed.  (We have a rule: Kiddo is only allowed to play Wii on the weekends.)  Oh, who am I kidding?  I'm totally turning it on for her as soon as she finishes her breakfast and comes back downstairs. 

The end-of-winter cold is unfortunately a bit of a tradition around our house, and one I would gladly skip.  It's supposed to be gorgeous out today, Hubby told me this morning as he was getting ready for work.  Sunshine and temps in the 50s.  I'd planned to do some yardwork (there are enough sticks in our yard for me to build a bonfire) and I was supposed to be volunteering at school this afternoon on a big art project the first graders are finishing up, but instead I'm going to pull down the shades and retreat to my Mentholated Rainforest Cave. And did I mention on top of this cold, I also have *every* possible PMS symptom right now, too? 

Pathetic.  Totally pathetic.

DST = Darn Stupid Theory

And so it begins again.  Daylight Savings Time, aka a Darn Stupid Theory.  DST has never been my favorite time of year, at least not the "springing forward" portion of events, but now that I have a kid I absolutely loathe it.  The fact that my kid happens to have SPD just makes it worse.  She needs her schedule, and she doesn't need it arbitrarily bumping around by an hour twice a year.  It's like jetlag without the fantabulous destination.

Yesterday, it wasn't so bad.  Being a weekend day, we just let Kiddo sleep in and get up whenever she woke up on her own.  Bedtime last night was another matter altogether.  Despite playing hard at a birthday party yesterday afternoon (and might I digress for a moment to say that while she was looking mighty cute in her party duds as she headed off to the party......

... as soon as she got there, she immediately joined in to the rousing game of Tag that was going on with all the other cute, little girls in their party duds.  A passel of dressy outfits and carefully bowed and beribboned hairdos tearing around the party room, getting more disheveled and sweaty by the second.  You can dress 'em up, but....) Anyhow, as I was saying, despite the playing hard at the party, Kiddo had difficulty falling asleep last night.

I expected she'd have trouble getting up this morning.  Heck, *I* had trouble getting up this morning.  She was grouchy, out of sorts, and for an added bonus appears to be coming down with a head cold.  Because you want crusted over nostrils to complete the look of the grumpy, sleepy, and at least three of the other Dwarfs' names-adjectived kid scowling at you from the breakfast table.

I did my best.  I made her a hearty breakfast (including a dish that is known around here as "Egg Balls" - egg whites nuked in one of those microwave poaching contraptions) and even gave her a glazed doughnut instead of her usual whole wheat toast.  I didn't object when she played the triple audio delight of Eye of the Tiger, Funkytown and the theme from Ghostbusters over and over and OVER again on her iPod without using her headphones.  I ignored the death stare I was getting in the bathroom mirror as I de-bedheadded the newly banged hair.  I didn't even sing "I see London, I see France" when it turned out she'd put her undies on backwards and thus, there was a good inch showing above the waistband of her pants.  I was a Kind and Thoughtful Mommy, Sympathetic to Her Plight.  And this was with me being sleepy and cranky myself, plus in the final hormonal rush of PMS and suffering with the vague rumblings of a headache that I didn't quite vanquish last night to boot.  (Don't worry, I did reward myself with a doughnut as well.  That cinnamon streusel friedcake from the Wegmans bakery was the only thing that got me out of bed and down to the kitchen this morning, truth be told.)  I even let her bring her iPod out on the porch while we shivered in the damp, "oh right, it isn't actually Spring yet" upstate NY air, thus confusing our neighbors into thinking they were suddenly living in Rocky III.

Now, this isn't our first encounter with Daylight Savings Time, obviously.  We've been fighting the fight to keep Kiddo cool, calm and regulated through the time change for several years now.  That is why I know this is going to get worse before it gets better.  I'm bracing for the meltdown that will occur sometime between the bus dropping Kiddo off this afternoon and bedtime.  It is unavoidable, inevitable, like death, taxes and that weird, long, black hair that springs up on my forearm every six weeks.  Complicating matters is that today is swimming lesson day after school.  While ordinarily I look forward to the extra tiring out Kiddo gets from her swimming lesson, I'm thinking we might skip it today so as not to exacerbate the situation.  Tomorrow morning will probably be worse than today, and by Wednesday we'll likely both be weeping into our Honey Nut Generic-Os.

And for what?  Really, what good does Daylight Savings Time really do?  After a few weeks of it finally being lighter when the alarm clock rang, putting a bit of extra spring in all of our steps as we went about our morning routine, this morning when the alarm clock sounded, it was pitch black outside.  Like we'd suddenly plunged back into deepest February.  Nary a bird singing.  It was just so wrong.  As I put on a happy face and tried to get Kiddo through the horror and off to school, I wondered: exactly whose brilliant idea was this, anyway???

I  seemed to recall, in my not-yet-completely-awake brain, hearing that Benjamin Franklin "invented" DST.  I mean, didn't he invent everything back in the 1700s?  I decided my memory must be faulty, so I brushed the doughnut crumbs from my keyboard and googled good, old Ben.


The following quote from Wikipedia cleared things right up:

Daylight saving time (DST) is often erroneously attributed to a 1784 satire that Franklin published anonymously.  Modern DST was first proposed by George Vernon Hudson in 1895.

Aha!  Erroneously attributed to a satire Franklin wrote.  See, I knew Ben wouldn't have come up with such nonsense.  Of course, I immediately clicked on the link to discover the identity of the true culprit who is responsible for such folly.

There he is.  George Vernon Hudson.  Of course a man came up with such a ridiculous idea.  I mean, obviously no woman - at least no mother - would ever think of such nonsense as smart.  Facebook and the Twitterverse have been chock-full of sentiments echoing mine in the past 36 hours, and most of them belong to parents of children who still reside at home and need to be gotten off to school in a timely manner.  (Okay, so that might be slanted a bit, as most of the folks I'm friends with on FB and follow on Twitter are parents of children who still reside at home and need to be gotten off to school in a timely manner... but my point is still valid: I am not alone in this sentiment!)  

Further reading led to the conclusion that at best, DST is "controversial" and it is unclear how much actual benefit there is to the citizens of the world who are forced to deal with it.  Yep, that's right, DST is not a worldwide phenomenon, as evidenced by this map here.  This map, which gives me a brilliant idea:


We need to move to Hawaii.  Right away.  That would solve our DST struggle once and for all!


And really, having this view off the porch:

instead of this one?  

Just a bonus!


I know that, like most other struggles, this too shall pass.  By the coming weekend, Kiddo should be pretty well adjusted to a regular sleep/wake schedule.  It's just the duration of the battle that I dread and loathe.  Especially when it seems so, darn stupid and pointless.  I'd wager that folks would still do the same activities they do now in the summer even if the clocks weren't switched by an hour, dontcha think?

Relatively Wordy Wordless Wednesday... Bangin' and Bobbed

After using a lot of water, the blow dryer and approximately half a bottle of Instant Freeze hairspray this morning to camouflage Kiddo's self-inflicted hair trim results from last week, I caved in and took her for a professional repair job after school today.  The hair at one week out was already beginning to resemble one of Andy Rooney's eyebrows, right there in the middle of her head, and I couldn't do any sort of center-parted hairstyle because of it. 

Those first snips were the hardest for Mommy to watch.  I resisted the urge to save a lock or twenty, though.  (I do have the very first lock from her very first ever haircut tucked away for safekeeping, though...)

 

The downside to having bangs cut in, as far as Kiddo was concerned?  The hairstylist had to stand in front of her, thereby blocking her view of the flatscreen, hi-def TV blasting cartoons that Kiddo was trying desperately to gorge herself upon.

Once the bangs were cut in sufficient quantity as to hide the errant eyebrow bit underneath, I decided "in for a penny, in for a pound" and allowed Kiddo to get the "short" bob for which she has been begging for ages now.  This is as short as the stylist dared go, as Kiddo's hair still has a good deal of curl/wave to it and if it was any shorter, we feared it would look like Buster Brown with a bad, home perm.  Here's the finished result - Krystal and Kiddo.  Krystal was an awesome stylist and if anyone local wants a referral, I'm happy to give it!

Once we got home, Kiddo wanted to show Daddy what it looks like "just down" without the fancy ribbon, so we took it out and did a quick restyle to the way it will likely look 99% of the time (at least 99% of the time for the first five minutes after I comb it in the mornings.  I'm sure it will resemble a bird's nest of snarls by the time she gets off the bus at the end of the day...) -

And Kiddo being Kiddo, she insisted on doing a picture with her head tilted.  For some reason, she thinks this is the way that photos should all be taken.  I have no idea why.

Monday Musings

I know there is a "thing" out there on the blogosphere to post Random Thoughts Tuesdays.  One of my favorite people to stalk bloggy friends, Cristin, does this pretty regularly and I always enjoy reading her posts.  Well, I always enjoy reading any of her posts, but you know what I mean.  (Or maybe you don't.  It is quite possible that I'm not making any sense whatsoever this morning as I am functioning on a caffeine hangover and less than 4 hours of sleep thanks to last night's Oscars telecast and my decision to majorly overcaffeinate in order to stay up late enough to watch every, last moment.  My brain is so foggy, it's San Francisco.  Or London.  Or that John Carpenter movie.  Or its remake.  Okay, okay, I'll stop.)

So, as this is Monday and not Tuesday, but the best I can do is throw out some random things that are clattering around quite loudly in my aching, befogged brain, this is my stab at a Random Thoughts Tuesday but I'm calling it Monday Musings instead.

***

The flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la!  Look what four days of sunshine and a few-degrees-above-freezing temperatures have wrought in our front yard (along with a rapidly shrinking snowman):

 

 Crocipetti!!  (Or crocuses, for the non-Beat Cats in the audience)

  

 Daffodils!

 

Daffodils and also possibly a hyacinth!

I planted about 150 or so bulbs in front of the house and around our light post last fall.  I did a mixture of crocuses, daffodils and hyacinths because those were the three bulbs I was assured by many an online gardening site would be least tempting to the seventy squillion squirrels and chipmunks that call our silver maples and pine tree home.  I know that some of those furry critters still felt the need to sample what I'd planted because I came across several bulbs that had been dug up and had a little nibble taken out of them before being rejected and tossed aside.  I replanted those and hopefully they weren't too taste-tested to bloom.  I'm just glad *anything* is coming up.  I'm glad we've had sunshine.  I'm glad I can see something other than white, liberally splotched with yellow.  (Think I'm kidding?  I'm not...............)

That was taken the weekend before last.  There are no dog or cat footprints leading up to any of those spots, either.  Ewwwwwwwww.

***

With the recent thaw, it's a good thing we got outside the weekend before last and accomplished a few of Kiddo's Most Desired Winter Weekend Family Outdoor activities:

- building a snowman bigger than Kiddo...

- and building a snow fort from which to have a snowball fight.

Ed, the snowman - or rather, person of snow that we built, has suffered mightily with the sun that decided to come out and stay out in the days immediately following his creation.  We have had to pick up the various bits of his face and reattach them several times in the past week, most recently this morning as we were waiting for Kiddo's bus to make its way up the street.  Ed is now a little person of snow with basically just his bottom snowball still vertical and present.

 

If I'd realized that constructing things out of snow in the yard was all it would take to bring on the spring thaw and sunshine, I'd have been outside at 12:01am on January 1st!  Let's hope it lasts............

***

So, the Oscars were on last night, which reaffirmed my deep and everlasting desire to one day be a seat filler for the Academy Awards.  At least twice during last night's telecast, I saw a seat filler sitting right next to George Clooney.  Can you imagine?!  Of course, I'll need to get a whole lot more attractive before they'd plunk me next to any celebrity, much less one in the front row.  With my luck, I'd get to seat fill next to the guy who was sitting behind Quentin Tarantino last night... (not that I have anything against Gandalf, of course...)

I've said I really want to do this for my 40th birthday, so I still have another year plus to figure out the wheres, hows, and if it's really possibles since Seat Filling at the Oscars is totally the number one item on my bucket list!

***

Words Kiddo asked me to define for her over the past three days:

murder

distended

slipshod

Each time, the question came out of the blue, and each time, I asked her where she'd heard/read it.  Murder came from a book she had to read about Abraham Lincoln for homework, distended from the movie Bolt and slipshod from a Kim Possible book she was reading.  It's like living with a pop vocabulary quiz around here all of a sudden.

***

Are you watching Modern Family?  It is, hands down, my favorite new show of the season.  I like that not only is it side-splittingly, spit-takingly funny, but that the characters actually seem to be fond of each other.  Yes, there is snark, but it isn't mean-spirited the way it tends to be on sitcoms of recent memory (well, even further back than recent memory - all the way back to Roseanne).  Every character gets great lines and great scenes, from Ed O'Neill's Jay on down to baby Lily, who had her first lines last week.  Modern Family is the reason why our family's band name for Rock Band/Guitar Hero is Why the Face...

Speaking of television, I'm just not as into American Idol this year as I've been in years past.  I haven't even re-upped for the annual AI pool in which I've eagerly and intently participated for years.  I don't know if Adam ruined it for me with his utter perfection last year or what, but despite being a huge Ellen DeGeneres fan (and enjoying her participation in the show this year a lot too), I'm just not that into it.  Anyone else with me?  I don't know if it is that none of the performers have grabbed me (yet?) the way that Adam did last year, that the song choices have felt tired and the performances for the most part ho-hum, or that the judges other than Ellen seem to be trotting out a lot of the same, exact comments that they have made in previous seasons or what, but I'm not feeling it.  Out of the current group of contestants, I'd have to say my favorite is Crystal Bowersox, and I am hoping I get more sucked in as we get closer to the top 12, but right now, it isn't Much Watch Live TV, but more Watch it off the DVR at Some Point TV instead.

Also speaking of TV, how about that final season of Lost?!  Whoa nelly!  Now *that* is Must Watch Live TV, along with Modern Family and The Amazing Race (though I really do still miss the Globetrotters from last season).  I'd watch Project Runway live too, if it weren't on so late.  That falls into the Must Watch off the DVR Because it is on Way Past My Bedtime category.  (Speaking of Project Runway, did you hear that Meryl Streep's Oscar outfit last night was designed by PR alum Chris March? WOOHOO!)

What TV shows are on your Must List this season?

***

Conversation with Kiddo the other day:

Kiddo:  Mommy, I think it would be fun if you played Littlest Pet Shop with me.

Me:  You know what would be even more fun than that?

Kiddo:  What?

Me:  Doing your homework!

Kiddo:  Ha. Ha. Ha. 

*pause*

Kiddo:  That?  Was me laughing sarcastically.

(Yes, she has a ways to go yet before she realizes that sarcasm is diluted quite a bit by pointing it out immediately after using it...)

***

If you're looking for a good book to read, in terms of being laugh-out-loud funny as well as extremely well written, I recommend picking up a copy of Notes from the Underwire by Quinn Cummings.  I've been reading her equally well written blog, The QC Report, for a while, and after languishing on the library's hold list for what felt like an eternity, I finally got my hands on a copy of the book last Friday.  Now that I read and enjoyed the book, I'm sad that I got it from the library because that means I have to return it.  This might be one of the rare times when I go out and buy a book after I've read it courtesy of the public library, because there are so many bits that I'd like to be able to reread whenever I want to, without languishing on the hold list all over again.

For example..............

What I want to be is a strong, resolute figure leading my daughter through the primeval forest of childhood, hacking out a clear, bright path of expectations for her.  What I usually end up being is a person swatting at bugs, squinting at the sun and saying nervously, "Wait.  I know I have the map here somewhere."

There also was an entire chapter about organizing summertime activities for kids (as in camps) that struck a huge chord as I'm presently squinting through the reemerging sun and noticing the long, long stretch of no school that is suddenly looming much closer on the horizon.  She had me rolling in that "It's funny because it's true" sort of way through this whole chapter.  It also had me checking the town's recreation department website for the opening of registration for the "summer fun" program and sending an email out to all the other parents in Kiddo's class and our Daisy troop to find out whether any of her friends are going to be attending Summer Fun and if so, when.  Kiddo loved Summer Fun last year, when she didn't know a soul in town and it didn't matter therefore which weeks she went.  This year, there are more field trips as she's now a going-into-second-grader which puts her into an older group (2-4 instead of K-1) and she knows lots of kids, obviously, now that she's in school here, so the timing of Summer Fun scheduling is more complex.  The cost has gone up a bit as well, but it still is the most reasonably priced summer day camp type program around, for which I'm grateful that Kiddo enjoys it so much!

Whoops, I'm digressing again.  I think that's a sign I need to walk away from the computer and tend to either the grocery shopping or the sink full of dishes from last night and this morning.  I'd much prefer curling up in a sunny spot on the floor like our cat and taking a nap, but I've squandered any potential nap time by blogging instead.  Think I might ingest some hair of the dog before I attempt anything else... 

***

Last but not least, it's almost March Madness time again, so allow me to display a bit of Hubby's and my school spirit and end with a hearty

LET'S GO, ORANGE!!!

Just one more reason I will never, ever be mistaken for Martha Stewart

Yesterday afternoon, I took Kiddo over to Target to scarf down some popcorn select presents for two upcoming birthday parties she was scheduled to attend (one of which was this afternoon).  Once we had finished agonizing over which thing to get for each friend and drooled over various Littlest Pet Shop items (her) and home decor items and new release books (me), we headed to the gift wrap and birthday card section.  I told Kiddo to pick out whatever gift wrap she wanted, within reason, as all I had located at home in any sufficient quantity was Christmas wrap.  She interpreted "within reason" to mean a roll of super-shiny, silver wrapping paper.  I was dubious but she was insistent and it was fairly cheap as well as being enough to wrap both of the presents chilling in our cart.  She was thrilled to have her shiny, silver paper and brandished the roll aloft the entire way out to the car.

Well, time was drawing nigh this afternoon for us to leave for the party.  While I had been secretly hoping Hubby would notice the birthday present, roll of wrapping paper and fancy, tri-color bow Kiddo had also picked out sitting up on the table and wrap it for me (as is customary in our house - I am *not* a good gift wrapper.  Sadly, I'm not even a good gift bagger; I lack the creative dexterity required to make tissue paper look pretty inside a gift bag.  This is why Hubby, who is able to neatly and precisely wrap anything, no matter its size or shape, is the Head Gift Wrapper in our family), it was about 20 minutes before we had to leave and Hubby was showing no signs of getting his wrap on.  He and Kiddo were firmly planted on the couch in front of the Syracuse basketball game, so I trudged upstairs to wrap it myself.  (Okay, so I said "Well, guess I'm going to go get the present wrapped now....................................." and waited a bit more, looking hopefully in the couch's direction.  Nothing but a "Let's go, Orange!"  Humph.)  I removed the shrink wrap from the roll and began to unroll it.  This is when I discovered a tiny, little problem..............

Turns out the "silver" paper?

Was not quite silver when unrolled........

Gift wrap FAIL.


I managed to save the day by locating a shiny, holographic, silver gift bag in the bin in the basement along with all the Christmas wrap.  Perfect for a 7 year old girl's birthday party, at least in Kiddo's expert opinion.  I even found some tri-color tissue paper that matched the bow exactly.  Whew.


Now I just need to come up with a project that needs lots of clear, cellophane wrap as I can't return it now that it's been open and manhandled.  How much do you want to bet I still have this roll in the basement ten years from now?


Just one more reason why I will never, ever be mistaken for Martha Stewart!


(On a tangential but sorta-kinda related note, how sweet was it that the birthday girl specifically asked her mom not to use any food dye in the frosting for the birthday cupcakes today, so that Kiddo would be able to have one?  This is the second time in the past two months that one of her classmates has made a point of requesting no food dye in party-related goodies just so that Kiddo could partake.  With Kiddo's life being so full of Sorry, you can't eat thats and Nope, we'll have to scrape all the yummy frosting off of this firsts, little things like this really touch me.  Yay for the kind hearts and compassionate natures of Kiddo's friends!!)

At least it wasn't Bernice Bobs Her Hair...

Well, it happened.  A rite of passage I had hoped we'd skip over.  Kiddo gave herself a haircut.  It could've been worse, I know - it really was more of a trim than a full-on cut, not even severe enough to require an emergency visit to the hair salon.  (Yet.)  I didn't even notice it until the day after it happened.  But still...


There we were the other night, Kiddo and I, in her bathroom after her bath, me tending to her wet hair.  I was about to braid it, so I began combing and parting it in the center when I noticed some very short hairs, right in the front at her hairline.  I didn't think anything of it at first - her hair does tend to break right at the front from frequent ponytailing and barretting, so a few flyaway, shorter strands aren't unusual.  Then I looked more closely.  This was more than a few flyaways - this was at least two locks of hair.  Right in the front, right in the middle, where a widow's peak would be if Kiddo had one.

 

Her hair was still rather wet, so it was hard at first to determine the extent of the damage.  It was already clear, however, that this had been cut, and not by any professional.

"Kiddo," I said in my stern parenting voice, "Did you cut your hair?"

"Um..... I don't remember." came the Reaganesque reply as she stared intently down at the sink - more so as not to meet my reproving look than because she'd actually noticed all the solidified-into-something-stronger-than-cement toothpaste globs she never, ever rinses out of the bowl when she's done brushing her teeth.

"Kiddo.............."  I decided to throw her by changing questioning tactics.  I haven't watched approximately seventeen thousand hours of the various flavors of Law & Order for nothing, after all. I can interrogate with the best of them.   "When did you do this?"

"Um......" Kiddo paused, hoping perhaps that I'd have one of my short-term memory lapses and forget what I'd just asked her, but finally she cracked under my withering gaze, doubled by my reflection in the mirror.  There was no escaping this.

"I did it when I was doing my presidents homework."  Okay, that made a little sense, as the "presidents homework" involved cutting words out and pasting them into a Venn diagram about Washington and Lincoln.  So, she had scissors handy at the time already.

I absorbed and processed this for a moment, then let go with the dreaded follow-up question: "WHY?!"

She really had no good answer.  She tried "I don't know" and mumbled something about how she "didn't mean to" and her hair was "bothering her" and she "didn't realize" and wrapped up with an apology.  Had they been studying explorers instead of presidents in first grade, she would have been able to pull a George Mallory and answer "Because it was there."  That seems to be the real reason, from what Detective Mommy could discern anyhow...

By now, sufficient time had elapsed (along with the heat of my glare) to dry enough of the hair for me to get a fuller picture of what a pair of Fiskars in the hands of a not-closely-enough-supervised six-and-three-quarters year old can do.  

I should pause here to mention that I tried to have Kiddo's hair cut in bangs once, when she was a toddler and finally had hair in quantity and length enough that "keeping it out of her eyes" was something requiring consideration.  It was a mistake.  Kiddo's hair was way too curly to allow for decent bangs.  What she wound up with was a frizzy fringe that more sprang outward and upward than lay smoothly across the forehead, keeping out of the eyes as had been my hope.  Back then, I swore I'd never do bangs for her again, as tempting as the idea was in terms of keeping her hair neat and out of her face.  While Kiddo's hair does seem to be more "wavy" than outright "curly" now that it is longer, I still haven't dared attempt bangs again for fear of reliving that horrible, unmanageable, frizzy fringe look.

Kiddo, however, dared and did.  Ugh.

Detective Mommy had one, last follow-up question before turning the case over to Judge and Jury Mommy.

"What did you do with the hair that you cut?"

And with the mumbled "I put it in my boot" response, I knew that she knew that what she'd done was wrong and was something she'd therefore tried to cover up.  Perhaps not premeditation, but definitely a clear indication of guilt.  (As a quick aside, here, her boot?  That was the best hiding spot she could come up with?  My kid is definitely not a criminal mastermind.  Well, yet, anyhow...)

She stood there, tears beginning to spill down her cheeks and generally looking pathetic, with that damned row of hair high atop her forehead like a peacock's feathery 'do.

I considered appropriate consequences, the fitting punishment for this crime.  I quickly realized that just having to live with it would be punishment enough.  I shook my head sadly with a sigh for full effect, picked up the comb and began to comb her hair again.

"Well, Kiddo," I said, my voice laced with disappointment and regret, "there's nothing I can do to fix this.  We'll just have to wait for it to grow back in again, and that's going to take a very long time."


"Like how long?" she asked, a glimmer of hope in her eyes that she'd managed to escape a harsh sentence.  "Until..........April?"

"Oh, no, no, no.  Much longer than that.  Like, until you are eight or maybe even nine."

I wasn't exaggerating that much, after all.  I mean, hair grows at what?  A half inch a month?  Prior to her Edward Scissorhandsing, her hair came to just below her shoulders, so about eight or nine inches long.  Nine inches = eighteen months, which puts Kiddo at closing in on her ninth birthday.  Well, past her eighth birthday, anyhow.

This news came as quite the shock to her.  She looked positively chagrined.  "And," I continued in the same disappointment-shot-with-regret tone, "it is going to look MUCH sillier before it looks normal again.  I'm not going to be able to hide it that well, either, since it is right smack-dab in the middle of your head."

That was it, the killing blow.  Kiddo crumpled and of course, Evil Judge Mommy felt my heart crack a bit at seeing her misery.  This misery continued through dinner, with much snuffling and weeping (exacerbated, as it was, by the specter of the Disappointed and Upset Daddy next to whom she was seated).  By bedtime, she was so thoroughly defeated that I felt the need to relent a bit and attempt to mitigate her woe.  I did so by telling her the following story (at bedtime every night, Kiddo always asks each of us to tell her either a story about When We Were Young or When She Was a Baby - with "Baby" loosely equivalent to "any time she can't clearly recall herself") -

When I was a kid, my sister and I were huge Sesame Street fans.  Even at the age of almost seven, which is when this story took place, I still was quite fond of Sesame Street - all the PBS lineup, really - mostly because it was one of the very, very few shows my mother would let us watch.  When your choices are that limited, you'll watch whatever you can.  Anyhow, our loyal Sesame Street viewing period coincided with the time when one of the people on Sesame Street was Olivia (played the by the recently deceased Alaina Reed-Hall), Gordon's sister.





Now, along with having a lovely singing voice and performing a great rendition of the Sesame Street classic Sing, Olivia, as you might have spotted in the clip above, wore her hair in a style that included beads.  My sister and I were in love with Olivia's hair.  We were envious of Olivia's hair.  We wanted Olivia's hair.  Well, one day, as my mother was distracted with the care and tending of our infant sister, my then 4 year old sister and I decided we were going to give ourselves Olivia's hair.  We sat there in our room and pondered how to do this.  Okay, fine, I confess - I did most of the pondering.  My sister really was just going along for the ride on whatever scheme I came up with.  My eyes darted around the room, trying to figure out what we could use to simulate those awesome, super-cool beads.  Finally, they alit on the artist's kit Santa had brought me for Christmas the previous December.  A-ha!  Inspiration struck!  This kit included no less than ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY EIGHT magic markers, in every shade of every color on the planet.  Well, in every shade of all the "big" colors, anyhow.  I explained my plan to my sister and got her agreement that I would do her hair first.  (I should point out that my sister's hair was the exact opposite of mine.  Whereas mine was brunette, short and full of unruly curls, hers was blonde, straight as a pin, and right around shoulder length.  Much more conducive to my brilliant plan.)  She perched on the edge of her bed and I got to work.

My plan was simple - we'd imitate the look of a head of braided and beaded hair by removing the cap from a magic marker, wrapping the end of a section of hair around the tip of the marker, and then jamming the cap back on to hold it in place.  My sister's favorite color at the time was blue, so I used all the blues, purples and greens on her head - almost half of the markers in the kit.  There was a bit of trial and error at first - not enough hair to keep the marker jammed in place, too much hair to get the cap wedged back on - but I got the hang of it pretty quickly and in about fifteen or twenty minutes, it was done.  She looked glorious, and immediately began to gently swing her head to and fro, making the markers-posing-as-beads click and clack in the most magically wondrous of ways.  I urged her to get my hair "beaded" too, but alas, being as short and curly as it was, the markers really didn't work in it.  It was just too difficult to get enough hair to wrap around the end and then, if she did manage to get a marker applied, it jutted out from my scalp at an odd angle, rather than cascading softly down around my shoulders like hers did.  I was quite disappointed, but still proud of my handiwork, which we immediately ran down the hall to show off to our mother.

(At this point in my tale, I paused to ask Kiddo what she thought my mother's reaction was.  "What did you DO?!?!?!?!?" came Kiddo's response.  She was pretty much right on the mark with that.)

Yes, our mother, rather than either being pleased at our ingenuity and creativity or just impressed by our beautiful new hairdos, flipped right the heck out.  In retrospect, I'm sure that the sleep deprivation that comes with having an infant, along with the generally being run raggedness that comes with also having a four and six year old, two dogs, one cat and no nanny or cook or maid around, may've dulled her sense of wonder and awe a tad.  As it was, we were told in no uncertain terms to get those markers out of our hair RIGHT NOW and then grounded for an eternity following the grim discovery that not only is hair porous enough to soak up magic marker ink when it spends some quality time jammed up against a magic marker's tip, but that said ink will in fact be as permanent as the art kit promises and not wash out of that hair.  We were summarily taken in for hair cuts before being sent to our room and the lovely, fantastic art kit with all its rainbow shades of markers was confiscated, not to be seen again until over two full years later when I had a Social Studies project to do for school and needed something with which to color in my feeble attempt at an artistic rendering of a Lenni Lenape village.

So, I told this story to the still sniffling and small Kiddo, and she was mollified somewhat, as she generally is by tales of my miscreant youth and its errant ways.  The following morning, I attempted to hide the pieces of hair by sort of smoothing them over to the side, but I do fear that in another month or two, it's going to look like a teeny, Charlie Chaplin moustache, right there in the middle of her forehead.

 

And if it does, that will be the point at which I take her to a salon and see what, if anything, they can do.  Maybe her hair has lost enough curl that bangs would be an option after all.................

Mostly Wordless Wednesday: I love a parade

You know what was even better than watching a parade, at Disney World, on vacation, featuring lots of my favorite Pixar and Disney characters? Kiddo getting chosen by one of the performers to dance in front of the crowd in the parade and having the time of her life.  Literally - she said to Hubby, after it ended and she was back with us, "I have never been happier in my entire life!"

(PS - Yes, she's wearing a fleece jacket and gloves.  Yes, I said "Disney World" - it's been ridonkulously cold all week.  Still, the sun has been shining and it's warmer than home, where we hear there's snow awaiting our imminent return......)

In lieu of a crowbar...

In my ongoing quest to get unstuck and back on the blogging wagon, I popped over to Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop to check out some of her blogging prompts.  I've never participated in her Writer's Workshop before (though I've read many an excellent post from folks who were participating), and seeing as how I'm using a prompt from last week to unstick myself, I guess technically I'm not participating now, either.  Maybe I will after I unwedge myself from my current Blogger's Block....

Anyhow, the prompt I'm using in lieu of a crowbar is:

List 10 things you never knew until you were mom.

Here goes!


1)  I never knew that one, ridiculously small human being...

could produce so much laundry.  (That's Kiddo at 3 weeks old, newly home from the NICU and weighing almost 5 pounds.  She's in a preemie onesie and socks and that's a normal sized pacifier next to her, to give you an idea of exactly how small she was.  And yet, the piles of laundry she produced... the veritable Himalayan Mountains of laundry.......)


2)  I never knew that I would one day know every, last move of the Wiggles' choreography, to go along with knowing every, last word and note of the Wiggles' extensive song repertoire.  Even years after my daughter last watched the Wiggles I can still execute a mean Hot Potato, as well as the trickier numbers like Uncle Noah's Ark.  She doesn't even remember the words or dance moves, but I still do.  (Just please don't ask me what three items we need from the grocery store right now, because that?  I cannot remember.  Nor can I remember what I did with the list I wrote of the three items we need before heading to the store.  Must be a short term vs. long term memory thing.  Either that or my brain is full.)


3)  I never knew that my very first reaction, upon being faced with another human being on the brink of vomiting, would ever be to cup my bare hands under the barfer's mouth and attempt to catch said vomit therein.  Now?  It's apparently instinctual, as I've done it (many more times than once) without even having a conscious thought on the action.





4)  I never knew the rule "The smaller the toy, the more painful it is to step on barefoot in the middle of the night."  This is, of course, compounded by the facts that (a) the older the kid gets, the smaller the toys get and (b) the older the kid gets, the less chance one is supposed to have to step on a toy because theoretically, that kid is supposed to be able to pick her dang toys up off of the floor and put them away where they belong.  The subsequent "element of surprise" multiplies the pain factor, I think.


4b) Also? I never knew I'd be able to accurately identify the species of several dozen different dinosaurs simply by stepping upon them barefoot in the dark. For the record, the ankylosaurus is both the easiest and most painful dino to identify using this method.


5)  I never knew that "Fisher Price" was a legitimate interior decorating theme.


6)  I never knew that I would ever instigate and/or enthusiastically participate in detailed conversations centered around the topic of bodily functions.  Sometimes with relative or even complete strangers, even.  What is it about motherhood that makes one suddenly eager to discuss things like poopy diapers, and the amount, color and texture thereof?! (Thank heavens this was just a phase that passed by potty-training's conclusion.)


7)  I never knew my heart could break, just a little bit, on a daily basis, but it can and does. Each morning, as I watch my now-first-grader climb on the bus, it shatters just the teensiest bit.  (Yes, I'm over it by the time I've got the front door closed and am surrounded by the peace and quiet of my morning at 8:04, but there is that moment, still, every day.)

8)  I never knew I'd actually do the "lick the finger and scrub at the dried Godknowswhat on my child's face" maneuver.


9)  I never knew that I was flexible enough to not only accurately pass the [sippy cup/water bottle/bag of Goldfish/book/toy/stuffed animal/Kleenex/wet wipe/chapstick] into the waiting hands in the back seat of the minivan without taking my other hand off the steering wheel or eyes off the road, but also to later retrieve the dropped [sippy cup/water bottle/bag of Goldfish/book/toy/stuffed animal/Kleenex/wet wipe/chapstick] off the floor of the back seat of the minivan without taking my other hand off the wheel or eyes off the road.


10)  I never knew that time would go by so damn fast.  It feels like I've just blinked and a third of my child's childhood has passed.  I heard them tell me - oh yes, I definitely heard all the parents who told me, over and over again, how quickly the time flies by once you have a child, but I never knew it until I became a mom.

***blink***

Stuck

Ugh, I've been stuck for a while now with blogging and all.  Just gave my blog a quick makeover and I'll see if that helps......... more to come soon!

Kids and world tragedies

Up until now, Kiddo has led a very sheltered life. She's never known of any of the world's tragedies or catastrophes in any real way. I mean, she was born in 2003, so she missed 9/11. She was just a toddler for both the Indian Ocean Tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. Even if she had been old enough to be aware of what was happening, we would've kept it from her. We have a strict no-news policy in our house. Kiddo never watches any news program nor does she listen to any news radio either here at home or anywhere else as much as we can help it. (Yes, this means I'm perpetually shutting off the Fox News channel when we're visiting my parents - it is on full volume 24/7 there.) When Haiti was devastated by the earthquake last week, Kiddo was none the wiser. Hubby and I saw the newscasts on TV, the videos and photos online. I felt my heart break anew with each picture or tweet or headline. I have no personal connection to Haiti (though I have friends who do). Even still, how can one be human and not feel the pain of the utter devastation and the anguish of being mostly powerless to help? This was the pain I was keeping from Kiddo. I didn't want her to worry, I didn't want to introduce the rainclouds of human tragedy to her child's perpetually sunny world view. (Well, sunny except for those times when Mommy or Daddy is being MEAN to her, which still is a childlike raincloud.)

Then Kiddo came home from school yesterday with a small sheet of green paper in her backpack. As I was fishing out her lunchbag to determine how much food might possibly have actually been ingested during the school day, she picked up the green paper and began to read. "Haiti suffered a horrible earthquake.........."

Enter rainclouds. She was instantly filled with questions. What's a Haiti? What's an earthquake? What does "suffered" mean?

So, we had our first Big Talk, right then and there, me sitting on the steps and her on my lap. Putting it into terms I hoped she could understand and issuing many reassurances that we do not live in an area prone to earthquakes ourselves, I explained as best I could.

Her first reaction was to ask me if we could go to Haiti and help look for people who were stuck under buildings that fell down. I explained that we personally couldn't go there right now, but that there were lots and lots of people from the US and around the world who are going there to help.

Her second reaction was to run upstairs to her room and grab her piggy bank. She emptied it out and said she planned to donate all of her money to the school's collection jar (the actual purpose of that small, green flyer was to let families know the student council at her school has decided to collect money to donate to UNICEF for relief efforts in Haiti). I helped her count it out and put it into a baggie to bring to school, and she did today. All $8.21 - a princely sum for a child who doesn't get a regular allowance (beyond the Tooth Fairy, she does scrounge for pennies and such whenever possible though!) - that she had in her piggy bank went into the school's collection jar today.

I am so proud of her. So happy that her first thoughts were not so much to worry for herself but of concern for the people affected by the tragedy, so happy that her first instincts were "what can I do to help?" Apparently something we're doing in raising her is coming out all right. I'm also relieved that she hasn't had a bad reaction to the news, that she didn't dream about it or dwell on it as I was worried she might. They talked about Haiti in class today, looking it up on a map and talking about the earthquake. (Hopefully my rusty recollection of plate tectonics and fault lines wasn't too off the mark and jibed with what the teacher told the class today!) I don't know if we've been doing the right thing by sheltering her. I know that now that she's in school, current events will become more a part of her daily existence whether I'd want them to or not. I'm just glad that she's handling this first, big world tragedy as well as she seems to be. I did hear Kiddo reassuring some of her stuffed animals that "it's okay, we don't live on the edge of a plate so there won't be an earthquake here, and our house is very strong, too, anyway" so I know she is processing it. So far, so good.

I would urge everyone out there, if you haven't already, to please take a moment and do what you can to help the people of Haiti. If you need a starting point, one of my oldest friends is part Haitian. She has family there, and she posted here about ways you can help. Anything you can do to help is more than they have. Even if all you have is $8.21 out of your piggy bank, please do consider helping. As my friend Lylah said in her blog, "Please keep the victims and their families in your thoughts, and do what you can to help responders help those in need. Remember: No amount is too small. Right now, everything counts."