Mama: You buy it at the store?
William: No!!!! How do they MAKE the TAPE?
William: No!!!! How do they MAKE the TAPE?
Mama:.......that sounds like a great question for Daddy*
* Something I SWORE I would never do. Documented proof.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
William the Questioner
I know. I know. I'm a bad blogger. Work, school and extra curriculuar activities just keep pulling me in several different directions. Amelia is on a nap strike and I feel like I haven't sat down in four years. I did want to take this opportunity to write this down while I remember:
William is full of questions. He has been for years now (it feels like). The questions just keep on getting harder and harder. I literally do not know how to begin answering some of the questions he has asked. Just today:
1. When I die, will I turn into oil?*,**, ***
2. Does God have bones?
*One of his favorite dinosaur books talks about how the dinosaurs died and their bodies turned into oil after a period of time.
** I'm trying to be patient with this one, but my child talks about dying a lot. Not him. Dinosaurs, our cat, other animals....I really feel like death is a concept he is struggling to understand and it is a very difficult concept to grasp. So, he asks questions. Lots of questions. Which may or may not be appropriate to the setting. Consider yourself warned.
***William's line of death questioning has me so uncomfortable. I know he is trying to understand, but how I do I explain the delicacy of the subject?
The other major questions as of late:
1. Are there noctornal dinosaurs?
2. Can rocks die? (insert any other object, plant, animal)
3. Can we go to the hospital and get another baby (!!!!)
4. Why do I have bones?
5. Can you break one of my bones so I can have a cast everyone will sign (NO, I won't). William's followup: But, can you break my bones?
6. Do fish drink water?
7. Why are there clouds in the sky?
8. What is in this chicken? (so NOT ready for the meat discussion right now on the tail end of the whole dying piece).
9. Can I drive the car?
10. Why didn't you remember to buy ranch dip?
11. Is there a number bigger than 62?
12. Why did Daddy crash the car?
13. When will I be a grown up?
14. What does this button do?
15. How does the smoke detector work?
16. Why does Daddy go to work?
17. Can I go to work with Daddy and help him?
18. Will you buy this for me? (I gently suggest he spend his own money) I'm not spending MY dollars on THIS! I'm saving my dollars for toys!
19. Why do we live here?
20. How many dollars did our house cost? (ME: a lot) William's follow up with big round eyes: More than 61 DOLLARS???!?!
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
The Flintstone event
_________________________________________________________________
This was not my favorite day. For the sole purposes of torturing, blackmailing and embarrassing my teenaged daughter, I am sitting here this evening to put down the events of this day.
Background information:
1. I work on two mornings a week. I drop the children off at a sitter's house (my girlfriend) and go to work. These mornings are busy with me trying to get my two kids out the door while trying to keep my work attire neat and clean.
2. Before Amelia turned 2, we were under instruction to give her 1/2 of a children's chewable vitamin tablet each day. Luckily, they are easily broken in half.
3. After she turned 2, there were still several half pieces floating around in the vitamin bottle.
4. I am cheap. I like to use things up and not have them go to waste.
The story:
I was running around on this particular morning trying to get all three of us ready and out the door on time. It seems like no matter how much legwork I do the day before (put out clothes, pack lunches, pack work bag, pack diaper bag, set out breakfast items, etc) I am always frantically running in the morning.
I finished eating and went to get dressed. The kids usually linger over their breakfast (or, dawdle if you prefer). They laugh, chat and play with their food. Instead of standing over them yelling, I find it more peaceful to get myself ready for the day. I usually brush my teeth and then check on their progress, go back and pull on my clothes and check on them again. I bounce back and forth between kitchen and bedroom until they are done and I can wipe down both kitchen and kids. With all the bouncing, is it any wonder I forget something almost every day (deodorant, makeup on my left eye, socks, etc).
On one of my "check back" trips, I wiped down William. Amelia was still eating and I half noticed that she had something red smeared all over her face. I figured she was doing one of her newer tricks: dipping her vitamin into her milk and the using it to "paint" her face. On a morning like this my reaction: whatever. I just calculated in an extra minute to wipe her back off again.
It was time to wipe her off just moments later. The job required more than one pass of my washcloth*. I rinsed the cloth and came back to wipe her off again when I noticed more red on her face. If I would have stopped and thought about it, I would have figured out what was going on right then. But, I didn't. Instead, I plunked her down to play and started removing the pieces of concrete like oatmeal from the kitchen table, floor and chair.
A short time later, I found Amelia playing in the living room with more red on her face. At first I thought she was bleeding from her nose. Alarm bells were ringing loudly. The nose was most definitely the source of the red........only it wasn't blood. I was relieved for about .45685468 seconds. That is when I realized something was wrong. So very wrong. I tipped Amelia back against her wishes (ie: I held her down) and took a peek up her nose with a flashlight to discover the source of red: a children's vitamin was lodged up inside.
PANIC.....PANIC.......PANIC...........PANIC.............PANIC................PANIC...........PANIC....
I don't work at the sort of job where I can arrive late. There is no substitute teacher finding system to call. I am responsible for finding a replacement if I cannot be there to teach my students promptly at 9am. Life happens, but I CANNOT be late. This situation is difficult because it is too late to find a replacement and I have to make some hard choices.
PANIC.....PANIC.......PANIC...........PANIC.............PANIC................PANIC...........PANIC....
The doctor's office was not open until 9 (remember what time work starts?), so I had to call the after hours call service. The nurse was very helpful and reassured me this was not something to panic about unless she couldn't breathe. They advised me to keep watch over her and make an appointment when the office opened.
Conclusion: I'll wrap this up as quick as I can. I rushed around on PANIC while red stuff continued to leak from Amelia's nose. I would do a task, then run by and wipe her nose. I called John, got ready for work, called the sitter and got the kids ready.
Moments before I had to leave for work, Amelia sneezed two of the biggest, reddest sneezes ever. A flashlight** inspection showed no traces of the vitamin. I dropped the kids off at the sitter's house on time. I arrived to work on time, exhausted.
John took Amelia to the doctor to confirm all the vitamin was gone AND there hadn't been any damage to her cute little nose.
*In hindsight, I now realize she had been half crying/complaining about something while rubbing her nose. My busy schedule oriented brain did not have room for this information at the time.
**Yes. I am the kind of mom who will inspect your nose with a flashlight without thinking twice. I am NOT the kind of mom who will pinch the opposite nostril shut and blow out the object as initially suggested by the nurse.
Beautiful day...
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