Paging Nurse Gaz

This morning Gaz hopped out of bed bright and early, opened the bedroom door, and asked, "Mommy, can you fit through the door?" And then, "Mommy, why are you laughing?"

It's been a crazy week here, as last Friday we met Number One Godmother, Auntie Aiiiieeeee,* at the oral surgeon's office, as she was getting her wisdom teeth extracted. It took forever, but Gaz still somehow managed to remain more or less well behaved. She konked out in the car on the way home after being only slightly disturbed by Aiiiieeeee's strange appearance and inability to talk (and more terrifying--her inability to laugh!).

Thus began Gaz's first time giving up her room to a houseguest since she really started liking the place. I mean, she doesn't sleep there, but she does jump on the bed constantly and her little play kitchen and a random assortment of toys and books are all in there. It was a little strange when Aiiiieeeee needed some post-op nap time and Gaz had to collect whatever toys she might feel like playing with for a while and remove them to the living room. Mark took Gaz to the park for a while and I was able to get the house in order for the rest of the convalescence.

So Aiiiieeeee stayed with us until Monday evening, and Gaz thoroughly enjoyed the extra attention another adult human can provide, as well as getting to play nurse. She patted Aiiiieeeee's knee and wore a very grave, concerned expression while doing so. She offered toys for Aiiiieeeee to sleep with and built her cubes out of Legos and painted her pictures to help her feel better. It was terribly precious, but also terribly taxing on the little one to be so good for so long.

Among other hijinks, which I'm sure I'll remember as soon as I hit the "post" button, Aiiiieeeee and Mark explained to Gaz about heartbeats and the circulatory system. And since we're talking about Gaz here, this lead directly to everyone drinking buckets of pretend blood. How does she think of these things without prompting? I have no idea. But she now knows that her body is full of blood and it moves around. And even now, she sometimes picks up a plate from her play kitchen and sits down to "eat some blood!"

Since Aiiiieeeee's return home, Gaz has been missing her auntie. Tuesday was made of mope until she realized that she could now jump on her bed any time she liked. But generally, she's had a short fuse. The adjustment time after any visit is always full of crankiness, but this has been rougher than average. Part of that might be Auntie Heather's visits on Saturday and Sunday, which contributed to the fun quotient and the post-fun crash. But all in all, Gaz had a great time last weekend, even though Aiiiieeeee felt terrible and the rest of us were a little harried.

Oh yeah, the other really crazy thing she said happened while she was making Auntie Heather run around on Sunday. Gaz stuck her hands into the front of her diaper (she often pretends the front of her diaper is a giant pretend pocket when she's running around mostly naked), then flung her hands out in an expansive gesture and said, "TA-DA! THE COOKIES ARE HERE!" Which is way more entertaining than when she pretends to pull a rabbit (or some other random magic trick type thing) out of her pants.

Today has been a long day of tantrums and art (we just discovered Elmer's 3D paints deeply discounted at Walgreens) and an accidental late nap, so I expect the grumpiness to recur when it gets closer to bedtime (which is coming up all too soon!). But right now she's cavorting and cheerful, so blessings duly counted and sincerely appreciated.

And we all learned a valuable lesson about how hard it is to tell the difference between "I" and "Aiiiieeeee" in casual conversation. I don't think we figured out what to do about it, though, because it's still really cute to hear her use her babyish approximation of "Angeli."

* She's inherited a few more extremely awesome godparents since then, but Aiiiieeeee gets top billing since she actually saw me in labor. :)