Bonding with Cousins

Gaz played with her third-cousin here at the parents place today. Also yesterday. Cousin is equivalent in age, and they have a good rapport. Heck, yesterday, she pitched a total fit when asked to leave their house. But she was pretty good today; Gaz gave her one of the Polly Pockets dolls she recently got, and cousin gave her some Barbie jewelry, so they could be best friends forever.

It's good when Gaz bonds with her family. She's got first cousins who she doesn't see very often, but they're not entirely compatible; we always see them together and they have their own sibling dynamic and none of them are directly equivalent in age. She loves them, but doesn't relate to them quite as well. Third cousin, though, it was like gangbusters.

I don't know that I ever connected with any of my relatives like that. I get along with everybody, but I never entirely bonded, as friends. There's a few folks I would have enjoyed getting closer to, I suppose, but everybody's so spread out these days. Ah, well. Even still, it was really cool to see them getting so close.

Actually, me and third cousin's father, my second cousin, we got to talk a lot while the girls were playing, and honestly, I'm really glad I got to talk to him. Perhaps I will be bonding with relatives after all.

But this blog isn't about me, it's about Gaz. So she got to do a lot of things this trip; it's been a very successful father-daughter trip out to the parents. I think we've gotten along pretty well, even through a couple of melt-downs. We've gone through worse, and I think she's pretty pleased with how it turned out, as well. We'll be able to tell tomorrow, though, once we got back to LWG and Gaz tells her story of the weekend.

PS: we went to a Chinese buffet place for dinner, and one of the waitresses really took a liking to Gaz and third cousin, even tickling them when they were playing. Gaz seems to have that effect on people; she kept showing off her Polly Pocket and her jewelry and just smiling like an angel. She's awesome like that.

Pasta!

The new DVD we got for Gaz from Netflix has a bunch of new dinosaur species in it. We were looking over some of the names in one of the special features, and found "Postosuchus," which we wondered if it was pronounced "pasta-succhus".

Which led Gaz to say in a very disparaging, almost scolding voice "There was no pasta in the Triassic!"

She ain't wrong.

Dental News!

Last week there was a collision at school, and Gaz's mouth took the bulk of the damage. The teachers weren't at all worried, but Gaz very animatedly explained how it took THREE times of rinsing her mouth out for the bleeding to stop. She did have a little cut on her lower gum, right under and around one of her two front teeth there, and upon closer examination I found that the tooth was loose. The dentist said that as long as she wasn't in a lot of pain and the site didn't look dramatically swollen or otherwise infected to just keep her on soft foods over the weekend, apply NSAIDs as needed, and check back with her if we were concerned.

Well, yesterday I checked her mouth again, and the tooth is even more wiggly than before, but completely not painful to the Gaz. It looks like she's really getting ready to lose her first baby tooth. I could probably go check the archives and see if this is in fact the Very First Tooth that is working up to escape velocity, but I've got to fetch her from school soon.

She's very excited and has already told us both that the wish she plans to make on this tooth (with inflation, I guess kids now get money *and* wishes in exchange for teeth) is for a pink lollipop. Just what a kid needs.

But she's not a Virgo...

Today our wonderful Aunt Niki sent Gaz a book of 201 experiments to do with science. It was already annotated with her own notes, but she added a bunch of helpful (and aesthetic) post-its bringing Gaz's attention to specific experiments... post-its which Gaz methodically removed and stacked in an organized fashion before G was able to see what she was doing.

It reminds me of when she and her class colored the paint-spotted dog pictures from a story they'd read, and Gaz put the right colors in the right places, exactly as it had been in the book.

That kind of precision and methodical attention to even insignificant details is, I understand, supposed to be a trademark of Virgos, which both G and I are. But she's, like, a Leo, I think. I have no invested interest in astrology, mind you, but I do love to think what people who DO would think about this. Can astrological signs rub off?

Confidence

It's been an up and down day. We went shopping, which went well, but the temperatures are very high today (forecast was 86, but it read 90 earlier), and we got a bit cranky. But we relaxed and were having a good time by the time Mom came back from helping out Auntie Aaaiii. Gaz started playing with her balloon in the fan air currents and basically playing balloon, as you do.

She squeals and bops and runs around, and then goes "Man, I'm good!" She frequently tells us how fast she is, or how strong, or how clever she is. And she is darn good. I just worry that she'll keep tooting her own horn as she gets older, and get a rep for egotism. But maybe I'm putting too much thought into it.

Jello!

It's been a bit of a cranky week, for no reason we can easily determine, but last night we had good old Uncle Greg stay over, and she got to see him off this morning. She wouldn't go over and give him a hug, but when he was standing on his way out, she threw her arms around his knees and said "If your legs were Jell-o, I'd eat them up!"

I'm sure it was meant fondly.

Jello Legs! Sounds like it oughta be a nickname of some sort. "Hey, there, Jello Legs, you seen Google Brain around?" "Last I knew, she was going out to the store with Fan Hands."

... Like I need more nicknames in my life.

Elder God Pajamas?

So, we're picking out pajamas today, after a lengthy day out at the zoo and a decent evening and lengthy bath, and she goes "Okay, we'll get the Mystery Pants" i.e. these pajama shorts that aren't connected to any pajama top that I know of "and the Cthulhu shirt."

"We don't have a Cthulhu shirt!"

She started mumbling something about ancient evil that I think she remembered from when we read the box for Loveable Carl Cthulhu. We eventually picked the shirt with the jaguar with glow-in-the-dark eyes, but I was amazed and entertained by her attempt at Lovecraftian foreboding, even if she was half-giggling the entire time.

Heard at Dinner

"Boy, doing the same thing a whole lot sure can wear you out!"

Yes, yes it can.

Ease

Watching a movie this afternoon, Gaz starts burrowing behind the couch cushions.

Me: "What are you doing?"

LWG: "Are you trying to hide?"

Gaz: "Yeah, but it isn't easy!"

Singing!

For a number of years, Gaz has made up songs when she feels the urge. Tonight, after a decently long day and a watching of this Barbie mermaid movie we have through Netflix, she's been singing in the bath. It's LWG's turn to give the bath, so I've only caught snippets over the past half-hour, but a few:

"...you'll try to win it for Malibu, you'll go crazy for Malibu..."

"...you'll surf for a million years..."

"...then you gotta curl, oh, yeah..."

Now she just needs to work on rhyme and meter, and she's got a career.

Gaz v. Science

Today at dinner, after I came up with residual static as the reason the very slick Old Maid cards were sticking together, Gaz proceeded to explain my explanation right back at me. Then she asked "Is that scientific?"

Why, yes, yes it is. Just like when you told Mom about how the sun isn't a planet, it's a star made up of gasses that melt together and create heat and light and energy. That is indeed scientific.

She said she's good at science, and we opined that she should see if her first science fair went well, whenever that happened. I proceeded to tell her we've got a number of friends who actually work in science, so if she ever needs project ideas, we have aunties we can go to. I was particularly thinking of Auntie Nikki, in part because she was recently at a science fair, and she loves science! (and reads this blog), but we would take ideas from anyone!

Anyway. Science is good!

Addendum

Incidentally, happy Cinco de Pie-o!

We had pumpkin and strawberry cream (which, the filling was actually banana).

Hope everyone's Cinco was excellent!

Vocab!

So, the other night, we're doing the cool-down in the bed, waiting for Mom, and we're goofing off and she laughs, and then tells me very seriously (albeit smiling-ly) "I screamed with laughter!"

"People also say 'shrieked.' 'I shrieked with laughter.'"

"Shrieked!"

It's much better when she learns words as opposed to what she's learning on the playground. No, not sex and drugs ... poop jokes!

We've got a playground friend who is friendly and enthusiastic and a fair bit bossy; it's only just recently that Gaz is beginning to stand her ground. But anyway, once they were on the tire swing, and I was pushing them around, as one does on the tire swing, and friend starts telling a joke. And it's always something like this:

"I've got a joke!"

"If it's anything like your others, I don't think that..."

"Who put the poop in the toaster and put the toaster in the potty?"

"That's actually pretty disgusting..."

"YOU DID!" (pointing at me and shrieking with laughter)

And it goes on like that. It's not even jokes, just an excuse to talk about disgusting things and make fun of Dad, basically. Which I'm up for, that's fine. But somebody's got to play the straight man, I suppose, and I'd really rather have, like, an actual punchline. Heck, even a banal, Carrot-Top-like observation would be fine. But maybe I'm spending too much time sabotaging our small appliances in disgusting ways. If you ask Gaz on the playground, that's all I seem to do.