In Bosnia, You Get a Free Cat

Well, you get the free cat if you set out food and the cat likes you enough to keep coming around an let you pet it.This is one of the stories Gaz has related to me from one of her school friends, whose family is from Bosnia and who sometimes gets to visit. I love it, not only because it's a cool story, but because she's thinking about places that aren't here, learning that things are different and not-so-different in these distant places. I hope she gets to see all the wonders of the world, preferably on her own dime, but I would gladly use her as my excuse to do some globetrotting if I could.

Gaz has almost finished three weeks of school now, and today was open house day. I got to meet her teacher, who not only seems very nice, she's a Loyola alum. That just makes me like her more, since I have yet to meet a reprehensible Rambler. And Gaz is, in Mrs. H's own words, an angel in class. A very messy angel, though--I saw in her desk, and couldn't help but clean it out a bit. I did leave the lollipop wrapper in there, but put all the pencils and crayons in their proper place, and I located the long lost eraser. But the important things are that she's doing very well (100% on her first spelling test), she's focused in school, and she's tolerating the after-school time with the neighbors reasonably well.

It's Marathon Kids time again, and she's crazy excited about that too. She's talked one of her friends into coming with us to the kick-off. I'm not sure how well this friend will do with running a whole mile, which is what Gaz tries very hard to do, and might even succeed this year, with her longer legs and increasing stamina. I got her to run with me for a half a mile one Saturday before she got distracted by a playground

School for me is very intense and makes blogging and photo uploading even more sporadic. It's been a good Gaz day, so I wanted to get this down before I fall alseep. Which will be very soon.

Birthday and groveling

Gaz is now four and seems to be loving it. I think she hit the annual growth spurt early this year, so she's been a bit grumpier than usual and a bit more ravenous. Her appetite has returned to normal, but she's still a little more whiney than normal. I'm hoping that will be decreasing any minute now.

We had the birthday party on August 1st out in the park near our house. We had a few kids attend, and everyone seemed to have a good time. Gaz requested a red velvet cake decorated with a rainbow and sprinkles, and that's what I made. She even helped with the sprinkles and the rainbow, but mostly she ate sprinkles and begged for icing.

By now you're probably wondering where the pictures of this merry event are. It turns out that after years of playing with the camera, she's finally figured out how to delete every single picture from the camera all at once. You can imagine my glee. Now I don't have a picture of her from her birthday morning, etc. etc. Fortunately for you all, the party was documented by the fabulous Auntie Darci, so you all will get to see pictures that are probably a lot nicer than I would have taken with my crappy old one that sometimes like to zoom all the way in for no good reason.

Anyway, the birthday was had, the presents were all deemed acceptable by Her Majesty, and cake and ice cream were shared by all. We had a fine time, despite the incredible winds that threatened to blow food and everything into the river.

This afternoon Gaz and I were Queens of the Wild West. We wore rainbow-colored dresses and sang songs. We also saw a cloud shaped like a bunny with really lumpy skin.

We finally got around to sorting out the back porch, so we even got to do our imagining out doors, while snacking on our newly lounge-friendly porch.

Now I have to go here the one-queen band in the living room.

Gaz says

Thursday was a rainy day, so we stayed inside and amused ourselves in the usual manner (tea parties and various excuses to move all the toys from one room to another), then Gaz announced that she was going to write a speech to read to Obama.

You see, she's got a bit of an Obama obsession. I take responsibility for this, as I did make her watch the whole inauguration (well, we played with toys and I listened in, but I did take a break from toys for the big speeches and oaths), but it's really grown into something strange and wonderful inside her head. Every time she sees a magazine with him on the cover she says, "Hey Mom! There's Obama!" The other day, her alien toy didn't believe that Obama was the president

, even singing a song about how he, the alien, was president and not Obama. Gaz set him straight in the end.

Then she started asking about speeches, and why do people make speeches, and what do they say in them, and what was Obama speaking about in this or that news clip. Then, on that fabled rainy day, she asked me for a pencil because she was going to write the speech she would be reading to Obama. And so she disappeared into her room for a few minutes and emerged with a bunch of random letters on a page. I should scan it for posterity.

The best part was that she couldn't read it to any old imaginary Obama. She had to read it to Mommy pretending to be Obama. So I did my best to sound presidential and listened attentively to Gaz's speech about her favorite things, her favorite toys, and what she likes to do (play games, play with her toys, play with the kids next door, etc.).

I wish I had had the foresight to have the camcorder handy, because it was definitely a YouTube moment.

Other fun that's happened lately:

What happens when you cook a fossil? (Inspired by waking up with her knitted nautiloid this morning, she insisted we find pictures and information about nautiluses, which naturally ended up by checking out pictures of Lituites lituus. I've been trying to explain fossils lately, but we're still at the "if it's a dead animal, what happens when you cook it?" stage. Don't ask me to explain this stage. I don't get it either.

Of the Greedo key fob she found today: "He's a skeleton guy with clothes on. But he lost all his bones!" (She did not respond to questions on how he can be a skeleton guy and be missing his bones at the same time. Greedo is just so much fun to play with, I suppose.)

Many apologies for the long dry spells between posts. It's been a crazy few weeks, between disturbed sleep cycles and general random cranky three-year-oldness, but I'm trying to catch up. I'm even not ashamed of the kitchen right now! The living room on the other hand . . .

Well, one thing at a time.

Bulletin!

If you put a crazy straw in the keyhole of Gaz's bedroom door, you can use it as a lever to release the alien octopuses that eat people.

In more sane news, Gaz sends her thanks for all the nice Valentines she received. She's also been making a ton of her own, and we are now practically drowning in hearts. She's having a good time, though, so can't complain too much.

Today

Gaz colored the bottom of her right foot with a black marker and went for a stroll all over our beige carpet. I was more than a little angry, sent her to her room without the markers, and thankfully the Atlantis cleaner thing removed the marks that I found. (I think I just found another one, but the light is strange this time of day.)

I checked on her in her room, and she was busily and cheerfully coloring me a picture (with nice, washable crayons, I might add) to help me feel better.

Then we made a pot of Montana Gold tea (which is, incidentally, the best tea in the world) and drank tea with milk from her groovy 70's plastic teacups. The cucumber sandwiches didn't go over quite as well with the Gaz, who prefers her cukes and her sammich to be prepared and served individually. I sure ate well, though.

Now she's sitting next to me, buried under all the couch pillows, sighing heavily. "I'm having a rest because it's been a hard day!"

"What was the hardest part of the day?" I ask, expecting the morning's drama to figure in somewhere, or maybe all the coloring. Or maybe even all that patience that had to be exercised while waiting for tea to brew, waiting for me to finish some phone calls I had to make. Something like that.

"Drinking all that tea today was REALLY HARD WORK, Mom." Of course.

Dentist

Oops! I forgot to post after the check-up! I ended up with some surprise editing work that ended up taking more time than I expected, which wiped me out and so forgot about blogging for a while.

The dentist is completely wonderful. I heard many tales of her awesomeness on a local mailing list, so the choice wasn't hard. Even better, it's just a short bus or train ride from our new place. There was much praise for how well we brush her teeth, and Dr. T. told Gaz that she needs to let us help her with her toothbrushing until she's eight. I'm sure she'll really love that as the years progress. Her molars are a little close together, so we can go ahead and start flossing, or at least getting used to floss, but her front teeth are nice and spacious--lots of room for the permanents. And because Gaz started cutting teeth so early, she'll probably lose her first tooth early too. Like, maybe around five. We've got time yet for that milestone.

The spot I was worried about is, thankfully, not a cavity! It is a little pit, but it's "hard as a rock" says Dr. T, so we'll watch it and make sure that area gets brushed extra well. ::insert massive sigh of relief here::

Agatha got all kinds of goodies (Dora toothbrush, SpongeBob toothpaste, a purple dental mirror of her very own, crayons with pictures of toothbrushes on them, and a little sand timer to make sure we're brushing for long enough) and I got the lecture about the Horrors of Fruit Snacks. Which are only Gaz's favorite thing in the world. Dr. T says she'd rather see us give her ice cream for a treat than any kind of gummy anything, so I guess the fruit snack issue is pretty serious. Did we even have vast quantities of fruit snacks on the market when I was a kid? We're going to have to rethink our treat plans.

I've taken the opportunity of the dentist visit to push the "spitty toothpaste." Gaz is a very stubborn creature, and it makes life easier for everyone if I find a creative way to make things seem like they're really her idea. Getting her in the bathtub? We say that we're going to take her bath for her, which plays into her competitive spirit and gets her into the tub quite cheerfully most nights. Switching toothpaste wasn't too hard given it's novelty (and it's sparkliness), but it takes some doing to get all the way through the brushing without Gaz freaking out a bit about the volume of foam generated by spitty toothpaste versus the training toothpaste she's so fond of.

Apart from teeth, not much else is going on. There's been a lot of grumpiness the past couple of weeks, so we've not been as social as I'd like. We've been painting many pictures, working on writing letters and numbers, doing all sorts of drawing and putting stickers on paper and things. Oh, and cards. Making lots of cards. I finally found my giant stapler, so I made some little books that she can decorate, and that's been lots of fun.

Yesterday we opened up the "Mummies and More" kit my mom got me a while back, and Gaz painted the pyramid bank from that. Today we're still decorating it, but we ran out of My Little Pony stickers.

Gaz stuck a big crescent-shaped sticker on her forehead yesterday and is refusing to take it off, I think because it's stuck to her eyebrows. I figure if I can get her to run around enough, the sweat will loosen it up and make it easier to yank off when she's distracted. And it's not like I have to fight with her to get her to run around.

The Scooby-Doo obsession rages on. We just discovered the Netflix movies you can watch on the computer, so our SD library has expanded greatly. At least we don't have to watch those horrible old movies with Don Knotts anymore. She's probably the only three-year-old who even knows who Don Kotts is.

Such is life around these parts. One of these days it won't be so horribly cold and we'll be able to go out and run around. Come on, spring!

success!

We have ironed out our technical problems, which are a whole long tale of woe that I won't get into here, and so there will be updateyness more regular now. Also, photos will be uploaded here in a bit. We've got some from our first scouting mission, I think, that still haven't been uploaded, so there are some shots of the new neighborhood in somewhat warmer times.

The weather here, as I'm sure you all know, is not so pleasant. We've got icy steps out the back, and all our lumber from the old place that used to be shelves are now vaguely woodish icicles on the back porch two floors down. But our neighbors there are very generously not using them for frozen firewood. Huzzah!

How's Gaz handling the move? Not quite how I expected. I was waiting for sleep disturbances, because that's historically how she's handled routine disruption in the past (also grumpiness, but I'd always just filed that with the sleep issues). She's sleeping like a rock, but she spends a lot of the day screaming and getting mad at me for various random things. I would not trade this for the night terrors, though. Those have taken years off my life.

Some days, Gaz wants to go outside without coat or even pants:

Me: If you go outside without pants today, you'll freeze your legs right off!
Gaz: Then I will walk around on my blood!

[Insert stern glance at Auntie Aiiiiiieeeee for starting the whole blood thing.]

But pants have prevailed more or less. Gaz even wore the scarf I crocheted for her yesterday. It wasn't even a very scarf-worthy day! I glow! I think this is the first time she's worn something I made from yarn since she was small enough to wear the baby hats on which I ruined my tendons.

But anyway. We are here, we are sorting through boxes and contemplating exciting new shelving arrangements to accomodate all of the box contents. And now we can do some comparison shopping for needful things with the awesome power of the Internet. Most importantly, Gaz can play games on pbskids.org now. We know where our priorities are in this family.

Right now, the Gaz priority is explaining to Mark about proper application of (imaginary) perfume. I still don't know where she gets this stuff.

Still Here, Still Busy

Just not posting often. A thousand apologies!

We've finally wound down from a crazy bunch of traveling. Since this time last month, we've visited Evansville, Michigan twice, and Joliet, all on back to back weekends. This is our second weekend in a row at home, and we're finally feeling like we've recovered from all the travel. Not that we don't love seeing everyone, but all that time in cars does take its toll on a person. I caught a cold around the first of the month, and it's taken me until just recently to sleep it off. My lollygagging hasn't been entirely due to laziness. ;)

I'm working on uploading a huge quantity of pictures and will update here when that's done. Stay tuned for puzzling evidence.

Let's see . . . Gaz continues to surprise and entertain me. We're doing a lot of singing, and she picks up lyrics really fast. After a few listenings to the Jimmy Driftwood songs "Straighten Out My Laig" and "Down in the Arkansas" she could belt out the choruses perfectly (well, the words, not necessarily the tune), and she's picking up some Elvis Costello and They Might Be Giants, as I've been playing some of that lately. We also do this thing where I'll start to tell her something, and maybe she's not listening, so I'll start singing a little song about what we need to be doing, and she'll answer me in the same tune, and we'll go back and forth like this until one of us (usually me) gets tired of singing. Sometimes it's the difference between arguing over getting out of the house to go to the grocery store and having a happy, pleasant child willingly take off without protest.

Two days in a row we've had good potty mornings. We get up and first thing she and I go to the bathroom, where I've been able to talk her into sitting on her potty. She's got the usual amount of patience for a two-and-a-half-year-old, so getting her to sit down long enough for her to actually go is usually the problem. But she's so excited about being involved in emptying the potty chair into the toilet and flushing that she's slowly starting to come around to the joys of potty use. During the day she still doesn't think much about having to go until after it's already done, so I don't see an end to diapers any time soon, but we're making progress. She's generally dry all night, so this is good too. We're trying to figure out some kind of reward we can do consistently that doesn't involve food or stuff. Maybe trips to the zoo? We're working on that.

The vocabulary is enormous. We have many more thoughtful conversations than we used to, and Gaz is more sensitive now about how she speaks and how she sometimes misspeaks or misunderstands words. I've been admonished several times now "don't laugh when I say that!" because she'll say something that comes out wrong but adorable, and I just can't help myself. I keep trying to explain that sometimes the words come out and the words are funny, not Gaz herself, but she's my little diva. She takes herself pretty seriously.

We've been doing a lot of cooking and cleaning together. Right now she and Mark are vacuuming (she with her little play vacuum), and she is my constant companion for dishwashing and general straightening up. Earlier in the week we made cookies, which was educational for both of us. She learned the dangers of flour (getting it all over herself, in her eyes, etc.), and I learned that she is the exact opposite of attentive. Or she is attentive and keeps doing what I tell her not to do to see if I'll give in. Periodically we'll have these battles of wills, and while that is, I know, a part of her understanding what the boundaries are with me, I just wish she would schedule these for more convenient times. Not when I'm trying to get cookies in the oven without burning myself.

She's having a great time lately going to the library, and now that the weather is getting gradually nicer, we're taking strolls down that way much more often. Each time we go she ends up grabbing a book from nearby the area where I am looking for things, and most recently she picked up a cute little tiny book (entirely without my input!) called On Bullshit. I am sure a couple of great-grandfathers got a big kick out of that. I know I got a kick out of the look on the librarian's face when Agatha relinquished the book so she could scan it in. (It should go without saying that I didn't read the book to her, but she enjoyed reading it to me. "Once upon a time a girl walked down the street. . .")

I'm sure there are a million other things I could (and probably should) relate here, but I'm tapped out. Probably better focus on the uploading.