tiny dancer
May 11th, 2019
let’s celebrate Sesame
Our month of celebrating Annabelle’s birthday is finally wrapping up.
Christopher’s birthday job every year is getting the balloons and he never disappoints. She couldn’t believe how many he got. Go big or go home is his motto when it comes to buying things.
Mom and Elizabeth were here for the last week and we did our final birthday celebration on AB’s actual birthday. The birthday person always picks whatever fancy plate they want and she chose a Christmas plate. Given that she’s on the 18th consecutive month of listening to Christmas music at night it was a choice I should have predicted. Our sweet little friend Lana came over for a special birthday supper. It’s fun to give her bigger parties but it was really nice to have a quiet day to visit and play together.
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| Special birthday pedicure |
The next day we went to a plantation an hour and a half away to take birthday pictures. It did not go as planned. The shoes we brought hurt Annabelle’s feet. Neither pack of special balloons I bought had strings. When I did get a confetti balloon blown up, it burst and flung confetti all over the pristine garden. Elizabeth swung her arm and accidentally gave Annabelle a bloody lip. We were not off to a good start.
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| I feel you, sister. |
A few of the 210 pictures I took turned out well. Look how grown up she is. When did this happen?
Three days ago she looked like this and now she looks like she’s about to a teenager.
I always have a month week of mourning before Annabelle’s birthdays. This year she joined me in crying. ”But I don’t wanna turn five, Mama! I wanna stay 4 years old!” I had to really talk up how great being five will be. I don’t love how fast she’s growing but I love her and plan on keeping her around for the next 105 years.
.five.
Annabelle was born on a Friday and I didn’t change one single diaper until Monday afternoon. I didn’t ask anyone else to do it, but I couldn’t sit up or walk to the bathroom without help so Christopher or the nurses did it all. It was the least they could do after I had a person unceremoniously pulled from my body.
Five years later to the day, I was scooping poop out of the kitchen sink because one of the cats (not to name names but Lucy) didn’t use the litterbox for its God-intended purpose.
All that to say, I didn’t expect the day my very much potty trained favorite child turned five would be a day I dealt with unpleasantness of that kind.
I say this every year, but I can’t believe she’s growing so fast. As my friend said, the sands in the hourglass are falling at warp speed.
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| 1:40pm, the exact minute she turned 5. |
She loves school, food, coloring, crafts, snacks, popsicles, stuffed animals (of which she has dozens and dozens), swimming and movie nights with popcorn.
She’s so funny. I want to bottle up her giggle.
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| She’s always been ready for a good time. |
She tried talking to the kids on the playground about the Pilgrims and didn’t understand how they didn’t know who the Pilgrims were.
She loves going to the doctor. “Um, Mom? I have this scratch over here from when I bumped into the wall but like, not really bumped into it. Just a little bumped into it. Do you think we can go see Dr. Tweet?” (His last name isn’t really Tweet but it’s very similar and I never correct her because it cracks me up.)
She’s not perfect and struggles when others don’t want to play what she does, but she is very compassionate towards other children and has a good heart. She has a little friend who can’t walk well due to health issues and AB has never once gotten frustrated with her or not wanted to play with her because she can’t keep up as well.
She loves the cats and more often than not they sleep together at night.
She’s become an excellent swimmer. She does hour-long lessons every Tuesday and has come so far. She struggles with freestyle but can do fairly well with the breaststroke. As long as she has goggles on she’s a happy camper. If the goggles fog up or fall off she acts as if the sky is falling and she won’t swim.
She can be so absent-minded. I’ll tell her to put her dishes in the sink and she’ll start talking about what she did at her imaginary school and she’ll walk right past the sink and into the living room.
She got nervous about going to a new Sunday school so she asked Christopher to write our phone numbers down for her. She folded the paper up and put it in her shoe for safe keeping. Every week since she’s asked for our numbers and little family portrait to “keep me from being lonely.”
She still has the most curly hair and the bluest eyes.
She’s my best girl.
birthday month begins
A few weeks ago, we gave Annabelle the option of having a birthday party or taking a special birthday trip. I thought for sure she’d pick the party. She talks about her party for months leading up to the big day but I underestimated her love of hotels. I know she loves them but I didn’t think she’d pick a hotel over a party. Her love of the “honeypot” aka hotel room ice bucket runs deep. Truthfully I was a little disappointed because I love setting up her parties but it did take things off my plate. Plus, with the changes in the family coming up with foster care we thought it would be nice to have a special time just the three of us.
Her one request for the hotel was that it have a pool. I called before making the reservation to check on the status of the pool which was a gift of true love in and of itself since I don’t like calls with strangers. We made strawberry cupcakes, went to the party store for party supplies and counted down the hours until we left. I don’t love the usual kids selections at party stores (I’m more of a klassy party girl), but I knew she would want to pick out plates and napkins and it was her weekend. She picked Shimmer and Shine. I did my best not to steer her towards the cute rabbit plates. It’s her party! Her weekend! If she wants Paw Patrol or Elmo so be it! She got to pick out a party favor for each of us and little bags to put them in. She was so excited.
For all the road trips she’s been on, I would have hoped she’d learn not to ask “are we there yet?” every fourteen minutes for three hours. When we finally got to half an hour away, I said it was the length of two Daniel Tiger shows. She knows there are 60 seconds in a minute and asked us to count to 60 with her 30 times. Thanks but no. I can’t make every birthday request come true.
Sesame brought her imaginary brother Matt to the hotel. Thankfully I didn’t have to pack for him this time. She usually requests I pack his luggage and carry him through the airport. I didn’t know until it was almost too late that I was supposed to bring him a party favor too. Thanks to my trusty imagination, I whipped a slinky out of my pocket for him. In this picture, she’s smiling at Matt with true love. She has several imaginary friends but Matt is her current favorite. She also has a brother named John and a sister Olivia but they didn’t come.
The main destination for the trip, besides the hotel pool, was the American Girl store. She doesn’t love dolls like I did when I was her age, but she went two years ago and loved playing with the displays. I think we were at the store for half an hour before she got overwhelmed by the noise and screaming children and asked to leave. We said she could pick out a small item for her Bitty Baby and she kept saying, “You can pick whatever you want, Mama. I’ll like what you pick.” Most times I appreciate that she’s very compliant and it’s much better than the alternative of throwing a fit, but sometimes I wish she’d be a little more decisive.
After a few laps around the mall, we went back to the hotel for the party. Yes, I put light candles near the sheets and no, nothing caught fire.
AB was thrilled. She sat on the bed eating cupcakes off Shimmer and Shine plates and talking about her new American Girl cat. It took all of 25 seconds to clean up which made me think maybe the no-party route is the way to go.
The next day we went to a nature center/museum. The ride home took nearly 5 hours instead of 3 thanks to bad weather, but Matt behaved well during the drive. It’s so hit and miss with those imaginary friends.
produce and parties
Yesterday I went with Annabelle’s class on a field trip to the grocery store. It was not a hotspot destination like the pumpkin patch in the fall. I was talking with a few moms on the playground the day before and the general consensus was no one wanted to go since we all go to the grocery store all the time, but hey needed parent volunteers so I said I’d go. It was very much like a scene from The Hunger Games when everyone salutes the poor soul going to fight. All the playground moms wished me luck but were clearly relieved they didn’t have to go.
The children looked like a row of little green ducks wandering around the store.
It went much more smoothly than I expected, bringing 21 small children into Publix. Everyone was well behaved and only a few boxes of oatmeal were pushed over. I immediately went into full-on teacher mode. Being around a large number of children brought me right back to my teaching days. I didn’t mean to, but I told a little boy to stay in line and told another to pay attention. I totally forgot I was the parent and not the teacher.
In other school news, I signed up to do the class Valentines party. Since the beginning of the year, I was the only one signed up which was fine with me. I have pinterest boards for such a time as this and quite frankly I didn’t want to compromise on anything with someone who might not have the same love of themed straws and coordinating napkins. Last week Victoria’s family was guilted into helping out. I was there when the whole thing went down but didn’t say anything lest they think I’m a difficult and/or rude mother. The teachers gave me Victoria’s grandmother and nanny’s phone numbers so I could make plans. Yesterday I ran into the woman who brings Victoria to school in the hallway which seemed very providential since I hadn’t yet called either of the women. I didn’t know if she was grandma or nanny. I wasn’t sure if nanny meant babysitter or nanny as in another name for a grandmother. She was an older woman so it really could have gone either way. That’s why I said, “Are you…? I mean, hi. Are you Victoria’s grandma? Nanny? The nanny? I’m doing the party with you and…the other woman. Um, are you either of those people?” CALL ME SMOOTH AS SILK. She looked at me like I was crazy (legitimate thought), threw her hands up in the air and said, “I’m just the nanny, call Grandma and plan it with her. I can’t do any of this.” Great talk! I’m so glad I embarrassed myself for this.
I finally got in touch with Grandma Denise this morning. She’s traveling in from another state for the party which I’m taking as a good sign we’ll work well together. I appreciate someone dedicated enough to throwing a good party that they’ll travel across borders to attend.
pumpking patching round 2
Update from the weather desk- it hit 57 degrees this morning. FIFTY-SEVEN.
The locals are calling it a cold front and bundling up. I call it normal weather for October.
You’d think the cool air would mean my brain is fresh and unfried but I’ve completely forgotten what I was going to blog about.
I blame the lack of brain cells on Annabelle. For the last 15 nights (but who’s counting?) she has woken up during the night. For most of those nights, she’s sobbed and yelled and generally made a scene about going to bed because she’s scared and can’t stop her “bad thoughts about the Grinch and the selfish giant.” We saw a Halloween figurine in Cracker Barrel and she said, “My brain is going to add that to the list of bad thoughts.” After the many hours it takes for her to fall asleep, she’ll wake up sobbing and scared around midnight, then 2 o’clock. Hours will pass before she’ll fall asleep again. I can’t sleep when she’s not sleeping so I lost hours of sleep too. It’s like having a newborn again. In the Army, Christopher did training where they played tapes of children crying for hours so he became immune and will sleep through most of it until I kick his legs and wake him up. It’s been a beautiful time of family bonding. Things are finally headed in the right direction. We’ve talked to her about praying or singing when she’s scared and I’ll hear her doing both over the monitor to calm herself. We’ve figured out a routine that makes her feel safer. She finally slept through the night last night and while I’m still not fully recovered, things are looking up.
Due to the above-mentioned sleep issues, we’ve been sleeping in a little. We need to leave for school at 8:30 but yesterday I didn’t wake up until 8:13. I flew out of bed like it was on fire. I NEVER leave the house without mascara or earrings but I didn’t have time for either. I felt like I was going in public naked but desperate times call for desperate measures. We squealed into the school parking lot only 2 minutes late. I don’t know if I’ll be in the running for Mom of the Year because we made it, or if I’m out of the race because we were late.
We switched Sesame to a new school at the beginning of the month. There were many conversations about whether to leave her where she was or switch her. The school she was at was very into desk work and the school across the street was more play-based which I like. She’ll have 13+ years ahead of her for deskwork. I want her to learn through play while she can. Had I toured both of them at the beginning of the year I would have picked the new school, but I was so afraid of leaving and hurting the original teacher’s feelings. I liked them as people but I didn’t like the curriculum. I felt like a traitor leaving for a school within eyesight of the first school.
Short story unnecessarily long, we went on a field trip with the new school on Tuesday. It was to a pumpkin patch and AB kept repeating that she was glad we went to a pumpkin patch the Saturday before so she was able to “practice pumpkining and know what to do.” I drove us but the children coming from school on the bus were supposed to arrive at 9:30. They were 20 minutes late which made me feel so much better about my 2-minute tardiness.
There’s not a colored tree to be seen in our neck of the woods but there are pumpkins of every shade. Annabelle interrupted the man giving a speech on the lifecycle of pumpkins to say that she doesn’t like to eat the inside of pumpkins, only the seeds. The strings are too gross. But she likes the seeds. We cooked them with butter and cooked them in the oven and then Mom ate some. But the inside is yucky.
Another day, another goat to feed.
Maybe if she had a goat to snuggle with she’d go back to being a good sleeper.
Wife, mother, laugh-er at very inopportune moments, and matchmaker. I am an excessive user of commas and exclamation marks. I once won March Madness despite knowing nothing about basketball, and I know how to find all the best Dunkin Donuts coupons. Clearly my talents are just endless.