Teasing

Following is the Quote Book Quote for the day. You're welcome.

UNO, to DOS: Dos and [random boy] sitting in a tree, S-I-K-K L-M-N-O-P!

:-D


~RCH~

Cookies are on their way!

Very briefly, as my life has been turned upside down by a move (yay!!!) and I don't have my computer just yet:

Your Girl Scout cookies are on their way to those of you who ordered them! If the post-it note receipt (we're a classy retailer, I know) indicates you owe money but you've sent a check already, just disregard it. I'm only just now getting around to filing our change of address form with the post office so your payment may be sitting at the ILs' house waiting to be picked up.

Thank you again for supporting the Girl Scout cause! :-)


~RCH~

We have standards around here, you know.

DH: I see you found my mom's copy of Charlotte's Web. Are you going to read that one to the girls?

RCH: No way! Sure, it's a classic, but it totally glorifies spiders!

Obviously. Geez!


~RCH~

Don't watch Animal Planet before bed

...or you may end up saying a prayer like this one of Uno's:

Dear Heavenly Father, thank you for this day. Please bless that blood-drinking bats don't live in our town. And please bless our house to get sold. In the name of-- Oh, wait. And if blood-drinking bats do live in our town, please bless that they won't drink my blood. In the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Scary stuff, those bats.


~RCH~

Halloween

I'm too tired to blog about our adventures (which were of the standard beg-for-candy-while-wearing-awesome-dress-ups variety), but you can have some pictures. :-)









Happy Halloween, everybody! :-*


~RCH~

Don't mess with the ghost!

I awoke this morning to discover that the skeleton and ghost decorations we'd hung on the bird feeder in the front yard had gotten in a fight (and/or been whipped around by the wind, but whatever).

I'd say the cause of death was manual strangulation.




~RCH~

Get Well Soon

Dos is sick. Not that you'd know it from the way she behaves; she has remarkable reserves of energy and cheer even when she's febrile. I wouldn't have known to keep her home from school if it hadn't been for the love note.

Uno helped her write it; as a big first grader, she knows how to spell more words than Dos does. I found it yesterday morning as I tried to rouse the girls from sleep and take the breakfast orders ("You want Pop Tarts or Marshmallow Maties?" We're full service around here!). I sadly no longer have the note -- DH threw it away in an unwarranted cleaning frenzy, grrr -- but it went something like this:

Dear Garit,

You are so col. I love you and wont you to mere me. PS ples dont tell the rest ov the class. I wold be sad. LOVE [Dos].

She tried to grab it out of my hand when she saw me reading it, but I'm too quick for her! "Who's Garret?" I asked.

"Just a boy from my class."

"Hmmmm."

On the one hand, you can't get much more innocent or adorable than a kindergarten crush. On the other hand.... They have such limited time to be children; I'd like to discourage and delay the boy crazies for as long as I can.

"This is a really nice letter," I told her. "I'm glad that you have friends you care about so much. I just don't think it's appropriate to take to school, okay?"

Her face crumpled. "I can't give it to him?"

"Sorry."

She dissolved into tired tears; it was all very pitiful. I put my hand up to move the hair out of her eyes and give her a little kiss -- and that's when I noticed the heat emanating from her forehead. I confirmed my suspicions with the temporal scan thermometer and informed her that she wasn't going to school anyway. More tears. (Until she remembered that once Uno got sick and had to stay home from school, and I brought her breakfast from Sonic to cheer her up, and so Mom can I please have french toast sticks with syrup and a blue coconut icee and no tots? At which point Uno turned on the tears: "Hey! How come I have to eat Pop Tarts?")

She seemed fine all day yesterday; she ran around, played with Tres, ate and drank normally, refused to rest. Sure, her fever would occasionally spike again, but why should a little something like that slow her down?

DH and I went to her parent-teacher conference in the afternoon. We explained Dos's absence to her teacher (who had been absent, herself, for two weeks -- two weeks! -- when her daughter had the flu) and collected her papers, the coloring and letter practice worksheets she would have done if she'd been in class yesterday. And then we got to the fun part, wherein Mrs. D told us how wonderful our daughter is:

According to her kindergarten teacher, Dos is very well-rounded, sociable, and a good leader (a fact I didn't know, since Uno dominates in their interactions at home). She's smart, listens and takes direction well, and has a lot of self confidence. Overall, she's a delight to have in the classroom. :-)

As we chatted, she relayed a story about Dos and the class troublemaker (we'll call him B). He'd been acting up from the very first day of school -- fidgeting in class, talking back, bothering other kids, bla bla bla.... His dog had been moved down the path and into the dog house (their little system of tracking behavior) plenty of times, and he had become acquainted with the principal. Mrs. D, exasperated, told him at one point that someday he'd bother the wrong kid and get walloped on in return -- and she wouldn't be able to do anything about it. That time came in P.E. a few weeks back. B picked on Dos and she -- itty-bitty-for-her-age girl that she is -- turned to him and started pounding. Mrs. D separated them before anybody got hurt, but she couldn't fault Dos for defending herself and B learned a valuable lesson: Dos may be small, but she's scrappy! Mrs. D said she had to fight to keep from laughing as it happened; she never imagined that sweet little Dos would be the one to give B his due. She said if she didn't know better, she'd think she must have brothers at home. (With girls like ours, who needs sons? LOL.)

At the end of the conference, the teacher gave us a certificate and a special pencil to take home. "Dos was the Star Student today," she said. "Tell her we missed her and she was the star for a reason; she adds so much goodness to our class." My heart rose and then sank a little. Every kid in every grade gets a chance at some point during the year to be the Star Student for her class. I've heard Uno and Dos talking about it before, wondering when their turns would come ... and now here was Dos's and she missed it.

I tried to talk it up when we got home, but I was right: She was disappointed. She held onto the certificate and pencil tightly, safeguarding them from a thieving Tres, and she cried. "Can I go back to school tomorrow?" she asked. I had to tell her no. She still had a fever. :-(

Dos woke up early this morning and came to find me. "I feel great!" she said. "Do I get to go to school?" I checked her head three times with the thermometer -- 102F each time. Definitely no school. Still, if you'd seen her at home today you'd never have guessed she didn't feel well. She bounced and danced; she roughhoused with Tres; she grazed and snacked throughout the morning. All of our girls are superhuman when they're sick, though: Glazed eyes? Flushed cheeks? Diminished energy? Grumpiness? Nah. They might get a little sleepy as their temps hit 105F or so (as happened toward the end of our recent trip to the Seattle area), but even then they're pleasant and remarkably low maintenance patients.

Dos had an elevated temp (100.0F, so not technically a fever) before bed tonight. She keeps talking excitedly about her class fieldtrip to the pumpkin patch coming up on Friday, and of course trick or treating on Halloween, so I've got my fingers crossed that her immune system has kicked viral butt and she'll be well in time to participate. She's such a good girl, so sweet and scrappy. I'd hate to see her disappointed again.




~RCH~