Right on schedule

The toddler has learned to count! She's known how to recite the numbers from 1-20 for a long, long time, and she can recognize the written representations of at least 1 - 12. But when asked to count objects, say, a pair of shoes, she'd just point to them over and over and recite numbers until she felt like stopping. (How many shoes? Pointing back and forth from one to the other, "Wan, two, flea, four, five! Five shoes!")

I noticed on Sunday, though, that she's made the transition into real counting -- associating objects with their actual corresponding amounts. She counted the flowers on the baby's shiny black church shoes, pointing to each one only once, stopping at four because there were only four flowers there. She's done it with other things, since. I don't know if a light bulb switched on in her head, or if she's been secretly and gradually getting better at it for a while -- but the fact is, she can count. :-D

Unfortunately, she seems to have stumbled onto another developmental milestone, as well. I've read that children first begin experimenting with lies at around 3 -- their experience with pretend play makes them wonder if they can pretend their way out of trouble. Well, the toddler will be 3 in about a month; she's right on schedule.

She and the baby had a slight altercation yesterday that resulted in a bloody scratch on the baby's face. Although I had a pretty good idea of what transpired, I did what moms do and I asked anyway. "What happened here?" I said, pointing to the baby's scratch.

The toddler avoided my gaze, looking slightly down and to the side, and said, "A shark!"

Yeeeeeaaaaahhh. Sure.

So she's not a very good liar, lol, but I'm guessing she'll get some practice in these next few years....

Hooray for milestones.


~RCH~

I didn't need that finger anyway

The way I screamed and sobbed and moaned and carried on, you'd think I had amputated the finger entirely. DH couldn't understand me at all when I first called; he was in the noisy, crowded hospital cafeteria and I was in near hysterics (well, no, complete hysterics).

"Hello?" he said when he picked up.

"I (*sob, sob*) slammed my finger (*sob*) in the doooooor (*wail*) and it huuuuuuuurts! (*Sob, sob*). Not just a little nick, but my whole finger was just stuck in the door and the door was closed and I couldn't pull it out and I was holding the toddler in my other hand and I couldn't just drop her so I had to twist and reach around to open it with my other hand while still holding her and now my finger is purple and huge and it's bleeding at the nail and it's throbbing and it hurts sooooooo much! (*Scream of pain for emphasis*) I don't know what to doooooooo!!"

"Can you drive up to the hospital with the girls, or do you need me to come home and get you?" he asked.

"Why?" I asked, panicked. "Do I really need to come to the hospital? Do you think it's broken? Will my fingernail fall off?"

"I can't answer any of that until I see it," he said, "but I may need to drill into your nail to relieve the pressure."

"(*Long, protracted, freaked-out wail*)"

"Can you come, or do you need me to come get you?"

We decided I could probably make it. He told me to take 4 Advils, put some ice on it, and then head up to the hospital with the girls.

Yes, I'm a big fat baby, but I've never completely shut my finger (or anything else) in a car door before. And while it's certainly a painful thing to do, the idea of my finger trapped between a two heavy pieces of steel was as upsetting and scary as the actual pain I felt. It took a second, when it happened, for that fact to register: Your finger has just been smashed to bits and you can't pull it back out. Add to that the complication of holding an almost asleep toddler, and it took another few seconds for my brain to register a way to get the door back open and my finger free.

DH and all his little doctor friends gathered around for a gander when we arrived. I got a lot of sympathetic looks as well as a few door and hammer stories from other people. They noted the purply bruise, the swelling, and the lack of any noticeable hematoma under the nail bed. ("Do you think you'll want to cauterize it anyway?" one colleague asked DH. I paled. "Oh, don't worry; it's just a small, really hot needle that'll melt right through your fingernail to relieve the pressure. You won't even feel it." I winced in terror.)

DH sent me to get x-rays -- only my second ever in my life; the first was last winter when I got pneumonia (which, in completely unrelated news, was the first time in my life I'd ever had a fever, and I had one for 5 or 6 days straight! I'm suddenly so interesting, lol!). It turns out I didn't break or fracture any finger bones and that, along with the complete lack of blood building up underneath the fingernail, meant that I got off without so much as a bandage. (The toddler really, really hoped DH would give me one, but frankly I'm glad not to have anything touching my wound.)

I keep loading up on the Advil at appropriate intervals and I'm fine now. The funny thing is that the injured finger is the middle one on my right hand: I keep it up and apart from the rest of my fingers so it won't bump into anything, but that makes it look like I'm flipping people off. But hey, it's been a bad day ... so maybe I am. Tee-hee.


~RCH~

Oh Daddy, proud of your planets! Oh Mommy, proud of your sun!*

Ever in search of new experiences and diversions, I took the girls to the planetarium today and left my post-call DH to sleep the afternoon away in peace. Actually, our plan was to go to the university's free museum -- the toddler loves the dinosaurs, all of them T-Rexes (to her) with big growls -- but the planetarium is connected to it and shortly after we arrived, they announced over the loud speaker that a star show would start in just a few minutes. In addition to dinosaurs, I happen to know that girl loves her planets and sparkly stars. I figured this would be the best outing ever.

Holding on tight to the toddler's hand and awkwardly steering the baby's stroller with its bum wheel, we made our way to the planetarium and waited in line. I tried to prepare them for what they would see: It would get very dark, but there would be a movie on the ceiling that showed a twinkly sky and lots of beautiful outer space things. "Oh boy!" said the toddler. "Outer space! Shake your booty, Mommy!" (Lately she's been inserting that command at random times. Go figure. I did a little dance and moved on.)

We sat toward the back, so as not to bother people, and at the end of a row so we could park the stroller. I pulled the baby out and placed her on my lap, hoping she'd cuddle and fall asleep in the dark since she had stubbornly refused to nap earlier. But as the lights dimmed, the toddler scrambled off her chair and into my lap, as well.

I've only got so much lap.

The baby, already a bit cranky from the sleep deprivation, started to whine and climb Mount Mommy. In doing so, she stepped on the toddler's hand (I think -- it was pitch black at that moment) and the toddler began to cry. I tried to bounce and soothe and distract them both: "Look up there, guys! It's sooooo sparkly!" But nobody cared. And the toddler's cries seemed to be turning from pain into panic at the darkness of the room.

I decided we'd better go, but leaving a pitch black planetarium with two young children and a mildly defective stroller isn't exactly the easiest thing, either. Holding the baby in one arm, the toddler in the other, I felt my way to the stroller, plopped the baby in and fumbled for the straps. The three of us then bumped into the wall and followed it around to the exit. Of course, upon leaving I noticed the baby was missing one of her shoes -- her first pair ever, bought a mere three days ago -- and so I left the girls alone in the hallway (bad mommy) while I went feeling around in the dark under seats for the infant size 3 shoe that had been lost in the scuffle of the lap war.

*Sigh!*

Fortunately, I found the shoe and the girls didn't get abducted while I searched. So I guess something good came out of our trip to the planetarium.

Maybe we'll try again in a few years.


~RCH~

*A prize of five pretend dollars to the first person to name the song/artist referenced in the title of this post. ;-)

All the fishies live in there

"What's that, Mommy?" the toddler asked while on a walk one afternoon.

"A fire hydrant," I said. "It has lots of water inside. If something catches on fire, the fire fighters come in their red trucks, hook their hoses up right there, and then they can squirt water on the fire."

"Can we open it?" she asked.

"No, it's too tricky. Only the fire fighters can open it."

"But how are we gonna' get the fishies out?"

I explained that while fish do live in the water, they don't live in every bit of water.

Still, every time we pass one while walking or in the car, she'll point and shout, "A fire fighter hydrant! Over there! Let's get the fishies out!"


~RCH~

T is for Go Tech!

We went to another college basketball game on Wednesday. We bought $5 tickets -- cheapest we could get without sneaking in! -- expecting to sit in the nosebleeds. But apparently all the basketball fans left town for the holiday; the game was so sparsely attended that they told everyone up in the balconies to come down to the floor. We ended up watching the game from about 8-10 rows away from the court. :-)

The girls loved it. Like last time (which I meant to blog about, but never did), the toddler plugged her ears for the first 10 minutes or so. She doesn't like loud noises (the vacuum terrifies her); the buzzes, the whistles, the shouts from the crowd, the piped-in music all took some getting used to. The baby, however, got right into the spirit of things, shaking that little diaper-padded booty of hers and clapping her hands.

I never in my life expected to utter such a phrase, lol, but I was disappointed not to see the cheerleaders and drill team this time. There were four stragglers, left behind to do backflips after every successful foul shot, but I missed the showy routines from the full squad during long time-outs and half-time. When we went earlier in the month, the "fancy dancers" had been one of the girls' favorite parts of the game! All that running back and forth gets old when you don't understand the intricacies of the sport, but pretty ladies (and a guy or two) in sparkly clothes, dancing in perfect synchrony to obscenely upbeat music? Oh my goodness, bring it on. Little kids just eat that stuff up.

Geez, where are my principles? Lol! What can I say? I just love to see my children happy and entranced.

The toddler also missed the mascot, who must have had Thanksgiving plans elsewhere. Ever since that first game we went to, she's been talking about going back to see her friend Scarecrow (uh, he's actually not a scarecrow, but I don't argue). She thinks he's going to give her presents. She thinks everyone is going to give her presents, though I don't think it's out of greed. She just has this innocent optimism, a firm belief that good things will happen and in her vernacular, presents -- and birthday cake -- are the ultimate good things.

We had a great time, and our team won. I really wish we could afford to go more often.


~RCH~

Big savings on holiday orders!

The holidays are fast approaching! If any of you had planned to shop for gifts (or hey, for yourself) at Leonine Designs, now is a good time because I've got coupons for you! Woo-hoo!

Just navigate on over to http://leonine.spreadshirt.com, spend a ton of money, and then use the appropriate coupon code from the list below when you check out. If you don't know what your recipient would like, you could always print out one of my lovely coupon graphics and use it as a stocking stuffer! The possibilities are endless.

And, as always, if you see something that you'd prefer to have in a different color combination or style, or if you have a design idea you'd like me to help you bring to fruition, let me know and I'll do my best to accommodate you. :-)

~RCH~

I demand to see pictures

Attention fellow bloggers: Some of you are falling down on the job! I have requested pictures at least here and here, but nobody seems interested in following up on that for me, the lone far-away family member.

And the rest of you! For all I know, you've dyed your hair and had extensive reconstructive surgery to mask your identities; it wouldn't kill you to post a few pictures now and then, either, to make sure I'll still recognize you.

Here I am, all alone in the world, out of the loop with no way to weasel my way back in it at least until next Summer....

Seriously, people. Have a heart. Post some photos.

That is all.


~RCH~