So I was sitting at my desk the other day, feeding Gracie. Eilis was in the living room, watching Dora on the television. One minute, I heard her yelling gleefully at the TV “Swiper, No Swiping!”, and the next thing I knew, she was standing in the doorway of the office/laundry room, crying and screaming hysterically.
Ahhh, fall. It is definitely my favorite season of the year, and I wish it would stay this way all year long. I would not miss swimming, I would not miss shoveling snow, and although I might miss them a little, I could learn to live without spring flowers.
At Granuaile’s 4 month check up, the doctor said we should begin putting her to bed awake, thus teaching her how to fall asleep on her own. The problem with this method is that she usually falls asleep during a bottle, which, of course, we give her at bedtime. Up until now, the give her the bottle, let her fall asleep, and gently put her in her crib method has worked like a charm for us. She has gone down each night between 9 and 10 PM and slept through the night until at least 5 or 6 in the morning.
Well, it took us two attempts to get Gracie’s 6 month check up done. I originally made it on a morning when Brighid had no school so that I could have an extra pair of hands with me. Brighid is still treating her hip injury, so I had to drop Eilis off at school at 9, have Brighid to PT by 9:30, and then have Grace to her appointment by 10:30. I had to leave the pediatrician’s office by 11:15 in order to get to Eilis in time for dismissal, but they are really very good there about taking you back quickly and being seen quickly.
Grace has learned in the last week or so to blow raspberries, and is ever so proud of herself for learning this amazing feat. If you come withing 2 feet of our little Old Faithful, you will be doused with a hearty helping of baby spit. Her father and her sister Eilis take great pride in this little Whiz Kid for being able to project this much bodily fluid at any given time, Brighid is a little grossed out by it, and I am just fascinated with the face she makes. Instead of blowing raspberries in the usual way, she has refined her technique by pulling in her bottom lip, allowing the top lip to protrude as if she has buck teeth. When she blows the raspberries in this manner, they have a tendency to spill out all over her chin and the top of whatever outfit she is wearing, as well as all over the arms and sleeves of whoever is holding her at the time.
It is mid-morning, and I am sitting on the floor of my sister’s bedroom. I cannot remember why I am sitting there, but the phone rings and she goes to answer it. It is Jim Something Long, she tells me. I say, of course, who? She doesn’t know, she hands me the phone. When I hear the voice, I know immediately who it is, and I start to wonder why I thought his name was Paul Andersen and why I never thought to ask what his name really was.
Boo! It’s Halloween in Bellmawr, so that means the man a couple of streets over from us is going all out again with his Halloween decorations. He’s got the spooky spider webs that cover his house from one end to the other. He has the requisite pumpkins, bats, and giant spiders. He has the totally scary strobe lights going as soon as it gets dark. And then he has the most horrifying Halloween decoration I think I have ever seen in my life. He has a black man hanging from the highest beam on his porch. Yes, there it is, out in public, racism at it’s finest.
So Eilis is taking a drama class. It started on Saturday, and it is at a local community college. To get her excited about going to the class, her dad kept telling her she was going to college before Brighid and how cool was that. She was so excited - she even exclaimed that you had “to be 10 to go to college!!!” We talked about it almost all week long, and then Saturday came. I drove over to the school with just me and Eilis in the car. She was very quiet, so I started talking about how great the class would be, and she’d make new friends. She just quietly asked if there would be ANYONE that was a little kid in the whole college except her. I felt pretty bad about going along with touting how important she was because she was going to college.
Copyright Anna Skamarakas 1985-2008 | 2009