My Saturday Night

I've made a new friend. Which, ya know, is kind of a big thing for me. This woman has seamlessly incorporated me, my whole family, into her life.

Even more, she's  extended party invitations. "You should come!" she insisted, "Its a Girl's Night Out. You'll love it!" And has hence incorporated me into her friends lives.

Which is surreal.

It takes a lot for me to talk to people. I need a plan, mental index cards with conversation topics, most of which usually revolve kids and the weather. I know, it's bad. Which is why I avoid social situations. But I walked into our friendship blind, and it has flourished; so I walked into her circle of friends blind too.

While it is to early to declare myself a success with the circle, I can say that night one was good. I was quiet, but I was myself. I made an ass of myself, and it was embraced, heralded even.

"You are one of us now!" they exclaimed in triumph, smoothing over actions that would have crushed me in any other group.

 And so, in a group of strangers that I have little in common with in the day to day, I now possess what seems like a teflon bond of foolishness.


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This post was inspired by Saturday Night Widows by Becky Aikman. After being kicked out of her widow support group for being too young, Becky creates her own support group with an unusual twist. Join From Left to Write on February 14 as we discuss Saturday Night Widows. As a member, I received a copy of the book for review purposes.

In-Network

At the Grace's visit to the dentist for her cleaning, her 5 year old status granted a new experience: x-rays. When the images were transferred to the computer screen, I was immediately called over to have a look.

Somebody is about to loose some baby teeth, the staff exclaimed. We are sure the next time we see you, you'll be missing some teeth Grace!

On Friday night, Grace had her first visit from the Tooth Fairy. Not for tooth collection, but for formal registration with the Tooth Fairy Network. That sly little sprite left this package on Grace's bed overnight for her delight at dawn.

The message read:
Dear Grace ~
I hear you have some loose teeth!
Congratulations and welcome to the Tooth Fairy Network!
To schedule a visit, leave a tooth in this pillow.
~ The Tooth Fairy

And for the rest of the day, she whispered her tongue across her teeth testing for wiggles.

Big Time

This chair has been a center point of my world for the last five and a half years.

It has stood true, creaking toward the end, but always giving a place to nurse, feed, snuggle, rock, sing, sleep, read, laugh and cry. And today, it has found a new home. It is just across the hall, newly designated as my reading chair, but still, it's presence is missed.

It's time had ended though. We need room for this.

Clare no longer fit in my arms in that chair. She no longer needed my body as a pillow to sleep. She needed the next step. She needed a big girl bed.

We do need to get her a little stool to help with a boost into that big bed though.

With a Rubber Hose

We were all rushing around like bees in a hive:
4:45p Daycare pickup
5:15p Early dinner for the girls
5:45p Matt's class at the gym
6:15p Grace's gymnastics class

At 5:40 Clare decided to put herself on the evenings agenda too.

I was barking orders and clearing dishes and clearly not paying attention.

She looked at me slyly.
"Mama," she said with a smile, "In my nose."
"What's in your nose sweetie? Buggers? Do you need a tissue??"
"No," she said, "Up my nose. No buggers. A bead!"

Time froze for a second. She was so proud of herself.

Upon inspection, there it was.  As a distraction, I had pulled out a big bag of beads over President's Day weekend and let the girls and their friend string necklaces. The rubber of the elastic cording in the bag must have been getting old, because the necklaces have been systematically breaking and spraying nostril sized beads all over the floor. I thought I had been doing a good job of cleaning them up.

I tried trying to wiggle the bead back down her nose with my fingers from the outside. It wasn't budging. In fact, with the way she was fighting me, it was sliding further up. I called Matt. By the time he came home from his abandoned class, Doctor Google had given us some new ideas:

Try tweezers! - Except as soon as she saw us coming with them she would start to scream and thrash so violently we were afraid of poking the bead up into her brain.

Use a shop vac to suck it out! - Which we do own as part of the ill fated pool draining experiment, but they are big and loud and the hose was the size of 1/3 of her face. So we tried the vacuum, which didn't go over well either, because I don't vacuum. Ever. Well, only on special occasions. It is usually something we leave to cleaning crews, so Clare has only ever heard the vacuum 2 or 3 times in her life. That option did not go over well either. And now she was crying so hard she was doing the opposite of the vacuum and starting to suck the bead up further into her nose all by herself.

So at this point we were talking about the immediate care center. And Grace has realized that her chances of going to gymnastics were getting slimmer by every passing minute and starts to have a meltdown.

At the clinic, the doctor was indeed able to remove the bead in the predicted 30 seconds, but it was well worth the $50 copay. She would have never let us get it out.

And now the house has been purged of the beads and we repeat the daily mantra of "I promise I will not put anything up my nose. No beads in nose. I promise."