Saturday, March 7, 2009

Things That Have Happened While Rob Is Away

By this time tomorrow Rob will be home, albeit only for a few days, and thank goodness for that.  We've been coping reasonably well but will all be very glad to see him.  In the meantime, here is what has happened.
  • I went to a park playdate with some girlfriends and their toddlers.  One of them was then kind enough to invite us all over for dinner, which was lovely.  Our evening turned sour once we got in the car to go home, though.  Violet screamed the whole way home; I tried stopping to nurse her but once she was done and back in the car seat, she screamed her desperate 2-month-old wail the whole rest of the way home.  Once home, Violet was OK but then Grace started to lose it.  During the bathtime/bedtime routine it escalated into the worst tantrum she's had in over a year.  She was like a little wild animal, running and sobbing and unable to get the least tiny handle on her emotions.  She was tired from no nap and the park, and I'm sure Rob not being there contributed.  I was honestly unsure about what to do because it was going on for so long and was by this time so far past her bedtime.  She was starting to come down in intensity when Rob called on the phone, and he managed to calm her by reciting Goodnight, Moon from memory and saying prayers with her.  That's some serious parenting skills, right?  De-escalating the tantrum from halfway across the country?
  • A lizard has died in our bedroom.  It has turned warm here and the lizards are starting to come out to eat bugs and lead their summer lizard lives, but this little one somehow made it into our house and then proceeded to die.  At least, I assume so-- I haven't prodded it but it hasn't moved in 2 days.  Lizards themselves don't bother me at all (in fact, I wrote a long-winded comment on my friend Kristy's blog last summer trying to persuade her they were nice creatures), but I am VERY squeamish about dead things and I can't decide what to do about it.  Wait another day for Rob to come home and dispose of him?  Vacuum him?
  • I gave Grace her first haircut.  Calling it a "haircut" is a slight exaggeration, really.  I've been thinking that her hair could use some evening out because the sides were much longer than the back.  Sort of a reverse mullet, or maybe like that Victoria Beckham haircut that everyone is getting.  Anyway, we were at my parents' Friday night, having dinner and playing.  We gave Grace a bath at their house and put her in her pajamas before driving home and in the process of talking about her hair, we somehow decided to go ahead and do it right then.  I snipped a bit off either side, trying to get it the same length as the back, and her curls bounced up after I trimmed then, full of sweet little-girl charm.  Then Violet proceeded to scream almost the entire drive home from my parents'.  Sigh...
  • Grace had her first trip to Chuck E. Cheese's this morning for a birthday party for a little girl in her class.  It seemed on the whole bewildering, overstimulating, and slightly terrifying to her.  I can see why; the place was full of flashing lights and blaring electronic noise and crazy children.  We lead pretty low-key (lame?) lives where the most stimulation she normally gets is her time at preschool; this was in a whole different league.  The animatronic mouse elicited a teary, "I don't like it" from her and she ended up closing her eyes and putting her head down.  She held herself together through the cake and didn't actually break down until we got into the car when, of course, she wailed that she wanted to go back to the party to exchange the blue worm toy she got for "the green thing", even though she picked out the blue worm with her tickets.  Ah, Chuck E. Cheese-- a source of children's breakdowns for decades now...


Hmmm, there's been a lot of crying lately, hasn't there?  Shockingly I haven't been joining in yet; let's try to keep it that way.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I still shiver at the thought of Chuck E Cheese birthday parties. As a child I was terrified of people in animal costumes, which was of course the speciality of Chuck E Cheese in the early 80's. The one by my house had a swiss cheese maze that was too small for the 6 foot mouse-man to fit in. I spent many a birthday party sitting in the back of the maze waiting for cake time. Also, I don't think our parents went with us to these parties. Very scary.