Poop, Pee, Potties, Dead Moose, and Throw Up

Colds are going around, and our elder seems to have contracted one from the younger, because last night she started coughing before bed - that dry, continuous, post-nasal drip kind of cough.  We set up a humidifier, and since I know how she rolls when it comes to sleeping with an on-coming cold (and by "sleeping" I mean "not sleeping at all and keeping the rest of the house awake with her") I made her take a belt of cough medicine.  She typically complains on the rare occasions she's required to take something, but tonight's complaining was pretty creative, I thought.  While alternating between microscopic sips of the medicine and huge swallows of water, she declared that the medicine tasted like pee and poop together.  Next sip. "Ewww, now it tastes like pee and poop AND potties!"  Another sip.  "And dead moose!" Last chug.  "Make that pee and poop and potties and dead moose and THROW UP!"

How she knows what any of that stuff tastes like, I don't want to know.

Colbert on Immigrants

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/10/27/alabama-immigration-law-colbert-i-told-you-so_n_1035165.html

"No!" and "Go Away!"

Okay, so it wasn't quite that emphatic.  But tonight I had to hear it from both kids, and that's a first.  Elena has finally started to speak the word "no," and she says it repeatedly and with great enthusiasm.  As in:
"Let's change your diaper."
"No!"

"Time to get dressed, honey."
"No, no!"

"Get down from there, that's dangerous-"
"NO!"

"Please stop drinking your bath water!"
"NO NO NO!!!"

And then there's Avery.  Tonight I read stories with her, as I always do, then turned out the light and put on her bedtime music, which is Enya's first solo album.  Normally I lie down and snuggle with her for at least a few minutes, then tell her I need to go downstairs and clean up and I will check on her in five minutes.  And when I go back up to check on her after a generous five minutes, she's normally fast asleep.  I enjoy and look forward to this ritual.  It's a bright spot in my day.  There's that few minutes where we're done with stories and she's just talking and telling me about her day or about something she's thinking about, and I feel completely peaceful, like everything in the world is just fine.  I like my few minutes of delusion, okay?  Tonight, for the first time ever, she turned to me when track #3 (her favorite) started playing, and told me she'd like to be alone.  Well.

I dutifully kissed her cheek, said my I love you's and bid her goodnight, promising to check on her in a few minutes but knowing she wouldn't need me to.

It's too soon.  I'm not ready, dammit.

Language Explosion

The toddler is saying so many new words these days, I don't know if I can remember them all right now.  I'd probably have to post about every ten minutes to keep up with her.  But here's a partial list:

Juice
Water (sounds like "whaaat?")
Nana (banana)
Cheese
Apple
Cookie

Tea (whenever she sees someone holding a mug)
Eat
Done
"Oh, my!"
Pen (sounds like "bun")
Swing
Bath
Piggy
Poop
Potty
Phone
Walk
Down
Ouch

Also, she says "peeeeesh?" when she's begging for something, so we're assuming that's "pleeeeease?"  Which she totally got from listening to big sis.  Interesting that she doesn't say the word "no" yet.

Hurricane Camping Homework Farm

.....A summary of last month's events with the kids, since I haven't blogged much.  So I'll lump all the pictures together and let them speak for themselves. 

Taking a walk before the storm really hit

Rain + drain = equilibrium

Not everyone was excited to come back in the house.

Morning-after fun in the dwindling pool

Power's out?  Let's play dress-up!

Backyard camping! Avery helped Mom put up the tent.

..Hey, princess fairies go camping too, right?

Building up the fire with Dad

Elena: "They have homework in Kindergarten now.  Yeesh."

Elena assigns herself some homework, makes big sis feel better.

On the way out the door to go to Ashton Farm

Elena at the farm in her Daisy Dukes.

Avery catches her third chicken of the day.  Poor bird.

Avery hops on horseback like an old pro.

Basketball Head: Story of a Grade School Guidance Counselor

Yep, that's what we used to call her.  Sixth through eighth grades.  Her real name was Mrs. X, or something.  I'm not going to share her real name, which I do remember, not out of any courtesy for her, but because Basketball Head is more ridiculous.  She was mean.  I don't remember anything specific she did that was mean....wait, that also is a lie.  I remember a good few.  I came to her once with intense distress over a personal situation having to do with my parents, who were divorcing, and she was flip and made me feel like a retard.  My best friend was verbally abused by her;  I would go so far as to say emotionally manipulated by her.  Basketball Head was maybe a bit sick.  By the way, we called her Basketball Head because of her hair.  It was short and fuzzy, wiry-curly, so thin you could easily see her scalp, and colored something weird and pale and nondescript.  Why this reminded us of a basketball is a mystery, but look, we were twelve.

My niece went to the same school twenty-some years later, and fortunately B.H. had long retired.  What made this woman want to be a guidance counselor is not only obvious, it's frightening: she enjoyed the privilege of being a jerk to easy prey.  Now that I'm a mother and have a child in school, I'm suddenly remembering stuff long buried in the old coffers.  I realize we're WAAAAAAY too early in the game to worry about such things, and I also realize that my kid goes to a school that so far we could not be happier with, but facts and logic have never stopped my anxiety disorder yet, and they're certainly not about to when it comes to my kids.

I had one small victory with Basketball Head, in 8th grade when we all had to fill out some career survey thing and then have our results evaluated in a private consult with her.  My profile showed that I should have become either a meteorologist or a babysitter for brain-injured pigs.  No, really....I have no idea what it said.  Too long ago.  What I do remember is that when B.H. asked me what I thought I might want to do, I told her I wanted to be a philanthropist.  I had recently learned what that word meant, and I thought it was hilariously funny - to be a philanthropist you had to have a shitload of money, right?  Isn't that great as a career choice, then?  I mean, HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!!!

....Tumbleweeds.  Among her many crimes, B.H. had no sense of humor.  I have since told that joke to probably too many people over the years (.."ya know what I always wanted to be growing up?  A philanthropist!  HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!)  It's kind of like when I crack wise at the doctor's office, which I like to do because dammit, going to the doctor is stressful - rarely have I gotten the response I wanted.  Tough crowd, these "professionals" with "credentials."  But that's another post.

Chopped Up Fish Farts

So, the summer crop of experiments has been harvested, dug up, and composted over the back fence, and the soil has been turned over.  It was a good crop - all credit to GW for defying the drought and the record heat this summer.  We had basil, chili peppers, cucumbers, a couple of watermelons, and a ton of really awesome cherry tomatoes.  Among the casualties were the pumpkins, which died of some horrible bacterial infection that turned the insides of their stems to goo.  The cilantro lasted about ten minutes, its delicate little leaves fried by the intense sun like mosquitoes in a bug zapper.  But a great many gardening lessons were learned, and the next go should be easier. 

Last weekend Avery was helping GW plant some carrot seeds, and he decided to fertilize.  He doesn't just use Miracle-Gro - he has this rust-colored concoction in a milk jug that he made himself, and although the plants love it, GW's the first to acknowledge that it smells like the rear end of a cow with dysentery.  Noticing this, Av commented on it and asked her dad what, exactly, this foul stuff was made of.  "Mostly it's chopped up fish parts," he replied helpfully.  She seems to have made a highly appropriate pronunciation error of that last word.  We thought it was pretty funny.