halloween party

This first pic is where E was when I got to the daycare this evening, hiding with a friend (who didn't want his picture taken) behind the tables that had been pushed aside for the party.


She was a "pepper princess" again this year. The tiara, gloves, and shoes didn't stay on very long.


The ceiling fan had little tissue-paper ghosties flying around.


These pictures were taken before everyone got there. It was packed and crazy later on and I didn't take any pictures then. They had one room decorated with "spooky stuff" and one with a blow-up bouncy thing, and outside there were marshmallows and donuts tied to strings, which you had to try to eat without using your hands.

Victor sleepover

Next-door neighbors in the fort

Next adventure: discovering that the toilet "plumper" will stick to the wall.

finished painting

David's painting is finished, see pictures here, and en route to Wilmington to give to the veteran. Hope he likes it! I'm very proud of my husband.

part of the working mom/wife package

I'm organizing child care and transport, work meetings, date nights, family and friend visits, play dates, dance classes, doctor visits, birthday parties, and oh yes, grocery shopping. I'm even having to schedule the laundry. The next few weeks are going to be a logistical work of art.

how I spent 10-10-10

I read about a photography contest, to take a picture at 6:10 am my time (10:10 Greenwich Mean Time) on yesterday, but I decided not to set my alarm. I woke up at 7:00.

The sun was rising behind the Blue Ridge mountains. We were at David's parents' house. No one else was up yet. Emma was snoring gently in her sleeping bag on the floor. She has a slight cold. I went downstairs and turned on the tv (an exciting novelty for me!) and decided to watch CNN. They were showing live footage of a massive celebration in North Korea to introduce Kim Jong Il's successor, his youngest son Kim Jong Un. I know that live tv from North Korea is rare, and 100 international journalists were invited to watch the impressive dancing and fireworks. There were thousands of dancers in a stadium, choreographed to the millisecond. I've never seen anything like it. Beautiful!

Other news was annoying - spokespersons for partisan politics speculating on the influence Barack Obama might still be able to have on mid-term elections. Why don't they get more neutral observers? Bringing these on, you know exactly what they're going to say -- that's not news.

My father in law was up next, told me he found on Google Earth the place he had been stationed in South Korea in 1956. There's nothing there now.

I think it was around 8 am when I heard my mother in law moving around and then, E's little voice. We watched the Scooby Doo movie her Aunt Cindy sent to her until it was time to set the table for breakfast. E helped me with that task a couple times over the weekend, learning to fold the napkins and which sides the knives and forks go on. She was excited to have cheese toast, eggs, and orange juice. She ate bacon after her grandma teased her for saying it was too hard. She said, "Oh, she doesn't have any teeth, she can't chew it." Then E asked for some.

After breakfast E helped wash the dishes. And we went outside and collected fallen apples. E kept changing her mind about what to do with them. At first we were witches making applesauce with rotten apples. Then she wanted to pretend to make an apple pie. After several distractions we ended up leaving them in a pile as an Apple Feast for the deer who visit. E didn't like the "squishy" wet grass we walked in and went back to put her shoes on, but I loved it and kept my feet bare. The ground there doesn't have as many hard and spiky things as our yard here.

More playing, then finally packing up to leave. We took the scenic route home, guided by the GPS. It was truly gorgeous. Hard to find a bathroom though. We got to a country store that said they didn't have public restrooms but I promised to buy something so they let me go. I came back in with my purse and E and the store clerks exclaimed over her. Gave her free candy. David said, "Now she's learned she can get things just by being cute!"

We got home in time for E and me to go to the park. We played and I helped try to find the owner of a loose dog who was apparently not a stray but starving. Another neighbor brought cat food for him. Another neighbor petted and talked baby talk to him. He wandered off and we lost track of him. Poor dog. None of us felt comfortable taking him home to keep him temporarily, putting up posters and all that, which is what my animal loving friends would see as the right thing to do. Didn't want to call the dogcatcher either, because we knew how that would end. He was incredibly gentle and pleasant, but too old and decrepit to be adopted, probably.

The day ended with reading of the Richard Scarry Storybook Dictionary, as usual.

what a day

E watched a movie on my laptop while I took a shower this morning, and when I came out I caught her with her elbows on the keyboard, thumb in mouth, entranced by the lines she was making with her other hand on the LCD screen - with a sharp piece from a home-made glass and metal wind chime! There are scratches now. Could have been gouges, I suppose, but still annoying to look at on my nice otherwise clean white Mac. I was absolutely furious, as we'd already had a big "talk" about not touching the very delicate screen after she left finger smears all over it. The wind chime was made with wire and colored glass, given to her at the art studio after she admired it. The glass pieces aren't sharp enough to cut your skin at a normal touch, but they're not something to be playing with anyway. I said "I thought you had more sense!" and told her she could never watch any more movies on my computer, ever. Then I went in my room to calm down. She took much longer to calm down, herself, but by the mid-afternoon she wasn't crying whenever she thought of it. She compared this incident to how sad she was that time we were going to go to the mountain house but we couldn't because she was sick.

We went to Meeting (church) after that, and things were fine, but she was exceptionally energetic today. I took a nap on the couch while she watched a video, and instead of spacing out she talked all through it and had trouble sitting still. David called to offer me a break, said, "What's E doing?" I said, "bouncing off the walls". Later tonight she was even worse, stumbling and pitching herself over things, knocking stuff over, careening through the rooms, chattering nonstop and LOUDLY. When she finally went to bed she crashed hard.

We have had a lot of power struggles lately, and they've scaled back a notch, as I see her processing things through her play. Today at lunchtime (between church and my nap) was an extreme example of the kinds of things she's wanted to play since these control issues came to a head. She was the mom and I was the daughter, and the beans I was eating for lunch were my "yucky pills" that I had to eat 20 of. She wanted me to cry and whine and kick my legs throughout while she lectured me about it. She told me what to say and I had to pretend to cry a lot. Mimicking my calm motherly tone, she said things like, "You want to be healthy, don't you?"and "I'm sorry, Daughter, but you have to have a lot of painful shots," and "I'm the mom and I have the rules"! The rules for me were that I had to eat 20 yucky things and have 20 shots a day. I protested, "But that's more than most children have," and she replied, "You're the sickest child ever." She gathered a collection of keys, spoons, toy golf clubs, pencils and pens, and was preparing to give me "painful shots" with all of them - in that calm tone of voice - but luckily got distracted before I had to endure the whole series.