Fresh, Hot Wastes of Time

First of all, if you’ve emailed me or called me or anything in the last week, I’ve probably ignored it. Jo’s had a 102+ fever for almost a week now, and it’s not a happy time.

Second, the most horrifying thing happened to me last night. It’s been shorts weather here since early December. The ramifications are such as this:

Hub brought in the mail. I plopped it down on top on my laptop (which is in my lap) and proceed to sort through it. I get to the last circular, move it aside, and there is a half-crushed and wiggling adolescent frigging cockroach stuck to the wrist-rug on my laptop (which is in my laaaaaaap!).

The horror. The horror.

Here’s a short book that some of you (namely family members) might find interesting.

Caroline woke up earlier, as she is wont to do every night. She comes to sleep on the crib mattress we have on the floor of our bedroom for just such a reason. She’s often disoriented when she wakes up. Tonight she was trying to tell me something, but I thought that she couldn’t possibly be saying, “I want you to stand under the button.” I kept trying to get her to repeat it, and she was getting more and more frustrated with me. True enough, she wanted me to stand under the button. Of some dress on the floor.

She takes after her daddy, the king of waking non-sequiturs.

I’m wondering if the horrible situation in New Orleans is going to be the first news event that Jo remembers. She and Caroline have been talking about it a lot – asking what a hurricane is, what’s going to happen to all the houses under water, what would happen if a hurricane comes here. She’s been adding the Gulf Coast to her prayers at night, too.

As for me, I’m numb. We were just there three months ago. Now I’m wondering if there will be a New Orleans to go back to.

New Orleans photo album, May 2005.

Caroline’s reaching that question stage. I’ve been sitting with her for 45 minutes waiting for her to go to sleep. No dice.

This is a beautiful bed.
I love you.
Did Dodo love me too?
Was she a nice grandmother?
Like Jo’s teacher. Her teacher is nice.
How did she make this bed?
She bought it in the store?
Did God make all the city?
Does God live in heaven?
He’s up up up in the sky?
He makes it rain in the world?
Then there’s Jesus.
Does Jesus live in the sky too?
Is Jesus God’s friend?
When does God come to Jesus’s town?

Poor Jo. Tomorrow is her first day of “big kid school” – kindergarten – and she’s trying to pretend she’s not nervous. Her little body is giving her away though. All day today she was exceptionally cuddly with me, which is definitely unusual. It’s not that she’s not a loving girl, but she’s more of a tickler than a hugger. Then tonight she had problems sleeping. First she came downstairs around 10:15 and said her tummy was making funny noises. We gave her a big glass of milk and sent her back to bed. Then around an hour later, she called down the stairs – there was a little accident. That hasn’t happened for 2 years or so.

I’m nervous, too!

Jo had her first full-fledged prolonged public tantrum today at the mall. Actually, multiple tantrums. Basically it was an “I want” which was denied. A solid hour of screaming ensued. We touched on “I don’t want you as my mommy anymore”, but luckily skipped “I’m running away” and “I don’t love you”.

It all ended up with Caroline getting a special trip to the store for a balloon (she was almost self-righteously a good girl) and Jo getting nothing but a spanking. The mean words don’t bother me that much, since I know she was just trying all her limited arsenal to get me to buy her the outfit. The insistence on having it her way NOW is what I worry about. I do not want to raise a spoiled child, and hopefully this will help to teach her the appropriate way of asking for things, and accepting that she’s not always going to get what she wants.

I never guessed how rough the pleading would be.. “I’ll be the best little girl ever, I’ll do anything you want, please Mommy, don’t you love me?” Man, that stuff is hard to listen to. I know somewhere my own mom is up there laughing at me, cause I’m sure I pulled all that BS and worse.

Tonight, after the storm, I explained to her that when she told me she didn’t want me to be her mommy that it upset me. That I had fights with my mommy too when I was little, but now she’s not around even to have fights with, and I miss her – just as much as Jo would miss me if I were gone.

So today Caroline was crying about something and after she calmed down, her nose was still a little runny. “How does water turn into boogers?” she wanted to know. I explained to her that what was in her nose was not, in fact, water but rather snot.

The knowledge we take for granted…

Couple of highlights from Independence Day.