Wow, almost two weeks without an update. For lack of interesting things happening in our lives? Hardly. In fact, as I write this, I’m sitting in front of a roaring (gas) fireplace. And if you know our house, you’d know that our flue collapsed prior to our purchase of the house and previously, we’d used our fireplace to store toys in. True story. I’m also sitting .8 miles away from that collapsed flue in a new house. So, the lack of updates are not because our life has become increasingly stale, quite the contrary. We’ve moved, Loran’s been in an intensive work training since the end of October, both girls have been sick, Lillian had her first ear infection, I’m sick…and did I mention Loran’s been gone at a work training? But the move is for another update.
The evening before Halloween, we carved our pumpkins and watched The Great Pumpkin. This year, Ella was more into the carving, but not enough to touch the guts. She received a free pumpkin at the grocery store earlier in the day and was so proud of her little pumpkin. Her job was to steer her shopping cart, loaded with pumpkin from the kitchen to the living room. She took this quite seriously.
So rewind a week and a day to Halloween. Ella had been learning about this magical day at school during the week leading up to the big event. She knew she was going to be a tiger, tiger’s say “roar”, she’d practiced saying “trick or treat” and somewhat had a grasp that there would be candy involved. Once she put the knowledge into practice, it was a whole other ball game.
My parents and sister had come earlier in the day to help me move/kid wrangle, which was valuable once they were transformed into a tiger and pig. After a festive dinner of Jack-O-Lantern pizzas, Loran arrived home, my family left and we set out amongst the neighbor kids clamoring for candy. Ella was completely confused. You could just see it in her expression. “Why are we going to our neighbor’s houses in the dark begging for food?” She was near tears at the first couple of houses and refused to even look at people. She also refused to wear her hood up, which would have completed the tiger look. After a few houses though, Ella made the important realization that these people were giving her the candy which she’d heard so much about. Candy! In her bag! Suddenly, begging for food in the dark seemed like a great idea and she was off! We only visited the houses on our street. Which was a marked improvement from the immediate neighbors of last year. At one of our last stops however, Ella decided to cut to the chase, there would be no saying, “trick or treat.” Nope, she just flat out said, “I want candy” and held her bag out.
Out on the candy beat, surveying the loot, the reaction to realizing it was candy!
Laying on the floor, eating a glow stick, waiting for trick or treaters…
After trick or treating, we surveyed the haul, enjoyed a piece and worked on getting the kiddos to bed. Unfortunately, the little piggy woke up just after midnight in tears. Any time we’d try to lay her down, screams. This unwillingness to experience a shift in equilibrium made me immediately think – ears. Eventually, I quit trying to lay Lily down and resorted to sleeping on the couch, with her on top of me, elevated. It was a long night, but she did eventually get some rest. I made a doctor’s appointment first thing in the morning and the doctor came into the room to see a very happy and smiley baby who saw this as her opportunity to show off her mad clapping skillz…but, not to look like a complete idiot, while one ear was nice and healthy, the left one was starting to become infected, within days, Lillian would have had a full blown ear infection. If this is how she behaves with an almost infection, I’d hate to see full blown. So, we were off with Lillian’s first prescription of Amoxicillin. And 51 cents later, we were leaving Target with a little sack containing Lily’s newest nemesis. Pink, fruit flavored suspension in a small syringe. While the meds worked within days, the battle of the pink medicine is wearing thin. Only a couple more days to go! So, all in all, Halloween was quite fun. So fun, Ella has asked almost every day if we can trick or treat again. She doesn’t actually care about the candy or the costume, I think she just liked going door to door to get the candy.
As for Lily, she enjoyed seeing the other children in costumes and seemed to be oblivious of her own. That’s how it should be when you’re eight months old.
Luckily, I was rewarded with a beautiful sunrise after my restless night with Lily.
No comments:
Post a Comment