Latest Articles

Apparently I'm not the only clumsy one. Opal came home today with four bandaids; one on each knee, one on her knuckles, and one (left over from yesterday) on the blister where she definitively proved that yes, her old shoes were too small. I am told there was a race which ended badly. She was more proud of herself than upset.

It was an easy ...

I am remarkably clumsy these days. Yesterday, there was a swing-pushing incident. I think Opal's summary is surprisingly accurate: "You whacked your face with my head! Silly Mama!" Yes, she leaned back, I leaned forward, and I got the back of her skull smack into my cheekbone at a good clip and saw stars. Fortunately the bruise is fairly well hidden by my ...

We went to see Jane again this afternoon. We brought real, boughten flowers this time, although we did get a random assortment from the flower seller at the market who sells very random flowers. Opal picked it very carefully, but her main criterion was the presence of snapdragons (I wanted the one with purple gladiolus, but it didn't have any snapdragons). Opal ...

We went to brunch at Richard's, where Opal spent a while hiding behind me and then decided that actually, it was all going to be OK, and hung out with various adults. She spent quite a while hunting for ghosts, and transforming them into things. Apparently, the best way to get rid of a ghost is to turn it into a doorknob. She turned one of them into Scooby Doo, ...

Opal was in a much better mood today, but daycare was still a bit fraught, because she wanted to go back to the next class, but they were having a field trip to the ice cream factory. That naturally was not the sort of thing one could visit for (note that Opal has been on that field trip with her class -- it's a natural thing to do if you have an ice cream ...

It is crazy season in 4-year old land. Last night was fairly catastrophic, as Opal and I had a disagreement over whether whispering requests to me every minute constituted letting me sleep, which resulted in my banishing her from my bedroom (that is, requiring her to move a minimum of 2 entire meters, possibly even the 4 meters that would have taken her from ...

Opal is feeling very rule-bound these days, and if she doesn't think something is as it should be, it's silly. Things that are silly: Girls marrying girls ("But Cat and Christine got married." "Well, I like them, but it's still silly.") Palm trees near us ("Palm trees are supposed to be in the desert! Not in California!") The idea that we all get older at the ...

Still cranky, still rashy, but not quite so much of either and certified non-contagious, Opal returned to school, where she showed off her shots. Everybody assumed they were her kindergarten shots (next year!) which I can only hope she will have forgotten about by the time we actually get to the kindergarten shots.

We went to see Jane, and ...

Well, it was a delicately scheduled day, where Paul had to cancel several things, but we all survived, and Opal has been to the doctor, who says the Rash is a combination of bug bites and something else, where something else is probably contact dermatitis, cause unknown, possibly a nameless virus, and almost certainly not chicken pox. They recommend ignoring it ...

It is a parental nightmare. You take the shirt off your inexplicably cranky, tired, and horrible child, and discover a Rash. Now, this would only be mildly annoying if it weren't for the fact that Paul and I are supposed to be in two different adults-only places at the same time tomorrow morning (this is in fact the only day all week this is true of) and of ...