Your Weekly Dose of Kid Moments

1. Julianna funny A: Julianna’s been cracking me up lately. She’s missing a lot of cognitive understanding but the nuances of drama she has down cold. She’ll put the back of her hand to her forehead and tell me in a thread of a voice one step removed from the grave, “Mommy–I-hef –fehvoh.” (Fever.)

2. Julianna funny B: She had pinkeye Easter weekend, and I had to sit on her to get the eyedrops in her eye. So the last few days, what does she do? She comes up to me and says, in a slightly less pathetic voice than the above, “Mommy, I–hef–peck-eye. I need–eye-dops.” “What?” I say. “You are being goofy! You don’t even like eyedrops!” (Or cold medicine, for that matter. Although if you could take it in a spoon like Mary Poppins, she’d consider herself in Heaven.)

3. Julianna funny C: Pretty much every day she comes to us with her head bowed and her eyes covered, whimpering as if the world is ending. We used to get all concerned to find out why she was upset. Now we sigh tolerantly and say, “Yes, Julianna, what’s the matter?” Weeping–crocodile-tear-weeping: “I need give Tinkoh Bell hug!”

4. Nicholas drew this picture of Noah’s ark for me: Note the shark in the water, the ark hovercraft, the lightning bolt, and Noah hanging off the stern. At least I think it’s the stern. Not entirely clear. Still, this makes me happy, because until quite recently he was a scribbler. It’s good to see him progressing to deliberate, meaningful representations of the world. Even if they are a bit, y’know. Sci-fi.

5. Alex lately has adopted a car game made up by one of his classmates. It’s called SWAT. Or something. I’m not sure, exactly. They pretend to shoot SWAT vans. And what is a SWAT van, you ask? Well, you know, I’d kind of like to know that myself. I thought it meant any van with no windows in the back, i.e. delivery vans. But he seems to cast his net a bit wider than that. “Suspected SWAT area!” he’ll say to his carpool buddy. I smile, but it does make me quite happy to see them paying attention to what’s going on outside the vehicle. He’s been wanting entertainment, i.e. iPad or book, any time he gets in the car, so having him interact with what’s outside the car is a good thing.

6. I wrote a post about fear and parenting this week that has generated a good amount of discussion, if you’re interested.

7. Today marks the end of a crazy writing week–three deadlines, two of them involving multiple parts. I’ve barely slept this week. I promised that starting tonight I’d take this weekend off and not even think about writing for a couple of days. I’m already tempted to backslide on that, but I know I need the mental, emotional, and physical (i.e. sleep) rest. I’ve been making do with 5-6 1/2 hours of sleep this week instead of my usual 6 1/2 to 7. I’m at the point where if I sleep 8 I drag all day without energy. Who would have thought I’d adjust so thoroughly to insufficient sleep? Have a great weekend!