The other week we had some unwelcome visitors. I'm not talking about Shannon, Greg, and Nora, they were a delight. After the humans departed, we discovered visitors of the bug variety. Lice. I was told that it would be hard to spot lice in Fiona's hair because she's so fair, but in fact it was quite easy to see them crawling around near her temples. And guess what? I had them, too. And then even Rowan had a couple of nits. The injustice of preschool. So Fiona spent most of last week home with Rowan and me. She was matter-of-fact about the whole thing. "Mama, do I have school today?" she'd ask. "No, honey, not today," I'd respond. "Is it because I have bugs in my hair?" I suppose it's good she is bug-curious. Ba-doom ching!
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Went off without a hitch. Fiona met her new teachers and fell back into the old routine. There are new and old friends in her class, which I'm sure helps. But this is also her third first day of school so, you know, no big whoop. Thanks to Aunt Kate for the Hello Kitty lunchbox, which made the day even more special.
After a week of eye drops that would not deter Rowan's "heavy growth" bacterial pink eye, we have found relief with an erythromycin ointment -- yes, eye OINTMENT, lord help us. Nothing like pinning your baby down to squish solids into his eyes -- and Rowan is finally gunk-free. Three more days of treatment, and we should be done. No one is allowed to get pink eye again until they're able to administer their own medicine. My decision is final.
Fiona's interested in time, though it's still a very confusing concept for her. We tell her, "You can not wake up Mommy and Daddy until the first number on your clock is a 6." She seems to get that and, after a few weeks of popping up at our bedside when the clock said "5" ("The clock needs new batteries!" she'd cleverly but wrongly declare), she is back to getting up at a more reasonable hour.
Sometimes, Fiona looks at the big clock face in the kitchen and announces, "It says 11 and 5." I respond, "Yes. That's 11:25." She likes numbers. We count lots of things, like numbers of bites she has to take of my delicious dinners. "Four more bites," I'll say. She looks at her hands and holds up the correct number of fingers with an inquiring look. Lots of Fiona's sentences begin, "Nexterday, . . ." This is a great word. It covers all of the territory between past and present, "next" and "yesterday," so it really flummoxes the listener. "Nexterday, when I swing on the swing, I got a booboo." Okay. Pretty sure this was "yesterday" or "the other day." Past. But, "Nexterday, at Isaac's birthday, will he have a Spiderman cake?" This was a question that came up prior to Isaac's birthday, so in this case we're looking into the future. Fiona surprised me with her knowledge of language twice today: once when we were reading a book, and she said, "Why is there a zoo?" Sure enough, while the text was about a museum, Fancy Nancy had drawn a map of her town including her house, the museum, and the zoo, indicated with big "Z-O-O" letters. No animals, just the word. Awesome. The second time was when I spelled "Disney" to Brian, explaining that Uncle Britt and Aunt Amy were heading there soon. I'd hoped to avoid the 99 questions that would follow when Fiona heard the name of one of her favorite places on earth. Instead, she said, "Are they going to Disney?" HOW DID SHE KNOW THAT'S WHAT I SAID? Here is one sweet little bundle of chubby arms and thighs, flat feet with toes curled as though he's a monkey clinging to a tree limb, and cheeks cheeks CHEEKS. Oh, and amazing hair and beautiful eyes that provoke strangers to ask "What color ARE they??" My answer, "Yeah, uh, I'm not sure." I'm going with hazel. They're brownish grayish. Many say they're green. All I can say for sure is that they're not blue. Unblue.
At 9 months, Rowan likes to reach for and chew on things (duh), shake things (duh), empty containers, kick his feet, wobble his head, and scream. Lots of high-pitched ear-piercing screaming, punctuated with a smile. I think he knows his name. He's generally not afraid of strangers and will let anybody hold him. No teeth. No crawling. Fiona was almost 10 months and 11 months, respectively, so I'm not too concerned about it, though I thought he'd be mobile sooner because he has someone to look up to. No vocabulary, though the babbling has experienced an uptick recently. |
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