Today started at 2:22 a.m. when Anna burst into our bedroom and screamed, "I have to pee!" Not her style. She hardly ever wakes up in the middle of the night and when she does it's not with a scream. She had a fever of over 102 and she couldn't go back to sleep. She tried sleeping curled up in our room, but decided she wanted to go back to her room. She came back, though, and couldn't get comfy. I swear she had half the queen sized bed while John and I were smooshed on the other half. I went and slept in her bed after a while. Poor bubba. She's currently asleep on the couch. The fever's way down, but there was a bit of puke.
Speaking of dogs and puke...Brian left me a nice pile to clean up, too. Damn' dog.
Jack is itching to play Uno for points. I bought a set of Uno cards last week and have been teaching him and his sister how to play. She likes it, and even though I'm pretty sure she has no clue what is going on, she wins almost every single hand. Jack and I started to play for points and he likes to do that even though he loses. I told him that we should get Grammy Bailey to play the next time we see her because she likes to play Uno. He got a scared look on his face and said, "But she cheats!" She does. Apparently her reputation precedes her.
A bunch of people I work with have set up a Wednesday beach day schedule. If we can, we'll meet at Nantasket beach on Wednesdays. Today was meant to be the first as it is the first Wednesday of summer vacation. Unfortunately, my little girl is a little under the weather. This will be a good thing--not her being under the weather, but the regular beach dates. The kids love the beach and they get bored hanging around here sometimes. It's cheap and they'll be interacting with other kids, too. And I'll get to interact with other adults. Maybe I won't be so nutty with a little regular interaction with some adults.
John has cleared out some of the trees (read, "all of the trees") in the backyard so that we can put our pool up. We have one of those pools that you can put up and take down. It's about 4' deep and about 16' across. It never got warm last summer and the kids would play in it for five minutes and then be done--especially if I didn't get in with them. I wasn't getting in it if the temperature was not up to my picky standards. So John decided that he would clear out a few of the trees in the backyard so that we could have a nice sunny patch. Again, here's the difference between John and me. In my mind, a few trees included the big dead one and maybe a couple of others. In his mind, it meant the whole backyard's worth of trees. It was probably a good thing, though, because he found that even the ones that were alive were rotted on the inside. We have a ton of wood in our backyard if anyone needs some. He's hoping to have the pool up by Saturday so that we can use it next week. Hip, hip, horray! The kids are itching to swim, and the small kiddie pool really is too small for them and the assortment of rocks they like to wash in it.
The Disney trip is rapidly approaching and I was in a little bit of a panic mode. Anna was such a mess at Quassy that I was afraid that those behaviors would be present during our whole trip to see the giant rat. I thought about it a lot and realized that I hadn't set Anna up. I hadn't given her something to anticipate. I hadn't even told her where we were going and what it was like. In the past, I have written her little stories about what she would see and do and how she was expected to act. For this trip, I had just thrown her in and expected her to handle it. Bad mom.
So I figured that since I have time, I would write her a little book for every day of our trip. I sat down yesterday while the kids were playing and started to sketch out a step-by-step itinerary of our trip. I got through Thursday, August 18, 2011, really easily because all we're doing that's new is going to a hotel to spend the night. The next day got to be a disaster. The next day is our flight, our arrival, and then quality time in the pool.
In my head, I know what this entails. We'll take a shuttle to the airport. There will be bags to check and security to go through. We'll have to wait for our plane and then we'll be on the plane for a long time. Once we arrive we have to walk through our terminal and get onto a "people mover" to get to another terminal to then wait in line to get on a bus that will bring us to our hotel. I've got a perfect picture of how this will work in my head. I've done it before. I started listing the steps and the stages and the behaviors, etc., and then I got to the time when we're done in the pool. We had planned to play it by ear, here. Depending on how the kids are, we might do one of a few things. I couldn't figure out how to write the three options down. I scanned over what I had written so far and was overwhelmed by how LONG it was. This wasn't going to work.
So I wondered what to do. I thought about when it was at Quassy that she had a hard time. The first was waiting her turn to do something she really wanted to do--go on a ride. Lines weren't something she was interested in at all. The second was wanting to do something she liked repeatedly. She didn't really comprehend that she needed to see and do other things or that she needed to get back in line to wait to do it again. Next was leaving. She didn't want to leave and so she pitched the biggest, most embarrassing temper tantrum when we told her that it was time to go.
What I'm going to do with that information is a little up in the air. I can make something that addresses the behaviors. But what? I might make some mini-books and then see if I can get them lamenated. Does Staples do that? I'll have to sort that out.
Oh well. I won't be going anywhere today, so I guess I'll have time to think it through. :)
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| Anna's new haircut |
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| finger painting in the driveway! |
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