Thursday, July 31, 2008

In Which We All Go Quietly Mad

Lily, Jack and I have been in the house for two whole days. None of us has had enough sleep in two nights. Jack is a lot better, but still a little off his food. Lily is upset that she missed two play dates in a row, and frankly, so is Mommy. Mommy needs a play date, too.

Today we watched our Maurice Sendak DVD at least 20 times. Jack would have been happy to see "Where the Wild Things Are" over and over and over and over, world without end, amen. Fortunately, I was able to get him interested in something else every once and a while so that we could turn the TV off. Unfortunately, he could only be diverted for a few minutes before returning and saying "I wanna watch Wild Fings!"

I did get them out of the house in order to go to Butterfly Yarns and pick up the two patterns I ordered. They were relatively well behaved in the yarn store, except that Jack decided to "help" store owner Kim organize her crochet hook display on the front of the checkout counter. I noticed Lily immediately went over to a skein of yarn and petted it. Like mother, like daughter?

After stopping briefly to get the patterns, I took around the corner to Cravings as a special treat. Lily wanted a chocolate cone. Jack wanted a "green" cone. The store owner politely informed me that he only uses natural flavors and colors in his ice cream, so he didn't have any green ice cream. I told Jack there was no green and asked whether he wanted vanilla or chocolate. "I want purple," he said. I told the store owner to give him chocolate, just to end the discussion.

When I handed Lily her cone, Jack suddenly said "I want fwahklet! I want fwahklet!" Good thing I ordered that instead of "purple," assuming the store even had purple ice cream.

Jack got a lot of his ice cream on his shirt and then threw most of his cone into the trash. Lily was better at eating hers, but kept rubbing it across her lips (and, therefore, her face and chin) and saying "Look at my beautiful lipstick!" Indeed. On the way back to the car, Jack repeatedly asked me to carry him and Lily whined that it was too hot to be outside (it really was). All in all, not our best outing this summer. We were all glad to get back to our air conditioned house, where they immediately clamored for "Where the Wild Things Are." Again.

Did I mention that Jack refused his nap? He was more than content to play for two hours in bed, but did not sleep a wink. He did pass out on the floor watching Maurice Sendak after we got home from ice cream. He was flat on his back like a dead man. Lily continued to play in the living room, she just stepped over him like he wasn't there. He slept through it all.

Ah yes, I forgot to mention the terrible injury Lily sustained while standing over by the radiator cover. She scraped her foot just above the back of her heel, causing a minute flap of skin to come up. There was no blood, but she carried on as if someone had amputated her foot at the ankle. She demanded a band-aid, and when I couldn't find one, she cried and carried on for an hour, demanding that I call Jim and ask him to come home immediately so he could pick up some band-aids. She walked around with an exaggerated limp and told me her foot was probably broken. I finally unearthed a box of band-aids from the bowels of the bathroom cabinet and put one on her. It was a MIRACLE! She was instantly cured.

I don't know where Jack got his bug, but he definitely spread it to two of his friends. I am devoutly hoping that Lily missed out, because if she gets sick tonight, I will be stuck in the house with a pukey kid again, this time on one of my two "days off." I don't know if any of us can take another sick day at home.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glad to hear Jack is better! Don't envy you home with sick kids! I'll be going by Butterfly Yarns tomorrow to get my pattern.

cath said...

I thought you might have learned by now that band-aids cure EVERYTHING!! Stock up!