Em got dressed up today and told me, “You should take some pictures of me, for when I’m famous.” All poses were hers, and she directed me on the camera.
Afterward, she graciously gave me her autograph. When she hits it big, I’ll sell it on eBay for millions.
Very expressive. I swear her art is better than some webcomics I’ve seen.
A rare use of color in one of Emily’s drawings, inspired by the birthday party that Em went to a couple of weekends ago. That’s the birthday girl on the left, blowing out her candles. Em is the girl in purple dress with black velvet half-jacket and matching black shoes. The red things on the wall are a clock shaped like a strawberry and two other strawberries flanking it. These actually were in the apartment, they’re not from her imagination.
Em had a great time at the party. She got to take a whack at a pinata, have her hair curled with a curling iron by the older sister of the birthday girl, and watch the candles be blown out from a great distance (she’s afraid of fire). She also learned the perils of fancy dress shoes – her shoes were new and they did fit, but nonetheless after about three hours she came to me and said “my shoes hurt.” Welcome to womanhood, sweetie.
She and I were the only native English speakers there. The kids spoke pretty good English so it wasn’t an issue for Em, but it was a bit more daunting for me with the adults. I was able to communicate a bit with my rusty Spanish, but after a while there were so many people talking and crosstalking that I gave up and knitted while watching a Mexican beauty pageant on their satellite TV.
As soon as I pulled out the knitting, some of the little kids glommed on to me, so I taught them how to finger knit a chain and they were quite happy. Then someone asked, “can you make me a purse?” and like an idiot I said yes. I double-knitted a tiny pouch and gave it to the little girl, and she was happy. But of course, there was not just one little girl at the party, there were more than 20 kids. Ahem.
Anyway, I wound up making about eight. The last one was for the birthday girl and then I said that was all I was making. It was getting late. The girls were very nice, though, and brought me little bits of candy from the pinata, which I thought was very sweet. “You’re like a teacher! A knitting teacher!” they said. Well, I try.
Em got along great with the other kids, running and playing and generally behaving well. The other girls, who were very chatty with the knitting teacher, asked “Emily’s kind of quiet, isn’t she? She doesn’t talk much to people she doesn’t know, does she?” So that was their take on her. At 6:30 when she was pooped and lay down on the couch for a few minutes, the little girls said, “Emily’s tired, isn’t she?” Yep. It was pretty obvious to everyone.
After the cake, I asked her if she wanted to go, and she said no, she was tired but she was having fun. Finally I asked her at 7 if there was something she was waiting for. “I’m waiting to see everybody else leave.” Nice idea, but they live pretty much next door so they’re probably not going home until bedtime, and I have no idea when their bedtime might be. I explained that we have to drive and they don’t, and then she was okay with leaving. I was glad, not just because it was late but because she hadn’t cared for the cake and so hadn’t had anything to eat since arriving four hours ago.
As soon as we got home, she wrote a lovely unprompted thank-you note to the birthday girl and we mailed it off the next morning. All in all, a great success.
Em’s root canal yesterday went fine. There were some bumps. I had understood that it had been verified that insurance would cover the sedation, when apparently that was not the case. We’re working with the endodontist to get the insurance company on board.
Em has to be sedated because bless her heart, she’s a very anxious dental patient. She is fearful of doctors and dentists in general, but when it turned out that the sedation would come via a shot instead of the mask which she was familiar with, her scream could be heard from space.
Everything went well, though. It took her some time to recover, and in fact she still looks a little beat to me today. She’s been having her dolls play that they’re injured. One of her dolls frequently gets a broken ankle from snowboarding, and yesterday she said, “I think that when Gwen found out she had to have a cast on her ankle, she must have felt really scared, like I did when I found out that I had to have a shot in my arm.” That’s the first time I’ve heard her verbally empathize with someone that directly. She’s been doing it unconsciously for a while, having her dolls act out situations similar to her own, but I haven’t heard her say it outright before. Projecting your own emotions into someone else’s situation is a great skill to have.
As I was playing with her last night, I had one of her dolls go trick-or-treating.
Me: Trick or treat! What do you have for me?
Em: A root canal!
Note to self: skip Em’s house at Halloween.
This is a long shot, but I have a favor to ask.
I almost never go to McDonald’s, but I did last week and they were having an American Girl giveaway with their Happy Meals. Em went nuts for the little American Girl book which included paper dolls in it. Trouble is, the books are a series of eight. We’ve only been able to locate three, and the promotion ended this past weekend. Mommy’s little collector really wants the remaining five.
Does anybody happen to have any of the American Girl Happy Meal toys that they don’t want? We have Kit, Julie, and Felicity. I’ll pay postage if you’re not local.
I appreciate the consideration!
We got off to an earlier start this morning, allowing me to put Em’s hair up in four braids as she requested. On the way to school, the sun was just rising as it began to sprinkle, and a beautiful vivid rainbow arced all the way across the sky. One end looked like it touched down about where my father lives (that’s him with me and the squirrel in the previous post) and the other landed right behind Em’s school. It was gorgeous, and all the teachers were excited.
Hopefully it’s a good omen of a great day.
ETA: Now it’s stopped raining and is still cool enough to run. I feel like if I talk more about how great this day is going then something ironic will have to happen, like me getting hit by a bus. Watch this space for me in traction!
I got Em to school a few minutes late this morning. She’s very self-motivated and gets ready quite well on her own, she just did everything a few minutes later than usual today. I signed her in at the office and she went straight to the media center instead of to her class. Late for the first day of work! Unfortunately, she gets that from me. Oh well.
Even though we were running a little late, Em did ask me to put her hair in a high ponytail, and she did put on earrings. Em doesn’t actually have pierced ears, but I have some stick-on bindis leftover from my booth at Simucon a few years ago. She has taken to sticking them to her earlobes. Voila! Instant earrings.
We mentioned to Em that the president was going to be speaking today through the internet to their class. Em figured that “It must be about the multiplication sundaes!” That’s the level of importance that the sundaes have to her. The president is going to address the nation about them. Or, as my husband says, that’s the level of importance the president has – he’s been elevated in her mind to speaking about something as important as the precious sundaes.
I suppose it’s possible that Em will be the lead-in to the president. Again, my husband points out that that should be nationally, not just schoolwide. I’ll bet if the parents objecting to the speech knew that in addition to hearing Obama, they’d get to hear Em, they’d change their tune. Of course I will admit that it is remotely possible that as Em’s mother, I have a slightly inflated sense of her importance on the national political scene. Maybe. Possibly.
I can hear it now… “My fellow ice creamericans…”
I got this sweater late last year as part of a sweater/skirt combo so she’d have something dressy she could wear in the wintertime. I got it in a the size she was growing into so that she might be able to wear it this year, too. However, she’s grown out of that size and into a new one. Check the sleeve length. My girl’s a little filly who’s all limbs.
She and I went to the Matthews Alive! Festival yesterday. It was hot. To quote Biloxi Blues, It was like Africa hot. Tarzan couldn’t take this kind of hot. We only brought 20 bucks with us, and I had to ration that out so we’d be able to buy a drink after riding the rides.
Our first ride was a spinning strawberry. You sit inside, and there’s a wheel in the center that you can turn to make the strawberry spin more. We sat with two twelve-year-old boys determined to reach terminal velocity. I felt like we were training for the space program. Also, I felt nauseous. Em seemed okay, so I didn’t say anything. I mean, I was a 40-year-old woman riding in a spinning strawberry. I kind of felt like it was really the kids’ world and I was just sitting in it. Fortunately the guy came to get us out last so I got to recover instead of stepping out and falling on my face from dizziness.
Em also rode on a bouncy ride with the slowest moving line I’ve ever seen. It was awful, but of course once we were in line, we had to stick it out. After her turn was done, I asked her how it was.
Em: “It was okay.”
Me: “Was it worth the wait?”
Em: “No, not really.”
Oh well. I hate to say that I spent $2.25 and got sunburn for nothing, so let’s call it a learning experience.
Today’s day off will be spent watching TV, returning a pair of shoes to Nordstrom (I got a second pair that, on further reflection, wasn’t quite right for me), going out to the Greenway, and trying on the new winter clothes I bought. Let’s hope she doesn’t put on another growth spurt between now and this afternoon.
Em has always had a hard time learning her multiplication tables. She continues to count on her fingers, which isn’t a great technique when you’re calculating, say, eight times eight in the middle of a math test. She can do it, mind you, but it’s slow and laborious and painful to watch. She gets frustrated when I try to teach them to her, and hiring a special math tutor at crazy dollars per hour didn’t do a whole lot to help, in my personal opinion.
Enter ice cream.
This year, the fifth graders are having an ice cream sundae party. Which multiplication facts you know determines what you get. Every fact group you have down pat earns another topping. For instance, knowing all your ones might get you the ice cream, all the twos might get hot fudge, and so on.
Let us never underestimate the power of bribery. As one of Em’s reading tutors said this summer, “I don’t work for free, do you?” Good point. It would seem that ice cream is exactly the reward Em needs. “I want to learn all my twelves!” she told me yesterday. Apparently when you learn the 12’s you get your choice of a special topping. Em likes salt and pepper on her ice cream, so maybe that’s what she’ll go for.
Last night we taught her that 12×6=72. This morning, she still remembered it when asked. This may seem like a small thing, but in the past the answers have always flowed out of her mind immediately. Remembering the answer to a multiplication problem overnight is huge for her. We started work on 12×7=84 on the way to school this morning.
“There is a piece of paper with all the multiplication facts on it and I’m going to fill them all in and turn it in for an ice cream sundae.” She says she’s already started, but wants to work on her 11s and 12s now. The party is in early October, so I think we have time to get this done.
We’re thrilled at this breakthrough. I’m sure that sundae will taste even sweeter for all the hard work she’s done.