Look out, Spock

At the lunch table today:

Bookworm: What is pizza made of?

Doc: You know, crust--that's made of bread--and sauce, and toppings like cheese and pepperoni.

Bookworm: But where does it come from?

Doc and I (in concert): Pizza trees. (I know, it's worrisome that even one mind works like this; that ours do it together is more than a little scary.)

Bookworm (skeptical): Pizza trees? I've never seen any pizza trees.

Doc (in his element now): Oh, they grow over behind one of the pizza places in Haymarket.

Bookworm (knows she's been had now): That's not true!

(While Doc and I snicker, she proceeds to inform us of our mistake): There are no pizza places in Haymarket.

(Quick, hide the phone book!)

*********************************

Wait, is it April already?

Oh yeah...I guess we kinda sped through Spring Break (3400 miles and seven pairs of shoes...more on that later) and the rest of the month has been kind of a blur...I had a great birthday, and Aslan and Buzz are having fun with soccer. I've broken down and joined Facebook, and as I expected, I just don't manage my time well enough to keep up with it. And my photo catalog has crashed (I can still access the photos, just not through PSE) so I'm behind uploading photos. I'll get to it, I promise. Maybe by the time school's out.

Life on other planets

In the car on the way home yesterday, Bookworm was explaining to us that she had learned that Pluto used to be a planet. (Hearing this made me feel my age a little, though perhaps not as badly as the time I told Bookworm she sounded like a broken record, only to have her ask what that is.)

Anyway, Bookworm went on to explain that now we know that Pluto is just a dwarf planet. To which Buzz replied:

"You mean, dwarves live there?"

Eggcellent News

Yesterday, having scored a negative allergy skin test for egg at her recent check up, Aslan underwent what is known as the "graded food challenge." This was an egghausting 2-hour trial in which she sampled a small bite of egg, waited 20 minutes, then got a slightly bigger bite, and so on, all the while being monitored for possible reactions. She's a tough chick; she didn't complain about the wait, just sat and read stories, colored pictures, and dressed and undressed the sticker princesses in the activity book in the waiting room over and over. I was pretty fried by the end, but she kept her reaction in the shell until the doctor finally announced that she was certified grade-A egg allergy free. Then she got a devilish smile on her face and inquired, "Can we get doughnuts now?"

Unfortunately, that celebration got scrambled by the revelation that our favorite doughnuts also contain soy flour. Some other allergen always manages to poach on her fun! So we got bakery muffins instead. That got her sunny side back up.

So, Aslan is now back to eating eggs, regular cupcakes and pancakes, and a number of other treats she has been denied for a year. Her soy sensitivity is still there, but seems to have diminished, and the doc is hopeful we may unload that one in another year or two. Then she really would be full of beans again...but for now, at least her yolk is (over) easy.

Busting My Buttons

I'm just so proud of the whole family this week, so I've gotta share.

Daisy has been her usual charming self, showing off her keen powers of observation and complete unwillingness to be left out of anything. This week, she has shown up all her sisters by becoming the youngest of our children (by, like, two years!) to learn the value of a very important word. I'm sure all parents can relate to the challenge in teaching children to be polite while still at the age when the world revolves around them. Daisy has learned, though, that when her sisters ask for something, they get a glare from Mom until they remember to add the word, "please." Daisy's working vocabulary still consists of only a few easily recognizable words: mama, dada, hi, bear, ball, and uh-oh. When she wants a snack, lacking the words for "juice" or "goldfish," she still mostly whines, points, and stomps her feet. But now, when she gets the reflexive glare from Mom, she adds, "beese." This has worked so well that she is starting to come up and tug on my leg and say "beese" without the whining. I know that our communication issues are far from over, but still, I'm pretty excited about the development!

Oh, and here's the picture I promised of the first ponytail. This is also a good illustration of her attitude about food, which may explain her motivation to master "please" when it gets her snacks faster.

Aslan has just been a trooper this week. She finally got to return to school for the first time in two weeks, and she celebrated by painstakingly signing her name to each of the seventeen Valentine cards for her classmates and teachers. OK, so she had to ask me to spell it almost every time. She still did all the writing herself!

She also helped entertain kids of friends who stayed with us this week for various reasons, as well as helping distract her baby sister while Mom helped out with the Daisy Scouts' weekly meeting (the troop leader was late because the school at which she works had its roof cave in under the snow, so she's stuck in alternative sites for the rest of the year. Puts my driveway shoveling gripes in perspective!). And last but not least, she also provided cheerful company as we waited in the line to pick up our troop's 83 cases of Girl Scout cookies. This is especially noteworthy when you consider that due to her food allergies, the only variety she can now eat are Thin Mints, and she doesn't care for those.

Buzz had a good week too. Report cards came out, and she was awarded a writing award for her grade level this quarter. She also continues to make reading progress. But the accomplishment I'm most grateful for came early Friday morning when she fell victim to a stomach bug and proved that she has now reached the point where she can recognize she's about to throw up, navigate the bunkbed ladder, and get to the toilet in time. Of course I was sorry she felt sick, but believe me, at 3:00 am, this was still a big favor for Mom.

And let's not forget Bookworm, who not only made the new honor roll this quarter, but also spent Saturday being my right-hand woman at the National Air & Space Museum where I was volunteering to help out with a family event. We were helping run a station where kids of all ages were assembling and decorating some fairly snazzy paper airplanes, complete with fuselage, wings, tail fins, and propellers. At first she was a little worried when I told her we would be there for three hours, but after finishing her own "Valentine airplane" (completely covered in little hearts), she really got into assisting the other kids, prompting a visitor with three little girls to comment to me how good she was in relating to them. When I told her it was time to go, she begged me to stay longer. So hopefully she'll want to come with me again sometime; the volunteer coordinator was delighted to have her.

Side note: we had lunch with my former boss from the museum, who asked Bookworm what she wants to do when she grows up. Bookworm's answer surprised me, as it's a change from the former librarian. Now she wants to be an inventor. My boss chuckled and told her she could still spend plenty of time in a library that way. (At last check: Buzz still wants to be a ballerina, and Aslan, a mermaid. Daisy doesn't yet have an opinion on record.)

Finally

Lots of "finallys" happening this week:

FINALLY the kids are going back to school today, at least on a 2-hour delay. If there are no more missed days this month, they will have had all of 9 school days in February. At least they're glad to be going back; Buzz actually burst into tears Monday night at the news it had been called again for yesterday. Poor kid has had her class Valentines ready for days. You're only in kindergarten once.

Finally--Daisy has, this past week, actually gotten the hang of using a spoon. In typical fashion, for her: I've just been letting her use her fingers lately, as I got tired of picking it all up off the floor. But once she realized that everybody else was getting to eat with a toy that she didn't have, she started to rebel at eating even foods she liked until I gave her one too. We're going to have to watch out for this one.

Oh, and I tried pulling her lengthening bangs back in her first ponytail yesterday. Unfortunately they are not thickening, just lengthening, but it was still pretty cute. I'll post a picture as soon as I download them.

And not least...finally I may have to break down and join Facebook. Went looking for the date to my upcoming high school reunion recently, and apparently it's been set for six months, but no word from anyone...except on a Facebook page, with a link to join an email list. So if I want an invite to my own reunion, I guess I have to saddle up. Sigh. I'll find the time somehow.