My daughter the politician

Today Norah got off the school bus and the bus driver said, "Goodbye, Norah." (I know this because I was standing on the curb - kerb? - and heard him say it.) She ignored him. As we started walking home, I said, "The bus driver said goodbye to you, so you should say goodbye to him. It's just the nice thing to do."

She said, and I quote, "I couldn't say goodbye because I was too excited to see my daddy."

Clever deflection, sucking up to those more powerful than she, smiling as she said it - yep, she'll make a heck of a politician when she grows up!

Norah is exactly like Martin Luther King Jr.; plus, she dominates in school

This morning Norah told me about her dream. I will try to summarize it, because it sounds awesome. She made the whole thing up, of course, but still.

So, when she was two (if Norah wants to refer to something that happened in the past, it's always "when I was two years old"), she had a dream. According to her, a dragonfly kept coming into her bedroom. First it was a girl dragonfly, and she didn't have a problem with it. Then, a boy dragonfly, and she didn't like that. It turns out that this dragonfly was kind of a jerk. As she hid under the covers in her bed, the dragonfly took all the toys off her bed and absconded with them. Somehow the male dragonfly was either chased off by a female or transformed into a female, whereupon she brought all of Norah's toys back and became friends with Norah. Then a witch came into her bedroom and threatened to take all of Norah's toys, but for some reason she didn't. The dream started to make less and less sense then (because the whole evil boy dragonfly scenario made so much sense) and Norah decided to stop telling me about her dream. She did tell me that when she was "one years old," she didn't dream because she slept in the crib really well. Good to know she remembers that.

Anyway, this week was parent-teacher conference week, and we had no real surprises with Norah's conference. She's doing very well (all "A"s, for what that's worth) and getting better all the time. When she started school, I was worried that she wouldn't want to practice because she wants to be perfect immediately, but she's gotten better at dealing with that, even though she still gets a bit upset when she can't make a letter perfectly right away. But as long as she slows down, she's okay (this is true for most kids and probably people, I would imagine). The teacher told us her behavior is impeccable, which we didn't worry about. As part of the school's push to get parents to volunteer, I was in her classroom on Monday, and although it's always a possibility she was behaving just because I was there, she was very good (and I don't think she's quite that devious yet). I'm a bit worried because she's still pretty shy and she allows stronger personalities to dominate the group, and there's a girl in her class who's very loud and very gregarious and Norah thinks she's neat, but that's not too big a concern right now - Norah might be shy, but she also realizes that sometimes, it's better to distance yourself from certain kids. Overall, however, she's doing very well in school and her teacher is very happy with her. So that's nice.

Of course, she's still scared of dragonflies. What's up with that?

I should really have the house wired ...

I miss so many fun things that Norah says, or I hear them but then forget them later. This morning, for instance, she strolls up to me.

"Daddy, it smells like dirt in here," says the lass.

"What do you want me to do about it?" says I.

"Clean up the stink!" says the logical Ms. Norah.

She meant that the litter boxes smelled a bit. Considering I had just cleaned them, I guess she could smell the litter and the deodorizer I use, and as I had just stirred it all up, perhaps the odor was a bit stronger. But at least it didn't smell like cat poop!

Clean up the stink, indeed. If only that advice were so easy in the real world!!!!

Mia turns eight!

Mia's birthday was 30 August, as you should all well know. I can't say it's amazing she's made it to eight years old, considering she hasn't really been in danger of dying since her initial surgery, but the fact is that she has had more surgery than most kids her age, and there's a risk any time you go under the knife, so we feel pretty lucky that she's still with us. Well, we already feel lucky that she's still with us as her initial injury probably should have killed her, but we feel lucky whenever she goes into surgery and comes out fine. You know?

So we had a nice birthday party on Sunday the 29th. Mia doesn't invite her friends because she doesn't really have any (that's not to say she doesn't talk to kids at school, it's just that she forgets them when she's not around them and doesn't socialize with them too much), so we always invite friends of ours, some of whom have children and some of whom don't, as well as people who are important in Mia's life with whom we have close relationships (her therapists, for example, but we always invite her lawyer, even though this year she couldn't make it - but her daughters adore Mia, so it's fun when they show up). Mia, as usual, isn't impressed with any parties - she was fine throughout, but she just wanted to watch TV the whole time. We finally caved and let her watch a DVD after we ate cake. She got some nice presents, had a nice cake (which she didn't eat), and all was well in the land. Norah was allowed to invite one friend of hers, and the kids who did show up went in the pool, and we tried to avoid putting things down our garbage disposal, which my mother clogged up about thirty minutes before the party started (my mom likes to jam pretty much everything down the garbage disposal; if she were a serial killer, that's how she would dispose of the bodies). A good time was had by all!

Of course, I took pictures. What did people do before photographs? Using your vivid memory is for suckers!

Good news would be nice once in a while

I'm still going to write about Mia's birthday party, but real life intervened, so there's that.

I get very frustrated taking Mia to the doctor. Nothing is specifically wrong with her right now (her wound is healing nicely), but whenever I take her to the doctor, there's something bad happening. It's kind of annoying. Yesterday it was the turn of the gastroenterologist, who's helping us with her weight problems. Krys and I thought she was doing okay - she definitely doesn't look as gaunt as she did a year ago, and while she's not eating as much as we want her to, she's eating steadily. Then I took her to the doctor.

She weighs 40.7 pounds and is 48.5 inches long. So her height-to-weight ratio is way down, and the doctor is a bit concerned. She, in fact, was surprised at how skinny she was when she came in. Now, Mia has always been skinny, but the doctor thought she didn't look good. So she brought up a G-tube again (which goes directly into her stomach), and while I'm still a bit resistant to it, I'm much more open to it than I was a year ago. She also mentioned a form of massage that might help, so we're going to look into that before we put Mia through more surgery. Of course, getting Mia to eat more throughout the day is the first priority. That's always fun.

Mia is healthy, which is a good thing, and the fact that she doesn't eat enough is vexing, because she has no problems with the actual eating. She just doesn't want to. I was hoping that when we went to the doctor yesterday we'd get some good news. I should know better, I suppose. Oh well.