How the Baby Grew Up

I had another one of those moments a minute ago when I think about my daughter and kind of . . . sit there in awe and shock and completely unadulterated terror for a second about how fast things are changing. Thankfully these moments don't happen too frequently, or I'd be a basketcase, but I just had one. Allow me to explain . . .

So, Sammy starts preschool in one week. I know. A week ago she was still wearing toddler size clothes that come from the baby section, and then this week suddenly she knows her alphabet, is reading the letters off the label on the ketchup bottle, and we have to buy her clothes from the little girl section at the store.

Seriously. She picked an absolutely hideous pink and white zebra striped jumper to wear for her first day of school. I wanted the light pink, yellow, and orange plaid, or the cute striped one of the same color scheme, or the blue shirt and pant set with little chalk drawn hearts in different colors. But no. She wants the zebra stripes. Because she loves zebras. And it hasn't occurred to my nearly 5 year old that zebra stripes in preschool is a bit much. It doesn't help that I have exactly one bra that is anything other than boring and it happens to be zebra stripes (only fun one they had), which makes it the default when Sammy picks out my bra for me (don't ask how this got started, I still don't know).

Anyway, where were we? Oh, me freaking out a little that my baby is growing up. See, I can kind of figure out how this is catching me weird. It's because up until now, for Sammy's whole life, she's always been at home. She hasn't had daycare or anything like that to go away every day for, no schedule to meet. She was still a baby, a toddler, something other than a little girl in school.

But now . . . this is the precipice of a completely different time in her life. From now on, my baby is a student, a school kid, and for the next 14 years of her life, she will be going to school 9 months of the year. No, it's not like she's leaving home to go to a boarding school on the East Coast. But it's weird. Good and bad weird. Good because the child is driving me absolutely nuts, increasingly so over the last year or so. I think a nice 4 hour break 4 days a week sounds DIVINE.

But it's also bad, because . . . she just won't be my baby anymore. She is officially and irrevocably out of her toddler stage. And yeah, she hasn't been a toddler for something like 2 years now, but she's still kind of been in that group in my head. She's still been the baby. And now . . . nope. Not anymore. She is a grown up little girl who is going to school. And in two years, she starts elementary school, first grade, full time school. Which might be another big change, I don't know. I just know that this one, this leap from baby to preschooler, is a weird thing for me.

She is going to have so much fun. She's going to get to interact and play with a bunch of little kids her own age. She's going to suck up information and learning so fast, and I know she's going to love it. She'll have an absolute ball! And I'm sure she'll make new friends, and get to love her teachers, and I think she's just going to be the type of kid that loves school. I'm really excited for her.

But I sure will miss my baby. She'll always be my baby, in a lot of ways, but she's past that age now where she's still my toddler running around the house with jingle bells on her shoes so I can find her. She's a big girl. And her life is about to change in a major way. And so is mine.

I'm looking forward to making the journey with her. And at the same time, already missing my baby.

Terrible, horrible, awful, no good, very bad day.

I feel like I just got kicked in the stomach. I found out some extremely distressing news, and though I'm not as shocked and hurt as I was when I first found out, I still have that awful feeling in my stomach and chest. No, I am not saying what this distressing news is, let's just say it's right up there with family members dying and having your identity stolen by a terrorist.

So, whilst we wander away from that subject (my stomach is in knots again) I have fun news to report. This week my parents in law went on a week-long reunion in the Tetons. Normally we all go, but this year we couldn't afford it, my and my hubby both had work, and he had school. His finals are next week, so blowing all that off wasn't an option. Anyway, it was just my little family and my two sisters in law. Well, the week went pretty ok until Wednesday night. It was my best friend's birthday, and she wanted to hang out.

Long story short, due to unforseeable dinner circumstances that I wasn't told about, I ended up coming home almost 2 hours after I planned. This caused a rather explosive and immature fight between myself and my sister in law, which we got over fairly quickly, but for the good of everyone's sanity we spent the rest of the week in separate houses. (This isn't the fun news, by the way, we're getting there). So, on Thursday, my other sister in law went to join her parents camping for the rest of the week so all night Thursday and all day and night Friday we had the house to ourselves!!! Anyone who has ever lived with relatives knows exactly what I'm talking about when I say that it was so different and delightful and relaxing.

Anyway, we're finally at the fun part. We built a tent in our front room out of sheets and bandanas! We had two big sheets stretched over the sectional and tied to chairs and pinned to the walls, and another one covering the gap over the back of the couch and another for the door. It was barely three feet tall at the tallest spot, but it was so fun! We got ice cream and chips and watched movies with our daughter under it, and she thought it was rather the coolest thing ever! I wanted to leave it up until everyone got back from camping, but we figured they would probably want to put their stuff on the floor right where our little tent was, so we reluctantly dismantled it last night. :(

In other news, that same sprained ankle I had, like, a month ago is still not better. I was at my mom's house last week with all my siblings and two cousins and we all did an impromptu performance of the Boot Scootin' Boogie in the dining room (long story, involving internet karaoke, my dad imitating John Travola in Grease, and EFY dances) and I discovered that I am incapable of jumping or skipping without pain on that ankle. Still! How stupid is this! I find it quite inconvenient. I guess it's a good thing that librarians don't often find themselves in need of jumping on one foot.

Ooh, I thought of another fun thing! My little family had a water fight on Thursday. It started out with me filling up the teeny blow-up turtle pool that Sammy likes to play in, then I decided to brush our black lab and got out enough hair to make a whole 'nother dog, then decided to give him a bath. Well, if you have a running hose and a mischievous husband about, you're just asking for it. So, after taking turns with the hose and the bucket, all three of us were completely drenched (except for the dog, who after having his bath steered WAY clear of the water). Then we turned the sprinklers on in the front yard and got drencheder (I know it's not a word, shut up). I'm so ready for summer to end now, we've gone swimming and had a water fight and all that summer stuff. Please bring me autumn!!!

Ok, I'm running out of things to say, so I'm gonna go and try to figure out what to make for dinner that doesn't require cheese, potatoes, hamburger patties, oil, milk, or prefferably an oven since it's almost 80 degrees in the house even with the AC on. Have a lovely day, I sincerely hope yours is a billion times better than mine!!!

Sickie Sickie

You wanna know what I hate? Being sick. You know what I hate even more about being sick? When it hurts.

I had a sore throat last Wednesday, and it has escalated since then until I was finally prompted to visit and InstaCare this morning. I was looking at my reflection in the mirror (I looked like death, not even warmed over) and had a sudden wonderment if my excruciating painful sore throat might be tonsilitis. I looked it up online and I have all the symptoms, so I figured getting some antibiotics in me ASAP would be a pretty good idea.

So on a Sunday morning with me in my pajama pants still looking like death-not-warmed-over we took a jaunt to the doctor's office and paid a visit to Dr. Starbucks. No, that's not his name. I don't remember his name, but when he was checking my incredibly swollen glands I smelled coffee. Since neither I nor my husband drink coffee, it must have been Dr. Starbucks. He was really nice though, and aside from the incredibly painful double q-tip swab that felt like the entire back of my throat had come off, it was one of the most pleasant doctors office visits I have ever had. Except for the $75 fee that will be refunded when we turn in our financial aid form. That part sucked.

Anywho, I didn't get a prescription because Dr. Starbucks thought it would turn out to be strep throat, but it wasn't, so he thinks it is a virus that mimics strep. So after leaving we took another jaunt to Walmart to get Sudafed, the "good stuff" that you have to show your ID to get. I'm not really feeling a difference yet, but it's only been . . . 15 or so hours. The part that sucks beyond sucking is that NOTHING will make my sore throat hurt less! I tried ibuprofen, I tried Tylenol, I tried two other cold medicines, and I tried Aleve. NOTHING!!! Do you know how much it hurts to cough and swallow when it feels like you have enormous ruptured blisters lining the back of your throat? The only thing I have found that eased that pain slightly is honey, so I've been practically drinking it out of the bottle. Ok, not really, I'm dripping it on my finger and sucking it off, but I'm still consuming more honey right now than I usually do in a month or more. I'm very glad I got an extra bottle last week, we'll be needing it. So if anyone out there has a miraculous rememdy for a sore throat, I would love to hear it!

So, here I sit, alternating between a cold sweat, normal temperature, and a hot sweat, with my throat burning and stinging, my nose stuffed to the rafters, and a rather irritating itch on my back, deciding how bad it would be to mix Aleve with ibuprofen. Probably bad, huh? Yeah. *Pout*

I think it's time for bed. I'm going to call in sick for work tomorrow (I cannot express enough how much I love my job. One of the reasons is that they actually don't want you to come in if you're sick. I LOVE my job!!!) and perhaps the day after, depending on how I feel in the morning. If it is anything like now, I will be staying home for two days.

Ooh, before I forget, my handsome hubby is starting school tomorrow! He's going to get a degree in Computer Science and starts his first two classes tomorrow. He's been excited about it for a couple weeks, we got him new shoes and pants and a new backpack and a new laptop so he can do his online class. We have a couple laptops that we have adopted, but he needed a good one for school with a really nice battery. So yay for my husband!!!!

Yeah, I'm gonna go now. I'm going to finish this episode of NCIS, imbibe some more honey, and go off into a painless oblivion. *Crossing fingers* Night, all!