It is a rare occasion – I have two napping “babies!” Sadie is sick and Frederick is just napping. We’ve been lucky until now. A month ago when I mentioned to Sadie that a friend had “throw-up bug” she couldn’t remember what throwing up was, it had been so long since she’d done it. Unfortunately, now she is, again, intimately familiar with the process ….
Back to laundry for me.
I haven’t been good about taking notes for the blog entry this month, so I decided to do something different. Instead of an overview of several months, this entry will give you the specifics of what promised to be an “ordinary” day for Sadie and family. I started taking notes in the morning. By midday I was starting to suspect this combined role of mom/journalist was not well suited for meeting the journalist’s ideal of objectivity. The exercise certainly inspired some spontaneity and creativity to make for an interesting day ….
Friday, April 11th, 2008
6:20 am: Sadie wakes up next to me in bed and asks me to tell her a story about when I was a little girl. She’s seems awake & insistent so I tell her okay, okay, but I have to go to the bathroom first. I get up, thereby opening up the line of site between Sadie and Frederick (also awake). Sadie turns toward Frederick and cuddles up. When I return from the bathroom, Sadie’s eyes are closed. Amazing – she’s gone back to sleep! Frederick is still awake, so I sneak him out of the room.
7:20 am: Awake again.
7:45 am: O’sand “moo milk” for breakfast. “I only like ‘moo milk’ with O’s.” (Usually Sadie has a strong preference for soymilk.)
8:00 am: Playing with Frederick. “Frederick said a dinosaur name. He said iguanadon!”
8:15 am: Jammin’ time! Sadie dons sunglasses and picks up my old trombone. She gives Frederick pink glasses frames (lenses missing) and a tambourine. The kids play their instruments and encourage Ransom & I to join in. By request, I attempt to play “twinkle, twinkle” on the trombone, while Sadie sings along. Frederick mouths his tambourine. Daddy gives goodbye kisses and leaves for work.
8:30 am: Sadie has been putting on more dress up clothes. I’ve strapped Frederick to my back in the Ergo baby carrier and am attempting to clean up the dining room. Sadie tells me, “It’s time for the church pageant. I’m an angel and you are Mary and Frederick can be baby Jesus. Okay?” Start play …
[A beautiful angel appears to Mary. The angel is adorned in a shiny pink skirt, wings, ballet slippers, a braided headband, and rhinestone sunglasses. She carries a silver plastic wand. Mary, busy with her housework, had a large bump (a baby?) on her back.]
MARY: Am I still pregnant or was the baby Jesus already born?
ANGEL: You’re still pregnant… but it is time for the baby Jesus to be born.
MARY: No, I’ve just got to do a little more cleaning. I don’t think it is quite time yet.
[The angel returns to the heavens - the stairway - and sings quietly. It is hard to make out all the words but she seems telling the story of baby Jesus.]
ANGEL [singing]: A beautiful angel … her name is Sadie …. The angel sings … Jesus is born today …. I hope the baby doesn’t die as a baby … Jesus broke his arm … gets a cast … gets better…. Now we better go meet him.
[The Easter story has this angel a little worried. It seems she has re-framed the tragedy - death - into something she can more easily understand & accept - a broken arm.]
ANGEL [reappearing and speaking to MARY]: Jesus needs to come right now.
MARY: Just let me finish vacuuming this one corner.
ANGEL: I heard you have a little contraction. [Rolling in excercise ball.] Here, I brought you the ball.
MARY: [Laughs. Puts away vacuum.] I guess I did have a little contraction. Okay, okay, I guess it is time for the baby to be born.
[MARY and ANGEL go to the stable - the living room. Mary has a few more contractions, leaning on the ball for comfort/support. Then the baby JESUS is removed from the pouch on MARY's back and "born" headfirst into MARY's arms. This maneuver makes him smile and laugh.]
ANGEL: [By way of introduction] Frederick, you’re the baby JESUS. I’m the ANGEL. And that’s MARY. She’s your mom. And JOSEPH already went to work.
[The ANGEL continues to talk and coo to baby JESUS. JESUS continues to smile....]
ANGEL: The baby Jesus likes to ANGEL!
[Close curtains.]
8:50 am: Acting out Jesus’ birth reminds Sadie of her book about babies being born. She want to read it. We go upstairs. She picks out several books. She asks me to read “Frog and Toad Go for a Swim” instead.
9:00 am: Time to get dressed. “I’m not going to wear the [dress-up] clothes anymore, but I’m still going to be an angel.” Sadie puts on her clothes (with assistance). We tease Frederick about getting dressed and blow on his belly to make him laugh. Sadie is assigned hair brushing while I do some other things. She looks through books and “reads” to herself instead.
9:30 am: We read another story (“The Mouse and the Wind”), do hair, read “Diary of a Wombat,” and one page of “It’s Not the Stork” (the aforementioned book about how babies are born).
9:50 am: Getting ready to go to the Y.
10:00 am: Out the door.
10:15 am: Sadie has “Music and Movement” class at the Y. Today this includes doing the “YMCA” dance. How fitting! Frederick and I watch through the window. He nurses and falls asleep. I flip through the The Parent’s Paper. I notice there is a production of “Frog and Toad” going on at the North Shore Music Theater. What a coincidence that we just read Frog and Toad this morning! Today’s show is at 11:45 am. Could we possibly pull off attending?
11:00 am: Class is over. “Where’s my camera?” I remind Sadie that we didn’t bring her camera; it’s at home. “Next week I want to bring my camera so I can take a picture of all my favorite friends.” We agree on this, as long as she can help me remember. I ask Sadie if she wants to go to the show today. She asks if it is the theater where the seats fold up when you are not sitting in them. It is. She wants to go, yes.
11:20 am: We stop home for food. Sadie eats yogurt and a muffin while we drive.
11:45 am: We wait to be shown to our seats (the lights have just been dimmed). A few of the actors see us and stop to compliment Sadie on her purple coat with star buttons.
12:30 pm: The “terribly large and largely terrible frog” from a scary story frog tells to toad scares Sadie and she wants to leave. We cuddle and manage to stay to see the “terribly large and largely terrible frog” get tied up in a jump rope. Phew!
1:30 pm: Home. Sadie seems to have enjoyed the show. She makes no further mention of the scary scene. I get myself some more food. Sadie is not interested. She finds the medicine dropper full of infant Tylenol left over from after Frederick’s ear tube surgery (yesterday). I dump the Tylenol. She continues playing with the dropper, mixing water and toothpaste to make “medicine”, which she then intends to drink.
2:00 pm: I talk Sadie out of drinking the water/toothpaste combo. Instead we set up a tasting “experiment.” Sadie brings the medicine dropper. We get out all our extracts – vanilla, almond, lemon, orange, and mint – an eye dropper, food color, a measuring cup of water, some sugar, and spoons. We mix different flavors and colors of “medicines” from these ingredients – blue mint, purple vanilla, green orange. Sadie likes the mint best. While this is going on, Frederick nurses up to sleep so I transfer him into the bed.
2:45 pm: We’ve tried all the flavors. Now Sadie is mixing the leftovers together and using the eye dropper to give herself doses. She crunches the eyedropper between her teeth and the glass breaks in her mouth. I’m worried, but she spits it out without a single cut. This ends the “experiment.” As we clean up, we sing the song from the show, “Toad looks funny in a bathing suit ….”
3:00 pm: We’ve found a new experiment. Sadie is dissolving corn starch packing peanuts in a bowl of warm water.
3:10 pm: Sadie’s lunch, part 2. Two spinach pancakes with melted cheese.
3:20 pm: Sadie ties 2 wisks togetherwith a string from her lacing cards. Then she sets to making an “extra salty cake” for Julia. She uses her own container of (real) salt, but is frustrated when I refuse to give her sugar and rice flour. Finally she finds some ingredients from her own kitchen to use.
3:30 pm: Sadie requests the Sesame Street music. She wants to look at the CD book while the music plays. She calls this her “cookbook.” She tells me it has recipes for cookies that Elmo and Big Bird like. Sadie says she likes Elmo and Cookie monster best. She doesn’t like Big Bird. She tells me that she’ll be Cookie Monster and I can be Elmo and we should sing along to the appropriate songs.
3:45 pm: Emily, our mother’s helper, arrives. (We have a standing date with Emily, a 12-year-old we know from church, every other Friday.) She listens to Sesame Street with us for awhile. I get started making mint brownies for the church auction.
4:30 pm: Frederick wakes up. He’s in a wrap on my back to finish the brownies. Then he comes outside and sits in his bouncy seat while I clean off the exersaucer that we just got out of the attic for him.
5:30 pm: Ransom comes home. I convince him to order take-out Thai food for dinner.
5:50 pm: We ask Sadie and Emily to finish up playing together. The exersaucer comes inside. I ask Emily what she and Sadie did so I can record it here. They played Uno, played hide-the-glasses, played pins, opened and admired the letter Sadie sent herself from preschool the day before, and did some more pretend cooking.
6:00 pm: Play with Frederick. “It’s your big sister with the golden blond hair. Yeah, Frederick …. it’s your big sister….”
6:15 pm: More playing with pins on the couch. Playing with the exersaucer.
6:25 pm: Bugging me while I’m on the phone with Grammy.
6:30 pm: Talk on the phone to Grammy (mostly nonsense).
6:40 pm: Dinner. Sadie loves the white rice. She also eats some reheated black bean burrito.
7:00 pm: Sadie plays Uno with Dad while Frederick and I are still eating.
7:15 pm. Dessert. Sadie chooses to have a handful of chocolate chips.
7:20 pm: Sadie plays “silverwear people.” She gathers forks, knives and spoons of various colors and materials, and assigns them roles and activities.
7:30 pm: Time to go upstairs. Sadie negotiates 10 more minutes of playing silverwear people. We set the timer.
7:40 pm: Upstairs. We help Sadie brush and floss her teeth, go potty, and put on pajamas. Instead of books, Sadie wants to do a show with the silverwear people. It is Daddy’s night to put Sadie to bed. He agrees to the show.
8:00 pm: Silverwear show. Ransom, Frederick, and I sit on the floor while the show takes place on Sadie’s bed. The 8 silverwear have been joined by 6 toothbrushes, 3 tubes of toothpaste, a wand, a comb, and a hairbrush. Mostly the show is about who is who – the wand is mom to some of the toothbrushes, the plastic silverwear are brothers and sisters, etc. At one point a silverwear person gets a “time out.” In the middle of this, the silverwear parent says, “Oh yeah, we don’t do time outs,” and then they are on to something else.
8:15 pm: Ransom has encouraged Sadie to bring the show to an end. We kiss goodnight. I don’t hear from Sadie OR Ransom for the rest of the night.
9:10 pm: Frederick and I go to bed. It has been a busy day!
