Leah Says (& James, Too)

It's been a while since I did one of these!

One morning Leah very sweetly asked me (whilst covered and surrounded by pillows): Can you get me another pillow for my feet?

The other day she wanted to hold my hand down the stairs because we “don’t want to break up the team.”

Sam was telling James about Leah saying that & Leah overheard and added, "But Mom DID break up the team, when she went to WORK."

I'm 99% sure she thinks it's "heart beep" instead of "heartbeat."

And also it’s apparent she thinks the phrase is “pretty please with a carrot on top”

I have been making several crocheted things, including a couple of baby blankets. Leah, covetous, said to me: Maybe this is TOO BIG for a baby...Maybe we could keep it. When talking about her ear injury, she proclaims that she got "a slice." James, out of the blue, talking about Animal Crossing: I need to make my house payment.  & then, when I laughed: I mean, I already paid off my tent!

--- Leah: Stop touching me James: Atoms never actually touch Leah: Well, your finger got so close to me that I could FEEL IT

Spelling Bee

What feels like many ages ago, the school newsletter came home with a blurb about the spelling bee. James happened to be on the couch when I was reading it & I asked if he'd like to participate. He did, so I signed him up & emailed the sponsor that we'd like the study packet. Then we got COVID and the school closed for three days due to staff shortages and there were three snow days and we forgot about it.

The sponsor might have also forgotten about it, or maybe there were just too many disruptions due to missed school, but we didn't get the study packet sent home til two days before the bee, when James promptly freaked out because he hadn't been going to the Spelling Club meetings. I reminded him about that conversation way back & asked if he still wanted to do it & he said yes. He reviewed words after school right up til the bee & practiced following the Scripps rules. He was getting all of the 3rd grade words right and really a great deal of the 4th and 5th grade words, too. 

Then came the night of the Spelling Bee and James was the first kiddo to be knocked out! On a word I'm sure he knew, but it was a little bit stressful of a situation! I was impressed with how well he did practicing & he says he'd like to try again next year. 

He stayed up to tell me all about it when I got home from work. There was much excitement. Leah didn't want to sit still, and then they left her coat in the auditorium, but they got locked out of the building, and then the line at McDonalds to get an ice cream was too long, but then finally they got frozen custards at Randy's. Whew. 

Ear Troubles, or: Stitches, or: Earring Catastrophe

Welp, our only child (thus far) to need stitches has now got a second set. This accident was much worse than the first time, though, and necessitated a trip to the children's ER and concious sedation rather than being able to just stitch them up in the office.

This might sound a little kooky, but I think the COVID may have affected our sense of balance. I had the wicked earache and took a bad fall in the art room - which made it hard to distinguish sickness body aches from normal bodyache from my big dumb fall. James and Leah also took other big  tumbles and then Sunday morning, Leah had the bad accident. She was sitting on my legs and started to jump up and just went over sideways and her head hit the edge of the side table. When I got a look at it, I saw that her ear was just sliced open & knew she needed to go to the ER. Sam thought he should take her since I was in quarantine. 

Prepping for the procedure - you see they mollified her with PBS games on an iPad. 

Home & already feeling MUCH better!

She came home with a Disney princess dry erase board from the nurse for being so brave and 10 days of antibiotics. Spark was very, very interested in everything she did for the rest of the day. 

Which was mostly lying down. 

She played "puppet show" with Sam where she recreated the whole experience with the Hello Kitty paper dolls we got in the giant bag of craft supplies. When she got to go back to school, she started telling her teacher the whole thing, but Ms. Kristin convinced her to finish the story inside where it was warm. 

They put her hair up in an orange rubber band to get it out of the way and she also wore her hat all day, so her (very, very curly) hair got pretty matted. She let me wash it the next day, and this is what her ear looked like then - maybe a little swollen. 

And then this picture is 16 days out from The Incident, and it's still looking a little gnarly. She had a follow-up with the ENT who said everything looked good, and I think her hair will cover up the notch. 

And then there's James! He was roughhousing with Amelie one night while I was at work, and banged his ear in a way that pushed the stud into his earlobe. It swelled up something terrible (over the stud) so we thought we'd better take it out and let it heal. Poor guy only had his earring two weeks! I told him if it had been healed up better, like if the roughhousing had happened even a week later, it wouldn't have been any big deal. He might try again once it's healed. 

More Snow

The kids got 3 whole snow days. They got 3 Covid days recently, too - this might have used up the available time off without having to make it up, so I'd predict any other cancellations have a high chance of being virtual instead of just off. Amelie had a project and a paper so she was working quite a bit anyway.  

Sam took some pictures!

Sledding: 

I'd bet good money this was a staged photo, but I laughed out loud when I saw it in our shared photos anyway. 

I stayed inside, but got these pictures from the window. Here's Amelie and Leah building a fort: 

You can see Spark zooming all around. He's a big fan of the snow. 

Leah just went straight over the edge of the deck. Good thing there was a lot of snow to cushion her fall. 

She also liked playing in the pots. 

I asked James to go out and measure the snow in three places. I'd meant to average the measurements, but instead it worked because the other ones were blurry! 

Just getting started: 

We ended up with seven inches on Wednesday and two more on Thursday. Roads were still dicey on Friday. 

Edited to add some sledding pictures from our neighborhood park yesterday: 

Look at all those kids!