Scraps of Things

My blogging is going to be sporadic this week. I'm working on a huge project, and it's occupying a lot of my time and the majority of space in my head. I'll reveal it all next week.

This weekend I spent a lot of time working on it, plus deep cleaning my house. If you have little kids, you know you can only deep clean in phases--which, of course, by the time you're done with one phase and ready to move to the next, that one's messed up again. Saturday I tackled the upstairs--cleaning the floors and especially the upstairs bathroom.

As I was on my hands and knees underneath the sinks (apparently I haven't cleaned under the sinks since we moved in three years ago), Elaine came in. In the afternoon, we were scheduled to go to her friend Izzy's 2nd birthday party. She announced, "I tell Izzy about the pieces."

"What pieces?" I asked.

"The broken pieces. I tell Izzy about them."

"Well, why don't you tell Mom about the broken pieces too?"

"Ok, Mama, I show you."

So she took me by the hand and led me into her and Lucy's room where she had dropped a Mickey Mouse snowglobe on the floor. Tiny shards of broken glass were everywhere (and of course we were both barefoot) as well as water, the contents of the globe, and glitter snow. Then I noticed glitter all around Elaine's mouth.

"I drink some of the water there, Mom."

I'm not completely sure what I said at that point, but it was something along the lines of why why why why oh for crying in a bucket why would you do something like that?

"I sorry." (not particularly repentantly)

Later in the evening, after I had given both girls their bath and put their pajamas on, I settled them in my bed to watch an episode of the Waltons and just to wind down. They seemed very content to lie there. It had been a long day, cleaning, a birthday party, no naps, so everyone was glad to settle and I went into another room to read a book. Darren was at the side of the house, talking to a guy about weeding our yard for us.

All of a sudden, the guy looked up and said, "Ummm, oh no, honey, I don't think you should do that." Darren looked to see what he was talking about, and there was Elaine, in the front yard by herself, lifting up the guy's bike. We don't know when or how she got outside or why she felt compelled to lift up a man's bike.

Darren came in and told me that little story, and then I shared the shattered Mickey Mouse globe vignette with him. He said, "I'm probably better off not knowing these things. I'm sure she's a normal 2-year-old for anyone else? Just not for us."

That was pretty much the essence of our weekend, trying to get work done while wrangling Elaine. There were other moments with her in there too, but I'm sort of too tired to write about them.

Also here's an update: you know how miserable Lucy's been at daycare? Well, Alysa read my post on that and promptly invited Lucy to spend the day with her and Maddie and Jackson today so she wouldn't have to go to daycare. And this would have been her last day there, so she's kissed that place goodbye. She was so ecstatic when I told her and has been packing her suitcase full of Polly Pockets all weekend. She kept asking, "I don't have to go back any more ever?" and in her prayers at night she said, "Dear Jesus, thank you that I don't have to go back to daycare EVER AGAIN."

Oh and one last thing. All summer Lucy and I have been anxiously awaiting to receive the packet from school and find out who her new kindergarten teacher will be. Remember the story of Mrs. Blubbers? Anyway, when we got home from the birthday party on Saturday, the packet was sitting on the counter, unopened. (Hello? Does Darren feel absolutely no anticipation at all? Did he not want to see this all-important question settled?)

She was absolutely over the moon to discover that yes indeed, Mrs. Blubbers aka Blevens is going to be her kindergarten teacher. She called my parents right away and shouted to them, "Mrs. Blevens is going to be my new teacher! Mrs. Blevens who I've been wanting with all my heart!"

So I'll check in whenever I can here and I'll be sure to have a big reveal next week...