Bedbugs and other visitors

My daughter has been coming into our room every night since she could walk basically. I had set up a little blanket for her on the floor by my bed a while back so she could come in and not wake me up. But now that it's winter we use that blanket also so if I don't remember to set out another blanket then she comes in wanting a blanket or wanting in our bed. Either way she wakes me up. Every night. But thanks to what I can only imagine is a bed bug infestation in her sleeping bag, I may have broken her of this habit. Here's how it went down.

My brother came to stay with us for two nights around Thanksgiving and ended up sleeping in her bed, the lower bunk, since my mom was in the Murphy. So both kids slept in their sleeping bags on our floor. My daughter woke up the next morning covered in bites. Little ones. Dozens of them. Poor girl. My son got a few too so we thought either it was from putting them in the yardage bin while raking the leaves on Thanksgiving - an annual tradition - or the bugs came home with us from our last camping trip and have been living in the sleeping bags in our attic. Or there are just bugs in our attic and now, via the sleeping bags, they are living among us. The next night night she slept on our floor and we had our spare duvet down there for her. She got more bites. That duvet had been in the attic too. And it had also been camping. So we've now washed everything and the carpet cleaners are coming tomorrow morning to hopefully scrub away anything else lurking in the carpets. But she's convinced that sleeping on the carpet gives her bites so as long as we can keep her out of our bed, she only has one place to go and that's her own bed. Which hopefully is not infested too because that would totally ruin my plan. And we'd probably have to burn down the house.

Thankful

Even though Thanksgiving is last week's news I wanted to update everyone on the "what I'm thankful for" placemat that my son created in preschool this year. You may remember, though I doubt it, that last year he wrote on his placemat that he's thankful for his black car. The other kids wrote that they were thankful for their mommies and daddies and other, slightly more meaningful entities. Not wanting to relive the humiliation I coached him all year so that when Thanksgiving came around again he would write on his placemat (and these things are laminated so there's no making any changes) that he was mostly thankful for mommy and aba. Well I didn't actually coach him—but I clearly should have. This year he wrote that he was thankful for…drum roll…chicken nuggets and dumplings. What am I doing wrong here? At least I feed him, albeit processed food.

But then, it all came full circle when, on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we were driving home from a little lake by our house. We stopped at a red light and a drunk woman in a Prius plowed into our car at 30 miles an hour. We're all fine, though somewhat shaken by the experience. Apparently my son had it right all along. You bet your ass I'm thankful for my black car too. The Prius was totaled and our Passat wagon had a measly dent in the back. Thanksgiving took on new meaning this year.

It's like toast

We had a lovely Thanksgiving at my brother's house yesterday and my sister-in-law made the most kickass sweet potato and carrot pudding (equal parts vegetable, butter and creme fraiche. Yikes). The whole meal was outstanding and for the first time ever all of the kids actually sat at the table without having a total come-apart. In fact it's usually my kid having the meltdown. But this year he and his older cousin (one year older) sat at the kid's table. The two year old cousin sat in her high chair and baby sister was in the portable high chair and the six "adults" were seated around the table passing dishes, feeding babies, cutting meat into small pieces and explaining the food to picky preschoolers. So now you have the setting. Here is the cast:

My nephew
My brother

Here is the dialog:

N - What's that daddy?
B - It's stuffing.
N - I don't like stuffing.
B - Yes, you do. It's like toast.
N - It doesn't look like toast.
B - It's little baby toasts.
N - What's that?
B - Cranberry sauce.
N - What's a cranberry.
B - It's like a strawberry.
N - It looks funny.
B - It's sweet like jelly. It's like strawberry jelly. But sour. And sweet (?)
N - What's that?
B - It's bean casserole.
N - I don't like it.
B - Try it. It's like salty soup with beans.
N - I don't like soup.
B - But it's kind of like a cake. Like bean cake. With salty sauce.
N - perplexed
B - Have some turkey.
N - I don't like turkey.
B - It's like chicken.

And by this time the rest of us are hysterical. Every thing my nephew asked about had a parallel food on the menu he usually eats from. And I was laughing because clearly my brother and I are cut from the same cloth. The other day I made fish sticks but he wanted chicken nuggets so I called them long fish nuggets and he ate them. And then I realized that, actually, everything can be categorized into three groups:

Chicken
Bread
Known fruit or vegetable.

So basically, all meat is like chicken. All starchy food is like bread. And then cherry tomatoes are like grapes, cauliflower is like white broccoli, persimmons are like apples, leek is like celery, cucumber is also like celery, sweet potatoes are like carrots which are called crunchy sticks, beans are like corn which is like popcorn.

So while last night's dinner seemed like a traditional Thanksgiving feast to the untrained eye, it was actually just chicken with baby bread, mashed potatoes and brown sauce, mashed crunchy sticks, salty popcorn cake and jelly. Y-U-M.

Thanksgiving

I had breakfast this morning with my two favorite moms from my son's preschool. We used to have coffee while I was still on maternity leave and Rebeca was finishing her dissertation. And Veronica teaches high school Spanish on a part-time schedule so she was usually available for coffee and chatter after morning drop-off. But now, I'm back at work and Rebeca filed her dissertation and commutes to her post-doc post and Veronica is swamped with parent conferences and grading so she gets her coffee to go. And I basically only see them for the two minutes when we either drop off or pick-up.

But today we met for breakfast and I have to say I love these girls. We laugh our heads off about our crazy little boys. Rebecca asked if I had seen the "I am thankful" list that the kids made for Thanksgiving, which I had not because my son has been out with Pink Eye and we missed the Thanksgiving potluck on Wednesday. I didn't even know what she was talking about. And then she started to giggle. Oh Jesus, what the hell did my son say he's most grateful for? Mommy's cell phone? No.

My black car.

That's what he said. He's actually talking about my black station wagon. And I thought, okay, that sort of makes sense since I come pick him up everyday in the black car and he's happy to see me so he's associating me with the black car. Fair enough. I was fine with that response until Rebecca told me what Antonio was thankful for. His mama, papa and abuelita.

Great. My kid is thankful for a car and Rebeca's son is thankful for the people who love and care for him on an ongoing basis. The little shit. Rebeca, being the good friend that she is and sensing my despair at having been dismissed as merely the chauffer of the black car, noted that one of the other kids declared he was most thankful for quesadillas.

The sad part is that, in fact, it DID make me feel better.