Monster Ball

It's been a weird eye month, with a scratch in my eye for which I have now seen three opthamologists. The third one actually snorted at the advice the first one gave me. I don't suppose he'll be at that practice for long. The scratch should be healed by now, and next week I have another appointment which will hopefully take the bandaid out of my eye and be fine. I also have rosacea which affects my tear ducts, so that explains the dry eye and eyelid pain I was having. Anyhow...

After one of the first opthamologist appointments, my eyes were still hurting. Jim came home from worship practice to find me with a baseball cap pulled way down over my eyes. "Honey, you look like Gwyneth Paltrow on the way to the grocery store." Glare from screens was especially painful, but since it was movie night I put on the hat and sucked it up. It was Jed's first turn to pick a video, and Gus was not pleased. But then Jed picked Gus's favorite video ever, Robin Hood (with the fox) and all was well. That night they both wanted to wear their new monster pajamas, and I'm pretty sure that Jed picked Robin Hood because of the music in the video, because he's Jed and he loves to dance. Even a sore eye can't dampen how much fun it was to watch both boys in their monster jamas gettin' down together with Alan a Dale.

I think we talk enough about why we discipline, because Gus can say it all when Jed is in trouble. "You don't talk with boys in timeout." "He can make a better decision next time." Of course he doesn't seem to remember it when he is having trouble behaving. And I can't say I like the preemptive whining: "Jed isn't sharing!" "Have you asked him to share?" Well, no. It's so much faster to jump to conclusions.

Just got back from a week in Pittsburgh with my family. Gus was a bit miffed that Great PopPop belonged to Jed too. The cousins were the big hit, of course--it took the boys a little while to figure out how to play together, and then they were great, and we played with the girls. A day without the cousins was a day with lots of whining, so we got them together as much as we could. At one point Jed went up to his oldest cousin (6) and said something not particularly memorable. She said to me, "You sure can tell he's a Chinese boy!" Wondering how she had learned that from him saying "Hi!" I asked her how that was. And she looked at me like I was a complete moron and said, "Because he looks like one!" Moral of the story: sometimes the thought is not all that deep.

Jed spent the week impressing everyone with his prodigious appetite for poultry and pasta (one night he ate chicken faster than my sister could cut it), his determination, and his progress with English. He started three-word sentences early in the week "That's my daddy!" "I want this!" and progressed to a 5-word sentence before we left, "I want do that again!" Pretty much everything he says has exclamation points. "Mama!" "Sweatshirt!"

When we got home I rushed to get out the advent calendar that I made last year. Yes, I'm crazy, but I couldn't find what I wanted anywhere so I ended up making it. It's a felt calendar which tells the Christmas story (I felt a little less silly when one of my coworkers told me that she has a felt menorah for Hanukkah). We have another "calendar" made out of socks on a string, and in each sock is a piece for the Christmas calendar (and sometimes a treat). It's only day 3, and Gus is already overjoyed when it is his turn for a sock and despondent when it is Jed's. Jed loves all things foot-related, so he will stand there and say "Sock! Mama, sock!"

"SOCK!"