Well lord that holiday season got away from me! What on earth just happened here? I'm melting here into the couch feeling restless and wondering what on earth to do with my poor pitiful self on this here New Year's Eve and I realize... wow we've done quite a lot recently.
First off there was Hannukah, which was delightfully and oddly early this year. It didn't even wait for December to start. This is convenient, because it keeps it from getting bogged down in the Xmas morasse, but also inconvenient because usually we just start the 8 nights with gifts that family has sent to Allan and that early... well... we got the actual joy of giving her presents that we'd bought for some of the nights of Hannukah this year. It was a thrill ride I tell ya.
We also ordered some truly spectacular food and lit some candles. The house didn't burn down and everyone had full bellies, so... all in all, I rate the holiday a solid 9.9
Naturally as that ended, it was full steam ahead through the typical holiday scenes. We made a gingerbread house:
It was not the most structurally sound house in the world. But I'm impressed that Andrew managed to cobble it together considering the pieces came broken in the box. Yes, you hear me, BOX. We got a box for our gingerbread house instead of hand crafting every magical piece in our bakery full of singing elves and culinary magic. And I stand by this decision entirely. Though magical singing elves woulda been kind of fun in their own right. Maybe we can just have them over for a dance party. I wonder what genre elves like best.
The gingerbread house provided several thousand grams of sugar to be spread out over the next couple of meals. Breakfast and basically dinner for a good day that ended with Allan highly stressed out and unable to sleep because she'd extrapolated that there might be a power outage fomo my comment about a windy weather forecast that evening. I told her that the wind was absolutely still and I really didn't think the power would go out (words to eat covered in icing and gum drops) and that she just had the gingerbread jitters. She did, even though we agreed this wasn't an actual thing exactly.
And also... the power did go out. In the middle of the night. I had promised her solemnly that if it did I'd come right in and so I did (being the world's lightest sleeper, I was made for this moment!)
Allan seemed less terrified and more amused at this point. When I first came in, she looked up incriminatingly and demanded to know why I'd turned off her sound machine. When I crawled into her (tiny, uncomfortable) bed with a pillow and a blanket she started a variety of stream of consciousness monologues in between random kisses and giggles, then she tried to sleep on top of me, and eventually gave up to pass out mid monologue. I snuck out finally when the power came back on a few hours of very cold uncomfortable back aches later, and then checked on her a little later still when it went out yet again.This time she didn't even notice so I guiltily slunk back to my comfortable bed with the snuggly husband who had completely missed all the excitement and was quite surprised to hear about the multiple power outage evening the next day.
But I do believe that she would've been freaked out if I'd not come in/stayed the first time.
Which is interesting, because she has a favorite story about the power going out. When she was two, the power went out one night. It was a stormy night and a branch fell down on the lines out front. Allan woke up crying and mommy and daddy (back when we were in fact mommy and daddy instead of our respective given names to her) came running in from opposite edges of the house to be with her. I waited with her while Andrew went out to see what was happening. After a little while she fell asleep and when she woke up, it was morning and the power was back on.
Yeah, that's the story. It was one of her FAVORITES. The part where mommy and daddy come running in was like the first time you see the Valkyries on their horses belting out hiyatahoooooooo. Pure dramatic genius and a crescendo of frisson in her world. Her eyes lit up, she'd lift her finger to the sky and clap her hands as she'd say "and what happened then...?" begging me to hiyatahooooo the answer. And the fact that the power was back on when she woke up... PLOT TWIST. glorious, brilliant twist nobody ever saw coming with a side of pure delight. It was the story for about a year and a half. And she still tells it sometimes.
Anyways, it never seemed like a particularly scary story, since it was basically "something happened, mommy and daddy came rushing in immediately and everything ended up alright." But six and covid have definitely come to a slightly higher level of anxiety all around.
Like vaccines. She is now fully vaxxed - as vaxxed as a wee one can be anyways - and the first shot was... not bad. We thought only one parent could go, so she requested I take her. When we got in, she told the nurse she was scared. The nurse gave her this really cool wand with flashing lights and held a vibrating bee to her arm so she wouldn't feel the shot. I held her hand. It all went fast. She was amazed and proud and excited.
She told everyone about the bee. About how easy the shot was. But she didn't really want another one. And over the course of three weeks, her concern about the second one "hurting" increased exponentially. Andrew and I both went to the second one - and she brought her bunny Marlon to add to the comfort. She was very scared. She stopped dead on the floor and said she was too scared and it would hurt too much. Andrew had to pick her up and hold her and it took both of us hugging her tight before the nurse could get the shot in. Marlon was not really holding up her end of the bargain.
Immediately upon it having happened she said "oh that didn't hurt much at all!" Perked right up and skipped down the road like she had just had ice cream.
I've been trying to get her to tell the story about how the shot didn't hurt much again and again and again, hoping maybe it'll stick in her head. But we'll see. I'm still proud of her. For being ... well... her. She's pretty rad. And she came home and colored in a coloring sheet of a cartoon Batgirl for me for Christmas, so that was cool.
I made absolutely no mention of side effects (since she is very suggestible) but just obliquely mentioned if she needed anything in the middle of the night I could always come in. She didn't. She was fine. Her arm was sore for a few days. We won that lottery rather nicely.
Growing up means finding new demons to fight for sure (weren't shots amazing when kids were like 2 months old and had NO clue what the heck was about to happen to them?). But also new amusements and engagements. Her school is amazing and her small group "friends group" is super cool. She's done a lot of work in school with learning to be a good friend. Learning how to gracefully accept "no" for an answer (one of my favorite themes because don't we all need to work on that?). And following instructions. They always have fun games that parents can play at home to reinforce the skill.
And that led us to a slightly new phase in Allan's life: games! She likes inveting for us and has for a while, but following the instructions for other games hasn't really landed with her until recently. I had gotten her Candyland about 9 months ago and it was a hit. But you can only play it so many times. Last summer a friend sent us a bunch of their old games, and we did a little with those (mostly playing with the pieces), but we recently have fished them back out. Allan is an excellent loser and a pretty fantastic winner, so that's been fun.
The best was when we opened a matching card game called Hiss that hadn't come with instructions. Andrew and I spent about 24 hours trying to optimalize the perfect version of the game before Allan lost interest. But I'm sure we'll come back to it.
The family that plays together...
Wears goofy (sorry Minnie) matching t-shirts together on special occasions.
Like Christmas Eve.
That's right. In this big old crazy holiday month, let's not forget Christmas!!!
Allan spent the first part of winter break with her Grandma Pam. The adults missed her terribly, but kind of enjoyed having time to be grownups together. We went on an excursion to Pike Place. Had a games night (yeah it's a theme this year) and watched a full Marvel Movie! Talk about indulgent.
On Christmas Eve, we retrieved the beast. Had a family brunch, went to a park, had another family dessert outing. And came home with hands full of gifts and goodwill.
We ate delicious Chinese food for dinner, and called it a night with some happy bellies and good fortunes (like literally from the fortune cookies)
This night, Miss Allan had absolutely not problem getting herself to sleep. No excitement. No fear. Just snoooze.
Naturally, Allan awoke to a full stocking and a house laden with hidden candy canes, reeses cups and Ghiradelli squares.
She's getting a lot better at finding hidden candy, but I still only found the last one I'd hidden a day ago.
Luckily I convinced the child to eat a little protein and fat so as to avoid the gingerbread jitters' evil twin: the candy cane crazies! And on to the presentes!
It was an amazing haul. In years past we've convinced her to just open one gift a day, but this was no longer on the menu (speaking of growing up and exerting free will!) It still took most of the day to open and appreciate each gift, as there were many crazy wonderful things. Including a book that plays snippets of Vivaldi's Four Seasons (she's friggin' loves this book and has actually used it ot self-soothe out of a rough meltdown a couple of times), a lot of clothing, two crafts (both of which she got into that day), and tons of other fun stuff.
But nothing like the gift she receieved the next day:
A snow playdate with her bestest bestie!!!
It was perilous driving but we made it and they had a verifiable blast. The girls are so sweet together. they really look out for each other and the hugs. Oh the hugs. True spice of life. Allan played until the snow started to creep in through her collar and melt and then she cried that she was crying because she didn't want to go home ever. Eventually we went home anyways and the crying lasted for a good forty-five minutes before she self-soothed with the Vivali book and we got lunch into her.
Especially because, little Allan got snuggly warm with some of her Xmas gifts for the evening.
You'd think the excitement ended there, but goodness no
The snow was a harsh mistress in the end. Andrew and Allan were meant to fly out to San Francisco (well originally Tahoe but back then the absence of snow was a problem) on Monday and get back on Thursday. Their flight - as seems to be the going trend out of Seatac this holiday season - was cancelled with really no option to reschedule. To my knowledge Andrew is still on an Alaska Airlines customer callback list.
Andrew immediately spent all his strength and energy finding some way - any way - to get the fudge out of town. The airlines did NOT make it easy. But he finally finally managed on Thursday. Which, yay! But also, darn, I really wanted to spend New Year's Eve together. I'm glad they can go, but I'm a little lonelier this trip than most of them. I guess last time they took a trip, I had my friend staying over so I'm gonna admit I barely had a chance to notice they were gone. But before that... I don't know. I usually feel starved for the quiet time, and I am enjoying myself: I've read a book or two. Watched a movie or two. Had long video calls and a handful of naps. And my mom will be coming out to hang out tomorrow. So it's all good. But I also kinda miss the morning snuggles and the mid afternoon games, and the bedtime shenanigans. And I'm a little worried about their return flight getting cancelled or... you know... that omicron nonsense rearing up somehow.
I guess I have a bit of a superstition that whomever you celebrate New Year's Eve with or hug after the New Year's Countdown... that's who you're going to share the coming year with. So, I guess, I'm stuck with me this year? I do give good hugs at least.
I dunno if anyone's truly prepared for that!
I don't have any profound things ot say about 2021. It was a blur and a mishmash. Good shit happened. Bad shit too. And yeah, Betty White? Dang. But I kind of hope that there are as many Betty sightings as Elvis sightings now. I think there might be. I've got another Xolair day coming up next week and who knows maybe it'll help a little more each shot. Maybe they'll switch me to Dupixent so my dermatitis will calm the f down. Maybe I'll be able to go out on a date night and not itch and burn for the next week. A girl can dream.
But whatever happens, I'll be here. Where I am. Wherever I go. And probably hopefully reaching out and connecting with all of you. Because that's the stuff that really keeps me going, and I'm so grateful for it all.
Ok ok sniff sniff. Time to go countdown to an early New Year's, watch Harry Met Sally and take a long nap, because hey I know how to treat myself right!
For Auld Lange Syne and all that rot!
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