A Jen Too Many

We almost didn't make it to midnight last night. Their father and I spent the last half hour of 2009 chivvying the girls into staying awake. Well, kind of. I kept telling them that they were free to go to bed if they wanted to, and he kept reminding them that it was only a few more minutes until the new year. They really, really wanted to blow their horns, so they made it, but they were tucked in bed and asleep just a few minutes later.

It's so funny to watch small people trying to stay awake. We followed a tradition that I loved from when I was a kid. We spent New Year's Eve eating chips and dip and playing games. (I highly recommend Sleeping Queens - got it on sale and am glad I did so. A great game! Especially good for princess loving little girls.) The games went well, the junk food was greeted with joy, the root beer floats overloaded their little systems and left Youngest Girl Child complaining that she didn't feel good. Although I think that was also simple exhaustion.

Girl Child was slumped in a corner of the couch, glassy-eyed, staring at the TV while she waited for the ball to drop in Times Square. (She was very disappointed to find out that it wasn't literally dropped.) YGC insisted on cuddling with me on my bed, wrapped up in a comforter. She had discernible dark gray half moons under her eyes and clung relentlessly until five minutes to midnight when both the girls perked up, decked themselves out in hats and cardboard tiaras and sat glued to the countdown, clutching their horns.

The ball dropped, much noise ensued here, the dog started barking wildly in response, the girls laughed at the dog, OGC protested that she hadn't seen the ball drop, we rewound and showed her that it wasn't actually "dropped" but lowered carefully, and then everyone got hustled off to bed, much to Mommy and Daddy's relief, because we were tired, too.

This morning, we all slept in.

Somehow, we always wind up wrapping presents on Christmas Eve. I suppose it's a sign of how much I've come to dislike the task that I always leave it until the last minute. That's not a tradition though, just a bad habit!

Out traditions include going out on the lawn before bedtime to spread a few handfuls of oatmeal out for Santa's reindeer to snack on while he is in our house. The girls write letters to Santa and leave them on the table with cookies and eggnog using a special Santa-decorated mug and plate.

During the day we follow Santa on NORAD's Santa Tracker (if we remember to do so - last year we forgot until just before bedtime.) Today we will be making cookies for Santa, baking the pies for dinner tomorrow (pecan, apple, and mince) (I love mince pie; we're going to find out this year if the rest of the family can learn to like it too), and making the Jello Salad of Instant Diabetes*. We will hang up the stockings at some point.

We will eat cookies. We will drink eggnog. The girls will try to persuade us to let them open, "Just one present, please, please, please?" (The answer will be, "No.") Eventually everyone will fall asleep (this will take awhile) and then Santa will come.

Small people have been instructed that they are not allowed to get up until their alarm clock goes off (6:30 a.m. has been negotiated.) They are allowed to get Mommy and Daddy up at that time. BUT NOT BEFORE!!
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*Jello Salad of Instant Diabetes

Ingredients
1 3 oz box of flavored gelatin
1 8 oz tub of whipped topping
1 15 oz can of crushed pineapple
1 8 oz can of mandarin oranges
1 16 oz tub of small curd cottage cheese

Directions
Drain the crushed pineapple and mandarin oranges; save the juice. Prepare (according to package directions) whatever flavor you prefer of gelatin. (Lime is popular for this. I like raspberry, personally. Cranberry is also good, especially at Thanksgiving.) Use the saved pineapple and mandarin juice in place of some of the water.

After making the gelatin, put it in the refrigerator to chill until it is about the consistency of a raw egg white. Mix in the fruit and cottage cheese. Fold in the whipped topping. Return to refrigerator and chill until firm, in whatever bowl you will be serving it in.

Variations
Some people like to add nuts and marshmallows. Maraschino cherries are also popular. Feel free to throw in whatever goodies your family likes best. (There are a lot of variations of this. Throw the search string "jello cool whip cottage cheese" into a search engine and you'll come up with a ton of recipes.)

Once a year, sometime in December before Christmas, The Love of My Life will go out on his day off to fill up the car and come home with chocolate covered cherries. He gets one for each member of the family and hands them out when he gets home, tossing them to each of us, sometimes playing guessing games before handing us our candy.

It's the only time he ever buys those, and the only time we ever eat them. I didn't realize until today, though, when he was standing in front of me, saying, "Pick a hand!", that it's become a tradition for us. (I picked the wrong hand, but he gave me my candy anyway.)

It's not a big deal. It's not something we've ever even talked about. It's not part of our plans when we discuss Christmas. And yet, when I realized he'd brought the candy home, a small voice inside me said, "Oh, good, that part of Christmas is taken care of now."

It's just a quiet little thing, and yet, it's funny how important a part of Christmas this has become to me. A little affectionate gesture that helps to bind our family together, perhaps more important than the bigger traditions precisely because of how small and quiet it is. And, I can't help thinking - how typical that this kind of tradition originated with him. I tend to think of the bigger, flashier things-to-do and rope everyone into participating. He just goes out and does his thing, quietly and efficiently, not making a big deal about it, but bringing all the more meaning to it because of that.

Every year when we put up the plastic tree, we have cookies and eggnog. The kids and I put the tree together, while their father takes pictures. Sometimes the girls like to dress up. We always use multi-colored lights, because I am the one who buys the decorations and that's what we had when I was a kid. I like a tree with those kind of lights.

Either Mommy or Daddy puts the lights on, then the kids put the ornaments on. We have a tree skirt I made many years ago, some old glass ornaments I got at a St. Vincent de Paul thrift store when I lived in Oregon, several newer glass ornaments (that are gradually decreasing in number as one or two break every year) and a large number of figurine-type ornaments that were either gifts from friends and family, or made by the girls at school and church.

This year we have two new ornaments - a wreath the Youngest Girl Child made out of sparkly pipe cleaner and a milk jug lid ring, in kindergarten, and a styrofoam ball studded with beads and sequins precariously held on with pins made by Oldest Girl Child. The ball is already starting to shed pins and I worry for its longevity.

We also have: a tongue depressor Star of David (OGC), a tongue depressor snowman (YGC), a tongue depressor Rudolph (OGC), a felt-and-pipe-cleaner sled made by one of my sisters and given to me many, many years ago, a blue glass ball with "Merry Christmas R.S. '98" written on it in puffy gold paint (given to me by a friend who died a few years later), a white plaster (I think) snowflake on a blue background (OGC), a plastic bead wreath (unknown), manger figurines I bought a few years before I met my husband (baby Jesus has been lost for years), and a piece of lace the girls found at the bottom of one of the boxes which I used to use as garland back when I was roommates with Cari.

At the top of the tree we have a star, also lit up with multi-colored lights. and another decoration that I brought with me when I got married. The girls both want to be the one to put it up on the top of the tree, so we arranged things this year so that they could both have their hands on it when it went on. (That's another good thing about an artificial tree - it's really easy to make the star stay on.)

There's nothing on there that would impress a decorator, but I love everything on there. Christmas trees are supposed to be gaudy and tacky and full of little kids' art projects. There's a law about it. Somewhere.

I spent tonight teaching my daughters the fine art of artificial tree branch fluffing.

When I was a kid, we always had a real tree. One year it was a live tree, in a wooden barrel half. I think my parents were being ecologically correct that year. (The tree went outside after Christmas was over. I don't remember what happened to it after that, although I would be willing to lay money on it having died of neglect eventually. Green thumbs do not run in my family. Herbicidal thumbs do.) A couple of times we went out to tree farms and cut them down ourselves. Most years we just went to a tree lot.

Dad would always get the biggest tree that would fit in our house. The house we lived in when I was in high school had cathedral ceilings, and he really went all out after that, at least as far as height went. You see, a 10 or 12 foot tree is not cheap - unless you are going for the very tall Charlie Brown tree. Especially when you are buying it on Christmas Eve just before the lot closes for the year. I wish I had a picture of some of those trees. Not much in the way of branches, but they were certainly tall!

I was a Christmas tree purist when I was young. Artificial trees? Blasphemy! Yet here I am, on my *mumblemumble* year of our artificial tree, and very happy with it. OK - there's no smell. There are also no needles that are still being vacuumed out of the carpet in March. No worry about the dog drinking the tree's water and poisoning himself with tree food / preservative. No stress about scheduling when to get a tree, and how to get it home. No having to make sure to remember to put it out at the right time to have the garbage service pick it up free of charge.

So my children will have fond Christmas memories of putting the tree together before decorating it. That's OK. We have a living pine in a pot on our porch. If I remember to transplant into a bigger pot this spring, it might not even die.

When I was a kid I was notorious for constantly having a book in my hand. (I still do, it's just not as obvious that it's a book, since I keep my books on my PDA now.) I walked home from school, reading all the way. I walked around the house, reading. I even read while I was supposedly listening to my teachers in junior high school, hiding the book under the desk, on my lap (until I got caught by an irate science teacher.)

This morning, Oldest Girl Child was walking around, re-reading her latest library book, Junie B. Jones and the Mushy Gushy Valentime. Every time I turned around, there she was, reading instead of getting ready for school. We had to pry her away from the book in order to do morning scripture study and afterward, when her father was trying to get her attention so that he could ask her to give the family prayer, she replied, "I know, I know, I'm just reading a little bit."

She left the house for the bus stop, nose buried in her book. I couldn't be more proud. That's my girl!

The fat little guy on the left grew up to be the father of my children (who looked very much like this when they were babies.) No idea who the other baby is. A cousin? A friend? I'd also love to know whose hand that is he's holding. I'm guessing his mother.

Judging from what I saw the girls do when they were babies, that lopsided grin on his face means he's concentrating on something very interesting. He also looks like they did when they were still learning to sit up - I can just see him getting all side to side wobbly like babies do just before they fall backward.

I've been trying to see if I can see a trace of the adult in the baby, but nope. All I see is a baby, completely interchangeable with any one of his children.

To see other vintage photos check out Paper Dolls for Boys.

A few photos from Halloweens past:

Travelin' Oma's School Days Seminar - Day 2 Homework

~Blog about a trip that was a disaster. Ideas: "Our honeymoon should have been perfect, but" or "I woke up in Disneyland with chickenpox."

To be honest, my memory is a little hazy about that trip. Or maybe not hazy. Maybe I've just repressed large blocks of time.

We had gone travelling the previous summer with The Boy Child. I was 7 months pregnant with Oldest Girl Child, huge, miserable, already short of breath. It was only meant to be a day or two, but after visiting Kirtland we thought we'd jaunt on up to Palmyra, and after getting to Palmyra we realized the Hill Cumorah Pageant was going on and that seemed like something not-to-be-missed, so we stayed to see that, and, all in all, it wound up being a week before we got home.

It was a tiring, breathless trip, filled with small mishaps, but also full of wonderful experiences, memories that I still treasure. So, the next summer, it seemed only logical to block out the time to take a trip to Nauvoo to see the temple during its open house.

The trip wasn't all bad. I saw my first fireflies. I saw the place where some of my ancestors lived. Ummmm ...

Give me a second. I'm thinking.

Things went wrong from the beginning. OGC was the sort of baby you couldn't overstimulate. She was never happier than when in the middle of a noisy crowd, a trait that was apparent in her first few days. They was so much to see! Hear! Do! Learn! Even then, she was a raging extrovert.

Which meant that, faced with the stimulation of a trip, she wouldn't sleep. All day long that first day of travel, sitting in her car seat, watching the countryside outside her window, nearly delirious with delight. That night, at the motel, at 2 a.m., with an exhausted sobbing Mommy, who still hadn't learned to let Daddy take over sometimes.

I go blank after that.

The next thing I remember is standing in line to tour Carthage Jail. It was sooo hot. The line was huge. OGC wanted to get down and practice walking. I was Excessively Tired and Not Happy. I left my husband standing in line with the baby while TBC and I went to find a drinking fountain and a bathroom. I looked at several highly memorable and significant Mormon memorabilia with complete indifference, then shuffled back to the line to find my baby running around barefoot. Some ... woman ... had taken it upon herself to remove my infant daughter's footwear. It was too hot for a baby to be wearing shoes! she told me, smiling cheerily at the woman she obviously considered a completely incompetent mother. I was too angry to speak.

... filing through the uppper room at Carthage jail, hot, hot, hot, very crowded, just wanting to get out of there ... driving to Nauvoo, where we parked amid a huge number of cars, then walked and walked to get to the restored cabins ... TBC (or was it his father?) leaving my camera behind at the blacksmith's demonstration and not realizing until much too late that we'd lost it - all our photos, gone! ... getting baby food at some convenient grocery store ... sitting on the floor with an excited baby, so so tired, and too afraid to let her cry herself to sleep, because the noise might get us in trouble with the hotel management ...

The next day it is our turn to take a tour through the Nauvoo Temple. We are short on time when we finally get there, I don't remember why. Realize the baby's wet, ask where is a convenient place to change her. Get blank looks from the volunteers. After much discussion, get directed to a portable restroom, which doesn't alarm me. This isn't the first LDS temple open house I've been to, after all, and the facilities are uniformly clean and sweet smelling. (We put a lot of effort into making these things nice.)

Open the door and walk into the nastiest, filthiest public bathroom I've ever seen. Nowhere to lay the baby down but the floor and I didn't even want to set a foot on that floor, much less my baby. Obviously the volume of visitors has overwhelmed the small Mormon community in the area. Go back to the volunteers. I am worrying about missing the scheduled time for our tour. More confusion and blank looks from the volunteers. Impossible and ridiculous suggestions. I give up (she's only wet) and we get in line.

Ask another volunteer several minutes later, when we are nearly at the head of the line if there is anywhere to change a baby. Well, maybe. Back there? He thinks? Checking it out would mean losing our place in line, possible losing our chance to see the temple, all on the weight of a "maybe". Decide to take my chances with the perceptibly loaded diaper, but feeling increasingly frazzled and unhappy. Not to mention, the baby is heavy. I'd pass her to her father, but if her diaper goes, my dress is easier to clean than his suit.

More waiting in another line. We finally get in the temple. I am too upset and distressed, too worried about the baby's diaper to enjoy the once in a lifetime experience.

And then it happens. The diaper hits critical overload and a long line of liquid splashes down my dress. Luckily the absorbent fabric of my skirt catches it all. The brand new carpet I am standing on (back aching) is safe and dry.

I am ready to burst into tears.

We finish, go back out. See another volunteer, ask again about a place to change the baby. Get directed down a long staircase, to the first bathroom. Back aching, dress stinking, feet hurting, I look at those long stairs, then lose it entirely and give the poor young woman the most venomous glare and refusal I have ever given anyone in my life, frightening her and causing my husband to look at me as if I have lost my mind.

Sit impatiently and angrily through TBC and my husband eating something sweet. Frantic to get back to the car, where I can finally change the baby. Finally, finally, FINALLY!!! get to change the baby. Trying not to be angry on the way back to the hotel. Trying not to ruin the experience for TBC and my husband. Not succeeding.

The baby finally started sleeping a little on the trip back, but I still can't think about that trip without getting angry and weepy over it. And while we'll talk sometimes about the previous summer's trip to Kirtland, no-one ever brings up the Nauvoo trip.

It was years before we traveled for fun again.

I'm trying to figure out where I got this song from. I think I remember my mother singing it to us when I was a kid, but the memory is fuzzy. I started singing it to my children in the mornings when I was getting them out of bed, several years ago.

Good morning!
Good morning!
Good morning!
Good morning I say!

Good morning!
Good morning!
And have a good day!

Is anyone (siblings o' mine, chip in, please!) familiar with this song? Did my mother make it up, or did it come from some longer song?

I'll ask her, too, but honestly, I doubt she'll remember. She tends not to remember stuff like that.

Absolutely my favorite photo that I have ever taken. I just wish I'd had a better camera back then. This is pretty low resolution. We were living further south at that time, and this was an unusual January snowfall. It shut down the city, which amused this Idaho girl no end. It was the first time I ever got to see Oldest Girl Child play in the snow. I dragged her in kicking and screaming when she started to turn blue around the edges.

The tree had so many blossoms you could barely see the branches.

I'm sure each of these colors represents a different strength of line, but I just liked the way the colors worked together. We were on a ferry and this boat was behind the car next to us.

If you look carefully at this photo, you'll see a second rainbow over the first one. We were at a family reunion when someone called to come see the rainbow, so several of us ran out onto the front porch to see this. It's the only time I've ever seen a double rainbow, although I'd heard of them. (Note that the colors are reversed on the second rainbow.) This was two full rainbows, too. I wish I could have caught the full glory, but I figure I was lucky to get even this much. None of my other attempts show the second rainbow this clearly (or at all.)

I like having photos on my blog. Posts without pictures just seem kind of boring. Pictures are so much more fun! So I thought I'd spend the next week posting some of my old pictures. I'm blank anyway, lately. I can't write at all, so I'll let pictures speak for me.

Here's today's photo. I took it a few years ago when we were visiting the beach.

Well, well, well. Guess who signed my guestbook at *one of the many high school reconnect sites*?

Back in 5th grade my family picked up and moved to another state. I wasn't wildly thrilled to move - I left my best friend behind and thought I'd never be happy again - but I started to adjust. Happily for me, a few weeks after school started a new family, with a girl my age, moved into our ward*. Better yet, the girl was going to the same school I was going to. A friend, a friend! We would be best friends and spend all our time together, and have lots and lots of fun! I was so excited.

Yeah. Not really.

We got along OK. For a while. I'm not sure what caused the change, but before long she started picking on me. She got other kids involved. Eventually I found that I had no friends at all, not at school, not at church. People would get up and move away if I sat down by them. People threw things at me, yelled names at me - and here's the kicker: blamed me for the way they were treating me. It was all because I was weird, they said, too weird to be treated like a human being.

She kept this up for five years, the entire time we lived in that town. Anyone new was warned that if they befriended me they'd get the same treatment I was getting. Even going on to junior high school didn't help - she spread more poison there. By the time we moved, I had given up hope, was convinced no-one would ever love or be friends with me, and I was even considering suicide.

Now, please understand - all this is absolutely ancient history now. I don't hurt over those things, and I don't even feel angry with her. I forgave her a long time ago.

Those experiences had a huge impact in making me who I am, though, for good as well as bad, and I've thought about her several times over the years, wondering whatever happened to her. I even tried to Google her a few months ago.

And now, here she is, looking me up. I wonder what she thought when she saw my name on there. Does she ever feel guilty about what she did? Does she even realize how badly she hurt me? When she read my profile was she relieved my life has turned out so well, that she didn't ruin my life? Was she glad for me? Or does she still hate me?

Her profile gave her married name. Yeah, I did a search. I admit it.

She didn't come up anywhere. That's probably just as well. Obsession and stalking - not a good way to hang onto forgiveness and peace of mind.
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*Wards and Branches. Members of the Church are organized into congregations that meet together frequently for spiritual and social enrichment. Large congregations are called wards. Each ward is presided over by a bishop, assisted by two counselors. Small congregations are called branches. Each branch is presided over by a branch president, assisted by two counselors.

Youngest Girl Child is outside on the swingset, intent on whatever game of make-believe she is playing. She waves her hand over her head, looking rather like she is trying to do some fly-fishing; then she will bring her elbows close to her side, hands in fists in front of her chest as her lips move rapidly. Her feet beat in some complicated rhythm against the ground under her and she twists the swing from side to side, making a series of Xs with the chains.

I am watching from the window over the kitchen sink, trying to record some video of her. The screen over the window mars my movie with moire patterns, though, and I don't think it will turn out. I turn over other possibilities, but this is the only option I can find that won't alert her to my observation. The instant she sees me with a camera, this moment will be lost, and all I will have are a series of coy smiles, flounces, and mugs.

When Oldest Girl Child was a baby I could never take a photo of her smiling. She would be all smiles and laughs - until I put the camera in front of my face. She would immediately lose the smile, her eyes growing big, concern flooding her features. "Where is Mommy?" her body language shouted. "Where has she gone?"

Necessity has taught me to be a master of stealth photography. But not today. Today I just have a messy jumble of screening and water spots.

Maybe if I use my phone? I could quietly open the back door and stand there with my phone casually in my hand ...

You know, I really thought I was ugly back then? What I wouldn't give now to look that again. OK - minus the acne.

Of course, this was my senior photo, the big one, the one that was going in the yearbook! So, I was wearing makeup, and had just come from the salon where I'd gotten a brand-new cut and perm. (And, considering it was the 80s, I'm surprised it looks that good now. What? No BTS?* What was I thinking, looking so sedate?)

Most of the time I went around with my hair looking, well, odd. I never, ever wore makeup.** I had no judgment at all in picking out my clothes and probably looked a mess most of the time.

Unfortunately, a lot of that is still true. I hate wearing makeup, even though I've hit an age where I really can't get away without it anymore. I always forget to put it on in the morning, and it annoys me that I have to keep refreshing it throughout the day. Who has time?

Clothes are still my bane. I desperately need a clothing makeover, with serious advice on how not to look like a bag of rags that's been dragged through a blackberry bush.

But here's the difference between me-then and me-now: putting on makeup and getting my hair done isn't going to make me-now look a fraction as good as that 17 year old girl did.

And I thought I was fat and ugly.

Now, as mother-me, I wonder - how can I keep my beautiful little girls from looking in the mirror and seeing ugly? Right now they see beauty as mostly being in your clothes. Beautiful dress-up clothes makes you beautiful. Oldest Girl Child will come in, dressed in some outrageous combination of tutus, pajama bottoms and winter scarves and say to me, "Mommy, am I beeeauuutiful?" She preens, twisting from side to side as she poses, a pleased smile on my face, knowing that I'll tell her, "Yes, you're very beautiful," because of course, she's beautiful! She has on beautiful clothes!

Youngest Girl Child will dash into the living room, "Mommy, look at my dance!" and then she'll start humming or singing and break into a long, dramatic "ballet" routine, full of posing and leaping. She asks, "Mommy, am I beautiful?" and hardly listens for the answer, so sure of the answer. Of course, she's beautiful. She's wearing a pretty tutu!

Someday, one of them is going to look in the mirror and be the first to say, "Mommy, am I beautiful?" and she'll be talking about her face, her figure, her hair, everything but her clothes. "Am I fat?" she'll ask me. "Do these pants make my rear look big?"

And that? Will be what you call a bad day.
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*Bangs To the Sky

**Too shy. Color on my face made me feel conspicuous like people might look at me. Like boys! Which I both fervently longed for, and was scared to death of having happen.

The picture for this puzzle is mine, taken a few years ago, when the girls were much younger and we lived in a different state - one where we had a ton of azalea bushes lining the front of the house!

We have a couple of azalea bushes in front of our current house, but they barely flower and look wildly ill. Azalea fertilizer hasn't helped. I think it's just not warm enough here.

When I was a kid, getting a splinter was a traumatic affair, fraught with terror, filled with agony, heralded with much screaming and throwing myself around in hysteria. And it was all my father's fault.

I would go to unreasonable lengths to keep my parents from discovering I had a splinter. It didn't matter how big the splinter, or how much it hurt, anything was better than having them find out, because they would insist it came out. Immediately. I think there was talk about infection. I don't know for sure; that part of the whole thing is vague. What's clearest in my memories is The Pin.

My dad, as soon as he found out we had a splinter, would get out the matches, and get a pin from my mother's sewing supplies. He would light the match, then hold the pin in the flame for as long as he could, usually until the metal discolored. This was to sterilize it, he told us.

When the pin was properly sterilized, he would grab the part of our bodies (usually a hand) where the splinter was, and start digging. He had a grip of steel. It didn't matter how much you screamed, cried, and fought to get away, nothing was going to free you until Daddy let you go, and he wasn't doing that until the splinter was gone. He'd poke the pin into your skin where the splinter had entered, trying to catch the wood with the point of the pin, so that he could push / pull it out. If that didn't work he'd go to the other end of the splinter and try to push it out from there. If that still didn't work, he'd use the pin to start breaking through your skin over the splinter until enough splinter surface was exposed to let the pin get a good hold of it and pull it out.

I would have cheerfully allowed gangrene to set in and take a limb rather than have my oh so earnestly concerned father deal with even the simplest splinter.

When I had children, one of the first things I did was buy tweezers. I couldn't imagine why my parents had never thought to use tweezers to deal with splinters. It was so brilliant! So simple! So painfree!! My children, I thought smugly, would have all their splinters dealt with simply, quickly and pain-free. No pins for my family, no sirree.

Yeah. Right.

Just today I went through a familiar routine with Oldest Girl Child. (You could substitute Youngest Girl Child at any point in this and it would be just as valid.) She came in the house, sobbing, clutching her left hand at the wrist as she cradled it to her chest.

"Mommy!! I have a splinter! It hurts!!"

I got the tweezers.

"NOOOOOO!!!!!! NOT THE TWEEZERS!!!!"

I think her scream knocked a few squirrels out of the trees.

After a few tries, I coaxed her into letting me look at her hand. There was a very small splinter, almost too small to see, at the outer base of her thumb. I plucked at it with the tweezers, but couldn't grab anything with which to pull it out. I tried a couple of times before she grabbed her hand back.

"It hurts! Don't touch it! Get it out!"

We wound up soaking her hand for a while (30 seconds) in warm water with dissolved Epsom Salts. I don't know why Epsom Salts, except that it's what my parents used to do when they had a splinter they couldn't get out. I don't think it actually does anything, except make me feel better. I'm doing something! Not just standing there while my child sobs!

After about 30 seconds, OGC decided that it hurt to soak her hand in the water, so we gave up on that. After further negotiations it was decided that that magical cure-all, the cartoon character bandage, was the perfect solution to make it all better.

And off she went, happy again, ready to play.

It is so hard at these times not to say, "You know, when I was little ..."