Aunt Cele and Aunt Alice came to visit. It's always wonderful to have them here to spend time with us. You love having some extra adults to play with you. During a walk around the neighborhood, they found one of our neighbors giving away succulent plants, so you did some gardening to plant those in our yard. Aunt Alice showed you new games on her phone and tablet. They also brought Christmas presents, so we got to have a third Christmas. Hopefully we'll make it to Michigan again this year. It would be lovely to see my cousins and their kids, too.
You participated in a clinical trial this month. One of the researchers at my work is developing a blood test for appendicitis, and needed healthy kids to give blood to get a baseline for the test. We talked about how it would help sick people, versus it would hurt to get blood drawn, but that you'd get a reward, too. You waffled back and forth, even after you were in the clinic, but then you decided that you wanted to go ahead and do it. One of the nurses let you watch a video on her phone, but when they stuck the needle in your arm, you yelled! Then you held very still and just cried a little until they were done. And then you got your very own reward, a $25 gift card, which surprised me. I thought you would share one with Miriam. So the next weekend, we went to the toy store and you picked out a toy to buy with your reward money. First, you wanted a little dragon toy that made noise and shot arrows. But then you found the giant dragon toy, almost as tall as you are, and that's what you ended up buying. Giant Dragon went to school with you the next Monday, and he's been known to be a little startling in the dark when I'm walking past the living room at night.
Night time has become a little sad for you lately, because you want company all night. One night we had this conversation.
You: "I want someone to sleep with me."
Me: "Do you want Velveteen Rabbit?"
You: "No. I want a girl to sleep with me all night in my bed. Like you or Grandma."
Me: "When you're older and have a big bed, then maybe a girl will sleep with you in your bed."
You: "Grandma and Grandpa get to sleep in the same bed. You and Dad get to sleep in the same bed. Nobody sleeps with me in my bed."
So you and Grandma came up with the plan that when Miriam is older, we'll get you bunk beds. You can sleep in the top bunk and have company all night. I have tried to point out that sometimes it's nice to be able to sleep alone, but so far you're not buying it.
Dad and I went on a little second honeymoon in the middle of the month. We drove up to Humboldt Redwood State Park and did two days of hiking in the redwoods. It was lovely to see that part of the country, and to be in nature, and to have some time off. You were very disappointed that we didn't take you with us, of course. When you get a little older, we'll definitely go back, but you'll need to be able to handle walking for at least an hour at a time. It's amazing to see the old growth forests, though, and I want you to be able to experience that. I think it's valuable for lots of reasons. In Europe, you can experience human history going back thousands of years. In the redwoods, you experience Earth history that goes back thousands of years, and you gain an understanding of why "the forest" was such an intimidating concept for Europeans in the Middle Ages and earlier.
We had a parent teacher conference with Mrs. Hedley this month. You had not been in her class for long enough to get a regular report card, but she wanted to update us on your progress. You are doing quite well, by all her measures. Your school behavior is good, and she doesn't have any worries about your academics, so that was all very nice to hear. You still don't like doing homework, but we've switched to doing it in the mornings, and that's seemed to make it flow much better. Dad was saying that he wishes he were able to do it with you, because he feels like he's not very involved with your schooling. I think you'll have more fun doing other projects with him, instead of homework, but we'll see what happens as you get into higher grades. Right now, it's just nice to know that you're doing well.
Earlier in the month, we had dinner at a neighbor's house. Dave and Elena have a daughter, Thalia, who is also in kindergarten. They live about three houses down from us. It was nice to get to know them. They sent us home with some lemons from their lemon tree, and Dad decided that we should have some fruit trees, too. So Miriam and I bought a lemon tree and an orange tree on Saturday, and we spent time moving some plants around and planting the trees. Then you had fun watering them all. So now we'll hopefully have some fruit in the future. Which will be great for avoiding scurvy during the zombie apocalypse.
Love,
Mom
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