fall days and sick days

i should cop to good old-fashioned procrastination as the reason for my long delay between posts, but... look at this sick child!

we spent several days at home working through the phlegm and grumps with a little help from these guys:

i don't talk about the dogs enough here. kevin and i were getting teary last night as we realized that rudy at age 6 is now older in dog years than kevin. he needs dental work. our vet nicknamed him "rudy old man" when he was 2, and i wonder what happens when an old soul actually grows old. petey "the muppet" is a year younger and roughly equivalent to my age, and since my birthday i've become much more aware of my knees. i'll have to leave climbing half dome to the progeny.

i had long ago scheduled a few vacation days to clean the garage as a surprise for my dear OCD husband, and after missing work for all the sick days i nearly scrapped that plan but am so glad i didn't. it's an underrated joy in life to open a box labeled "punch bowl" and find an actual punch bowl instead of a child's potty seat.

so that's where we've been these fall weeks, though as usual the photographic evidence shows that we've been some other places too. we hit up "boo at the zoo" and saw a gorilla stand to full height and beat his chest, which was so very awesome and something i had never seen before, despite all my summers of "zoo school" at the san diego wild animal park. for violet though, telescope > giraffes

and carousel animals > animals.

i still think we're going to raise an animal lover though.

before halloween i took her to ride the "ghost train" in griffith park.

sure, i had to cover her eyes for 80% of the attractions, like the psycho clowns, vampire babies and chainsaw murderers, but she loved it, a lot, as in we have to "play ghost train" with pillows at least once a week. the make-believe games unfortunately involve a lot of props. i'm like, can't you just IMAGINE that all these things are piled on top of the bed? one evening i went pee and returned to find her on the back porch "at the beach."

we also made our annual trip with the dietricks to the pumpkin patch, and while i know i have a dozen better pictures somewhere, including some cute family shots that lisa took for us, all i'm finding are these.

i love this one of violet and kevin watching the band. it's safe to say her mama preference is officially over. violet regularly gives me the stink eye and declares, "only me and daddy and petey and rudy get to do fun things!" usually this is because i've denied her request for "one super super SUPER duper yaaaast episode" of max & ruby after she conveniently forgets having agreed that the previous one would be the "super super duper yast one." i also get shut in and out of rooms a lot. it's never been easy to help her learn to manage her frustration, but so far, age 3 is surprisingly more challenging than age 2. violet practically banished me from the house after i served her a cut apple that was "NOT RIPE!!!" and then had a meltdown when i failed to "PUT IT BACK TOGETHER!!!" another day i threw some trash into a public bin and she then decided that she wanted to throw said trash away, so i started into my patient explanation of why dumpster diving isn't for me, and she expressed her disapproval by slapping me hard across the face in front of a crowd. "hit me again and i'll throw YOU in the trash!" i screamed on the inside as i whisked her off for a quiet timeout together on a sidewalk corner. ah, modern parenting. another favorite is that she gives me and kevin the hand and shouts "RED LIGHT!" usually it's when we try to sing or dance, but sometimes it's when we're mid-sentence into an explanation about why electrical cords don't make good jump ropes. on thanksgiving she refused to nap and when kevin later suggested that the lack of sleep was making her grumpy, she snarled, "i'm not grumpy. you're just doin' things that MAKE ME MAD!"

who, this child?

the cuteness only helps her cause, as she of course already knows. five minutes this, two m&ms that, one more monkey video. she'd have a rug dealer begging for mercy. at the farmer's market inflatable slide (the above pictured and hilariously named "vertical rush"), you get two turns per ticket. after her second slide, she evaded eye contact as she darted up for a third turn. when i snagged her at the bottom and reminded her of the rules, she looked up at me through her lashes and sweetly said, "i must not have realized." we try to talk about lies vs. the truth, but she's savvy. "i lied by accident," she loves to say, almost as much as she loves to say "penis." on thanksgiving morning, she kept insisting that her favorite stuffed dog brownie "wants to show you his penis." thankfully brownie the flasher kept it in his pants for the visiting family. she also cackled delightedly after she "put boobs on tinkerbell."

my actual favorite story lately just happened a couple nights ago. i was puppeteering her two hallmark dogs, jingle and bell, and she was dictating when they would jump, bark, hide, and at one point, bell hurt jingle. bell apologized but jingle refused to forgive her. i said it would break my heart if they weren't friends anymore, and violet teared up. she was quiet for a bit, and then she told me that jingle did forgive bell. i smiled and said how happy that made me, and with her eyes still shining, she said, "it fixed your heart." indeed.