Isn't it self explanatory?
It’s been a long, busy, wonderful weekend, and as much as I’d like to write about it all right now, I just can’t. I have to go to sleep.
So, instead of writing, I’ll leave you with this lullaby: Hyla’s violin recital from earlier today. I tried out her little video camera to film her performance and the video quality is pretty poor, but at least the sound comes through okay.
Sweet dreams.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XgjyGPOEMeA]
From Hyla’s forthcoming book of drawings and comics.
We did the final crank on Hyla’s expander this morning. WOO HOOOOO!!!
We’re happy to report that her head did not split open on the final crank. We were only slightly worried.
From the very first time Hyla lost a tooth, she always insisted on keeping the tooth. No Tooth Fairy for her, even when she figured out (pretty much right away) that Tooth Fairy = Parent. So, she never once put a tooth under a pillow. Until last night.
Last night, after I had already gone to sleep, she finally got up the courage to pull out a tooth that had been hanging by a thread for weeks. And then (I’m told), she let Michael know about it, and she informed him that this particular tooth was fair game for the Tooth Fairy (wink, wink). And she put that tooth under her pillow.
Late that night, as Michael slipped the coins under her pillow, he found this note:
That’s our girl. She’s figured out she can have the money and the tooth. And she’s put it all in writing, At least she’s exceedingly polite about it.
Update: I failed to mention that she wrote that note while half asleep, and probably in near darkness, which is why the handwriting looks a bit funny.
Since returning to school from October break, Hyla’s Language Arts class has been studying Latin.
I’m all in favor of this because I never had any Latin education and I wish I had because now I know how useful it is. Michael’s all in favor of this because he took Latin in school and, as a result, his brain is at least three times bigger than mine. Best of all, Hyla seems to be all in favor of this and, last week, declared Latin to be “way more fun” than Spanish (which she had been taking since Kindergarten). It’s also lighter than English when weighed.
Although her school doesn’t believe in assigning homework to elementary school students, and, according to Hyla, frowns on kids even asking for homework, for some reason, she had a bit of Latin homework to do this weekend. She’s been assigned a Latin word and was asked to come up with as many English words as she can think of (without the aid of a dictionary of the Internet) that contain the Latin word as a root.
Her word is Porto, “I carry”.
Here’s her list, which she’ll hand in for evaluation tomorrow.
transportation
portal
port
important
porter
support
transport
portico
portage
porthole
portcullis
Can you think of others? Anything obviously missing? Anything on this list obviously not related to Porto?
Woody, the school dog
Ninja Cat, looking stern
Final instructions for the annual peanut hunt
Found some
Searching the field
Cute little kitty
Jack o’ Lantern family
Reward
Hyla got her braces last week.
The cool thing about braces these days is that you get to pick the colors of the parts adhered to your teeth, so she chose her favorite blue, and a gold that went well with the blue. I think she made a good choice.
The bad thing about braces is the upkeep and work involved — I had no idea there were so many types of tooth brushes and cleaners and liquids and pastes out there. I have a new appreciation (or horror?) of the “oral hygiene” aisle at the drug store. All that aside, though, the braces themselves don’t seem to hurt her much (or at all). The real downer is the expander, a bit of diabolical machinery installed across the roof of her mouth, braced between her upper back teeth.
The expander is a literal pain on many levels. It hurt to put it on in the first place, and sometimes it hurts to chew with it on, and food gets caught in it easily. In fact, learning to eat with it installed was something we hadn’t counted on at all. I don’t remember being warned that it would take a week (or more, according to some accounts I read on the Internet) to relearn how to chew and swallow with this medieval contraption installed. The first two or three days, Hyla basically followed the tonsillectomy diet: apple sauce, broth, pudding, jello. But even still, she managed to figure out how to eat milk chocolate, and, gradually, she’s gotten back to eating most of her regular foods.
What remains, though, is the last devilish detail: the turns. The whole point of the expander is to widen her her jaw, so the only way to make this work is to gradually force the expander to widen, which puts the necessary increasing pressure on her jaw. So, every other day, for four weeks, we put a little pointed tool into a hole in the expander and turn it once.
The orthodontist assures us that the expander moves only the width of a hair during each turn, but, from the look on Hyla’s face, it’s obvious that even this small measure of expansion is very uncomfortable. Fortunately, she recovers quickly after each turn, but you can imagine it’s a thing we both dread. Here’s another thing I just didn’t imagine having to do when we thought about having a child.
We have a countdown calendar in the bathroom, which helps up keep track of how many turns we have left. After this morning’s turn, we have 10 more.
This past week, Michael made the absolute coolest thing for Hyla.
While organizing the basement last week, Michael found a box of our old cork-stoppered, glass spice bottles and offered them to Hyla for “potion” making. Before we knew it, the kitchen counter was covered with little bottles filled with colored potions of all sorts, neatly labeled with post-it notes. Seems this little wizard was going to need a place to store all those vials, so Michael set to work in the basement and whipped up this little beauty.
Did you notice the little leather straps on either end of the top shelf meant for holding the wands? And the rack on the bottom shelf for filing recipe scrolls? And the neat row of prepared potions?
And, of course, the darling little black cauldron (yes, my friends, Dan & Whits does, indeed, carry everything)?
So, if you find yourself in need of some Polyjuice Potion, Felix Felicis, or Blood-Replenishing Potion, you know who to call.
Every summer, Hyla attends a local day camp for one or two sessions. On the second Tuesday of each two-week session, campers who are old enough are given the option of staying overnight for one night. Each year that she’s had the option, Hyla has said “no”. Last year, she skipped it not because she was worried to be away from us for a night, but because she was worried about the 9 o’clock lights out policy. Because she cannot fall asleep until at least 10 pm and didn’t know how she’d handle that.
At the start of this year’s session, she said she might consider the sleep over — it all depended on who was in her cabin this year (a group of about 8 girls) and how many of them were doing the sleep over. By the time the permission slip came home, she was emphatically in favor of the overnight.
So this morning we packed her sleeping back, extra clothes, flashlight, bug repellent, and pillow, and then M dropped her off at the bus stop. On one hand, it seems a small step (a single overnight at a very familiar place); on the other hand, it seems like the first step of many to letting go.