Week 222: Clinging, Reasoning, and Camping

Light update this week. Mandy is doing fine with her little pink cast, and we’re enjoying the freedom to park in the handicap parking spaces at the mall. One odd thing that she’s been doing lately, though, is to be really clinging with Geralyn. If even I try to pry her away, Mandy starts craying “MomME! MoMMMMMEE! MOOOOMMMMMEEEEEAAARRRAAHHAAAA!” until I relent and just pitch her back over to Geralyn. Mandy seems perfectly happy to see me as long as I’m not actually trying to touch her. I’m told (mostly by myself, muttering under my breath) that this will pass, but it’s still kind of exasperating in the meantime.

Sam, on the other hand, is not clingy at all, yet she still spends much of her time trying to get away with things. Last night, after I explained that she could in fact not have another brownie, she crossed her arms and gave me what I can only assume she thought was a menacing stare.

“If I were a grown up,” she said, biting off each word, “I could make my own rules.”

“Yes but if you were a grown up,” I retorted, “you’d have the judgment to make the rules good ones.”

This was, of course, a bald and terrible lie, as evidenced by various wars, cigarette companies, tanning booths, and both the second and third brownies I had eaten myself while Sam wasn’t looking. But she bought it. Thank God for childish naivete.

The other big event in Sam’s life is that Geralyn bought her a little tent. Nothing fancy or capable of withstanding anything more than a gentle breeze, just a plastic and nylon jobbie that assembles quickly and has provided so far many hours of inexplicable entertainment. Sam was beside herself with glee (which is, by the way, just awesome to behold), and spazzed out by repeatedly climbing in and out of the various flaps. She then insisted that we bring it up to her bedroom, so that she could sleep in it. This proved, as we told her it would, mightily uncomfortable, but she persisted. Creeping into your daughter’s room to check on her and seeing her two little feet clad in two little pink socks sticking out from a tent flap? That’s like one of the best sights EVER.

Also, Sam went bowling, apparently. And she got the best score out of all the children and some adults, though the latter had a much higher blood alcohol level.