Goodness Gracious

I saw The Girl yesterday, for the first time in almost six months. In April, she'll be six, and goodness gracious, has she grown up!
The entire time we were together, she was talking away, alternately wanting to ice skate ALL BY MYSELF and wanting both Mommy and Abbie to hold her hands. When we went out to lunch, she declared that she wanted "hot chocolate, and how about some . . . ICE CREAM!" While this may seem like normal five-year-old behavior, have I ever told you guys how hard we had to work to get The Girl to like vanilla ice cream? Have you ever sat with a four-year-old, saying "just take one bite of this ice cream, and then we'll be all done"? Because, let me tell you, I have. And it feels weird.
It was wonderful to see her. I already miss her again.

I am not a medical expert

Google does not seem to understand that I don't know anything about medicine. Pancreases, to be specific.
The number one search term that leads people to my blog is "bruised pancreas." Is that not a little odd? 'Cause, you know, I wrote a post a while back about my sister's totally badass bruised pancreas. And as it turns out, that post is the fifth link google gives you. Which is HIlarious for me, not so much for the people with badass injuries.
Internet, you need to provide the poor people with of this world with more information about their pancreases.

P.S. I don't think I ever told the story about how The Girl became totally OBSESSED with Dewey's bike accident. It was her favorite story. She liked to tell it like this:
"And then Dewey was riding her bike near her house when my car went BANG and Dewey fell off her bike and she got a dirty cut on her leg and also she hurt her PANCREAS!"
I'm not really sure why, but it was always very important to her that my sister crashed into her car. (Which she didn't, by the way.)
P.P.S. People also come to my blog by searching for "My Ginormous Boobs." Sorry, once again, no help here.

So Many Germs

I thought I'd made it through a summer with The Girl (she of the low muscle tone and near-constant colds) without getting sick once (except for the strep throat incident, but that doesn't count 'cause I was REALLY sick, not just all stuffed up and generally cold-y) because I was STRONG! And I had BUILT UP MY IMMUNITIES! (Wow. Two sets of parentheses in one sentence. I win.)
This is not the case.
A week after I get back to Dartmouth, home to five thousand eighteen- to twenty-two-year-olds, I am sick. Not in a little way. In a my voice sounds funny and yesterday when I tried to make a comment in class I had to stop because the snot running down my face was a little distracting way. It's not pretty.
At least I can find comfort in the fact that at least a thousand other Dartmouth students have this nasty nasty cold, too.

The End of an Era

Wednesday was my last day with The Girl. It was sad.
See, I am going back to school soon, and then I will graduate. I don't think I'll be coming back to Boston after college, and even if I did, I would need to get a job with things like health insurance and the ability to look good on my resume so I can get into grad school.
So I'm not going to ever be her nanny again. While I'm pretty sure we'll stay in each other's lives, it's not the same. She is an amazing child, and she has changed my life in so many ways, and I will miss her.

Score One for Good Music

"Hey, The Girl, which do you like better, The Beatles or The Wiggles?"
"The Beatles!"

As bad as I feel for brainwashing her, at least I don't have to listen to the Wiggles anymore.

The Long-Awaited Toilet Post!

Hello, friends. Long time, no blog.
I am still feeling uninspired, but I thought I might stretch the old blogging muscles and write about a toilet.
As I said, a couple of weeks ago, The Girl and I went to the Boston Children's Museum. It was quite fun, and The Girl did an amazing job climbing in the beautiful new, three-story, climbing structure. (When I was little, the Children's Museum had a similar climbing structure, designed by the same architect, and my family called it The Cage for Wild Children. I was terrified of the thing and would refuse to go in it.)
The Girl's brave climbing performance, however, was not the most impressive part of our adventure. That prize would go to the toilets at the Children's Museum.

Why the green handle, you ask? What makes them so special? Well, luckily for you, I took a close-up (several actually, since I couldn't get a perfect picture) of the plaque explaining it all:

I like how they tell you to flush up for #1 and down for #2, and then explain what number one and two are. Why bother using numbers in the first place?
Also, The Girl asking, as we walked into the bathroom on a subsequent visit (these ten-hour days I've been working before school starts demand things like frequent trips to museums) if she would get to flush down instead of up this time? Priceless.

It is Fun To Pretend To Be Gino The Dog

. . . Or, How I Almost Got Arrested For Child Abuse.
The girl's favorite new game is called "Let's pretend I'm Gino!" Gino is the dog who lives upstairs from her. The other day as we were getting ready to walk to the park, The Girl handed me a long piece of curling ribbon and asked me to tie it around her neck like a leash. Since I like my charges to stay alive while I'm taking care of them, I said no. Instead, I offered, I could tie it around her wrist. She agreed, and then proceeded to give me detailed instruction on exactly how to scold her when she didn't follow the orders I had to give her. ("Stay!" "Bad dog, Gino! You need to LISTEN to me!")
Once I have the directions down, and it took quite a while to understand how to do it all perfectly, we set off. She pulled at the "leash" like the bad dog she was pretending to be. (Did I mention that Gino is the yappiest dog EVER and terrifies her?). I scolded her, using exactly the words she gave me. She did it again.
Suddenly, I notice a traffic cop looking at me strangely.
"Excuse me ma'am, can I ask you a question?"
"Of course, officer!"
"Why do you have that child tied up like that?"
"She's pretending to be a bad dog named Gino! He's her neighbor's dog! She doesn't like him! He scares her!"
"Okay, ma'am, whatever you say."

After that, we untied the leash.

You have to make some sacrifices to have enough room for all those twinkies

"Honey, would you like some more blueberries?"
"No thanks, I'm trying to cut back."

On Junk Food

I picked the girl up at school the other day, and as she was climbing into the cab (you will recall that I don't have a driver's license, and sincer her school is not t-accessible, we have to take a cab to get there. It's quite the adventure.), I noticed that she was uncharacteristicly talkative about her day, and how Ava spilled juice and Adam cried because he didn't want to wipe his mouth at lunch. The thing that she was the most animated about, though? A twinky.
"I had a TWINKY today at school! It was yellow and crunchy! And white! I tried it and I didn't say yucky! I was very brave! It was sooo yummy! I love twinkies!"
It should be noted here that The Girl has an Autism Spectrum Disorder, and two of the ways that this manifests itself are that she is normally not very conversational (one of her most common statements is "I don't WANT to have a conversation!" whenever you try to ask her about anything), and, until recently, she had an extreme aversion to food that wasn't scrambled eggs, teriyaki-flavored vegetables or macaroni and cheese. Or vanilla ice cream. And that took me at least a month to get her to like. So the fact that she was excited to tell me about something, and that that something was food, was kind of huge.
The next day when I picked her up, she was equally talkative. This time, though, she said "I wanted a twinky today, but they didn't have any. So instead I had an oreo. It was good."
Oh, junk food, you can make a convert out of anyone.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand

The other day, The Girl and I were riding the T home from a playdate. Understandably, once she had finished her snacks, she got kind of bored. Lacking the keep-her-happy-on-the-T toys that usually live in my bag, I pulled out my iPod, which is now home to a Laurie Berkner album. I let her put on the headphones and listen to Victor Vito and B-O-O-T-S, and she was entertained until we had to switch trains.
A couple of days later, we were sitting around after dinner when I had an idea. I got my iPod out again and told her that, if she wanted, we could listen to I Want to Hold Your Hand, the song I always sing to her when we're walking. She liked the idea, so I helped her put the left earbud in, turned the volume way down so as not to hurt her precious baby ears, and started the song. Her eyes lit up as she heard the Beatles singing the words she knows so well, and she started singing along. Then she paused.
"Abbie?"
"What, honey?"
"Is this song about you and me?"

Yes, honey. Yes it is.

I didn't tell her about how they hurt like a bitch

I spend a good deal of time these days putting sunblock on The Girl. Whenever we go through the ritual, starting with the legs and slowly working our way to her face, we talk about how we do it so we don't get a sunburn.
Over the weekend I decided to ignore the fact that because I am pale, I tend to burn. Quickly. Instead, I thought I'd get some nice color and deal with my farmer's tan by sitting out in the sun recuperating from strep. Needless to say, I didn't get some "nice color." Instead, I got a "very painful sunburn."
At work today, I told The Girl about how I got a sunburn, and I even let her touch it. As she was gently running her fingers over my lobster-red shoulder, I realized that she had not only never had a sunburn, she'd never even seen one.
Kids these days, eh?

Children, or, Here is Where My Friends Stop Reading My Blog

Have you ever watched a child try to play catch with a doll?
My Favorite Child In The Whole World (who will for hereafter be called The Girl, because her old pseudonym's
just too long) got a doll yesterday. The doll's name is Sophie. We love Sophie very very much, and that is fantastic. She is Sophie's Mommy, and I am Sophie's nanny (while also being her nanny. It's an interesting arrangement). We feed Sophie and put her down for naps and take her with us when we go on adventures. This is especially exciting because we are engaging in symbolic play with Sophie, and that's something kids on the Autism Spectrum often have trouble with.
Today, while we were looking for fish in the Public Garden (a quest that was utterly pointless, but so much fun it didn't matter), The Girl fell into the duckling pond. With Sophie. As soon as I pulled her out, she screamed "I don't want to go in the washing machine!"
She doesn't have to, but Sophie might. This could be a problem.

Please Don't Mind the Puddle of Melted Heart

So I just got off the phone with my favorite child in the whole entire world, the one who I nannied all last year, the one who I love more than is healthy and talk about more than is necessary. Her new (as of late September, when I came back to Dartmouth) nanny just quit, so her mom's between a rock and a hard place, childcare-wise. Since I'm going to be on spring break next week, I offered to babysit for four days while her mom tries to hire someone new to take care of her. I'm totally attached to her, but she's mildly autistic, plus she's little, so I kind of assume that she only vaguely remembers me. Tonight, I was arranging things with her mom, who told her she was talking to me, and asked if she wanted to say hi. She did. As soon as she gets on the phone, she goes "Abbie? Are you going to pick me up at school?"
She didn't know that I was babysitting next week, 'cause her mom wasn't sure it was going to happen, so she didn't tell her.
Now does it make sense why a little part of me wants to quit school and go take care of her until she's fifteen? No? Oh, well.