This is Read Across America weekend --and what better weekend to have it than what would be Dr. Seuss's 104th birthday? Think about ways your family can celebrate: I think we may have a little family read-a-thon on Sunday evening. This is one of those situations in which just announcing something in a special way can totally change the way your child sees a task; on the one hand, you can tell your beginning reader that it's time, now, to practice his reading. Groans! But...suppose you propose that the whole family celebrate Read Across America weekend by everyone gathering around the table with some books and a nice cup of hot cocoa! Or, you can ask for suggestions or let the kids design their own ritual. It becomes an entirely different affair.
It also seems to be Sick Across America weekend, as practically everyone we know with kids is either sick, or just got over being sick, including all of us. So it's turned into Ross Reading Weekend. We just all have the icks, except Ella, who had the major icks when I was gone and who now is the only one who is well.
Madison has bad bronchitis. I slept/stayed up with her all last night. Breathing the steam from the shower is the only thing that holds the dreadful wheezing at bay for a little while. David--none too well himself--just took Ella to a birthday party that they'd been looking forward to for a while, because she really is over whatever it was that gripped her, something stomachy. I'm in Madison's bed with her--a feverish, wheezy, hacky baby. She's been bribed into finishing her bottle of water with promises that I'd show her some web programming stuff, but as soon as I climbed in next to her with the laptop she murmured, "A little snuggle first, Mom, ok?" and closed her eyes. She's now uneasily asleep next to me. A little while ago, her eyes popped open and she asked if I'd been talking to her. I hadn't. "Ok, I just didn't want you to think I was being rude if I didn't answer you," she said, and slipped under again.
They're so loving and clingy when they're sick. (Well, mine are pretty loving when they're well, actually.)
OK, I just got a call from David saying that the birthday party was YESTERDAY. Damn. I don't usually make those kinds of mistakes. Ah well. It was a party for a little boy from a seriously fundamentalist family, and the theme was *dinosaurs*. I was probably going to have to disabuse the girls of ideas about The Sixth Day and all, so maybe it's all for the best.
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