Weekend Serendipity

Kassie was only here for about 36 hours, but it is amazing how much more human I feel after 36 solid hours of constant adult conversation. I feel like my brain has been jump-started out of “peanut butter and time-out sandwich” mode and back into “contemplation of morality and Doctor Who” mode. While the former is sometimes necessary, the latter is always preferable. Glorious, even.

Sienna is smitten with Kassie. She has been since Kassie first came to visit us in Dallas and brought Sienna a pair of her old toe shoes. They are Sienna’s most treasured possession. When she wasn’t talking a mile a minute or trying to show Kassie “just one more thing!”, she was watching Kassie with studious intensity. She copied the way Kassie talked, the way Kassie moved her hands, the way Kassie walked. She pulled out her old, too-small blue dress with polka dots because Kassie wore a blue dress with polka dots to Mass on Sunday. She bemoaned her lack of red shoes, my lack of red lipstick, and our collective lack of “black curly hair.” She announced that her new goal in life is “to be a ballerina nanny and live in New York City and have black curly hair and always wear red shoes and red lipstick.”

Lincoln, to everyone’s amazement, is also smitten with Kassie. This is the baby who cries when strangers look at him, who screams when strangers (or anyone who isn’t me or Christopher) touch him, even if he’s in our arms. This baby will not let anyone hold him and buries his face in my shoulder if someone looks like they are even thinking of trying to hold him. But the first night Kassie was here, Lincoln was angst-ridden because I was ignoring him and focusing on bruschetta, so Kassie picked him up. I braced for a meltdown, but he didn’t cry. He didn’t even make a sad face. He just cuddled up with his head nestled under her chin and went to sleep. I couldn’t believe it. After that, he started reaching for Kassie anytime he saw her, cooing in delight when she picked him up, and the morning after she left he crawled from room to room in our house, pulling up and looking on all the beds, and finally back to the living room, where he burst into tears and refused to be consoled. I’m positive he was looking for her.

Charlotte, on the other hand, called her “Alicia” or “what’s-her-name” the whole weekend, and Liam was his usual charming 2-year-old self, shouting “No!” and “I don’t want to!” anytime anyone said anything to him. But really, winning the hearts of 2 out of 4 is pretty impressive, especially since she’s the first person ever to win the affection of Angry Lincoln.

I really needed the pick-me-up of Kassie’s visit after four solid weeks of sickness. But the universe seems to be making up for all the bad juju we’ve been suffering lately. Yesterday our friends, who spent the weekend getting new furniture at Ikea, gave us their old couch. But it’s not just any old couch. It’s a red sectional. It’s beautiful, it’s in great condition, it’s three times the size of our old couch, and it’s my favorite of all favorite colors except orange, and even I realize that orange furniture is usually a bad idea.

I can’t express in words how much I love this couch. I keep looking at it just to look at it. It’s amazing. We’ve never had a sectional sofa before. We’ve never even had a sofa that our entire family could fit on at the same time. Our entire family could sleep on this one. It’s like a miracle in the form of home furnishing.

Then, on top of the Kassie-happy-hours and the sofa bliss, a bunch of my freaking awesome readers sent me some Paypal and Whole Foods love so I could buy more cherries. Which I did. The children are so delighted with the cherries that they haven’t even noticed the dearth of other sugary treats. (I put a moratorium on sugar as part of my attempt to shed the prednisone-and-birthday-cake-weight.) I’m so delighted with the cherries that I haven’t even noticed the dearth of other sugary treats. I have absolute best readers in the whole internet. You guys make blogging so much fun.

Now that my spirits have been bolstered by my friends and readers, I feel refreshed and reinvigorated enough to tackle a follow-up post to my Sloppy Seconds post. The first one raised all kinds of hell, which was fun, but it also seemed to confuse quite a few people, so I think a clarification-and-elaboration post is necessary. If you guys have avoided the combox (and I don’t blame you, the comments are hovering somewhere around 430) you should at least read the posts by CS. She makes some brilliant points. I’ve been slow-clapping every time I read her comments. I kind of feel like I should just hand over the keys to my blog and let her drive for a while.

I’ll be back soon with said post. The plan is tomorrow, but I’ve learned by now not to include specifics in my projected post times. “Soon” is vague enough to cover a multitude of child crises.