The weekly epistle

It has been a long week.

K gave me a cold which isn't so bad on its own, but combined with physical issues is knocking me flat. I woke up today and thought about how I was up quite late finishing work last night, and would have to work until 4 at the museum today, then go home and work another four hours, and then spend all weekend doing solo childcare while B works. Then I took a sick day from the online job. I made it through the day at the museum more or less and was so, so thankful to be able to come home and collapse with no more work in sight.

It helped that it was deader than a nuclear crater. We had three visitors the entire day, and two of them were members of the Friends. This would be because everyone else in the area was downtown at the parade for the Phillies along with over a million other people. It was sort of unreal, the every other part of the city was deserted. B's library had barely any people, his student workers had been in school with only 5 or 8 people in their classes. My boss said that her daughter's teachers were tacitly encouraging them to skip school to go to the parade, saying things like "If you're sick tomorrow, you can hand this work in on Monday."

I sent a very cute dinosaur to preschool this morning (didn't manage to get any pictures, but I'm pretty sure I'll be able to get her back into her costume again to get pictures). I was a little amazed that she's been so definite for the past month about her costume. She said dinosaur when I asked her a month ago, she still said dinosaur when I asked her two weeks later and suggested some other costumes, she was even steadfast in a choosing a dinosaur costume last week when I took her to the store*, passing up several princess outfits that she admired, but didn't even think about taking. I was perfectly fine with her being a dinosaur (heck, I downright encourage it), I've just heard too many horror stories about kids her age being all enthusiastic about a costume only to decide after it's been bought or made that they want to be something completely different, so I was trying to cover my bases by giving her ample opportunity to change her mind. But clearly my daughter isn't the fickle sort. This doesn't really surprise me.

I think she ate her weight in sugar today. She was exhausted coming home from daycare and already had a bag of candy from there, so we decided not to try going around to houses this year, a decision cemented when we discovered the bag of candy a nice neighbor left on our porch.** She was enthusiastic about handing out candy briefly, then fell down in a meltdown of sugar, exhaustion and excitement. Hopefully she's now sleeping off the diabetic coma.

Believe it or not, this is an improvement over last year when it was raining, K had a cold and she refused to put on her costume, even just for a few pictures. I'm sure next year she'll have more stamina and be able to make it through the day and still have energy to go out to some houses.

*I originally intended to make her costume by getting a hooded sweatshirt and sweatpants and modifying them, but for some reason, it was impossible to find green sweats in toddler sizes. And as it turns out, if you wait until the week before Halloween, there's still a pretty good selection of costumes and you can get a fairly nice one for less than $10. Something to keep in mind if your child wants to be something that can be easily found off the rack.

**I just opened the bag and wow, it's some primo stuff. Reese's Pieces and Junior Mints and not a cheapo brand like Smarties or Dum Dums in sight. Gosh, you rule, Mike from Next Door! And now I feel it is my duty as a good parent to prevent K from eating yet more sugar by making sure it's unavailable to her. It's my Duty.