For Miss Avery

Avery, my eldest buglet, will be five soon (hard to believe). When she turned two, I sewed her a sockmonkey....

Amid all the high-tech gadgets and toys she received at the time, he stood out like a black eye, sadly. (A homemade black eye, too....) But I'm happy to report he's still around and still loved and still in one piece.

During a recent bugsitting gig, Avery brought him to me and pointed out some owies that she hoped I could fix. And so I took him home in my Gramma Bag, and with her in mind I've documented the procedure to prove to her just how brave he was 'under the needle' (in case there was any doubt). So without further ado:

Sockmonkey's Owie

(and How Gramma Fixed It)

First we must assess the damage. Yep -- looks like an easy repair.

(Owie #2 was in a place that he didn't want photographed for posterity....)

It's ok to be apprehensive. Dental floss will work like a charm.
Plus, you'll smell nice afterward, too!

 Step One: Thread the needle.... Step Two: Repair the tear.

 Awwww, poor sweetie. I'm stitching as fast as I can!

(Although he said nothing about it, I'm sure my choice of footwear wasn't helping....)

 All over! Here's a snuggle for being so brave.

And a band-aid, of course. Too bad I didn't have one with bananas on it!

Raisins help owies heal faster. Everyone knows this.

Looks like somebody's feeling better already!
But it's best to take things easy for a bit, Sockmonkey....

So here's a handkerchief sling.

And a kiss.

Ready to return home to Avery!

Good Advice

I'm not away. Just busy. And this week has been overly stressful....

My family's been aware of the goings on here, and yesterday my eldest Grandbug told me (complete with wagging finger), "Gramma, just try to forget your troubles and have some fun today!"

Good advice.

So she and I spent the afternoon together at The Pond Near Her House. We sat on the wooden dock and 'took the pond's temperature' by dipping sticks into the icy water. We looked for floating snail shells and fished for mermaids.

Fluffy cotton-candy clouds sailed by and blocked the sun. "Gramma, if you could ride on one of those clouds, which one would you choose?" I picked one and she picked the one right next to it so we could hold hands together while traversing the sky.

My cell phone rang and I answered it. It was Grampa. With a little wrinkle in her forehead, the Grandbug watched me converse, then when I ended the call asked worriedly, "Does this mean you have to go home? Because I don't want you to go home!"

There would be no going home yet.

Hours (and a bit of sunburn) later, there was bubble stuff and sidewalk chalk and the sharing of Freezie Pops. "Gramma, how about you taste my purple and I taste your yellow?" Ants were studied and leaves were picked apart. Airplanes were watched as they cut across the sky. Would they fly through our clouds, we wondered? Nope. Whew!

A most excellent day. And when I returned home again, I discovered my troubles had pretty much taken care of themselves.

Her words were more than just good advice. They were absolutely magickal.
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Snowflakes and Smiles

(Would you believe we're supposed to be napping?)

There are snowflakes in my village today! Only a few, but still.

And I have yet to pay attention proper to my favorite season of the year, so if they know what's good for them, they'd better make their visit brief. Just sayin'.

Because there are still loose Fest-related ends to gather and tie, belated birthdays to celebrate, Halloween flotsam to gleefully wade through, and so much battening down of hatches to do before the snow comes.

And dang if this girl's battery isn't down for the count....

But it's not so depleted that I can't enjoy a Bug Day. And yesterday was IT. I got to pick my eldest Bug up from preschool and hold her mittened hand all the way back to my house, stopping repeatedly to check out fairy-sized holes in oak trees and add acorn caps to our pockets. Every step of our walk was a cold and blustery adventure, its soundtrack one of wind in the trees and the crunch of leaf piles underfoot and the enthusiastic, run-on sentence delightfulness that is the Grandbug's communication style, itself animated dramatically and told in notes that only dogs can hear.

Before our coats were even off at our destination she was cleaning pet dishes and dispensing foodstuffs (she takes her jobs at my house uber-seriously), and then we were on the floor together, re-enacting at her suggestion her favorite moments of this year's Festival. A stuffed chicken became the Piccolo Pony. A toy firetruck was the ladder for our dolls to mount it. (One doll was afraid she'd fall, but another said in a cute cartoon voice, "I will hold onto you. You'll see -- it's FUN.") Then a plastic bowl became the Butterfly Ride. As Avery gently twirled the bowl in the air she said to me, "Gramma, remember when you took me on the Butterfly Ride? That ride was awesome." (Said with her characteristic lisp -- 'awe-thumb.' The ride is a no-frills device made to rotate as a result of two adults in the center pushing it manually. This girl has already been on theme park stuff that would give me nightmares, but she remembers the Butterfly Ride. And it was awesome....)

Later on, Grampa James surprised her by arriving home early (I'm not the only one who thinks a Bug Day is worth dropping everything for) and he suggested we all bundle up and walk to nearby Hardees for lunch. Avery explained to him that her walk with me from preschool earlier was all fun and stuff but "my armth and legth and feet and handth got really really tired!", so he dug the stroller out from the garage and tucked her into it for the trip. Hamburgers got cold what with all the excited talking, but milk was consumed so I called it a satisfactory lunch. And on the way home we took a more scenic route and I asked her what her favorite part of the day was so far and she said, "All of it."

Once back again at Tumbledown, Avery informed us that she was tired and demanded that all three of us cram into my bed for a nap. But a book must be read first, of course. Bless her, she picked Where's Waldo and searched each page with serious intent, which allowed me and Grampa to, ahem, 'rest our eyes' in turn. (Because there's a brand of tired that only Bugs can manufacture, and it'll knock.you.OUT.)

No napping occurred. No surprises there. But there's just something about spending a chilly Autumn afternoon curled up on a candlewick bedspread with a book and a Bug.

I may have felt even more tired afterward, but my heart was charged to the absolute max. :)
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Fishing for Mermaids

Here she is. See the twinkle in her eye? :)

James and I drove to my Youngest's house to babysit for a bit late last Saturday afternoon, and Miss Avery (my 3-year-old grandbug) conned the two of us into watching Disney's 'The Little Mermaid' for the billionth time while she ate her supper. 

 

The first time we all watched it together, Avery sat between me and James on the couch and used my arm to cover her eyes when Ursula the sea witch robbed the mermaid Ariel of her voice. Then when the film was over she dubbed me Ursula and herself Ariel and we played 'Little Mermaid' together. Grampa James got to be dashing Prince Erik, a character in our play that was never called upon to do anything, and so he sat on the sidelines and watched instead. (Her little brother -- the real Prince Erik -- was not given a role at all. He apparently wasn't old enough for our game.)

 

I played Ursula to the best of my ability, curling my fingers and arching my eyebrows and mwa-ha-haaaaaaaaing with evil delight. It was a fun part to play and Avery soon saw the advantage in it. It didn't take long for her to switch our roles and soon she was playing Ursula most often, snatching my voice away with wicked glee and refusing to give it back. And I really played up Ariel, too -- pointing at my throat in a panic and silently begging for mercy while Avery crossed her arms and shook her head at me, ignoring my pleas. Her pretend power was obviously intoxicating, but eventually her soft heart won out and she'd zap my voice back. (Unsurprisingly, when the movie ended on Saturday she again asked me to play Ariel to her Ursula, and I couldn't help but think how important that pretend power must be to someone who's only three years old.)

 

At dusk last Saturday evening I walked Avery to the nearby lake to look for tadpoles while Grampa James stayed home and played with her little brother Erik. She brought her fishing pole and I brought the bucket and the two of us sat on the edge of the dock and gazed down into the shallow water while she dunked the rubber plug on the end of her line. 

 

"Hmmm. I'm not sure I see anything," I said. "Well, I see water bugs," said Avery. After a while she thought aloud that perhaps something would come to her 'hook' if she sang, so she did. And then she feigned a tug on her line and reeled it in. "Look Gramma, there's a mermaid on my hook! Put her in the bucket!" I grabbed the bucket and in she went.

 

Five invisible mermaids later, Avery pretended to catch an invisible sea witch. There was much fun shrieking and feigned panic and shouts of "throw her back!" A handful of high school kids partying on the end of the dock walked past us on their way to the parking lot and a boy (seeing the plug on the end of Avery's line) snickered, "Catch anything?" And Avery immediately piped up in her little lisp, "Uh-huh! We caught five mermaids! And a sea witch, too! But we threw her back before she could take away our voices!" 

 

Everyone stopped in their tracks. All that was missing was the sound of crickets. And then after a moment of stunned silence a girl whispered, "That. Is. SO. CUTE."

 

:)

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