Weekend Adventures

The weekend started early at our house....

Friday, literally as I am unlocking the door at 0800 after walking to school and back, the phone is ringing from the counselor at school. Masha decided to throw a crying hysteric spell in her 1st grade class & when Mrs. T couldn't calm her down, took her to the office. So I brushed my teeth, threw on some mascara, grabbed my Love & Logic Magic Book, a Russian dictionary and headed back to school. She was all giggles & smiles as they brought her up front to see me, and she didn't actually want to talk to me at first, so I just sat down in the office. After about 10 minutes, she finally told me that she was tired, she wanted me to come to school and take her home so that she could take a nap. (Guess who finally got caught sneaking the cd walkman to bed to listen to music late at night.) She then got 2 choices: 1. play in Field Day or 2. sit in Ms. P's office all day & I'd get her after I was done with work. Took another 10 minutes & she decided to go play in Field Day. Since I was sitting across from the front office, I figured that it would be politically incorrect for me to wring her neck, but I really wanted to. She got the point later though, because I was so late getting to the hospital that it was after 7pm before I got home. She spent 2.5 hours asking Dad where I was and kept hearing that I was at work. After she'd been home an hour or so she told Michael that she had "cried really hard and had made Mom come up to school twice." So I'm buoyed by the fact that she spent all day thinking about her actions. I'd be more optimistic if she'd connect cause & effect with "stay up too late -- be tired all day", but that's probably asking too much.

Then on Saturday, 50 minutes before people show up for the party & she had a complete wall-eyed fit because she was watching a movie (in Russian) with English subtitles for the girl-next-door (GND) and she decided she didn't like the sub-titles. (GND) got sent home, and after the fifth round of "Uh-Oh, how-sad-little-room-time-coming-up...." I had to hold the door shut for 20 minutes solid. She did the screaming mimi's, the bash her head into the door, the throw her body around the room. The Works. Got to come out about 20 minutes before party time & her only comment was that her head hurt. Pardon me for a second -- DuH! By the time people were here, she was fine. Michael missed the whole thing b/c he was at the grocery store on a last-minute run. You would have been proud of me though, I didn't lecture, even though I really wanted to. Had a good birthday. This is truly sad though. When I asked her when her birthday was she didn't know the day, and her first response was "Six." It was in fact just a couple of weeks before her sixth birthday that she entered into the orphanage. She got the concept of birthday party pretty quick though, like in 30 seconds flat as I was explaining and people started getting out of their cars out front.

Sunday was remarkably fun and non-painful.

Tonight, when she didn't get to run next door to see GND (GND was already on her way to bed at 8pm), then she started with whining and worked up to a small hysterics fit. Only needed two rounds of "Uh-Oh, how-sad-little-room-time-coming-up...." with 3 minutes of door holding, one body slamming of door, and two thinking periods (left early with the first one and so got to start over on her 5 minutes.) Bath time then proceeded to go smoother than usual. She then lost her 3rd tooth tonight (1st one in America). Apparently, in Russia you flush your tooth down the toilet & make a wish. As evidenced by my interceding rapidly to explain the whole tooth-fairy concept as she was about to do just that. Didn't have time to look-up "fairy" so the "tooth princess" is coming to buy her tooth later tonight. And we both ended up on our hands & knees searching for a small baby tooth on tooth-colored bathroom tile. Probably one of my more funny moments today. Note to self -- keep a stash of small bills & big coins at home for such occasions.... It was in fact the easiest time we had putting her to bed in about 6 nights! For a good laugh you should have seen Michael when Masha dropped her tooth in his hand and then grinned & was bleeding from her lower jaw. He totally grossed out. When he came to complain, I was as usual the "Queen of No Sympathy" and told him what goes around comes around, since he'd dropped his broken tooth in my hand about 2 months ago. http://tame-do.blogspot.com/2006/02/just-in-case-we-thought-life-was-dull.html The walkman got removed Friday night, so here's hoping that she's very deeply asleep by now.

edited: Mission accomplished. Michael did well as my stealth tooth retriever!