Keep her away from the sugar.
For reasons that are still unclear to me, Stella appeared to be the only child who – after a visit to her preschool from the Arcata Fire Department – was wearing a sticker-badge. I guess my bigger concern is that they let her actually sit near the controls inside of the fire engine. Thankfully, no one was accidentally shot across the school yard by an errant, spouting firehose.
Family Faces
Crayon on newsprint
Ls and a T (as in sTeLLa)
Crayon on newsprint
And, I’m back. With back-to-back grandparent visits squarely behind us I am delighted to say that my children have not required stays at the post-grandparent-visit rehab center. You know, the one where children are de-programmed of the delusions that life exists for no other reason than to serve their every whim.
Each grandparent visit took on a slightly different strategic plan. My mother’s decision was to divide and conquer, taking on one kid each day she was here, and letting the other go to their respective care facility while I was at work. The grandparents Walston approach (being that there were 2 of them) opted to go full monty, taking on both Walstonlings for the duration of their visit – even throwing in an all-nighter. The word glutton springs immediately to mind. The sum total of each visit however, had the same outcome: a granddaughter who has started to realize the gravity of good-bye.
During each visit, there was a moment wherein Stella calmly, yet with the power of an emotional wrecking ball, asked each grandparent to stay. With my mom, it was the morning they were playing together in the yard, and out of nowhere Stella asked, “Grandma, will you stay?” To which, my mother could only respond, “I’m not going anywhere. We can play all day.” “No, Grandma. I want you to stay.” With the grandparents Walston, it came right as they were saying their good-byes on Sunday night to head back to their trailer. No matter how delicately and logically they tried explaining their departure, Stella could only reply with one response, “Don’t go.”
I swear, there are moments when I’m absolutely certain that her honesty and innocence is going to make my heart explode within my chest and ooze out of my ears. I just wish I could conjure these feelings right about the moment I am ready to dangle her by her feet for refusing to sleep past 5:00am.
Alas, even with all of these heartwrenching moments, it took her about 32 seconds to settle right back into her old routines, like insisting on working some form of the word poop into every sentence that leaves her mouth.
Stella was resolute from the very first moment we asked her what she wanted to be for Halloween: A Beautiful Butterfly. As the pieces of her costume started coming together, however, it became more and more apparent that Beautiful Butterfly had actually metamorphosized into Disco Butterfly. The true turning point came when the thin, pink glitter belt was added. It looked as though she fluttered straight in from a Donna Summer video. As usual, this doesn’t come without some relevant back-story. Of late, Stella has found the wonderfulness that is disco. Her #1 request that she repeatedly implores from the back seat is YMCA. Yes, everyone, my child is hooked on the Village People. Running a very close second is We Are Family, as in – I got all my sisters and me. In both cases she knows the words, and sings them with great gusto. Reason 376 we know, unquestionably, that she is our child.
I took Porter’s non-verbal cues of BEING UP ALL NIGHT that he wished to go as something nocturnal. This, coupled with the fact that he is getting four teeth at once and BITES ON EVERYTHING, made it a no-brainer that he should be a bat. He looked adorable, natch, and (along with his sister) posed for about a zillion photos .
We opted for a loop around the Arcata Plaza again this year, and after witnessing the unsavory types that trick-or-treat our neighborhood, I decided we would invite ourselves over to Dore & Lewis’s house for the remainder of the evening, so as not to have to pass out candy to the taller-than-I-am “kids” that ring our doorbell into the late hours of the night. Plus, that meant we didn’t have any left-over candy that I would surely consume by the fistful.
Little did I know that we would get to see one of the more memorable moments of the evening when Steve, Lewis and Porter all went to the door to hand out candy, as Steve casually remarked that they were dressed up as a gay couple who had just adopted their first baby.