Sozlet stories

Secure children tend to see happy pictures.

:-)

A couple of random ones:

My mom was here last weekend, and wanted some feedback from me about a work situation. Sozlet listened to the whole exchange, and after I'd given my take, got her grandma's attention and earnestly said, "You should listen to what my mom says, she gives really good advice."

Sweetie.

Last night, we were talking about how our (my and E.G.'s) 10th anniversary is coming up, and I was musing about "what" anniversary it was, like 1st is paper or something, 5th is wood or something, and she offered, "Maybe it's styrofoam?"

Yeah! Maybe she'll make you something out of FLOAM!!!

Just teasing. I read that thread to my son a while back. Now every time that commercial comes on, he screams at the TV.

Apparently, the tenth anniversary is Tin, Aluminum, or even better, Diamond - depending on which works for you:

http://www.happy-anniversary.com/year-of-marriage/year-ten.html

Heh! What's he scream, Eva? (Floam is evil evil evil...)

Yeah, I found that... tin?? Aluminum??? Eh, it's not like we've paid that much attention to the "what" part of anniversaries thus far, anyway.

My manager's 10th anniversary is in a little under 2 weeks. Since the appropriate (?) gift is tin, we were thinking about getting him a musical bottle/can opener for his favourite hockey team.

OK, that wasn't exactly my favourite idea, but tin ... it's hard to be very creative with that. We can't really get him a box of canned goods to take home

That sounds like a good one actually.

One of my favorite stores has some Mexican saints and holy figures out of tin, they're kind of cool, maybe something like that.


Most of the tube discussion stuff happened here (ear infections, whether to get tubes in her ears, etc.), so I'll plonk in a link to the update:

http://www.able2know.com/forums/viewtopic.php?p=2070738#2070738

So the "is ____ really real?" questioning continues, this time about the tooth fairy (lost her first tooth last night!) To bring something I'd wanted to respond to over from DrewDad's thread:



It's not really the knowing or not knowing, or lying or not lying, that I was trying to figure out. It was what answer would be appropriate, what she was going for. We do a lot of magical realism, for lack of a better term, talking about things like they're real when we both know they're not (at least not in literal terms). Like, I wouldn't ask her if Jones is really real, we just carry on talking about him and what he's up to. (He made an agreement with her a while ago that he wouldn't go on vacation anymore, evidently, and has been trying to help with her whole friend situation, giving her some good advice. "He's just always trying to help," she says, with a fond shake of her head.)

So, that's how we talk about Santa, and any number of other things, and I guess I thought she already knew that they were in the magical realism realm rather than being really-real. I think she does, actually, but some combination of factors has her slipping out of that way of thinking for a bit, and I don't know if she really wants to be jarred all the way out of it.

For now, I owned up to the fact that the Easter Bunny is really parents (since she found the evidence), and left things open about Santa and the tooth fairy. The tooth fairy made a visit last night and sozlet was awed and thrilled when she found the packet (a $5 bill, hey, it's her first tooth ever) this morning.

Wow, $5? Forty years ago it was a quarter! The tooth fairy must have come into some money.

This makes sense. And I guess if she found a Jones animation on your computer someday, she'd react similarly as she did with santa clause.

Any news from the chimpanzees in the tree with the pet fox, or have they completely faded into magical realism limbo?

They faded a long time ago, unfortunately. (Plus they lived in the tree in our old yard, not here.) I printed out the Compleat Sozlet Stories for E.G. last xmas, and read her a lot of it (including the orangutans ["orange gorillas"] and their pet fox story), and she loved the story but had no partcular memory of it. Sigh.

Tooth fairy drama continues. I had stored the tooth in a small silver box between when it came out and when it was sewed into a little pouch, put under her pillow, and spirited away by the tooth fairy. Last night, she told E.G. that she wanted to look in the box, and if the tooth was there that meant that the tooth fairy wasn't really real. She crossed her fingers and crossed her arms in the way she does when she's really hoping for something, opened the box, and when she saw there was no tooth, started crying. :-( E.G. tried to figure it out -- was she sad that the tooth fairy was real? No. Did she want to see the tooth? Yes. Beyond that, she didn't want to talk about it. (And was resolutely changing the subject and not wanting to talk about it when he told me what happened.)

She had an eyelash on her cheek just before she went to sleep, and I told her she could make a wish on it about her tooth if she wanted and who knows, maybe the tooth fairy would bring it back since it was the very first one and was extra-special. She made a mighty wish (eyes squeezed shut, total focus), and after she fell asleep I put the tooth pouch back under her pillow.

She was absolutely thrilled... beyond thrilled... ecstatic to find it this morning. Hugged it, kissed it, wreathed in smiles. After the initial reaction, she bounded over to the pouch with the money in it, looked, and exclaimed, "And the tooth fairy left my money, too!" (I hadn't considered taking the money, ah well.)

Happy girl.

Not quite sure where we'll go with all of this, we'll see. The feeling I get at this point is that she knows all of this is not real but is afraid I'm going to go and make it obvious so we can't even pretend anymore, and she wants to keep pretending. So I think I'm going to roll with it until I get some definite indication from her otherwise.

From the "For What It's Worth" Dep't.

I wanted to keep my son's first tooth and put it in his baby book, just like my mother did with mine. I had shown him my first tooth, and he was excited about losing his. I explained that my mother had asked the Tooth Fairy if she would please let us keep the tooth since it was the first one, and she agreed.

So when the tooth came out, we wrote out a letter to the Tooth Fairy and asked her. We put it under his pillow along with his tooth. The next morning, he found a dollar bill there along with his tooth. The Tooth Fairy had scribbled a note on the bottom of his letter in purple ink..."Yes, you may keep this one since it's the first."

The next time he lost a tooth, he wanted to write her another letter so he could save that tooth, too. I told him no, that was just for first teeth. He thought about it for a while, then said that he'd decided not to give it to the Tooth Fairy. I reminded him that he wouldn't get any money, but he said he'd rather have the tooth. It was part of him, and he wanted to keep it so he could look at it.

They were HIS teeth, so I figured it was his decision to make.





We have a small box full of teeth now.

Soz--

You might ask her what she thinks the Tooth Fairy does with the teeth?

This might open discussion--although some turmoil is too involved for words.

As usual when there is a long break, some pedestrian ones mostly to get myself back in the habit:

***

The budding Buddhist:

Sozlet: Have you ever tried thinking of nothing?

Me: It's hard, isn't it?

Sozlet: <blank look, sustained for about 10 seconds, and followed by rueful sigh> OK, I can't...

(We had a pretty good talk about Buddhism after that, actually, I showed her some of the Buddhas we had and talked about koans and stuff.)

***

She's been teaching everyone she knows how to swim. And it's working!

***

She's a social butterfly at the pool, hanging out with this kid for a while and then that one while I talk to people or read. On the way out the other day, stopped and chatted with the mom of a kid she'd been hanging out with, who related that sozlet came over and put her towel down, straightened it all out, and then asked the kid if she could straighten out the kid's towel, too, and proceeded to do so.

Great stuff! Say, how did the problem with the overly freindly pool people turn out?

Overall not bad, I think there may still be a confrontation in the cards, not sure.

I'm trying to remember where I left it -- I think it was after my last update on the other thread that the whole thing happened again, with sozlet hanging back but the two men being instigators. I tried to do some sign communication when I didn't like how things were going, like signing "careful," and she'd yell back things like "Be careful about what?"

I decided that I did NOT like, if nothing else, the utter disregard the men had for my uneasiness -- it was on display (the "be careful" thing, a few others that were even more obvious, can't remember right now) -- and when we left I had a serious talk with her and said that since even when she was trying not to do the touchy stuff they made it happen, I didn't want her playing with the grown-ups anymore, but she could play with the little girl if she wanted to. I said that if the grown-ups had any problem with that, she should tell them to talk to me.

What I plan/ planned to do if that happens is say something like, "Look, I should have said this at the beginning and I apologize that I didn't, but we really want to be consistent with what messages we give her about safety," etc. If they get pissed, that's OK, I'm ready to deal with that.

Anyway, since then she hasn't played with any of them -- including the little girl, though I said she could -- and we've seen them several times. She now knows a lot more people at the pool and can nearly always find someone else to play with, anyway. They seemed a little mystefied. I'm cordial when they make eye contact -- not complete cold shoulder -- but I'm definitely cool. The moment for direct discussion just hasn't happened, though I've been ready a few times, and I suspect it will happen at some point.

Sigh. We'll see.

*****

Earlier this evening, we were talking about school uniforms and E.G. said something like, is it uncomfortable to wear a skirt in the winter time? And I said well, depends on the tights. He said well what if you have bare legs? Sozlet said, "You have to ask?"

How well does EG handle being talked down to from below?

He laughed. :-)

Oh and she's lost another tooth, that one hasn't been given to the tooth fairy. When people ask her how much she got for it she's said that she hasn't put it under her pillow "yet," so she may still change her mind, but no indication so far. (Happened maybe a few weeks ago?) I think we'll probably end up with a bunch of little teeth too, Eva. :-)