family: ... anticipation....

3 big pluses: park, sunshine, cousin!

You can plan all you like, but things aren't necessarily going to work out the way you expect. For instance, it's gorgeous, our first real summery weather, and the park was in the cards for us. Cousin Maggie was coming to spend the night before helping with the fund raiser tonight, and the girls were thrilled. But we hadn't planned on K getting sick!

Cousin Maggie arrived last night (K: "When Maggie going get here?" L: "When Maggie get here?") and approximately 15 seconds after she arrived they'd lassoed her into watching 2 (!) Saddle Clubs with them. While I made dinner.

At dinner K said she was cold and insisted on a coat and ended up curled in my lap, and after I bought a clue and took her temperature (102), I realized what was happening. She'd eaten almost nothing, but she was bleary-eyed and miserable and so I carried her off to bed still in her clothes and jacket.

L was her normal, crazy, wound up self and "galloped" back and forth across the kitchen while K quickly fell into a feverish sleep. Somehow we made it through the doldrums of the evening (Maggie kindly entertaining L) and eventually we got her to bed as well. And just to be clear, I've compressed a fair amount of angst into the phrase "got her to bed." And then I made ice cream. (You gotta do what you gotta do.)

Maggie (at the kitchen table with her laptop open): I never do homework on Friday night.
me (at the sink with piles of dirty dishes): What do you do?
Maggie: Watch shows on the internet.
me: I can hook you up on our network.
Maggie: No, that would be a bad idea.

Eventually we each went to bed. Or rather, I left her at her homework and climbed upstairs past those sleeping munchkins and into my bed.

A timeline from there:

• 4.30a - L wants to come into my bed. I cave (strike one)
  
• 4.31a - 5.20a - rattling pacifiers, tossing and turning
• 5.21a - she wants to go downstay-ers.
• 5.22a - I tell her ok, but we have to sneak past K (strike two).She agrees.
  
• 5.23a - We sneak past K (L (shouting in my ear): "I whispering!")
  
• 5.24a - 5.59a we occupy the kitchen, the floor of which makes up the ceiling of the basement room Maggie was sleeping in. L continues her galloping from the night before, periodically asking "When Maggie going to wake up?" and "Why Maggie not up?" I contemplate attempting to explain mornings that start after 5.30a and decide it's not worth the effort.
  
• 6a K appears, seeming much better
• 6.01a - 7.59a-ish, both L and K wonder loudly why Maggie hadn't shown her face yet.
• 8a-ish Maggie gets tired of the thundering above her head and crawls upstairs. (It's hell being a college student in a toddler household.)
• 8a - 8.15a - Maggie has a chance to have some breakfast before we head to the park.
• 9.15a - 10.45a - Urcolini Park for biking and sliding and climbing.
  
  
  K, fading
  (you'd think I would have caught a clue)
  
  
• 10.46a - both girls announce they need "privacy" and go into the van
  
• 10.47a - 11.10a - Maggie and I are trapped, waiting
• 11.11a - L needs a change. K too, but she hasn't pooped. Which is just as well, given that I've run out of diapers.
  
• 11.20a 1.30p - back home for naps.
• 1p - 3.30p, my sister visits
• 1.30 - girls up, K feeling miserable
• 1.35-1.40p - calling around to neighbors to find ginger ale (Tom & Christine come through!)
• 1.40 - 2.50p - girls drinking ginger ale
• 3.30p, my sister takes Maggie away, abandoning me with a badly fading K and a crazy-active L.
• 3.31p - I resort to 2 Saddle clubs and a Curious George so I can make an early dinner (both girls have "eyebags" and are due for an early night)
• 4.50p 5.25p - dinner and dessert (ice cream for K and a piece of candy for L)
• 5.30p - baths with tears beyond tears
  L (after I get K out and dressed and tucked in on the couch): Wath thith! It pretty amazing! (throws soggy wash cloth across the tub where it slaps against the far wall and slides down to the floor).
  me: amazing.
  L: Wath Daddy! Wath! (repeats, this time with the wash cloth sticking) See! It pretty amazing!!
  
• 6.15p-6.30p - jammies and books, K snuggled miserably next to me
  
• 6.45p, K asleep
• 6.30p - 7.15p, L jabbering and yelling for me
  

And now it's time to clean up the kitchen, eat some ice cream myself (hey, I ate all the broccoli after asking if they wanted me to make some and having them tell me "yes"), have a cookie from the cookies and iced coffee that Kenny & Sheila brought me this morning after reading about yesterday's "coffee incident" (they're just like that), and then to bed I think, even though there are plenty of things yet to do including laundry, building bookshelves, vacuuming....

Less than a day to go!

Good night.

Candy is good!
(smiling L)