File Under: Stories, Not Serious

I've been kicking around a follow up post about labor and delivery (I've just finished reading Birth Day, by Mark Sloan, and found it to be very interesting and useful).

I've also been kicking around a follow up post about the wider issues in our health care system. (I have a funny story about my first trimester screening, which I was just notified was disallowed- not by my insurance company but by the medical group who performed the screen! My insurance company was as confused as I was by that one, which I think I have now sorted out.)

But I'm tired. I'm really, really tired. I'm wondering how I'm going to make it through the 6 weeks of work I have in front of me before my planned exit for maternity leave. I keep trying to take a day off, but finding that I have too much to do to allow it.

So I'll tell a couple of cute Pumpkin stories instead:

1. On Sunday, we picked up a hand-me-down Little Tikes playhouse and a Litle Tikes table and chairs set from a colleague of mine whose kids have outgrown them. Pumpkin adores her new house and her new table and chairs. She likes to line up her chairs, and tell me which of her friends will sit in each chair. "M- will sit in the middle. E- will sit in back. And Pumpkin will sit in front!" She was very concerned by the fact that the little playhouse only had two bench seats at its table. But then she decided she could bring one of the other chairs into the house, so all was good again- both M- and E- had a place to sit.

Earlier, when we had first brought out the table and chairs, Pumpkin sat in one chair and shooed Hubby out of the other, because it was reserved for "baby sister". I guess we should be glad that she is now reserving the seats for her playmates, since it will be quite a while before baby #2 can join in her games.

2. We took Pumpkin to the beach on Saturday morning. She ran straight to the water- none of the hesitancy we saw as recently as our Christmas-time trip to Hawaii. She splashed happily in the water with her Daddy, and got very excited when they saw a fish. She came running over to where I was standing, talking excitedly about how she'd seen "a little fish, Mommy!" Hubby tried to get her to participate in the time-honored tradition of exagerrating the size of fish, but she was having none of it. It was a little fish, and she held up her hands to demonstrate. Hubby says she got the size about right.

At one point, she lost her footing and fell over backwards in the water, effectively dunking herself. She was surprised, and had to be taken up to our blanket and wrapped in a towel to recover, but she went back in the water later. I think she would have played longer in the water, but she got cold. It is easy to forget how little she is, and how little body weight she has to help keep her warm. We dried her off, fed her the lunch we'd packed, and took her over to the adjacent playground for a long stint on the swings.

3. Despite the fact that Pumpkin's spoken vocabulary far exceeds her signed vocabulary at this point, she still enjoys signing. She loves to show us the signs for words. This weekend, she spent quite a bit of time showing us the sign for "surprised", which involves making exclamation points out of your pointer fingers, right next to your eyes. She'd come up and yell "SURPRISE!" at us, while making the sign, and wouldn't stop until we did it back to her.

Later, she showed us the sign for green, but she got very upset when we didn't do it right. No matter what we tried, it wasn't right, and that upset her greatly. We finally promised that we'd watch the Signing Time DVD later, and see if we could get it right.

I have a feeling there are more stories I should be capturing, in addition to more thoughtful posts to write. But those will have to wait for another day. Right now, I want to go lay back down on the sofa.