Chicken bug and chaos

Madeleine woke up this morning with some important news for me: "Mommy, I got CHICKEN bug!"

This is something she has been talking about for weeks now. Even her baby-sitter mentioned to me that Madeleine was going on and on about having chicken bug while I was out at work. Madeleine doesn't seem terribly troubled by her chicken bug; she is merely interested in announcing it to the world.

For those of you wondering what exactly a chicken bug is, I'm afraid to report that none of us have any idea either. Our attempts to find out have gone something like this:

MADELEINE: I have CHICKEN BUG!
JULIA: Do you mean chicken POX, Madeleine?
MADELEINE: Yeah, I have CHICKEN BUG!
ME: Do you mean bug bites?
MADELEINE: Yeah, I have bug bite. I have CHICKEN BUG!
ME: Can I see your chicken bug?
MADELEINE: (holding out her finger)
ME: Do you mean a hangnail?
MADELEINE: Yeah, it's CHICKEN BUG!

She was at least temporarily distracted from her chicken bug today due to the weird October snowstorm that hit the northeast, resulting in loss of power in our neighborhood, plenty of downed trees, a transformer that fell on our street and caught fire in the road, and many damaged telephone wires. In fact, Julia and Madeleine didn't even seem to mind that we were freezing our buns off in our unheated house yesterday because they were so fascinated by the snowy scene out the window. Standing on the bathroom stool and one of our little red chairs, the girls were like sentries at the window, staring out at the snow and reporting on any new developments in the street below. When we went out in the car as a family later in the day, Madeleine delightedly exclaimed, "We're going to the SNOW!" We were not, in fact, going to the snow, but instead to the Y so that I could run and then take a shower, but the mere fact that we were out driving in the snowy wonderland was excitement enough for the girls. We wound up taking the most roundabout route possible to get to the Y, due to the fact that nearly every road we normally take was closed. As we squeezed our car by an enormous downed tree, Julia astutely declared, "Mommy, this is just like the "Discord" episode of My Little Pony, because everything is all chaos!"

Chaos, indeed. Let's see how trick-or-treating goes tomorrow in the aftermath of the storm... you may wind up seeing pictures of Rapunzel and Ballerina-in-Boots...