Dinner Party and Ear Pain

Last night, the girls got to have a dinner play-date with two of their best friends, Nate and Anja. While the typical dynamic during Nate and Anja play-dates is for Julia and Nate to go off and play some "big-kid" games that the little ones don't partake in, last night all four kids seemed to enjoy playing all together. They spent an extensive amount of time building with blocks, working somewhat parallel and independently on their own constructions while also taking time to admire each others work:




Julia and Nate busied themselves making parking lots for the matchbox cars, while Madeleine wanted to build a "blanket." As Julia pointed out, it wound up looking much more like the pile of mattresses from "The Princess and the Pea" than a single blanket, but I appreciate the creative mind at work.

As we all sat down to dinner, Ethan decided to put on some kids' music in the background to keep the little ones entertained and allow time for the grown-ups to talk. He couldn't have chosen better music than "Free to Be You and Me." As soon as the opening song began, the kids all lit up, and as I turned around to glance at the little art table, where Madeleine and Anja were dining, I found it empty. Looking into the living room, I discovered them dancing with wild abandon:



It wasn't long before it was a four-person dance party:



We did manage to wrangle everybody back over the the table to eat dinner, and afterwards, the kids all took their dessert into the living room to better hear the music. Ethan and I got to see a flash-forward to Julia's upcoming teenage years, as she and Nate wound up sitting on the couch together for the entirety of the album, listening to each track intently and occasionally commenting to each other on things they liked about the album. Madeleine, as you can probably guess, was not interested in sitting quietly to listen, and instead continued to flail herself ungracefully around the living room floor with thumping feet and "bizzying" twirls. During the tracks which are spoken rather than sung, she would look at me in utter confusion, inquiring, "Mommy? What's DAT one?" I know that in this household CD tracks that don't contain music are UNHEARD of.

Despite her busy social evening, Julia had a pretty rough night of sleep, largely due to a bout of ear pain. In fact, I tried to get her into the doctor today, but they're all booked up until tomorrow, which complicates things. In the middle of the night, I heard a sudden wailing, and assuming it was Madeleine and that she had dropped binky out of her crib, I went rushing into her room. It turns out Madeleine was not the wailer, although she WAS sitting up cross-legged in her crib, hanging out with Cowie. After laying her back down, I went to check on Julia, who was writhing around, half-asleep, in her bed, crying out over and over. I tried to rouse her and ask her what was wrong, but unfortunately she is prone to both sleep-talking and sleep-walking, and makes absolutely no sense when she's not fully awake (for example, the night a few weeks ago when she came to wake up Ethan and mumbled on and on about how she wanted more mucus in her nose.) She kept slurring something incoherent about her blanket, but once I finally had her fully awake, she told me her ear was hurting. I wrapped my arms around her and tried to snuggle her back asleep, commenting, "I wonder if you have an ear infection."

"Mama!" she exclaimed, as if she had just discovered that we have some secret, life-long bonding type of thing in common. "That's what I was thinking!"

As I lay cuddling her, she grew quiet, and I complacently patted myself on the back, thinking I had relaxed her back to sleep, when suddenly she observed brightly, "So, Mama, I saw that Madeleine brought Puddles with her to nap today!"

Needless to say, it was a long time before she was able to get back to sleep, and both Ethan and I lost a good amount of our own sleep because of it. I do wish I could get her into the doctor today, especially because, in her own words, "My ear is hurting so much that I was just, like, pressing it into my pillow, and I just kept saying, 'Ear, PLEASE stop hurting!"

This morning, she was still asleep with half an hour until school, so I regretfully had to wake her up. She stared at me groggily, then climbed out of bed and drowsily followed me down the stairs. "Mama?" she informed me. "Sometimes when I was asleep and I just woke up, I still feel a little bit sleepy, like I could just fall back asleep, so I feel like my head is just wobbling all around."

My poor wobbly-headed, sore-eared little girl! Here's hoping the doctor's visit tomorrow will provide some relief for her!