Nurse, we need cheese, STAT

When injured, most of Stephanie's responses are very toddler typical.  Look of surprise.  Look to Mom to see if she is okay (who is no doubt grimacing because that really looked like it would hurt).  Realization that it does indeed hurt.  Face wrinkle, burst into sobby scream, run for Mom.  And here's where it takes a unique Stephanie turn.  When she starts to pull it together, she will inevitably gulp out, "I... want.... cheese..."  One to three slices of nearly any variety is the typical dosage, and it normally kicks in right away. Now, the question is, would our HSA cover it if I got a prescription and can anyone recommend a doctor that will prescribe cheese PRN?

Name Guilt

You know the fun of bringing home a pet and naming it?  Sometimes it's easy.  When I was 16ish, I told Mom that whenever we got another pet, I was going to name it Gizmo- fish, cat, dog, I didn't care.  Shortly after this declaration, we got to the river house, and there was a little orange cat in the yard.  It was clearly our Gizmo, who went on to live a long and happy life on the farm.  The name worked for her, and I never questioned it.  Years later, I brought Boston home.  I had him for several days before I could come up with a name.  I tried Lazlo, a la Real Genius, but it just didn't stick.  Finally, I came up with Boston because he was black and white and so annoyingly dog-like.  A few months later after I started dating Kevin, Kevin said that he thought Boston's real name was Pork Chop, which did seem right, but the name ship had sailed.  All of this to say that I think we really missed the boat on naming our most recent pet, Fatty.  Fatty was a small caterpillar that Kevin found in the garden for Stephanie.  She helped him capture Fatty and put him in a jar with fennel.  They covered the top of the jar with a very porous fabric, and periodically freshened his food.  I named him Fatty right away because he was, as promised in that wonderful book, a very hungry caterpillar.  Within a handful of days, he turned into a chrysalis, which, as far as I can tell, is a fancy man word for cocoon that is harder to spell and harder to pronounce correctly, thus making it the preferred term.  The name Fatty was still working for me, though.  Well, this morning, Kevin called upstairs that Fatty was a butterfly.  He rushed the jar upstairs to us, and we told Stephanie that we were going to set him free.  She thought to go out onto the deck of our bedroom and not back downstairs, which was really funny to me, because I forget that deck exists, and she came up with the idea just seconds ahead of Kevin.  At first, Fatty the butterfly (and this is where I am having a hard time with the name Fatty) looked a little deflated and unsure about flying, and we were afraid he/she wasn't going to make it  Stephanie was nonplussed, she merely said "I get new Fatty".  Fortunately, with a little rest, Fatty took off flying just wonderfully.  I hope Fatty has a good life, and maybe doesn't hate us for such an inappropriate moniker.

The first day with Fatty

A few days later, really living up to his/her name

The chrysalis is attached to the fabric on top

Fatty, the beautiful butterfly

Not looking so lively here, but was fine several minutes later

The (every other year) Yearly Meal

There are lots of things to love about Alaina, but I think the part where I can always tell her what I am thinking and the part where I can always expect the same might be my favorite.  My last few trips home, I have spent a lot of time in the car and visiting people.  I love to see the people, and I don't really mind the car, but in the end, it doesn't feel much like a break.  So this trip, I decided that if someone wanted to see me and Stephanie, they were going to have to come to us.  And that is what I told Alaina, because I can just tell her that.  She went for a run and came up with an excellent plan that involved her coming to me, which I felt a little bad about, but she said that she wanted to (the favorite part: She said she wanted to = I knew she did want to = guilt absolved).  Anyway, in what is becoming a bit of a tradition, we hit up a German restaurant (which are oddly hard to come by) for a good meal and beer with Stephanie in tow.  Stephanie did not have much of the meal (and obviously no beer, at least not that I noticed), but she mostly sat in her seat and mostly didn't disturb any other patron's meals.  Photo-bug Alaina made sure we captured the memory, just like we did 2 years ago in North Carolina.  Not a lot has changed since then.  Stephanie is a bigger and harder to take out to eat, and I apparently order larger beers now (which may or may not be connected to the part where Stephanie is harder to take out :)), but German food is still fried and covered in gravy, Alaina is still great company and we, apparently, still favor the same hair styles...

Family Camp

Stephanie has two camping books that she loves, and she pretends to camp at school, so Kevin picked this weekend for the first ever family camping trip.  I really enjoy camping, Kevin LOVES camping, so he went all in for this adventure.  He found a park on the lake that offered a hike-in trail with primitive camping sites.  Stephanie is a great walker, and it was a 4.8 mile loop, so we figured that if walking went quickly, we would do the whole loop, and if it didn't, we would hike in and then hike out.  The trails were quite manageable for Stephanie, but there was some hand holding to get over rocks and roots, and in the end, we walked in about 1 mile.

Yes, Kevin DID hike her bee pillow in, and OF COURSE Santa came!

At that point, we found an awesome spot to camp.  It was a little sooner than we planned on stopping, but we went for the super cool site.

In the end, it wasn't a bad idea to stop because Stephanie did not go to sleep very early (the tent was way cool and Mom and Dad in there too was just too exciting to get settled), so she was pretty tired in the morning and only walked about two-thirds of the distance out, choosing to take the Mom transport system the remaining length.  At the camp that night, she was really excited about roasting marshmallows, which she waved near the fire for a whole 6 seconds, took a bite, spit it out and declared "too soft".  But the chocolate and graham crackers were a hit, as was the hot dog dinner.

We all had a nice time.  Since she was tired this morning, I could not get a good sense of whether or not she would want to do it again soon, but I'll ask her sometime next week, and I'm sure by then we will be able to judge her true feeling on camping.  Either way, we are up for more camping and hope she enjoys it as much as we do!

And herein was the sleeping problem-  this is how she looked heading in for bedtime!

But no worse for the wear in the morning... Other than not wanting to walk a full mile back to the car.  Who can blame her?