Greetings!
My niece, Sorsha Dawn, is three years, eleven months, and six days old (as of today, obviously). Basically, she's four. She's also hilarious. She likes to sing, dance, play, scream, read, talk, look at her reflection and/or pictures of herself, and make friends. She occasionally sleeps, cries, and goes on walks. I'm going to go ahead and start saving things she does here because they're constantly on Facebook and I need somewhere to put everything. Sometimes I think I might put up pictures of her, other times I'll put up stuff she's doing that amuses me, maybe I'll put up videos... who knows. She also likes watching videos of herself, so I've taken a few videos of her watching the video being taken, which are pretty interesting.
Anyway, for my first post, I'll share some interesting conversations that she and I had today.
I was getting her dressed for bed and I told her to stand perfectly still and "straight like a soldier." She straightened up, saluted me, and said "Yes, sir!"
I told her that I am, in fact, a ma'am, mostly because I am a woman. Men are called "sir," and women are called "ma'am." This sparked some interesting conversation between the two of us, and she clarified which are which.
She then told me, "But you look like a girl-man!"
"I do?"
It was while this conversation was being held that I was undressing her so I could put her pjs on. At this point, I was pulling her pants off to put on her pj bottoms. Continued:
"Yeah. You look like... you look like a girl-BUTT! MY BUTT!"
FYI, she's been on-and-off obsessed with her butt since she was very little.
She starts bending over and doing the "butt-drums" - beating on her butt with her hands. She followed that up with this:
She's going to hate me when she gets older and reads this...
"I'm staring with my butt!"
"You are? Staring... at what?"
She turns and points at the wall behind her. "At that wall. I was staring at that wall... with my butt."
I put on her pjs and told her to go say goodnight to grandma and grandad. She did, and asked grandma if she was a ma'am. Grandma said yes, "because I'm a woman." Satisfied, she wandered off to find grandad.
As soon as she found him, she demanded this of him: "ARE YOU A MAN!?"
He said, "Yes, I am a man."
She replied with a barrage of shrieks of "MAN! MAN! MAAAN! MAN!" which was only interrupted when he told her that he was "a man who wanted a goodnight smooch and hug." She gave him one of each, and said "Goodnight man grandad."
Then I read her "The Giving Tree," sang "Walk the Line" by Johnny Cash and two songs from the "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" soundtrack ("Big Rock Candy Mountain" and "You Are My Sunshine") and told her to go to sleep. She didn't, of course, but that's not unusual. It's 12:30 AM, and I'm pretty sure she's asleep now.
Earlier today was an interesting episode with her. We have fake flowers in random places around the house - always have - and one particular set includes stick-things with bead-things on the ends of them. They're held in place by wires and they look sort of lovely if you look at them from the right angle.
We brought these down to the Casa Nueva today from the Big House, and they have been chilling in the living room most of the day. Sometimes tiny pieces break off here and there, considering they're old, they're fake, and they're flowers(ish), and we pick them up and throw them away as we find them.
There was one tiny twig-thing that we didn't notice or paid no attention to that found its way onto the love seat that Sorsha always sits on to watch her shows. I would like to take a moment now to put forth this disclaimer: besides the occasional finger or piece of tissue, as far as I know, Sorsha has never tried to stick things up her nose.
Until today.
Sorsha was watching "El Dorado" today - that old Disney(?) movie with the two guys who find the city of gold, yadda yadda Elton John - and she was sitting on the love seat that she shared with the relevant twig. I observed her several times digging for gold in her nostrils and told her not to pick her nose while people were around, but more or less left her alone to her own devices.
I was in my room, playing a video game, minding my own business, when I heard her start crying and saying that something was in her nose and that it hurt. Grandad was the only one in the room with her and he was reading his book, so he had no idea what she was talking about.
I have managed to train my body to drop everything and respond immediately to the sound of her tears and today was no exception. I jumped up, went into the living room, and asked her what she stuck in her nose. She said "a thing," so I started narrowing it down to whatever was around her - a pen? a pencil? She said yes to both of those, so I tilted her head back, looked into her nose, and couldn't find a thing. I asked her which part of her nose she put it in, she said the left nostril, so I looked there. I couldn't see anything, so I diagnosed her as pushing a pencil into her nose, lightly stabbing herself, and causing herself some pain.
I then asked for a flashlight to see if she'd cut herself. When it was handed to me, Dad covered her eyes and I shined it up her nostrils. I looked into her left nostril first, saw nothing, and then looked to the right, and lo and behold, what should I find, but a gigantic bead shoved knuckle-deep into her nasal passage.
"Oh my God, there's a bead. There's a bead stuck in her nose, and we have to get it out."
Thus began the (very) painful process of attempting to guide it out from the outside of her nose, which only caused her to scream, to trying to pull/pry it out with the wire of the twig-thing that she'd shoved up there in the first place, which also caused her to scream. This latter produced an even worse side-effect, however: she started to sniff.
Mom was involved at this point, and the three of us flew into an immediate panic, screaming at her not to sniff. Mom told her to sit up and to blow, so she sat up and started to sniff.
A side note: she's always had trouble blowing her nose. She doesn't like the way it feels, she doesn't like the way it makes her cough, and the past few times I've tried getting her to do it always ends in tears. She prefers to sniff.
We started begging her to blow, just like if she was blowing her nose, and I found myself hoping she remembered what "blow your nose" even meant and that she would do it even though she didn't like it.
Luck was on our side (especially hers), and she remembered. She blew once, but it only came out both of her nostrils because we hadn't plugged the other side yet. I cheered for her (she responds very well to loud praise) and told her to do it again, and harder. I reached down and pushed in her other nostril, she took a deep breath, and blew - and the offending bead shot out and landed on the edge of the couch.
A collective sigh of relief was heard from the adults, but only for a second - now we had to deal with a panicked child. I held her for a while and rocked her on my lap and tried to guide her in deep breaths - she was hyperventilating - but she wasn't doing too well with it.
I was worried that I'd have to lie her down in her bed and sing songs to her to get her to relax, but she suddenly informed me that she just wanted to watch her movie.
Movie? What movie?
I'd forgotten that she had been watching El Dorado for the first time ever.
I agreed, and said that I'd sit on the couch, she could turn her head, and we'd watch the movie together. It was the scene where they have the basketball-esque tournament, and, as promised, we watched it together. Her hyperventilating stopped the instant the movie was back on, and soon we had a running commentary going about the movie.
Not even five minutes after one of the more traumatizing moments of her life and she's more or less forgotten all about it.
Mom, Dad, and I, however, will probably have nightmares about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment