Partay

All in all, not a bad weekend.

Penny started up her swimming lessons again, Saturday morning. Matt took her along on that so he could get in some swimming, as well, so I stayed home with Alex. We actually had a great time. He wanted to play with blocks, so I took him into the green room (which is pretty much the kids' play room) and got out the blocks for him. We built a tower, and then he very meticulously put all the blocks back into their box. And then he had me get out his puzzles for him.

He completed each of his four wooden puzzles by turns, and though he got frustrated with pieces that didn't fit once or twice, I sat on my hands and encouraged him to try again -- and he nodded and said "Okay," and then figured it out. I was startled, surprised, and proud -- Penny never cared much for puzzles, so I have no idea whether this is advanced or right on target for his age. But when he was done with each, he had me put the puzzles back in the rack, and when he'd plowed through the whole rack, he "helped" me put the rack back on the shelf. I'm loving this "clean up" thing he's going through!

Then he got out several other toys, played with them briefly, and then put them back. I played "with" him some, mostly just trying to keep him engaged, but mostly just watched him and marveled. I don't often get to watch him play when Penny's not around, and she's so prone to do things for him that it sometimes takes me by surprise when I see how much he can do on his own.

Saturday afternoon, I took Penny to a birthday party. She ran around with her friends, shrieking and giggling. She was much more daring than usual, though it kind of bit her on the ass -- she jumped from the top of a bouncy slide and despite landing on another air-cushion area, must have hit wrong, because she hurt her foot. (I checked to make sure it wasn't broken or strained, then sent her limping off again, and within ten minutes, she was racing around like before.)

The third time she detoured by my chair to ask how long it was until the food, I had her check her blood sugars, and of course she was low, so I stuffed some Smarties in her and sent her off again. When they assembled the kids for the food, she re-checked and was back up in range. She leaped happily onto pizza and ice cream cake, though I restricted her to just one slice of pizza. Maybe I shouldn't have, though -- most of the other kids sucked down two or even three slices. (She was still complaining of hunger when we got home -- with which I sympathized, because I'd only had one slice of pizza, too -- so I let her eat a whole plate full of veggies with dip.)

Apparently I'd grossly overestimated the carbs (or underestimated the effects of an hour of running and jumping) because she was low again that night. And weirdly, the usual post-pizza effects of a day's worth of high blood sugars didn't emerge on Sunday. So maybe keeping her to one slice was the right choice, hunger pangs or not.

I spent most of Sunday reading -- I've spent most of the last couple of months slowly working my way through Lois Bujold's Vorkosigan saga as night-table books, which means I read a chapter or two when I'm supervising the kids' baths, another page or so during Penny's bedtime routine, and maybe a chapter or so before I go to bed. But the closer I got to my favorite book of the series (A Civil Campaign), the more and faster I was reading. I finally got to Campaign Sunday. I thought I'd finish it before I went to bed, but Matt was watching the Oscars, and it captured my attention just enough that I didn't want to walk away from it entirely. So despite staying up until midnight, I'm still two chapters from the end. Ah, well.

(I don't really have any comments on the Oscars. I'd only seen two and a half of the, what, two dozen movies? I was mostly enjoying the silly jokes, even if most of them were delivered a bit woodenly, and making comments about the clothes and the people. I completely distracted Matt from one of the presentations, I think, by pointing out how one of the presenters was keeping her shoulders hunched and her arms firmly at her sides to avoid having her boobs pop out of her dress.)

This week should be good. Looks like just enough work to keep us moving without making things crazy. Or interfering with my plan to take Friday (and possibly part of Thursday) off for the concert. Time to start getting excited about that!