Tragic Sandwich

Tag: Baguette

  • Anatomy of a Birthday Weekend

    Or, What We Did On Our Birthday Vacation

    Thursday (our birthday weekends start early, by necessity)

    • Tour a school that we might want Baguette to attend next year.
    • Decide that we do not want Baguette to attend that school (it seems like a very good school–just not what we want for her).
    • Clean the house.
    • Clean the patio and back yard.
    • Go to speech therapy and music therapy.
    • Go to Costco and buy food and birthday cake.
    • Clean the house.
    • Make items for party games.

    Friday

    • Clean the house.
    • Clean the back yard.
    • Do some work that needs to be done even if I am on vacation.
    • Clean the house.
    • Clean the back yard.
    • Clean the patio.
    • Welcome grandparents and great-aunt, who are visiting from out of town.
    • Go out to dinner.
    • Clean the house.
    • Make party favors.

    Saturday

    • Make party favors.
    • Clean the house.
    • Clean the patio.
    • Make signs for food.
    • Clean the house.
    • Clean the patio.
    • Locate the Happy Birthday banner we bought two years ago.
    • Put up the Happy Birthday banner.
    • Locate more tape for the Happy Birthday banner.
    • Make the salad.
    • Put the Happy Birthday banner back up.
    • Welcome guests. Realize again that we have invited a really large number of people.
    • Abandon hope of keeping the Happy Birthday banner up.
    • Make sure parents and children are enjoying themselves.
    • Call the pizza parlor and confirm that the pizza is actually going to be delivered.
    • Make sure that Baguette has the chance to find some quiet time.
    • Put out the pizza, salad, and signs for the food.
    • Realize that I have left another parent supervising Baguette in the front yard for far longer than is reasonable.
    • Ask Baguette if she wants pizza. (“No thank you.”)
    • Ask Baguette if she wants macaroni and cheese. (“Yes.”)
    • Bring a chair we took outside for the party back inside, because Baguette wants to eat at the table in the breakfast nook like she always does, not at the table on the patio where her friends are.
    • Make sure everyone gets food.
    • Eat one slice of pizza and some salad.
    • Realize that, in spite of all the cleaning, the living room still contains a case of baby wipes and a 3-pack of contact lens solution.
    • Decide not to care.
    • Bring out the cake and put candles on it.
    • Try to light the candles.
    • Try to light the candles.
    • Try to light the candles.
    • Try to light one candle, which is the most that we may be able to keep lit with the breeze.
    • Abandon hope of lighting the candles.
    • Serve the cake.
    • Encourage Baguette to say “thank you for coming to my party” to as many children as possible.
    • Say goodbye to everyone.
    • Try to get Baguette to nap.
    • Abandon hope of getting Baguette to nap.
    • Regroup with grandparents and great-aunt when they come back from their hotels for dinner.
    • Order Chinese food.
    • Eat Chinese food (adults) and macaroni and cheese (Baguette).
    • Open presents from grandparents and great-aunt.
    • Accept that the most enticing part of presents is the paper, which tears interestingly and can be draped as a fetching hat.
    • Say goodnight to grandparents and great-aunt.

    Sunday

    • Have morning meltdown (Baguette, with collateral damage to Mr. Sandwich’s hearing).
    • Regroup with grandparents and great-aunt.
    • Caravan to 7-11 for coffee.
    • Caravan to L.A. Zoo, because it is the weekend and therefore we go to the L.A. Zoo.
    • Look at zoo animals.
    • Get in line for lunch.
    • Take Baguette for a walk, because the line is too long. (Mr. Sandwich)
    • Realize that Baguette is screaming, and Mr. Sandwich is waving energetically from outside the cafeteria.
    • Take Baguette and try to comfort her.
    • Realize that 5 feet away, a zoo docent is holding a small constrictor.
    • Consider one’s pathological fear of snakes.
    • Ask Baguette if she wants to touch a snake.
    • Confirm with Baguette that she wants to touch a snake.
    • Hold Baguette while she touches the snake.
    • Wash Baguette’s hands.
    • Eat lunch.
    • Leave zoo.
    • After Baguette falls asleep in the car, take advantage of the situation to trim her fingernails while Mr. Sandwich runs into the hardware store.
    • Go home and let Baguette unwind.
    • Make brownies for Baguette to take to day care the next day for her actual birthday.
    • Watch Baguette start to spool up again when grandparents and great-aunt rejoin us for dinner.
    • Try to prevent meltdown.
    • Fail.
    • Take Baguette into her room, comfort her, and tell her that she can take time to calm down, but that we will be in the living room so she doesn’t feel abandoned.
    • Give Baguette iPad when she asks for it. (Mr. Sandwich)
    • Be grateful that, this time, the iPad helps her come out of the meltdown instead of exacerbating it, because there is no predicting.
    • Send grandparents out for In-N-Out.
    • Welcome Baguette when she comes back to the living room, feeling better.
    • Feed Baguette one of her favorite noodle dishes.
    • Tell Baguette that we will be on patio, and that she can come out when she wants to.
    • Eat In-N-Out while Baguette plays with party games on back lawn.
    • Say goodbye to grandparents and great-aunt, who are returning to respective homes on Monday.
    • Give Baguette a bath.
    • Open a few gifts for Baguette and talk to her about what they are and which of her friends gave them to her.
    • Write thank-you notes to those friends.
    • Wrangle Baguette into bed.
    • Sleep fitfully.

    Monday

    • Put brownies in car.
    • Take thank-you notes to day care, along with party favor for one guest who didn’t get one.
    • Give brownies to teacher.
    • Realize that Baguette would still really prefer to have some quiet time.
    • Recognize that at this point there is nothing to be done about that.
    • Drop off thank-you notes.
    • Wonder how ABA will go tonight.
    • Wonder how birthday phone call with aunt and uncle will go tonight.
    • Wonder if Baguette will catch stomach bug that is running rampant through her school.
    • Think about how, at this rate, it will take several days to open Baguette’s presents.
    • Go to work.
    • Really, really intend to write the rest of the thank-you notes.

    Little girl in chair, covering face with "Happy Birthday" balloon

  • Baking with Baguette

    Earlier this week, we were in the living room. Baguette came around the corner from the kitchen, waving a wooden spoon and saying, “Let’s bake a cake.”

    From that point on, she refused to bake a cake. I would ask, and she would reply, “No, thank you.”

    But tonight, I asked again, and she said, “Yes. YES.”

    So she mixed (turns out she’s pretty good at mixing), and I poured the batter and put the cake pan in the oven, and then I frosted and she helped with sprinkles distribution.

    This is either the BEST idea ever for Share Day at day care, or the WORST idea ever for Share Day at day care.

    Chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and multicolored sprinkles

    UPDATE: Good news! Her teacher was totally cool with getting a surprise cake. (I made sure to take in as many paper plates and plastic forks and spoons as I could find, so that she didn’t have to scrounge.)

  • Grown-Up Day

    Last Friday was my birthday, but I didn’t really plan anything, so Mr. Sandwich and I took today off. Baguette stayed in day care, which means:

    GROWN-UP DAY!!!

    Which, naturally, we spent watching Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Guardians of the Galaxy.

    Sure, some people might schedule couples’ massages or elaborate al fresco lunches, but we live not in a commercial but in the real world of total exhaustion.

    Also, we like superhero movies, and we never get to see them in the theater.

    Plus, you know what you can’t do while watching a movie in the theater? Put all of your clothing in a pile on the floor and sort out what to keep and what to donate. Well, I guess you can, but only until you are thrown out of that aforementioned theater.

    And now we are approaching the time to pick Baguette up from day care, which means we will finish the day of superheroes and wardrobe productivity with a trip to the pool.

    It’s pretty much perfect.

  • Baguette, of Late

    The last six weeks have been pretty incredible. Toward the end of December, both Baguette’s day care and our workplace closed for the holidays. At the same time, her evening ABA therapist got married and took a few weeks off. We did schedule one session with the therapist who goes to her daycare, but for the most part it was a real break for all of us.

    We’ve discovered that these breaks are very important. Routine lets Baguette learn new skills; the breaks are when she shows us what she can do. And when this break ended, she kept going. Here is a not even remotely exhaustive list of the new things we’re seeing from her.

    • She answered a question with a specific response: When Rockin’ Elmo said, “What do you want to do now?” she answered, “Run on the grass.”
    • She didn’t just quote, but imitated the “how do you wrap a present” segment from the Elmo’s World about birthdays.
    • On New Year’s Eve, she let Bestie watch videos with her on the iPad.
    • One day, after several viewings of a “Happy Halloween” Sesame Street compilation on YouTube, she came up behind us when we were in another room and said “Boo!”
    • One evening, she said, “Want carry you.” Then she jumped up into my arms and yelled, “Whee!”
    • Another evening, before bed, she sang first the first two lines of her favorite lullaby by herself.
    • She played with her Connect Four game and took turns with her stuffed lion.
    • When coloring, she enhanced a drawing of an elephant to show it spraying water with its trunk.
    • This morning, she used her Sesame Street-inspired gift-wrapping skills to help wrap Bestie’s birthday present.
    • At the zoo:

      • * “The elephant is eating the carrots”
      * “Look, an elephant”
      * “I see a lion”

    • After climbing and playing on the elephant statue at the zoo playground, she ran back, hugged it, and said “I love you. I love you.”

    small girl sitting on statue of elephant

    To a lot of people, these developments may not sound like much. But for Baguette, and for us, they’re huge.

    She’s communicating in ways she never has before. She’s expressing a complexity of thought that is new. She’s interacting in ways that we haven’t seen.

    Because not only will she let the lion take turns at Connect Four, but when she completed a task at day care and her teacher asked her if she wanted to pick a friend to jump with, she walked up to one of the little boys in her class and held out her hands to him.

    It’s hard to know who was happiest about this–us, her teacher, or the little boy, who apparently was overjoyed that the girl who talks to no one had picked him out of the group. But probably the answer is that we were happiest. Because we know what it took her to get here.

  • Progress

    A week ago, Baguette was coloring in broad swaths of marker. Now she can do this.

    coloring book page with Big Bird

    All.

    By.

    Herself.

    Don’t get me wrong, it’s not this precise all the time. But she suddenly gets what the lines are for, and pays attention to them. She matches the colors of the characters, whether it’s Zoe or Clifford the Big Red Dog. She’s doing SO MUCH right now, and it’s incredible to see how all of the hard work we’ve been doing, all of the hard work she’s been doing, is helping things come together.

  • Auld Lang Syne

    When I was younger, I thought it would be fun to go to a big, blowout New Year’s Eve party.

    I never did. I’m totally fine with that.

    First of all, I didn’t want to go by myself; I wanted to go to that kind of party with a boyfriend. And I almost never had a boyfriend, which limited my opportunities. (I did once go to First Night in Manhattan with a friend, her husband, and her brother, but I’m not even sure that was a set-up; I think we just all wanted to go to First Night.)

    So what have been my favorite New Year’s Eve celebrations?

    Growing up, we would have dinner at a Chinese restaurant and then see some blockbuster or other. That was always good.

    One year–I can’t remember whether I was dating Mr. Sandwich yet–another friend invited me to a party at her brother’s Manhattan apartment (different friend, different brother, same Manhattan). But it was supposed to snow, and my block was always last to be plowed, and at the last minute I canceled because I wasn’t sure I’d get home. Instead, I spent New Year’s Eve curled up on my couch, watching movies I can no longer recall and eating either Chinese food or pizza. The details don’t matter, because what I do remember is that it was a great evening.

    When we were dating, Mr. Sandwich and I spent one New Year’s Eve with his friends, starting at Cheesecake Factory and moving to one friend’s nearby apartment; we spent others playing board games with some of my friends.

    The year we moved into our house, we hosted a party at which I learned that if I’m going to drink, I really need to eat dinner. Or at least lunch. But that lesson didn’t make itself clear until after everyone else had gone home, so the party itself was a lot of fun.

    Since then, we tend to stay home, safe from the drunk drivers of the world. Last year, Bestie and her parents came over for dinner (we planned to start early, to reduce their odds of being menaced by drunk drivers on their return). A good time was had by all, including Wicket–although the hat placed on her head spoke more to her tolerance than to her awareness of the passage of time.

    This year, we have planned absolutely nothing. It’s been a busy couple of weeks, with lots of events filled with people who want to see Baguette. She’s done really well with it, but she needs plenty of downtime. We all do. So we have no plans, and I think it’s going to be another great evening.

    So to all, near and far–may you have a Happy New Year. And those good wishes aren’t just from me. They’re also from Wicket.

    small dog wearing Happy New Year hat and leis

  • Ten Things About Me

    I totally stole this from Nina at Sleeping Should Be Easy. As you do.

    So here are 10 questions for you to answer on your blog(s), should you so choose.

    1. What’s the last movie you watched (in the theater or DVD)?
    2. What’s a random fact about you?
    3. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
    4. What are three things you can’t live without?
    5. What is the best thing to happen to you this past month?
    6. What is the biggest stress in your life right now?
    7. Tell me five things I’d see when I walk in your door.
    8. Did you—or do you—have a nickname? What’s the story behind it?
    9. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
    10. Why do you come to this blog?

    And here are my answers:

    1. What’s the last movie you watched (in the theater or DVD)? Frozen. I do have a four-year-old, after all. The last movie I saw in the theater was Star Trek Into Darkness, and WOW, was that was a disappointment.
    2. What’s a random fact about you? I have ancestors from a lot of places, but only the Celtic ones show.
    3. Would you like to be famous? In what way? Not famous enough to get doxxed, I can tell you that much.
    4. What are three things you can’t live without? Baguette, Mr. Sandwich, and butter.
    5. What is the best thing to happen to you this past month? Baguette moved into the bed in her room!!!!!!!
    6. What is the biggest stress in your life right now? Lack of time.
    7. Tell me five things I’d see when I walk in your door. A giant pile of mail, a lion chair/pillow, my bag, a camera on a tripod (we just finished taking our family picture for our holiday photo card).
    8. Did you—or do you—have a nickname? What’s the story behind it? As far as I know, I’ve never had much in the way of nicknames. I have no idea why not.
    9. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be? I very much appreciate the way my parents emphasized breadth of interests, but I wish I’d been taught how to focus on something beyond the task/project level.
    10. Why do you come to this blog? Because it wouldn’t be here without me? I’m guessing this one is more for you.

  • Night-Night

    If you’ve been reading this blog, you know that sleep has always been an issue for Baguette–and, by extension, for Mr. Sandwich and me.

    Baguette naps at day care, but not at home, and nighttime sleep is very hard to come by. Although we never planned to bed-share, it turned out that doing so got all of us more sleep than any other approach we tried.

    But she kept growing, and the bed didn’t. Eventually, none of us was getting enough sleep. And then, on a trip to visit family, she suddenly decided that she would rather sleep on the hotel room’s couch.

    We capitalized on this by moving her to the couch when we got home. One of us has to lie with her until she goes to sleep, and that can still take a while. Our girl does not slip off into dreamland, not even when she’s clearly exhausted.

    And, frankly, the couch is not really big enough for two to sleep, even if one of us is still pretty small.

    Mr. Sandwich therefore took his experience in building a toddler bed and put it to use in building a twin frame. One of my cousins made a beautiful elephant quilt, because elephants are Baguette’s favorite animals. We bought a mattress and some sheets.

    And then this happened.

    twin bed

    Now, if we can just get her to stay there. Wish us luck.

  • Will Disneyland Be the Happiest Place on Earth for Baguette?

    A through E

    A lot of Baguette’s peers have been to Disneyland–many of them, more than once. My parents first took me when I was four, and we had annual trips until we left California a couple of years later. I’ve been a handful of times since, as a teen and as an adult (most recently with Mr. Sandwich and one of my college friends, about seven years ago), and it continues to be an amazing experience.

    Baguette is four, and we have no plans to take her to Disneyland. It’s not that we have any objection to Disneyland. It’s more that we’re not even remotely sure that she’ll like it.

    She’s just started to discover Disney movies, and she’s really only interested in Frozen. While she does know Mickey and Minnie, I’m not sure she sees them as anything more than two of her (many) plushes.

    Disneyland is crowded. It has innumerable lines. While there is a program to accommodate people with physical disabilities and special needs, I haven’t yet figured out how it works, and it still sounds as if there is a lot of line-standing and coordination required to navigate the program and the park.

    Will Baguette like any of the rides? Will she be okay with having a lap bar that holds her in place? Will flying on the Dumbo ride completely terrify her? Will Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride be a little too wild? Will Snow White’s Scary Adventure give her nightmares that she can’t tell us about? After all, this is a kid who won’t even ride one of the moving animals on a carousel.

    Also? Disneyland is freaking expensive. $96 each for Mr. Sandwich and me, and $90 for Baguette. That’s $282, and we haven’t parked. Or eaten. Or bought a single souvenir. $282 and a drive that isn’t short, for a day she may find frustrating and frightening.

    We’ll wait. Disneyland isn’t going anywhere. Plus, that gives us time to save up for it. Because entry will probably be $500 for the three of us by the time we’re confident about her readiness.

    Photo by Andy Castro, via Flickr. Creative Commons.

  • Friday Five: September 5, 2014

    Things that come to mind:

    1) We took a trip to visit cousins over Labor Day weekend, and had a wonderful time. I grew up across the country from much of my family, and didn’t know what I was missing. Fortunately–and thanks in large part to Facebook–I’ve gotten to know quite a few of my cousins now that we’re adults. But I want Baguette to just not miss it to begin with.

    2) Someday all too soon, Baguette is going to stop singing “Wet It Go,” and I’m going to miss it So Much. Just as I will miss it when she no longer says, “Want get wemon” at the grocery store.

    3) I wonder how many times I can re-read Cryptonomicon. So far, the answer is “a great many times.”

    4) It is becoming clear that we are about to enter a Winnie the Pooh phase. And because it’s the question everyone asks next, I mean Disney Pooh, not Classic Pooh.

    5) Mr. Sandwich’s hugs are like being wrapped in a hug. That sounds like it is circular and self-evident, but in fact it is just the best.

    5