another tick season is upon us...

i hesitate to write this in the blog, because i'd really rather forget all about ticks, but i just can't bring myself to leave anything out. so, nina had a tick on monday night. it was on her upper right shoulder. it must have crawled under her shirt, the bastard! it was attached when we found it, but fortunately couldn't have been on for very long, because it hadn't gotten any blood yet. so she should be safe from lyme disease, but we'll watch for the bulls eye rash just in case.
getting it off was unpleasant, and of course always falls to me. why is that? maggie was as upset as nina, and both girls ended up not falling asleep until way past their bedtime. even after falling asleep, maggie was really restless and kept waking everyone up.
so, we decided to not set the alarm for tuesday morning so that nina could sleep in, figuring she'd be pretty tired. and she was. of course, this is the girl who wakes up bright-eyed and bushy tailed at 6 am on weekends, but on a school day she slept until nearly 8. besides, when nina was crying after the tick extraction, she said she didn't want to go to school the next day. how could i say she had to? so i'd told her that if she didn't want to go in the morning, she didn't have to.
soooo, she stayed home. we had a great day too! it turned out to be mostly sunny even though we were expecting rain, and maggie was thrilled to have her. we did some home school work, because i didn't want to give her a totally free pass on school, but that went well. then we played a lot.

today was back to the daily grind though. it was also my last SAT class! it's nice to be done with that. maggie is fine with going to her friend hattie's house while i teach, but she's also been talking a lot about how she doesn't ever want to be apart from me, so maybe not teaching will help her separation anxiety. yesterday, totally out of the blue, she started crying and said that she 'didn't want me to leave that day that i left when anna was here.' i was confused at first, and nick and i tried to remember when we went out and anna was here. maggie said, 'no, nick was here too.'
then i remembered that when i went to ruth's baby shower last summer, nick stayed home with the girls and anna came by to use the wireless and help out. she ended up crying that night and i came home a bit early.
anyway, that was last summer for crying out loud! she's not even 3 yet, how does she remember this stuff? once maggie brought it up, i remembered that that was the night i wore the black dress that i'd worn to jenny's rehearsal dinner. when maggie had seen the dress, she automatically assumed that i was going out without her again, and freaked out. she kept crying and asking me to take it off, and i couldn't for the life of me figure out what was going on, until she said something about me leaving her and i realized she thought she wasn't coming too. she also said something about the dress, i can't remember what exactly, but i knew that i had worn that dress out before, and she associated it with the horrid, horrid trauma of me going out for a little bit and leaving her in loving and capable hands. i just hadn't remembered exactly what night i had worn it out (i had forgotten about the shower and assumed it was in may, when nick and i went out for an anniversary dinner).
wow, what an unforgiving memory for such a little kid! you can see though why i hesitate to go out... good thing she's so darn cute!!