The Laundromat

This week we visited the laundromat for the first time. Wren loved the laundromat. Not only did it have fabulous big front loader washers which could do all the laundry in one load, but you could watch it go around AND EAT FREE COOKIES. I tried to interview Wren about the laundromat but he was evasive and did not pick up on my prompting. I give you my unedited interview below. Please note that I do not always talk in incomplete sentences. What can I say, lately I am too scattered to use verb forms.

The sad news is that the washer valve has arrived so we shall not visit the laundromat again soon except for its entertainment value (admittedly great).

Extreme Reading

Q: What is Frost doing before breakfast?

A: Reading.

Q: What is Frost doing at breakfast?
A: Reading.

Q: What is Frost doing at the bus-stop?
A: Reading.

One thing about Frost that gives me real pleasure is his love of reading. I grew up 'in a family of booksellers' where reading was highly valued. The bookstore my Dad worked in (and my Grandfather before him) is a large store in my hometown named after our family and everyone who knows that town knows the bookstore (and my Dad). The bookstore was founded a few generations back and my Dad still manages the company which now owns a number of branches so it was and is more than a job. In the old store downtown it felt like a community in which everyone was important.

Growing up around a bookstore means you can read a lot (on 'apro' or loan from the store) but only if you look after the books carefully. That means never folding the corner of a page to mark your place, never opening the book wide enough to mark the spine and certainly having clean hands. I still try and keep to these 'book use' principles, at least enough to feel the guilt when I break them. However Frost is a hard book user and ploughs through them with all the physicality his 8 year old body can muster. Here are some pictures of Frost reading his current obsession: Harry Potter. I bought him the box set of Volumes 1-6, and he is almost finished book 4 and means to read nothing else but Foxtrot until he finishes all 7.

You must do nothing!

When Wren woke up this morning he had a stuffy nose and, despite his best efforts at excavation, he could not fix it. This made him sad&mad, a common state when you are almost 3.

I suggested we play but he lay, defeated, and said "no, you must DO NOTHING."

I lay down next to him and he was more sad&mad about that and said "do not do that you must do nothing."

I told him I thought that lying next to him was doing nothing.

"You are lying down" he observed.

I sat up, producing another paroxysm of complaint.

"You are sitting up. DO NOTHING," he insisted.

I was becoming exasperated. "Ok, I will go away for a bit."

"DO NOT GO AWAY." [head into pillow with some kicking] "Do nothing........ " [wailing]

At this point I decide He Is Sick Again and get the thermometer. Ok, I know this is not doing nothing as instructed but I had to check. He hates the ear probe thermometer so of course he screams and yells and says "My BRAIN IS SORE."

He has no temperature but now I fear meningitis, sinusitis or something else vile and 'itissy which I shall be forced to google and find only a Wikipedia stub and sad blogs about dead children.

I ask him to point where his brain hurts. He touches..... his chest - left side first and then right.

Huh - his heart? His lungs?

"When does it hurt?" (I'm thinking respiratory distress, pneumonia)

"It hurts HERE" (touching the middle and then rubbing around and around all over).

This is weird because he has not been coughing much and his chest was clear yesterday. At least we are getting somewhere [or doing SOMEthing].

I ask him to drink water. He refuses. I tell him that the water will make the stuff in his nose slide away (there is no visible snot but yesterday the doctor confirmed my suspicion that Wren is dehydrated. He is eating up a storm but not drinking.) He drinks a bit. He sniffs suspiciously and Hallelujah, his nose is improved.

He sniffs. His nose snorts a bit. He says "A water did go deep inside and it is not in my nose now!" He needs some more. Apparently he has figured that once the water goes deep inside its healing properties are reduced. He drinks A LOT.

I tell him it is Halloween Today and he suggests we read a Halloween book. After various colossal failures on my part (stupid stupid stupid to think that a book about bones is a Halloween Book, or a book about a 'gyptian mummy is a Halloween Book or a book about fuzzy bats is a Halloween Book) we look at I Spy Spooky Night.

Something is done. The day starts, anew.

Wren needs to pee.

Hallelujah. Halloween.