Togetherness

I have come to the conclusion that, with very few exceptions, Willow is a solitary person.  And I probably only didn't notice this earlier because I too am a solitary person, and so the two of us being solitary together didn't register as anything other than togetherness, but it isn't necessarily.  A great deal of our time is spent in parallel play.

And so just imagine how very parallel Willow wishes to be with other children.  Let's be in parallel rooms, perhaps.  All of which is fine--I certainly take no issue with Willow's frequently self-entertaining ways.  The problem only seems to arise when she encounters other children who don't feel exactly the same way.

Cousin Francie is a social little being, and wants to laugh and giggle and play...and Willow doesn't quite know what to do with that yet.  We went to visit over Memorial Day Weekend, and Willow was excited to see Francie, and Francie was excited to see Willow, but expectations are never quite met, are they?

Francie wanted Willow to run and scream.  Willow wanted Francie to sit still and ride tricycles with her.  Willow wanted to practice her newfound sharing skills by giving Francie some snacks.  Francie wanted Willow to get that yucky stuff out of her face.  Francie wanted Willow to explain her emotional reactions (a common question: "Why you crying, Willow?  Why she crying?")  Willow wanted Francie to get out of her crying face.

 'Tis a tricky business.  Luckily, we all mostly ignored them and paid attention to Baby Charlie instead.

That's me instructing Charlie not to let anybody else hold him.  Ever.

 

And indeed, it's not that fun wasn't had.  We worked in the garden with NamaMimi.

We slipped and slid our knees raw.  We swung.

And we rode motorbikes together.  As one should do on Memorial Day weekend.

Reward

I'm trying to convince myself that it isn't bribery, it's a reward system!  Positive reinforcement!  But I'm also trying to choose carefully--leading off with going out and buying a present probably wasn't the smartest move on my part. 

So yesterday, I dialed it down a bit.  Willow darling, if you take your nap, we get to play with fingerpaints.  Doesn't that sounds like fun?  Don't you want to go to sleep?

Turns out, it did sound like fun.  She did want to go to sleep.  She went to sleep in fifteen minutes, and woke up saying "Now let's play with fingerpaints."

Absolutely, my love, here we are, play like a little angel, because what could be more wholesome and childlike than fingerpaints?

Except for how, apparently, we're doing creepy zombie parts demon-summoning spellwork instead.

Don't ask me what happened to my fingerpaints.  So they got masticated bits of flesh in them--it wasn't on my watch.  Who knows what dark powers Willow calls up in her sleep?

Bribery

As far as that other thing goes, we seem to be holding steady and are even venturing out of the house and going so far as to let other people within five feet of us.  Quarantine appears to be over.

No, I'm back to that other problem.  The one I've talked about here.  And here.  And here and here.  Willow is once again refusing to nap.  Or go to bed.  Or sleep past 5:30.  We (kind of) have the going to bed under control--we're following The Sleep Lady's advice, and it seems to be going relatively well, if a bit slower than we'd like.  The 5:30 thing, well, it's light out and the birds are a-chirping so you kind of can't blame her, plus the early morning is Dave's shift so this kind of feels to me like the least of our worries (I am quite sure Dave does not feel the same).

But the naps.  Oh, the naps.  I CANNOT DEAL WITH THE NAPS ANYMORE.  I am this close to saying, fine, go without naps and go to bed screaming with exhaustion at 6:30 and never see your brother and sister or father, SEE IF I CARE!  But then I remember that my insistence on naps has much more to do with my need for ONE TINY LITTLE HOUR when I am not watching a small person to make sure she doesn't jump out a window or eat a light bulb.  Because she would.

Yesterday, for instance, we planned our entire day around jumpless-windows and sleepy-Willows.  After the 5:30 wakeup, we were easily out the door and at the special playground with the sandbox by 8:30, where I sat and stared in mind-numbing boredom as Willow shoveled sand (there are other things to do there.  She is not interested in any of those things) while Dave bought $300 worth of window guards.  We stayed until it was nearing naptime, and then we drove home.  She did not fall asleep on the ride home, so after her milk and cuddle time, I took her in her room to read stories.

For an hour.  And after an hour, I gave up, as my back was killing me, my legs were numb, and I was so frustrated that I doubt my voice was at all soothing.  I refused to read anymore, Willow flipped out, so Dave took her for a drive in the car to calm down and go to sleep.

He drove for half an hour.  Willow screamed the whole time.  And do you know what she screamed?  "That's not going to work!"  "I don't want to do this!"  Dave came home.

Okay, we figured.  Fine.  We hauled Willow back in the car to go back to the sandbox so Dave could affix the window guards.  Guess who fell asleep right when we got there?

Sometimes I think she's just trying to mess with me. 

So, obviously, I was afeared for the nap today.  Especially since it's pouring out and not exactly conducive to running around until exhaustion.  (I did the best I could, though.  We stomped in some puddles). 

Those are Willow's magical toes, or so she has deemed them.  She loves them.  She wants to paint them again, and her fingernails, in many colors, including, apparently, silver and purple.  I do not possess silver and purple nail polish, so thus far she has been denied.  And so here's what I did: I told her that if she took a nap, I would take her out to buy some silver and purple nail polish, so that she may have silver and purple magical toes.


But only if she took a nap.  And I reminded her of this whenever she got twitchy as we were reading stories.

Folks, it worked.  I know you're all shocked.  And you know what?  I DON'T CARE.  I WILL BRIBE THIS CHILD EVERY DAY IF THAT'S WHAT IT TAKES. 


Even if it means getting silver and purple nail polish all over the house.

The Plague

So all those photos--that was the fun part.  Because on the flight home, we discovered we had the Plague.

Not that plague--no buboes, no black tongues.  No, it was much, much worse.  On the runway at LAX, halfway home, I scratched my head and found...a bug.  That's right, I am that person.  I am the person that you fear more than anything when you board a plane and rest your head against the seat.  I had lice.  On a plane.

I spent the the 5-hour flight leaning forward at a 45-degree angle, trying to put out of my mind the fact that, if I had them, then Willow almost certainly had them, not to mention that we had certainly brought them with us on the flights to Hawaii, so the damage was pretty much already done for those folks, so what was the point?

I couldn't help it.  I sat up.

And when we got home to our mercifully unoccupied and therefore uku-free house, I locked Willow and me away in one room while Dave ran over to get The Stuff.  Fifteen minutes later, Sesame Street was on, towels were down, and the three of us were half-naked on the TV room floor picking stuff out of our hair like monkeys.

Except we hit a snag.  Literally.  My hair, which though it is Very Clean and Normally Not Bug-Ridden, tangles easily, especially in humid places.  Like Hawaii.  Plus it was so long it would have taken the entire freaking bottle just to do my head.

So I cut it off.  Or rather, I instructed Dave to do so, with no finesse, just one chop--which, by the way, dulled our scissors to the point where he was sawing through it by the end.

What can I say?  I panicked.  It was a lot shorter in the back--an inch long, in some places.





Anyway, I had them.  Willow had them.  Dave had them.  None of us had very many, but there were bugs crawling on my head, and on the head of my very small and squirmy child.  (Well, at that point they were all dead.  But still.)  We spent the rest of the day cleaning absolutely everything and bagging absolutely everything, including all of Willow Most Beloved and Necessary For Sleeping stuffed animals, so you can imagine how our bedtime situation has been of late. 

We treated again.  And then we treated again.  And then I finally got my hair fixed.  And we are spraying and cleaning and checking and checking some more and I think I'll just go check Willow right now because You Can't Check Too Often and my head itches.

The Rest of the Trip: A Photo Essay

I could say "and then we went to this beach, and it was cold, and then we went on this hike, and it was fun, and then we went to this beach, and it too was cold," but really, everything I said would just be code for "Isn't Willow beautiful?"  "Oh, look, there's beautiful Willow again."  "That Willow--she's so funny!"  And I'm sure you can just fill that in for yourselves.

At Onekahakaha Beach Park

At Punalu'u Beach Park

It was very cold.  And Willow has no pants.  And though it is unclear, I DO have pants.

Baking an Ohelo Berry pie

At Bird Park, also known as Kipuka Puaulu, but nobody ever calls it that

That's a rare shot with something in it.  Dave kept trying to photograph the birds with my ordinary zoom lens.  We have a lot of pictures of empty sky.

Sitting on the "horsey tree"

"Helping" Grandma with yard work on our last day

Wishing we could take everything with us

The Party

Officially, we were visiting Hawaii for my mom's 60th birthday party (to be held outside complete with barbecue, twinkle lights, and dancing to Men At Work, natch) and we totally ditched the majority of preparations by running off to a hotel for a couple of days.  But we did come back, and we did help set up, so that by the time Willow got up from her nap, the tent was up, the coolers were out, and everything was just about ready to go.

 

Where is everybody?  I've got the tequila all lined up!

It was a beautiful day, perhaps the only beautiful day we had up in Volcano, so Happy Birthday, Mom! 

It did rain, of course, but that point everybody was dancing so who cared.

I think that although Willow did her share of dancing, the high point of her evening was the discovery of that magical thing--Ranch Dip.

 Just shove it on in there, babe.

And by the end, she made sure every single carrot, broccoli floret and snap pea had ranch dressing pre-spread on it.  Helpful, labor-saving child!

500 Photos

I promise, I am not posting 500 photos.  But that's how many we took.  Digital cameras are dangerous things.

I'm going to skip right on over the boring stuff, like interminable plane rides and fractious toddlers who wake up at 2 am.  The fun started the morning after we arrived.

Here we are at 7am, our day having started many, many hours before, and Grandma is baking cookies because Willow asked her to.  Willow is discovering the power that talking gives you.  "You can say 'please can we bake cookies, Grandma?'  You're a darling genius!  Of course I will bake cookies with you even though I only just woke up and there isn't enough coffee in the world!"

Of course, baking cookies is about all we did for the first couple of days, because it rained.  A lot.  We bought Willow rain boots and an umbrella, it was raining so much.

So we fled to the other side of the island and stayed at our favorite hotel where Willow could torment the other guests by running up and down the hallways at 6 in the morning (hey, the Starbucks opens at 5) and be the very first one in the pool at 7:30! 




This is one of the very few shots of me swimming in the water on this trip.  When it wasn't raining, it was very cold.  I was able to wear the same suit over and over because it basically never got wet.

Willow, on the other hand, swam in frigid temperatures (okay, 80 degrees, so frigid by my standards but not most people's) until she was blue and shivering and still refused to come out.











And thereby worked up such an appetite that she ate $27 worth of ahi sashimi at Sansei (which, yes, is fancy and expensive, but that's still a whole lot of fish.  We thought we were going to get to eat some.  We were wrong) which promptly made her pass out into a food coma so Dave and I snuck out onto the lanai and played cards and drank a lot of excellent and crazy cheap tequila that I almost don't even want to tell you about because it's my special secret cheap tequila but here you go. 

And then we did it all again.

Except that because we were kinda hungover, we left the hotel to go get some lunch without our wallets and drove around forever before we realized it so by the time we got back we were cranky and essentially not speaking.

Willow tried to break into a restaurant with a spoon she was so hungry.

Here is Dave before lunch:

   

Dave after lunch!

 

And then we were back on track.

 We walked along the coastline at Anaeho'omalu, where we met a friendly turtle.

Or at least, Willow thought he was friendly.

And after another enormous meal of raw fish (if she starts turning grey in the pictures, tell me) and another night of tequila and Rummy 500, my parents came to meet us at what is perhaps the most beautiful beach on the island and another thing I'm almost inclined to not even tell you about.

This is Kua Bay.  It's very tiny.  Come early.  But not so early you get there before the guy comes to open the gate, like we did.

My Dad instructed Willow on the importance of keeping her eyes on the waves.  And when her father or her mother were in the water (another rare swimming day for me) she never took her eyes off the water and spent the whole time calling "Mommy, Daddy, can you come over?"  So perhaps not her favorite beach day, but it was mine.

Stay tuned for Part II.