I’m gonna throw a lot at you in this post, so I’ll try to be concise.*

Foot update

As you know, Annalie hurt her foot on New Year’s Eve. That evening, we went to our friends’ house for family party. While we were there, Annalie forgot her injury and hopped down off a chair, resulting in pain and tears. She insisted she just wanted to leave, but within five minutes of heading home she was quite cheerful, leading us to wonder if the tears had been caused more by the pain or by the houseful of people looking at her.

Tuesday, Annalie spent the day on the couch with her foot propped on a pillow or at the table with me painting or being carried place to place by Troy. Nothing traumatic happened. Troy and Annalie had some fun with leftover fireworks.

This morning when Annalie got up, I asked her how her foot felt, and she said, “More good!” She wiggled her toes for me, moved her foot around, and even let me massage it gently and put her shoes on to meet friends for breakfast at Chick-Fil-A. At the restaurant all was well until she leaned over a little too far and slipped off the bench, landing on both her feet. I scooped her up and she wailed that she wanted to go “somewhere with a little bit of privacy!” (she IS my daughter) so we gathered up our belongings and left. Within three minutes, Annalie had stopped sniffling and was chattering away. Again, I have to wonder if her distress was caused more by the pain or by the people looking at her. (My mom is shaking her head as she reads this, remembering the countless times I behaved this exact way about people looking at me when I was a kid.)

At dinner tonight Troy asked Annalie about what happened at Chick-Fil-A, and she said, “Well, it hurt, but not as much as it hurt at Kara’s house when I jumped off the chair.” As of bedtime tonight, Annalie still hasn’t wanted to put weight on the injured foot. It’s hard to tell if that’s because she really is in pain, or if she is afraid of the possibility of pain after landing rather hard those two times. We talked to a nurse at our clinic on Monday, and taking into account her advice, my personal experience with a sprained ankle, and common sense, we’ve decided to give it a couple more days before we take her to the doctor.

Whew. That was long. I promise I’ll keep the next parts brief, and throw in lots of photos.

Thank-you notes

First, a thank-you note from me to the lovely Angella of Dutch Blitz:

Dear Angella,

Thank you so much for the Aero bars! I can’t believe that you not only remembered a random comment of mine about liking Aeros, you bought some and mailed them to me. You are generous and thoughtful. My life is richer for having met you, and not only because you sent me candy bars that have not been available in the U.S. since 1992. :-)

Love,
Bethany

Second, Annalie has been using her cool new paint set (thanks, Heather, Conner & Rylee!) to make some notecards for writing thank-you notes. Thank-you notes are probably a bigger deal to me than they should be. I used to write actual letters and send birthday cards to everyone I know, but first email and then having a baby struck near-fatal blows to my letter-writing. Pretty much the only letters I write anymore are thank-you notes, and I’m holding on with a death grip to that habit.

I’ve been having Annalie help me write thank-you notes since she was able to hold a crayon. This is partly because I want her to get into the habit from an early age, partly because it makes the task more fun for me, and partly because it makes the notes more fun for grandparents and others to receive. When she was very small, I’d write the note and she’d scribble on the card. Now, with a lot of encouragement, she dictates a couple of sentences to me and signs her name.

Just to make the note-writing a little more fun this time, I gave Annalie several sheets of cardstock and broke out her new paint set. After the paint had dried, I cut each sheet into four pieces.

And now we have unique notecards that fit neatly into the A-2 envelopes we’d already bought for our Christmas cards. I figure since Annalie isn’t in preschool, these thank-you notes count as arts & crafts, etiquette, and writing practice. Now we’ll go watch some more Zoboomafoo for science.

Crocheted bits

I’ve been making lots of little things lately. Here are some of them. First, this was made with with Ana Paula Rimoli‘s teacup pattern, but I used a slightly bigger hook than the pattern called for and cotton yarn. So it’s more like a coffee mug.

I wanted something smaller that would stand on its own better, so I made up these two as I went along. I’m pretty happy with how they turned out. I’ll probably be making more.

After three cups, I wanted a change. So I made this little guy, whom Annalie named Pucky.

I crocheted him with cotton yarn and stuffed him with a plastic grocery sack cut into several pieces because I didn’t have any polyester stuffing handy. I used one of the free instant crochetification patterns from the wonderful Roman Sock.

I don’t know why Brie’s Etsy shop isn’t more well-known, because her crocheted creatures are totally adorable. Look at this giraffe, and these meerkats, and this polar bear! They’re not just crocheted softies, they are ART!

And if that doesn’t make her awesome enough, she just opened the Etsy shop to get rid of some of the creatures who were crowding her bookshelves. Many of the patterns are available on her blog for free!

*I think I failed miserably. Maybe I should have broken this up into three posts.

So we’re ending the old year with a bang, and a crash, and some tears (on Annalie’s part) and some self-recriminations (on mine & Troy’s part).

Annalie pulled a heavy box down onto her leg and foot this morning. Troy was helping me finish up a batch of cookies for a party we’re going to tonight when we heard a series of bangs and crashes behind us. Before either of us could move Annalie had fallen back into our kitchen chairs and table, sending the lightweight pieces skidding, and the large flat box holding the pieces of a bookcase was down on top of her right leg. Aack!

We both ran over to scoop her up and comfort her. She was crying, but thankfully she was able to wiggle her toes and move her foot. We ran cold water over her foot and leg in the bathroom sink (Annalie protesting the whole time, “That’s enough, that’s enough!”) and had her take Motrin to help with the swelling and the pain. At first she kept saying she wanted to go to bed, which I could understand because my inclination when I am in pain is to go hole up by myself too. But we wanted to keep an eye on her, so we convinced her to snuggle on the couch with Troy and turned the TV to Discovery Kids. She’d watch for a few minutes in silence, then remember the pain and cry a little. Poor baby.

It’s been a couple of hours now, and Annalie says her foot is feeling “more good” already. I’m thinking that after her nap she might get up and walk on that foot before she remembers that she hurt it. I hope that’s what happens. She also told us she was hungry, which is a good sign, no? She’s eating leftover aebleskiver as I type this.

A little while after all this happened and we were all sitting here on the couch, Troy said, “You know what the kicker is? As I was helping you with those cookies, I was thinking about how when I was done with that, I was gonna break down those boxes and take the pieces of the bookcase upstairs to the office, so they would be up there when we were ready to put it together in Annalie’s room.”

At least Annalie IS feeling better.

We hope she continues improving, so we’re able to go to the family New Year’s party at our friends Jill & Andy’s house tonight. There, we’ll chat with friends while we stuff our faces with delicious appetizers and the kids play. We’ll break out noisemakers and do the countdown at 7pm (midnight Greenwich Mean Time). Then we can all take our kids home and put them to bed at a reasonable hour. Troy and I will be staying up to see in the New Year with root beer floats and a classic movie we’ve never seen before, which has been our tradition since we got married. This year I think we’ll watch To Kill a Mockingbird, if Netflix delivers it today. If not, we’ll watch whatever we can find at Blockbuster.

Happy New Year, everyone! Whatever you’re doing tonight, have fun and be safe. I hope 2008 is the year you get pregnant, find that dream job, perfect your homemade spaghetti sauce, run the 5K, learn to knit, reconnect with old friends, or whatever it is your heart desires.