Ava loved her Indiana birthday party and had a wonderful time, but she was still a little bummed on the way home. "I wanted a party with my friends at home too." She pouted as we drove across the state line and into Ohio. Being the occasional over-indulgent parent that I am, I caved. "Well, maybe we can have a couple of your friends over for cake and ice cream next weekend." Tough negotiator that she is, she came back with, "No cake. Just ice cream." The kid despises birthday cake. Why? She can't stand frosting. (Who is this kid?!) "Okay, just ice cream" I agreed. Hey-no need to spend hours constructing another Ariel birthday cake. Like I was going to argue. So, at the after school pick-up this week, I mentioned to some of the neighborhood moms that we'd be having a little ice cream social at our house on Saturday in honor of my daughter's birthday. I'm glad I indulged her this time. It turns out that a couple of her friends were a little miffed that they'd been excluded from the out-of-state birthday celebration she'd talked about all week .
On Saturday morning, we decorated the dining room with a couple of rolls of streamers.
Then, in the afternoon, a group of Ava's neighborhood friends arrived.
They made sundaes.
The kids all seemed to have a good time, first running off their sugar high in the backyard, then sprawling across Ava's bed to listen to Taylor Swift and the Camp Rock 2 gang on Ava's new boombox. After the dust settled and all of the kiddos were gone...including the guest of honor (she went to play at a neighbor's house), Miss Emily made a new friend. "Grasshopper". He chose her as a companion by jumping right onto her shirt. Have I mentioned that this kid is not scared of anything, including insects? Last week I stopped her a fraction of a second before her chubby little hand closed on a rather large and venomous looking spider!
Here she is with her new "friend".
And here's some footage of Emily and her beloved grasshopper.
Poor kid. I wonder if she just feels "left behind" by Ava and all of the other big kids. I mean, why else would she adopt a grasshopper as her best friend besides the fact that she feels a little lonely? Whatever her motivation, Emily was crazy about Grasshopper. He has escaped more than once, because Emily kept opening the jar so that she could "cuddle" with him. Once he disappeared for over an hour, only to re-appear in the middle of our family room floor. When she first found him on our deck, he only had one leg. I almost felt sorry for him...especially with the way that Em was manhandling him and toting him around everywhere. Within his first few hours in captivity, I actually watched him grab his remaining hind leg in his mouth and wrench it off! At first, I gave him the benefit of the doubt, reasoning that maybe he was just trying to re-establish balance in his life. But still, it was horrifying to watch! The more time grasshopper spends with our family, the less I like him. I don't really feel so sorry for him anymore either. He's clearly crazy. I especially don't like the way that he stares at me...even turning his head to follow my movements around a room. He has a tiny brain and a giant scary mouth, how in the world can this thing have such a personality?! I'm secretly starting to wonder if he tore off his first leg just so we'd feel sorry for him and take him in. What? Paranoid? Me? Nooo. Hahaha.
I didn't expect Grasshopper to make it through the night, what with Emily taking him out to "cuddle" every few minutes and the traumatic limb amputation. (If you ripped even one of my legs off, I'd probably die in a matter of hours without medical care...I'm just sayin'!). Of course, sadistic Ava announced "He's dead. He's definitely not moving!" every few minutes just to watch Emily burst into hopeless grief-stricken sobbing. ARRRGH! Surprisingly, Grasshopper lived through the night. (Sleeping atop Emily's nightstand and next to his detached leg). He even looked chipper this morning as he did a little dance on his 4 remaining legs. I'm pretty sure that this is payback for the baby catfish, lizard, and lake mussels that shared my room when I was a kid.
While the grasshopper thrived, our laptop completely died. The place where the power cord attaches has been busted for months and we've been "babying it". On Saturday, it finally refused to charge, and eventually died. I was pretty devastated. No laptop?! How will I "work"? How can I communicate with the world? What?! People actually used to talk to one another...on the phone and...in person?! Amazing. I know that I had the panicked look and demeanor of a crack addict without her fix. I appealed to Mike, "You can fix it tonight, right?" At first, he gave me a hard time,(something about the broken laptop being my fault because I wasn't careful enough.) But then he took our laptop completely apart, removed the hard drive, pulled out some wires, and scraped out a bigger hole for the "plug in thingie" before heading to Radio Shack for a new part. He came home and retreated to the garage where he soldered the new part to the laptop and reassembled the whole thing.
Guess what? He fixed it! I'm typing this from our new and improved laptop right now! He is my HERO! Seriously, I think that my husband's ability to "fix stuff" just moved up the list to #3 on the "Reasons Why I Married Mike" list. : )
Sunday morning, we participated in the Cleveland Autism Walk. This our family's second year to participate in the event. We walk in support of our good friends, the Lyman's, and their son Chase. As a teacher, I knew the basics about autism, and spent time with an autistic student for a few minutes to a few hours every day. Now, as a friend of a family affected by autism, I see the obstacles that the child and his family deal with on a minute to minute basis. This walk is important. Raising money for autism awareness and research is important. As Ava put it, "We are walking so that scientists can get money to figure out how to help kids like Chase learn to talk better...like me!" Wow. I was super impressed by her interpretation of my explanation about how a fundraiser works and why we were participating.
Some pictures from the walk:
Ava and Em, waiting for the walk to begin.
Ava's best buddy Anna and her brother Chase.
Ava and Anna.
And Emily, chillin' in the wagon.
We wrapped up the weekend with hot wings, a Colt's victory, and some housework. Life is good. And that's the weekend at a glance. Hope you all had a good one!
