A teaching moment

I was taking Sweet Daughter to daycare yesterday morning when I passed one our local boys in blue trying to catch speeders in a residential area. Well, boys in brown, actually. From the Sheriff’s office. I passed him, he swung around, lit me up, and SD said “Uh OH!!” (Apparently, she’s seen one too many episode of COPS as is evidenced by the time we drove past a shirtless, mullet-sporting guy in an older pick-up and she randomly asked “Mama – is that man going to jail?” We haven’t watched COPS since that day. But I digress.)

I said “Honey – it’s okay. He’s just pulling me over to tell me my headlight is out. Remember we noticed that coming home on Saturday?” I figured it was a really good teaching moment to reinforce that the police are (generally) good guys and they help people in trouble. I got the usual questions (license, registration, where are you going). I complied with paperwork and answered “To drop my daughter at daycare, and then go to work.” Apparently everything checked out – I was dressed for the office, SD had her backpack, and stuffed animal, and even with my NRA sticker and this on the back of the car

I was not deemed to be a threat to society and I was sent on my way with a “Make sure you get that fixed so you don’t hit a deer and get hurt!” Yay, no paperwork!

“See honey? He just wanted us to make sure we knew our headlight was out! He wanted us to be safe.” Teaching moment complete. Or so I thought.

When I got to the office I glanced in the back of the truck. I hadn’t finished unloading it after “Pirate Fest” on Saturday. Luckily, this is what the officer saw.

That's some sort of leather belt thing, a red jacket, some paper bags, a pair of buckle shoes, a decorative stick of some sort and some tie downs, right?

This is what he might have seen had the cruel finger of fate decided to flip me off and stuff wasn't covered.

Oh look! Brown paper bags, a pair of buckle shoes, a coat with a decidedly miltary feel to it, a fairly long sword and boarding axe???

Not that there is anything wrong with this … I’m sure it just would have made the morning more interesting than I really wanted it to be. And  I learned to look in the back of my car before I leave the house.

QOTD

While picking up my car from the shop today, I found out that my mechanic used to go hunting woodchucks with this guy. shared a few memories, including the time Bob came to pick up his truck while in uniform “with a Chesty Puller starter kit on his chest”.

I LOLed.

Pirate Fest (LOTS of pictures of the kid)

Held at Darnall's Chance in Upper Marlboro, MD, this was a fun thing to do with a 4 1/2-year-old. First she put her costume together, The only thing she wore today that she wears at events were her shoes. Ratty old shift? Check. Imported Indian calico headrag? Check. Ragged skirt AND fancy skirt? Check. Sword, hook, compass, spyglass and plenty of necklaces? Check, check, check, check and check. The most rightous piratical stockings ever? Aye, Matey!

She walked the plank, she swung in a hammock. She climbed up ...

over, and down the rigging.

She dug for burried treasure. She rolled a barrel through a fenced-in path, remembering to push on the right side to go left, and the left side to go right.

She earned coins for each task, and then traded them in for a key to break the secret code on the directions to find the secret treasure. We headed north for 25 paces. We turned west. We found more clues, we went hither and yon until she found the secret doorway and got her official pirate papers.

She was in a parade.

She fenced -- oddly enough, she is very left-hand dominant when it comes to writing and eating. But she bats and fences (and shoots) right handed.
 

This would be her Scots blood showing and she handles this thing like a broadsword.

She got to see the parrots and other birds.

Note: I do not like things that flutter. At all. I avoid butterflies, even. When the bird flew off her head TOWARDS ME, I'm sure I looked startled, to say the least. But I did NOT jump, or scream, DFO, snatch my darling child to my bosum and flee, or any of the other things that flew (hahahahah) through my mind. Yay me.

She checked out the pillory. And looked like she was plotting.

She got a drink. Because that's all there was. That and snowcones and popcorn. The food vendor decided not to show. Good thing she was too busy to realize she was hungy.

And, she entered the costume contest. They were interviewed, demonstrated their pirate walk, and were then ranked by applause. Well, she made the final 5, but one parent can only whoop and holler so loud, and when other contestes have more family in the audience ...she didn't make the final three.

Here she is during the interview. The MC asked her what happened to her hand. She was quick to explain that nothing was wrong with her hand -- it was just a costume. Really. She was fine. Please don't worry. It's okay. Costume, see?

I tried to remind her how we'd talked about the fun part was putting the costume together, but she wasn't buying it. She KNEW her costume was better than the rest. I chalked it up to a good lesson in "Life's not fair, so suck it up, Cupcake" and started to procede along those lines, when a couple of the judges came over looking sheepish. They knew that the results didn't reflect the best costume, just the loudest supporters. So, the MC donated a copy of a children's book he'd written (Broadside Ben and the Big Brass Cannon by Cliff Long), and was kind enough to autograph it. (BTW, the book is a hoot. The Dutch ships are flying pennants with tulips on them, for starters.)

All in all an excellent if exhausting day. I think we'll go back next year.

"Mama - This bird isn't going potty on my head, is he?"

Belay the strawberry pickin’!

Plans for tomorrow included going to a pick-you-own-strawberries place with Sweet Daughter. That was until my boss told me that he’ll be at a historic site tomorrow where they’re having “Pirate Day” for the kids. He’s teaching fencing, and there will be face painting and a treasure hunt, birds to sit on your shoulder and a costume contest, vendors, food, etc. I asked SW which she’d like to do, and her face lit up as she decided the strawberries could wait another week.

We spent the evening trying to put costumes together for tomorrow. We started with our 18th century event clothes, and added and subtracted from there. SD was given a set of pirate accessories from Michael W., so we dug out the plastic hook, spyglass, compass and sword. She’s got bling, she’s got purple and green striped stockings, she’s READY.

I had no idea what to put together for myself, because the Renn-Faire Pyrate Wench thing is so NOT happening at a kid’s event. However, while mulling ideas over with my boss, I apparently said “Hey! I’ve got a BOARDING AXE!” with the same inflection that an 8-year-old girl would use to say “Santa brought ME a PONY!"

Chalk another one up to “I’m not like other moms …”

Foster care

Look what followed Shorter Half home. He says we can't keep it, but we can foster it for a couple of weeks. I'll get more pictues later -- maybe I can take it out for some "exercise" ...

Different?

Sweet Daughter wanted a handgun for her 4th birthday. While a-typical for most 4-year-olds, that’s old news around this house. But from time to time I’m reminded I’m a little … different.

First, there was the t-shirt incident. I was wearing my stamp act t-shirt.

I asked Sweet Daughter if the picture bothered her. She said it did, a little bit.

“But why? It’s just a picture of the skull Daddy uses at events.”

“Really?”

“Yup.” And she was fine.

Part of the Detached Hospital's Dental Display

Then there’s Sweet Daughter’s first grown-up party at the Gunnie Prom in Charlotte last Saturday. She was told what to expect, and what was expected of her, and I brought a kid-friendly-yet-appropriate activity for her so she wouldn’t find um, annoying ways to entertain herself. (Well, other than when she decided she needed to deliver something to Breda at the end of the row of tables, and decided the quickest way to accomplish this was to run the gauntlet under the row of tables. It was like she dissapeared into thin air. Good problem solving skills at least.) And when we got to the restaurant and she started holding her hands over her ears because it was too loud, I managed to find some earplugs in my purse for her. All moms carry those, right?

Special thanks to Breda for assistance with the artwork!

But yesterday morning she woke up and told me she’d had the worst bad dream of her life. Worse that the big, bad wolf, even. She said that she’d gone to the “NRA Gun Convention” (we’ll work on the redundancy issue when she’s older) and she’d taken her own purple pellet pistol to the indoor range because they’d asked to see it, but then they wouldn’t give it back. “They said it was too cute and they wanted to keep it. They played a trick on us!” she said. “It was really those ketchup people that want to take our guns away!”

I guess she remembered our conversation in the grocery store earlier in the week when I explained that we didn’t buy a certain ketchup because the family that owned the company didn’t want us to have guns.

I’m starting to think I’m not like other moms.

Three things

First, a picture of my Blogfather taken by Sweet Daughter.


Second, I’d like to dispel the rumor that I’m 7’ tall. You're off by 12". You can guess which direction.

Third, here is a close-up of the H-S booth guys. I didn’t get the face of the guy on the left (he was looking away anyhow), but look as his body language. *grin*