Riley and Avery

Oh goodness, where to start? My dental implants went well, except that my lower tooth was too infected to place the implant there. So he packed it with a bone graft and I have to wait six months to get that implant placed. The other two are great and don't hurt at all. The infected one, however, hurts like the dickens. So I'm on some pretty powerful antibiotics that make me nauseous every time I take them. Hooray. I am getting really tired of the care during the healing time and the restricted diet. Rinse with salt water four times a day, rinse with some prescription plaque-killer two times a day, liquid diet, antibiotics three times a day. Ugh.

Second, the Limey has crashed and burned. I don't know what is wrong with it, but it had been flickering for a few days, and then just went out. So back to the old horrible Gateway that I had to fix using mostly fists and paperclips (and a new dial-up modem, a waste of money but a quick fix). Ah, spoiled my the Mac. Hello, viruses, it's been a while...

Riley has been really cute today. She was brushing her Care Bear's hair and wanted a pretty for it. All the ones I offered were not good enough. She said the wanted the ones with "a lot of clips" meaning the claw type. I said that I didn't know if we had any more of those, and she said "yeah, of course we do. You just have to believe." I just thought that was so cute. Then she taped a lollipop to its hand. Then she found a Vietnam Purple Heart badge and taped it to the Care Bear because "it's on the best team."

You know, Riley is at the age where she can tell me just how awful a mother I really am. At bedtime tonight, she wanted to go back downstairs and I said that she had to wait until Avery was asleep first and why doesn't she cuddle with me until Avery's asleep (a favorite ploy of mine-it usually results in Riley falling asleep). So Riley cuddled and then in her most dramatic voice and grand arm gestures: "CAN'T YOU SEE HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU? Why are you mean to me? When you tell me that I can't go down it makes me sad and that's mean! CAN'T YOU SEE HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU?" And then the weeping. So I know that I wasn't being mean, but does it really matter if Riley thinks I'm mean anyway? The truth is her perception, so if she thinks I'm mean, then I guess I'm mean...

And Riley has been lamenting about how she wants to be thirty like me. "I want to be firty just like you!" and the weeping. "I want to be just like you and do everything you do!" and the weeping. I don't know what's up with her recent obsession with growing up and not growing up. Today she said "I don't want Avery to get big. I want her to be brand new again." Where does she get these things?

I did find the origin of her use of "stupid." Turns out I use it when I tell her Hansel and Gretel (her current favorite) and I tell it to her at least five times a day, no joke. When the witch tells Gretel to check if the oven is hot enough to cook Hansel and Gretel says she doesn't know how, I say that the witch says "Get out of my way you stupid girl, I'll check myself..." So there it is. Ta da.

Holy cow, I just used the printer that my parents got us for Christmas to go with the digital camera and it is phenomenal! I can't believe it, it looks just like I printed it from a lab! So totally cool.

I really don't think I have the energy to figure out how to download pictures from this computer, and I have traumatic memories of how unbelievably slow this computer was last time I used it years ago. I think I'll save the aggravation for another day...How totally cruel of me to post for the first time in over a week and then not include pictures. Tomorrow, I promise...I'm downloading Picasa right now.