Just wanted to say a huge, huge thank you for the lovely comments on the Hair Incident Post. You’ve all made me feel so much better — you’ve helped me sort out my own feelings and figure it all out. You so rock.

Things are better today. We were first in line at the Goobers this morning (a fancy west-end kids’ hair salon) and the girl there, after giving me a wide-eyed look of total sympathy, did her best to even things out. There are still a few bald patches and the Little Miss’ hair is OH-MY-GOD so short, but I’m getting used to it. The Goobers girl put sparkles in her hair and the Little Miss was beyond happy, so that’s all good.

As for Gal Smiley, she remains stoic even though we have banned her from the park for this week, and removed all playing-alone-upstairs privileges. At bedtime today we had a good talk in which I reassured her that although we were upset we still loved her very much, and she admitted that she had been making a secret plan to go and live with Princess Charming next door. I told her she was stuck with us, and she actually seemed a little put out but her little secret smile gave her away. Things are looking better.

So now that I am no longer crying every time I look at the Little Miss, I can move on to crying every time I look at the Captain. He’s had a system-wide reaction to some sunscreen we put on him over the weekend, and now his face is red, rashy, and puffy, his ears are beet red and twice their normal size, and he’s itchy all over his arms and legs. Perfect. He’s getting twice daily treatments with hydrocortizone but he’s still making me teary-eyed every 30 seconds or so.

Speaking of tears, last week the Captain had a field trip the Science Museum with his class at school. At the end of the day, the museum gifted each kid a very small bouncy ball. When his class emerged from the school at the end of the day, every kid pulled a bouncy ball from their pocket and started bouncing them around.

And of course, the Captain was the one kid who lost his. It bounced off a big rock and ricocheted somewhere and it was gone. He cried and searched and cried and searched and cried, poor little kid. MOM HEARTBREAK ALERT.

Of course I was near tears myself, but the real thing that got to me was the way his classmates reacted. Several were still hanging around the school yard and they all mobilized and started looking for the Captain’s ball right away. Some came over to offer words or hugs of encouragement during the crying phases. One girl actually offered to give her own ball to the Captain and although of course I had to say no, she was just so sweet and kind that I wanted to hug her, then CRY INTO HER HAIR, because I was so moved.

Kids of the Captain’s class, I love you.

Now excuse me while I crack open YET ANOTHER box of Kleenex. It’s been quite a week!

Little Miss Sunshine will be three years old in a few weeks, but she’s never had a real haircut. Twice we’ve trimmed off a quarter inch of baby hair, but otherwise, her hair grows free and wild, billowing around her face in an echo of her carefree heart.

This afternoon, Gal Smiley cut it all off. Right down to the scalp in a few places; an inch or so long in others.

When the Little Miss came downstairs, all excited and proud — we were enjoying a little quiet time as the girls played upstairs and the Captain amused himself with some Lego — I cried. Wept like someone had died. I could not get a hold of myself.

Sir Monkeypants struggled to reel me in, all the while trying to assure the Little Miss that she looked beautiful, and sending the Gal away to her room for her own safety.

I eventually stopped crying, but I still couldn’t face it. What’s wrong with me? It’s only hair. It’s not like she’s injured or sick. It’s not even permanent.

And yet.

My girly girl, my little one who used to love ponytails more than anything, who used to often say that her long hair made her into a princess, who used to say that the similar style of her hair to my own made us a team — I can’t even look at those bald patches under her princess crown without a lump coming to my throat.

I can’t shake the feeling that Gal Smiley did this not out of boredom or curiousity, but to deliberately take something away from her sister.

I don’t know how I’m going to face the Little Miss tomorrow morning, when she wakes up and looks at me with those giant, innocent, saucer eyes and wants to know why she can’t have ponytails today. She doesn’t understand that it doesn’t grow back in a day.

It’s only hair. Get a grip.

We’re walking a fine line on punishment over here. First of all, Gal Smiley had to clean up the mess — there was hair EVERYWHERE in our house, in everyone’s bed, all over both bathrooms. Piles of hair on the floor, on counters, on the Captain’s video game machine. Gal Smiley did vacuuming and laundry and wiping and then she was sent to her room.

Is that enough? We think what she did was pretty bad. “I didn’t hurt her!” was the first thing out of Gal Smiley’s mouth. She maybe didn’t hurt the Little Miss physically, but she hurt her heart — she took something that the Little Miss valued. She didn’t empathize or think about what the Little Miss might want. She treated her sister like a doll, not like a living creature.

She told the Little Miss that having her hair cut off would make her prettier, and the Little Miss, who worships her older sister, believed her completely. She asked us over and over, “I pretty now? Now my hair make me pretty?” and my heart broke.

Your sweet spirit makes you beautiful, my love.

Yet my own pride in your lovely long hair, my own love of making braids and pigtails is getting in the way of me selling that truth.

There are a lot of worse things Gal Smiley could have done. After all, it’s only hair, The damage isn’t permanent.

Oh, except for FameThrowa’s upcoming wedding photos. And her third birthday photos. And every photo we take for the next two years. Or three. Or five. Pass the tissues.

I’m overreacting, right? This ongoing need to cry over my child’s lost hair?

Her love of the world remains unchanged. Her adoration of Gal Smiley is still there. At bedtime, instead of her usual goodnight song, she wanted to sing a new song she’d learned today from Gal Smiley, that goes like this: “Cut cut cut!”

She’s happy and gorgeous and delightful.

She’s way, way smarter than I am.

Once when I was in university, a friend of a friend of mine ran an experiment. He took a slice of processed cheese, unwrapped it from its little plastic sheath, and threw it out on his deck. Then he left it alone to suffer through wind, rain, and animal attacks.

Four months later, the slice was still there. It was a little dried out, but otherwise as pure and orange and gelatinous as the day it was unwrapped. No mold, no animal bites, no rot of any kind.

Scary, no? Reminds me of the scene in Super Size Me (actually, I believe this was in the supporting stuff on the DVD) where the guy took some McD’s french fries and put them in a glass jar and, weeks later, they were as golden and clean as the day they were fried. YIKERS.

This comes to mind because the other day I was cleaning up some food to scrape into our compost bin, and I was wondering if, given the above experiments, it was actually okay to put cheese slices and McDonald’s french fries into your green bin. Would the power of the composting plant be able to break them down? Or would their plastic nature mean they fit in better with the blue bin stuff?

Poll time!

Which of the following so-called foods are real enough to actually qualify for green bin status?

• marshmallows
• hard candies, like jellybeans, skittles, or candy canes
• chocolate syrup
• artificial cheese slices
• shortening
• bubble gum
• fruit roll-ups
• cereals such as Lucky Charms and Cocoa Puffs
• unpopped kernels from microwave popcorn
• large pits, like those from avocados and peaches
• McDonald’s french fries
• Oreo cookies
• jello

Your guess is as good as mine!

So here’s something weird: I think I have developed a peanut allergy.

This is especially strange for me because I used to absolutely live on peanut butter. As a kid I had at least one peanut butter sandwich every day. As a grown up it was still a regular part of my diet — a peanut butter sandwich as a late night snack was heaven. I admit that I even occasionally indulged in a Fluffernutter or two. And since Sir Monkeypants is allergic to tree nuts, peanuts used to be a major player in our stir fries and desserts.

My mother ate a ton of peanut butter when she was pregnant with me. She had cravings for it and had it almost every day. These days it’s one theory that eating a lot of peanuts during pregnancy can predispose the baby to a peanut allergy, and my mom always points to me as a counter example — she ate peanuts all the time! And yet I’m fine! So much for modern science and their so-called “theories”!

And yet.

Back in January I was visiting Mrs. Carl Sagan, and she served some treats left over from a preschool executive meeting. I immediately went for the peanut butter cup. Since the Captain is allergic to peanuts, we’ve gone peanut free in the house, and I hadn’t eaten anything with peanuts in it for at least a couple of years.

And my mouth went all…funny. Fuzzy and thick. And itchy inside. It wasn’t anything scary, I didn’t get hives or stop breathing. But it was enough of a reaction, and so immediate, that I noticed.

Weird, I thought.

Then a few weeks later, I had some Reese’s Pieces at poker. And again, the fuzzy mouth, the itchiness. Last week, I had some Bridge Mix at poker, which includes chocolate-covered peanuts, and again, the weirdness. The next morning I felt hungover, exausted, and my mouth was sore.

So…I don’t know what. I hesitate to go all the way to allergy but this is very suggestive, don’t you think? It’s quite freaking me out. I guess I should get tested. The peanut allergy thing isn’t anything to mess around with.

It’s really scary to me that I could suddenly develop a food allergy this late in life. Someday they’ll figure out that food allergies are caused by something that seems so innocent, like hardwood flooring or kleenex or olive oil, and we’ll all slap ourselves on the forehead and have a good laugh and get rid of it. Until then, though, it’s disturbing to think that there is something in our world that is affecting our health, even later in life, and we have no idea what is going on. Eeep.

In other allergy news… it’s very early yet but we fear that Gal Smiley has developed an allergy or sensitivity to milk. She was always our healthy one, the one who never got sick and didn’t stop for anything. But over the past eight months she’s had breathing issues and serious coughs that she can’t get rid of, coughs that keep her up literally all night, coughs that cause fits that last for an hour or more when she literally cannot stop coughing even for a few seconds. We tried puffers and other medicines but eventually I decided to try taking her off of milk, and like magic, she is better.

Since we took her off of milk a few months ago, she’s been fine, but on the rare occasions when she has a bit of cheese or a little milk, voila, she’s up all night coughing again. Our doctor thinks this is pretty conclusive and we’re off for allergy testing for her in the fall.

CRAP.

As far as kids’ illnesses go, I can’t complain too much. It’s annoying to have allergy kids, but things could be way worse. I don’t see the kids’ allergies as life-threatening, and we learned long ago to live on an egg-free, nut-free, milk-free diet, so it’s not a huge lifestyle change, and the school knows all about food allergies now so everything is under control.

Still. There’s that old nagging feeling that something is affecting us. I really hope it doesn’t turn out to be pie.

It’s weird how you can hear something in passing, maybe on the street or while you’re flipping channels on TV, that can change your worldview a bit.

This one time in university, I was watching Married… With Children, which by the way is a show I despise, so I’m sure I was watching under duress at my friend Gord’s house, as he is a sucker for a sitcom. Anyway, Peg was talking about what a cheapskate Al was, and by way of example, stood up, thrust out her chest, and declared, “I haven’t bought a new bra in A YEAR!”

I was so bewildered. Was that so unusual? At the time I owned three bras and I’d had them for several years, at least three or four. I’d wear one for half the week, another for the other half of the week, then the third on laundry day. I certainly didn’t have $100 to run out and buy a bunch of new bras.

Maybe Peg meant that she only had one bra, and had to wear it every day, and thus couldn’t even wash it for a year?

Or maybe I was supposed to be replacing my bras every three months, and I was inadvertently living in a swill of grossness?

I didn’t even want to think about how old my underwear was.

I bought a new bra a couple of weeks ago so that’s why I’ve been thinking about Peg. I don’t think I’ll give you any more detail about my current underwear situation but thanks to Peg’s influence I think I’m in a cleaner, newer place now.

My middle child’s name means “night.”

My youngest child’s name means “ray of sunshine.”

They are literally day and night, these two heads buried deep in conversation as one leads the other gently across the field outside the school, heading for the woods they explore together every day.

One girl is a tomboy. She prefers her brother’s hand-me-downs; no pink nor sparkle nor frill will grace her athletic body. She’s a generous and kind care-giver, but also moody and sometimes sneaky. She’s the first to give her treat or stuffed animal or favourite pair of socks to her brother and sister, if they want it. She’s the first to complain, bitterly, if a distracted soccer team member lets a goal in. You have to work to earn her trust, but once you have it, she’s yours forever. There’s nothing she hates more than being the centre of attention.

One girl is a social butterfly. She likes dresses, Barbies, princesses. She can’t be hurried because there’s so much of life to explore, to dream about, to wonder at. She’s a little selfish and prone to tantrums, but she’s open and warm in her affections. Within seconds, you’re her best friend, but there are so many people to know that she might flitter off to someone new soon. Let her joy and happiness drench you while you can. All the world’s her stage, and all of us her audience.

Different in every way. Yet the same, because they were both built by us, both shaped from the same raw material.

Sisters, and best friends. Walking hand in hand through the woods, through the park, through life.

For May and June, we have:

Mondays: grocery shopping day; soccer for the Captain; skating for Gal Smiley and the Captain (haven’t quite figured out how the Captain is going to be in two places at once yet)

Tuesdays; swim class for Sir Monkeypants; preschool board meeting once a month; PTA meeting once every other month; plus occasional preschool general meetings

Wednesdays: laundry day; soccer for Gal Smiley; PTA meetings once every other month; book club meeting in May

Thursdays: Lynn tap class; Sir Monkeypants poker once or twice a month

Fridays: free, book us now or lose out!

Saturdays: dance class for the Little Miss, birthday party for Gal Smiley every Saturday in May, occasional classes at the library for the older two kids, poker for Lynn once a month

Sundays: gymnastics for the girls; ball hockey for the Captain

And. Breathe.

Also happening this month and next: planting our first-ever vegetable garden; planning Blog Out Loud; planning a shower for FameThrowa (don’t even TRY to talk me out of it, FameThrowa, it is happening!); hosting a brunch for FameThrowa’s fiancee’s family; having a birthday party for Little Miss Sunshine, who is turning three.

Not happening: Garage Sale, blurgh. I really wanted to have one and even have the giant, enormous, scary pile in the basement ready to go, but the only possible weekend for this is this coming Saturday and I have to just let it go for my own sanity. Anyone want any baby clothes or toys?

AND, somewhere in there I’m supposed to be training for the National Capital 5K, which at this rate, I am going to have to CRAWL THROUGH, and then, I will only make it if someone is walking three feet in front of me the entire time with a box of chocolates. At this point in time I don’t think I could “run” down to the corner and back.

Deep breaths now. If I can just make it through to July…I won’t know what the hell to do with myself.

Our kitchen table is just about the only flat surface available in our house. There’s a desk in the office, but I haven’t seen the top of it since we moved in five years ago. I think it’s yellow. Or perhaps blue.

Anyway, any time we want to do anything in this house, it happens at The Table.

Now, no mocking the disco-neon vinyl tablecloth. I like bright colours and plus, it was on sale for only 90 cents at the Superstore. Win-win!

Monday, 7 a.m., breakfast.

Monday, 7:30 a.m., breakfast remmnants and a rousing game of Mousetrap.

Tuesday, 9:30 a.m., snack for the Little Miss, work for me on the laptop, post-breakfast Lego still hanging around.

Tuesday, 11 a.m., snack for Gal Smiley, just home from school.

Wednesday, 11:30 a.m., pie making day.

Wednesday, 1 p.m., gluing craft for the girls before we have to pick up the Captain from school.

Wednesday, 3:30 p.m., homework, with marbles from an earlier game.

Thursday, 4:00 p.m., Lego versus Polly Pockets.

Friday, 6:00 p.m., remains of dinner.

Friday, 9:00 p.m., ready for another day.