Home with Phoebe

Tonight Phoebe and I had the house all to ourselves (which is a rather unusual thing). 

Alexander, Zoë, and Benjamin went to Grandpa's house for a sleepover (Darla is in California helping with her new grandbaby so Grandpa is lonely). Rachel and Miriam had planned to have a bunch of friends over to play games this evening, but they usually play games outside and it ended up storming quite a bit so they decided to head over to the church to play games instead (Andrew went to provide adult supervision, but the church was bustling with activity—a group was there playing soccer and another group was doing something else—so there were plenty of adults around...our teens just took one of the bigger rooms that weren't being used). 

So, yeah, Phoebe and I were left alone together. 

She was a little gutted that she wasn't invited to sleep over at "Gampa-Dala's" house. She packed all her most important items in a little backpack and was all ready to go...and then we crushed her dreams. 

There are just a few benchmarks she has to meet before she can be considered for a sleep over. Things like (1) sleeping in her own bed, (2) ditching overnight pull-ups, (3) not panicking whenever Mom or Dad can't be with her. Simple things like that. Once she understood that Mom wasn't going to "Gampa-Dala's" she was much more okay with the idea of staying home. 

She got to watch Daniel Tiger while I cleaned the kitchen. And then we had some music time and reading time and drawing time and playing time before getting ready for bed. 

"Here’s the deal—" I told her. W need to start getting ready for bed, so it’s time to tidy up."

"Sure hope kids are ‘kay!" she said.

"You…sure hope…" I echoed with a snicker.

"…kids are okay, yeah," Phoebe finished before sighing a big sigh. "Wonder what they’re doing right now…" She sighed again. Evidently she was starting to feel lonely without them.

Anyway, here she is drawing a picture of "my kitty, my Waffles":

The big pink shape in the middle is clearly a cat and then there's a beautiful orange sunshine and then she drew "all of us," so I suppose all those other blobs are our family.

I sent her upstairs to put an armful of stuffed animals away in her room, instructing her to get the ones she needs to have for bedtime ready for bed. Selecting and positioning her stuffed animals is quite the nightly ritual. It's an art, really—an art that only she understands. But it must be done or...else...and so I was happy that she was doing it. I expected it would take her a few minutes and let her have that independence while I kept tidying up things in the living room. 

When she came back downstairs she was gleefully clutching...something.

"What did you find?" I asked.

"Papstich!"

"You found chapstick?" I asked.

"Yeah!" she squealed. "On Zoë's shelf!"

"If you found the chapstick on Zoë's shelf...wouldn't that make it...Zoë's chapstick?"

"Her is not here!" Phoebe reasoned brightly. "So now it's mine!"

"Okay, so this is not how ownership works..." I tried to explain.

"I love my papstich and I love purple! It's so nice of Zoë to leave this here when she left, right? It's so purple. Isn't that nice?"

"You know she's coming back, right?" I asked.

"It's my papstich," Phoebe insisted. "I'm so pretty!"

I did eventually (and diplomatically) get it away from her. Zoë will probably still be upset when she sees it. This girl destroys chapstick...like, Grandpa left some chapstick here the last time he was over (for FHE after Rachel and Miriam got back from FSY). His chapstick must have fallen out of his pocket or something...onto the couch? Who knows? All I know is that Phoebe had it the next morning.

I texted Grandpa to say that we'd found his chapstick if he had been looking for it...but that Phoebe had been the one to find it and she had...used it liberally. She was so snotty at the time (like, physically, not attitudinally; her nose was so runny) that I was not surprised when Grandpa said she could just have it.

Where is it now? Well, that's anyone's guess. 

But this purple chapstick is up on Zoë's nightstand now (which is a shelf mounted by the top bunk) so hopefully it's safe!