Day: April 6, 2006

Book sales are meeting our expectations, but not up to our wildest hopes. That’s okay because some of those hopes were pretty wild. Besides we’re only 3 days into a month-long pre-order period. We still have time to use marketing strategies to get more people to pre-order. Being past the break even point removes a lot of the tension. Now we just need to bring in enough orders so that we can afford for Howard to start working on the layout for Book 2 as soon as we’ve mailed out Book 1.

Gleek continues to improve. She’s still sleeping more than usual, but much of the cranky has disapeared and her appetite is back to normal. I’m being very good about making sure she gets her antibiotic twice a day. And I’ll continue to observe her closely for probably a week after the antibiotic is gone. I really don’t want this particular affliction back anytime soon.

Patches has definitely acquired some abandonment issues. On Tuesday I left him with Howard for 10 minutes while I picked up Gleek from preschool. I told Patches I was leaving, he indicated that he wanted to stay. Apparently he changed his mind only moments after I walked out the door because I came back to a little boy who had been sobbing and screaming for his mother for almost 10 minutes. I snuggled him in my lap, read him a story, and rocked him to sleep. For the next week or two I probably won’t be leaving him behind at all. Hopefully that will help him establish enough emotional security that we can ease him back into staying at home while mommy runs quick errands.

Link’s bottom teeth have grown in crooked. I completely failed to notice this until yesterday even though they’ve obviously been doing this for months. Fortunately he has an occlusiguide which is supposed to help teeth grow into the correct places. I just haven’t been making him wear it. We found the thing and are working on having him wear it much more often. Yet another life detail for me to keep track of. Whee.

Kiki has begun her journey through the emotionally wracking world of preteen female peer relations. Kiki has a friend A who is also friends with B, but neither A nor B want to be friends with C even though C and B were previously good friends. (For a whole month!) Kiki doesn’t want C to be left all alone and is trying to use her influence to fix the situation. It gets more complicated from there as we add players D, E, and F. I’ll spare you all the details. I am very impressed with Kiki’s maturity in handling this situation. We talked it all over for almost an hour last night and there was not a single moment of melodramatic emotion. Kiki has placed herself in a hard spot because she believes it is the right thing to do. Not everyone can do that, especially during the difficult preteen and early teen years. As Kiki talked, I could see the patterns of needs and wants that are driving this conflict. None of these girls is bad, they’re just immature and struggling with inclusion and exclusion and power. They’re trying to learn how to be friends when being friends means more than just playing the same games.

Me? I’m feeling back to normal. I was completely incapacitated by stress Monday afternoon and Tuesday morning. I couldn’t think, couldn’t work, it was all I could do to maintain adequate levels of child care. Yesterday was something of a recovery day from that. Today I’m hoping/planning to dive in and get some real work done. I have accounting and laundry to do. Also I need to get to the library. Kiki has decided to face her new found fear of snakes (she was bitten by one on Tuesday) by reading lots of books about them. There are some parenting books I want to check out. And a book about Faberge eggs. I’m hoping that last one has lots of pictures. Beautiful pictures with lots of up close detail. Now if only slush will stop falling from the sky long enough for me to run errands.