The Queen's Rambles

I posted a few pictures on Flickr if you are a stalker. Click through to see them. They’re also on FB. I know you are living to see pics of my kids.

I had to post this one. Do you know who he is?

Star Wars fans can surely tell that’s Bobba Fett you’re looking at.

We are creative in our costume execution in these parts. Don’t you know a jet pack when you see one?

And of course I have to put up a picture of my sweet girl. She’s looking more and more like her brother. I had her in a blue sleeper last night and it was a big disconcerting. I kept having flashbacks to Erik’s baby hood (only without the screaming).

We’ve been having a pretty rough weekend. I’ve been Miss Cranky Pants, mainly due to disturbed sleep. I guess the old chestnut “sleep begets sleep” is really true. We tried many, many things to get Erik to sleep but nothing worked. All the simple, easy advice works with Elsa.

Problem?

Preschool.

Don’t get me wrong. I love preschool. But poor Elsa is all messed up. She no longer sleeps in the car or in her car seat and all the in and out and up and down is messing up her sleep. No sleep during the day means no sleep during the night. I don’t get it, but there you have it. No sleep begets no sleep.

I even had to take her out of the bed a couple of different times this week. Yes, I know that’s what you do with babies, but I was spoiled. She hasn’t been awake during the night since she was six weeks old (she starts grunting and I feed her, but she never wakes up all the way).

Ah, the joys of baby sleep talk.

At least we are finally getting somewhere with Erik’s night time routine. Mike and I are both very empathetic parents and both remember the feeling of lying in bed alone, being very afraid. We’ve not wanted that for Erik, thus one of us always lays with him until he goes to sleep.

No more!

We’ve been slowly weaning him off us and I think our work is complete. Now we lay there 15 minutes or so and then leave. It’s some kind of miracle. He doesn’t even seem traumatized.

How about something completely different?

I had a weird experience at Safeway the other night and I’m still feeling guilty.

We were in a big hurry and just needed to pick up a couple of items before karate class.

As we walked in I noticed a little boy, maybe 8 or 9, climbing up on the soup table and getting some crackers. Weird, I suppose, but nothing worth commenting on.

We rushed through the aisles and ended up in the produce section. The boy was sprawled out on the floor, cracker wrappers spread around, reading a magazine. Ok. Definitely weird.

My son, the social butterfly, went over to say hello. This happens all the time and we get various reactions–a friendly hello, running away and hiding, the reactions run the gamut.

This kid didn’t even look up. Erik got even closer and shouted at him, but again the kid didn’t even look up. At this point I noticed he was making some repetitive hand motions and an alarm bell went off. I started looking for a parent, but there wasn’t one in sight.

Erik kept asking me what was wrong with the boy and asking if he was lost. When your four year old notices something’s off, you know it’s really off.

I kept him in my line of sight as we got in line. When we finally got up to the checker, I told him what was going on. The woman in line behind me chimed in that she agreed with my assessment. The checker pissed me off royally because he refused to do anything. He just looked at me like I was stupid. I asked him to call a manager or security to go check on the boy, but he didn’t.

As I said, I was in a big hurry and didn’t really have time to be rushing around. I suppose that is no excuse, but what can I say? I felt guilty for walking out of the store, but I notified the staff. I should have went to customer service and talked to them, but there was a long line. I know that logically there had to be at least one staffer member keeping an eye on the boy. Don’t all those stores have plain clothes security roaming around? The guy probably didn’t call anyone because it was probably already being handled. Still. I feel guilty. I’ve googled and am not coming up with any missing children in the area. It was just so weird. I couldn’t help but think about that case in New York a few months ago about the autistic boy who got lost on the subway system. It took days before someone took an interest in him and figured out how to help him. I don’t want to be the type of person who leaves a child in trouble, but how much help can you give when the child won’t respond to you? You don’t want to cause a scene and get in trouble for harassing and innocent kid who has a parent on another aisle.

Ok, we have a wakey baby I must attend to. Night night!