Holpineville

Vacation with Us! A Quiz

1.        An apparently healthy child is most likely to be struck by uncontrollable diarrhea:

a.       In the very long airport security line, just after checking the luggage containing all the spare clothes, and before a long flight that you really can’t miss.

b.      While visiting the lovely home of a distant relative, where there is one bathroom for forty guests.

c.       In the middle of a municipal bus ride through a less-than-attractive and unfamiliar neighborhood.

 

2.       Estimate, to the nearest $10, how much we spent on “souvenirs” (aka “priceless treasures” or plastic junk) for the kids.

 

3.       On a six day vacation to an area of the country known for good restaurants and fine cuisine, how many days does Carl eat pepperoni pizza?

 

4.       On a car ride through a beautiful redwood forest, you stop to:

a.       Take in the view from the scenic lookout

b.      Let someone pee, incidentally in a giant grove of skunkweed

c.       Photograph the kids with a giant redwood tree

d.      Administer fresh air and the “of course you are not car sick, what are you talking about?” speech.

 

5.       Describe the appropriate emergency procedures when your precious child vomits all over the back seat and you are 25 miles into a 40 mile stretch of twisty roads.  You have no plastic bags, no paper towels, no water, no extra clothes, no rubber gloves, and no cleaning supplies of any kind.  Bonus points for strategizing how to get the child back into the car for the rest of the ride.

 

6.       You are driving through wine-making country.  The weather is perfect and the scenery beautiful.  You decide to stop for lunch:

a.       On the terrace of a café advertising tasty creative dishes made with locally-grown ingredients.

b.      You don’t.  Instead, you grab a plate of cheese, charcuterie, fruit, and crackers and enjoy it with a nice half bottle at your next winery stop.

c. At the Taco Bell/KFC in the gas station near the freeway entrance ramp.

We’re back from a few days far away at a family reunion, and my quiz had nothing to do with the high points.  It was wonderful.  No one wanted to come home.  I am trying to get back into the regular life groove today, and it’s not much fun so far.

 

Answers: 1. a.; 2. $115, but I could be forgetting something; 3. Four, I think; 4. b and d; 5. We stripped him to his underwear, used a map to mop up what we could, had him swish the dregs of a lemonade to rinse his mouth, used a tablespoon of flat diet soda to rinse our hands, and it was so awful I don’t remember the rest; 6.  If you picked anything but c., you’ve never traveled with little kids.

Jinkies*

Why do they always have to get sick?  And why is it always when the day camp is paid for, and you have Very Important Things to Do Without a Kid Along, and a vacation coming up later in the week?

So Ruby has another round of something unspecific and nasty.  Monday night, after a couple of hours of her looking pale, tired, grumpy, and saggy, it finally dawned on me that maybe her body felt a bit warm as we read a book together.  Yup, she had high fever.  Coincidentally, Tuesday morning was to be her seventh year check up at the doctor, so we converted the appointment to a "sick visit."  Apart from the fever, her throat looks really infected and the doctor seemed a bit concerned, but Ruby's initial strep test was negative, and thankfully, she's already had mono.  So we got some blood drawn (boy, was that fun) and some antibiotics.  It's now nearly 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday and Ruby is still asleep, which may be a record.  Her last dose of ibuprofen should be wearing off soon, however.

To add to the joy, Rod is in pain, sleepless, and very cranky because of what he thinks is just a bad case of swimmer's ear.  It hurt so much he actually went to the doctor voluntarily! He gets up every two hours for a hot compress and has formally adopted my bottles of painkillers. I suspect it might be something else, too, like Ruby's virus or an inner ear infection or a dental problem, but he says he feels somewhat better today and he went to work. 

And I am very tired from everyone waking me up all night, I hate packing, and I need to clean up the house, so I am procrastinating by writing this dull piece of news. 

We are thinking of hosting a foreign exchange student this fall, or taking in our occasional babysitter, who is a broke foreign college student, for a few months.  Nothing is confirmed yet, and chances are decent neither will happen, but I have to think of a nice way to explain to Ruby that we might need to move her stuff out of her room.  She sleeps in Carl's room, and she's a generous sort of person, so surely she won't mind, right? Yeah.

*We've been watching a lot of Scooby lately.

 

I Should be Swimming at the Pool

But I am tired today (from a long Fourth of July/birthday party yesterday, from starting to give up caffeine, from my pharmacy being out of my thyroid meds, from just being me…) and the kids suddenly seemed just too everything this afternoon: too loud, too bouncy, too smelly, too whiny, too needy.  Plus, I had things I would like to do around here without constant noisy interruption. Rod must have been in better shape than me, because he volunteered to take them swimming alone, and I was not foolish enough to make more than a token protest.

Dear Reader, I feel no small amount of guilt over not updating this here page sooner, but the things that have happened this week have all been rather minor, as you will see when I detail them for you now:  The kids got their hair cut, finally!  I threw up one morning and felt violently ill for about two hours and then I was fine.  Weird, huh?  I broke my favorite coffee mug.  I did a bunch of knitting on a baby sweater for a friend who is due to deliver any minute now.  (However, the weather is such that the baby won't be needing a sweater right away.)  Ruby and I spent a couple of hours cleaning her room today. It’s not the showplace I thought it would be without the clutter, but it’s better.  She wants to redecorate in a Parisian theme, and I am putting her off as much as I possibly can.

Rod was off work all week, and I wish we could say we did all kinds of really exciting family bonding things, but we didn’t.  Rod spent a bunch of time fixing things.  He also built the garden we promised Ruby as a birthday present.  She has a 4x4 raised plot now, with an irrigation system and real live plants: an eggplant, a couple of tomato plants, and a couple of things I don’t remember.  I am sure the 100 degree heat and partly-shady placement of it will make growing things harder than Ruby expects, and yet it is nice to see her so excited about it.  She wants to add flowers to the vegetables, once things settle in a bit.

The kids had space camp on two days, at the actual Johnson Space Center.  There’s got to be more to it, but all I have figured out from what they tell me, is that space camp involves eating junky food for lunch and doing some crafts.  Carl did learn something, because he and I watched the fireworks on TV last night and there was a taped message from some dude on the space station and a shot of mission control and Carl started telling me all about them.  Also last week, Ruby had a piano lesson, and an online Webkinz party with her cousins who live far away.  We went swimming a couple of times. Carl had a playdate with a friend, and took a nice long impromptu car nap one day. We had people over for dinner one night, and trekked out to Chinatown for dinner and grocery shopping another.  Rod and I managed a lunch and museum date one camp day, too.

In the Sudden Signs of Maturity Department: Ruby wanted to play the Monopoly game she got for her birthday yesterday, and to my surprise, it was fun!  She understood and followed the rules, she could do enough math to get by, and she didn’t have a crying freak out when things weren’t going her way.  She’s also been begging to play Uno a couple of times a day, and working on her knitting here and there. I wish I could get her to read more for fun, but there’s been a bit of that, too.  She and Carl have also been playing elaborate games together; role playing or using the stuffed animals, dolls and Legos.  They also put on shows for us often.  And then, just when you think we’ve achieved a certain level of household peace, harmony and ability to self-entertain, they go back to fighting and yelling and begging me to turn on a video for them.  

 

How I Have Missed You, Dear Friends in the Computer

Our DSL broke, for four days.  Rod patiently spent two and a half hours on the phone with Bangalore or Delhi or wherever, on his day off, without raising his voice, and then he made two separate trips to the store, and then there were only a few more hours of tinkering, and it’s like that whatchamacallit never quit working at all.  For me, it was a strange combination of a nice break and really annoying, not being able to connect with the world in my usual way.  I am much more Internet-dependent than I had realized, or than I was the last time the connection failed.

So, you are asking, what did you miss?  It’s been hellish hot here, with no end, or rain, in sight.  Maybe it will make the next hurricane look like a refreshing change of pace.  I am just trying to soldier on through it and somehow not notice just how unbearable it is. 

My sister Carla turned 38. And, on the same day, Ruby turned seven.  In keeping with Ruby's preferences and tradition, this meant about three separate parties, all planned, financed and executed by me, so I am a little tired just now. 

The defining characteristics of age seven so far are: 1) the child is huge, by which I mostly mean tall.  Not fat, but certainly not thin, and apparently she’s in a growth spurt, again. 2) the child has learned to distinguish maternal exaggeration from the truth and must call me on it, every time (“Mommy, you really won’t leave Carl here because he's not ready to go!  That would be illegal!”)  she is also working on her psychological manipulation skills when it comes to brothers and friends, to my resigned dismay, 3) she has a major Webkinz fixation, 4) she suddenly loves to play board and card games and will even follow the rules, 5) she’s showing a slight increase in her interest level in personal hygiene and has learned to shower alone (thank God, just in time for the hot season) and 5) there is continued moodiness, especially concerning the all-important issue of who’s willing to play with her and who’s not at any given moment, and all they want to do is play tag, and she’s always tagged first and it’s not fair and why won’t they just play hide and seek, according her favorite rules modification?

Ruby likes to organize things and to be in charge.  Sometimes now, and probably later in life, this managerial talent is great and to be encouraged.  Often, though, she just comes across as a bossy control freak, and since I am also a bossy control freak, we occasionally clash.  Plus, I am never quite sure what tactic to take, when I hear my darling child bellowing orders at her playmates: mind my own business, suggest a more diplomatic approach, or let her face the natural consequences? And of course, my advice on just about everything is inappropriate and instantly rejected. 

Seven also seems to mark the arrival of guilt over what one did.  Twice this week, I’ve had to coax Ruby out of her room, where she’s been sobbing with guilt over something she did to someone else.  Once, she got carried away by her temper; another time, she accidentally hit someone in the face with something she was waving in the air.  I hate that feeling of knowing I messed up, and apparently it hits Ruby with the same devastating effect.

Anyway, the parties: the big one was Sunday.  Rod got his twenty minutes of Father’s Day glory (poor Rod.  He puts up with a lot.) and then we put him to work chopping party snacks and frosting cakes and whatnot.  Ruby had invited a cast of thousands and it was 101 outside and she had a long list of games she wanted people to play at her cat-themed party.  We talked her down as far as we could, and I was pleasantly surprised by how it all worked out.  The kids loved the drinking-milk-from-saucers race, and the delicate-kitten-walk-on-bubble-wrap game, and the search-for-prizes thing.  Ruby’s headline event was the water activities on the front porch: throwing water balloons at Rod (yes, the same 200 he had filled up himself) and a water gun fight.  For cake, there was a cute cat face one, and the surprise hit, the Kitty Litter Cake.  Served in a box with a poop scoop.  Yum.  I had thought everyone would be too grossed-out, but no!  Even the grown-ups tried it, and as it consisted of smushed up cake, pudding, ground up cookies, and Tootsie Rolls, people really liked it. And the end of the party dwindled down to all the boys playing Legos in the living room and the girls playing Twister or doing crafts in Ruby’s room. 

Of course, we also had to plan something on Ruby’s Actual Birthday, and so we invited a subset of 15 or so dear friends over for pizza and cupcakes and more Twister and mayhem.  It was also fun, and now I am tired, and probably broke, although I am avoiding checking the bank balance to be sure.  I can serve them leftover cupcakes for dinner and put them to bed at 6:30 tonight, right?

Carl allowed his inner green-eyed monster to be subdued by the application of only one mid-priced Lego set, and he and Ruby are just back from the end of a month of Rowdy Arts Day Camp, which they highly recommend.  Next week, Rod is off work, and both kids have a few unscheduled days (help me, Jesus) and a couple of days of Space Camp.  We might toss in a day or two at the beach, just because, if I can justify spending the money. 

Under the Influence

I am home after a trip to the doctor for a shot in the back.  With any luck, it will reduce my pain level by a lot for a few months.  Or, it might not. 

My little procedure was done under the poetically termed "twilight sedation," and I'm still a bit loopy.  I also walk funny, there's some pins-and-needles action going on, and I have a sore foot and hip.  I'm told I'll be back to more or less normal function by tomorrow, which is good because I have a ton of things to do to get ready for Ruby's party on Sunday.  I am deep into "manage the birthday girl's expectations" mode and I don't think it's going especially well.

Pokemon videos don't make any more sense in my slightly addled state than they do normally.  Carl keeps asking me to spell with him using old keyboard keys (i.e., not enough vowels) and Ruby decided that today was the day that it was absolutely necessary for her to teach me how to finger crochet, using a ball of yarn from my private strategic reserve.  I guess I didn't need it, after all.

I think I may go attempt a nap now, although normally they are not a good idea for me.

Warm Spell

(Yes, 1-0-8)

I hate summer.  I just had to say it once this year!

It's not a good idea to leave a sealed can of soda in your car when you park at the airport for a couple of days:

 

Moving on:

Yesterday, at a swimming pool barbecue, Carl-the-semi-vegetarian decided he liked hamburgers: "Mom, I want one of those meat things with two covers (bun) and ketchup, okay?"  And he ate two enormous burgers and cadged another to take home for lunch today.  I was worried he'd barf, but he didn't, and he ate strawberries and a cookie along with it all.  This morning, Carl had two giant bagel-store bagels with cream cheese for breakfast.  I had to force myself to refrain from giving him the whole lecture on bread exchanges and bad carbs.   He's not even five yet...I hope it's just a growth spurt.  So far for lunch, he's had two small peaches and one bite of the above burger, so perhaps he was just doing a major refueling.

Ruby pulled me aside on Wednesday to whisper in my ear that a boy at camp told her he loves her.  Later, in the car she said that Fellow Camper (FC) said that and asked her to dance ("holding my arm like people do when they get married.")  "He says I'm the beautifullest girl he's ever met!" 

I tried to remain in non-judgmental observer mode. "Wow.  So what did you think about that?" And Ruby babbles on for a while.  I try to say that she doesn't have to reciprocate, and that she should be kind, because it would be awful to say that to someone and have them laugh at you or be mean.  I say that no one everhas said that to me, and it certainly didn't happen when I was six-going-on-seven. 

We agreed that they're a bit young to be discussing love.  Maybe, I said, he just meant that he really likes her and wants to be her friend, but he couldn't think of another way to say it.  "He must mean that I'm beautiful on the inside," said Ruby.  "Sure," I said, "because you are."  "Well, replies Ruby, "the outside is just skin and clothes and stuff." "Yeah," I agree, "but you have really nice skin; you're a very pretty girl, too."

Later, I told another mom about it, and she replied that her son and another boy in the class think FC is a big dork.  The next morning, I got to meet FC and his mom in the camp parking lot.  FC does have a bit of a dork aura about him, but I have always liked that.  And, he was also very articulate and cute and sweet to Ruby.  FC's mom said something about having heard all about Ruby from FC, and I replied that I'd heard he gives good compliments.  FC's mom gently explained that FC has a lot of girlfriends, that he seems to prefer to play with girls, and so even if Ruby is the beautifullest, she's not the first.   

With all the sweating, day camp, and romance, this has been one very full week.  I have been going to water aerobics and with friends to Nia (envision low impact aerobics, done barefoot, to world music and with a large helping of New Age mumbo-jumbo on the side).  I went to the back doctor (dull and expected, but depressing news) and to the OB with my preggo friend.  Last night, we hosted a baby shower for another preggo friend, today Ruby and I are going to an event that's part of Worldwide Knit in Public Day, and tonight we are having a couple of little kids over for a sleepover.   It'll be fun, right?

Because Mommy is a Bit Slow, That’s Why

The invitations are finally out for Ruby’s birthday party.  The good news is that it’s at home, which is about $300 cheaper than any other party location.  The bad news is that it’s going to be on Father’s Day, because I am a stupid dork. 

You may recall that Ruby missed 99% of the last week of school?  Yes.  I hear that some of the kids who were there that week got an invitation to another girl’s birthday party.  Now, Ruby and This Other Girl have the Exact Same Birthday, and every year for the past three or so, their parties have fallen on the same day.  Every year, I plan to coordinate better next year with the Other Girl’s Dads, but once again, I forgot.  So, Ruby didn’t get the invitation, whether because she wasn’t invited or because she was not at school to get it.  But, I heard Other Girl’s Party is once again scheduled for the exact same Saturday Ruby and I chose for Ruby’s (after consulting with all our other friends and several other June birthday kids). 

Confronted with this information mere hours after I pressed the “submit order” button for Ruby’s invitations, I swore loudly and creatively for a while.  Then, I decided the gracious thing to do would be to reschedule Ruby’s party, so we did, for the next day, a Sunday.  After I carefully crossed out and re-wrote the date on these very pretty, custom invitations, it dawns on me that the Sunday in question is Father’s Day.  This may also cost Ruby a few guests.  Aargh, as Rod would say, but I give up.  It'll have to do.

Morals of the Story:  1) Don’t have a summer birthday.  It sounds like a good idea, but it means no one comes to your party.  2) Don’t share a birthday with someone in your class at school. 3) Get a parent who’s a little more with-it calendar-wise than I am.

Moving on, the kids are in day camp this month, and thankfully, they both seem to like it.  There is little worse than spending hundreds or thousands on a camp that your kid doesn’t like, except maybe paying for a fun camp that your child ends up being too sick to attend.  This one is fine arts camp, a loose theme involving art class, tumbling, drumming, “culture,” etc.  A huge number of their neighborhood friends are also there, and it’s like one big party from 9 to 2.

Carl seems a little more tired this week, maybe because there’s no rest time at midday like there is at Pre-K.  He is also unhappy that I want him to wear underpants (every day!) against his will.  He wants to play with his best and most incorrigible friend every day after camp, and then they end up fighting, but somehow this doesn’t tell him that the play dates are a bad idea.  I am dying to share my story about him from this morning, but it might be a bit embarrassing to Future Carl.  I will merely say that I was able to preserve his presumed future ability to create my grandchildren and convince him that tying the drawstring of one’s shorts to one’s penis is a no-no, all within a single panicky minute in the camp parking lot.

Tonight, my kids decided they would rather go with their friends to have sloppy joes in a church basement than hang out with me.  I attribute their eagerness to leave to their unfamiliarity with both sloppy joes and church.  Still, I am beginning to feel at times less necessary to them than I once was. So, before they come home cranky and hungry, I am having a peaceful happy hour with you and the pesky cat next to me, and the mortgage amortization calculator (a girl can dream of being debt-free, can’t she?)

The Bachelor

Carl is showing more interest in letters, sounds, and writing, albeit in his own slightly bizarre way.  For instance, Rod says Carl asked him to spell “force field” as they were driving today.  

A couple of days ago, Carl and I were talking about how to spell a couple of easy words, and tracing the “n” in Ben in the air with our fingers.  Then Carl asked how to write “domestic cat.”  I told him it was complicated and he’d need to get some paper, which he did.  So I slowly sounded it out for him, and helped him remember how to write the letters in “domestic.” 

Then we moved on to “cat.”  Carl drew the C, the letter he knows best, of course, but backwards, starting at the bottom.  Then he pointed out a couple of bumps toward the middle of the C.  “It looks like cat ears!”  And he starts doodling them in.  “No, a cat head!” and he keeps going… “Now it’s a cat body…chasing a mouse.”  Finally, the C drawing is complete and we move on to the A, which gets converted to a tent.   

It is intriguing to me, how he’s in a place between drawing and writing.  Carl’s journal work at school is all drawing, but the teacher says he tells the story to himself as he draws (complete with missile fire and light saber sounds).  At home, he sometimes has me write words in text bubbles for the little guys in his drawings, like in the comics.  He’s fascinated with some junior graphic novels we’ve been checking out of the library (which Ruby can read to him…the librarian says they’re a popular gateway drug for budding readers).

____________________

Current Events Recap:  Ruby tested negative for flu and strep, but stayed very sick until Friday, when it all morphed into a cold.  So, she missed the end of school, but recovered in time to go on a sleepover Friday night.  Carl went, too, which meant that Rod and I had impromptu date night: sushi and Star Trek. Yes, I was being nice to Rod, wasn’t I?  It wasn’t so bad for a science fiction/adventure/explosions movie.  Of course, the kids were exhausted crabby zombies this afternoon.  Trade offs, trade offs.

___________________________ 

Today, Rod took the kids to a playdate at a park for the kids in Carl’s class. One of Carl’s classmates, S, complained to Rod that Carl is mean to her at school.

“I’m very sorry to hear that, S,” says Rod.  “What does Carl do, to be mean to you?” 

“He says he won’t marry me,” pouts S.

________________________________ 

For the record, Carl said last week that he won’t have any babies, either.  I think he was mostly worried about getting “fat” (pregnant).  He seemed pretty relieved when I told him boys couldn’t give birth, so he wouldn't have to get pregnant, but I took pains to stress that daddies have to take care of their babies, so he shouldn’t help make any until he’s ready. 

Then Ruby got confused about how you can have babies if you're not married, which leads down a wandering path towards adoption, infertility treatments and her friends with same-sex parents.  I realized that I have a gift for leaving my children more confused at the end of the discussion than they were at the beginning.  But at least it was an interesting dinner.

Summer O' Fun Starts Now

Where to start, where to start? Once again, things happened too fast for me to write them all down for you.  Here are some random, unrelated paragraphs for you, in lieu of a real and coherent post:

Ruby just came home early from school with a fever.  She says her throat really hurts, but the nurse said that because Ruby’s throat looks fine to her, and because Ruby wasn’t coughing, Ruby didn’t need to go get the swine flu test.  Then Ruby coughed in the car.  So we’ll see how it goes, but maybe I should go get her tested just to know for sure?  The only thing a positive flu test might change is my travel plans next weekend. 

• I brought Carl home too, because I couldn’t find him another ride, and I didn’t want to have to make two trips to school.  He was wearing wet pants, apparently from an accident hours and hours ago that he didn’t want to tell anyone about.  Both he and Ruby have decided lately that going to the bathroom to pee is just too time consuming and dull for them, leading to the predictable consequence.  Let’s hope they figure it out soon, because I am too old to be dealing with pee pee accidents now.

• Friday night was the annual song and dance performance at the kids’ school and also their spring carnival.  Rod helped set up the carnival in the heat all afternoon, and I took a death-defying shift at the Throw Darts at Balloons Station. 
• Saturday was our seventeenth wedding anniversary, which Rod and I both neglected to do anything special about.  We’ll try and get a real date night later.  I started writing you a nice list of Good Things about Being Married, but I ran out after “Good sex basically anytime I feel like it so long as my kids are otherwise occupied,” and that was probably too much information anyway.  I attribute us making it seventeen years in mostly blissful happiness to amazing luck and a bit of tenacity.  May we hold it together seventeen more.
• Otherwise, this weekend we spent a lot of time swimming: at the pool on Saturday and Monday (festive holiday barbecue included), and at the beach on Sunday.  Carl has discovered the diving board.  His swimming form still isn’t the greatest, so to his great dismay he is required to take a grownup with him to the deep end.  But, he can jump in and swim to the ladder with his face in the water, which is solid progress.  Ruby is upset because despite a Whole Entire Hour of group lessons a month ago, she seems to have forgotten how to dive in head first. The whole “not everything is easy to do the first time.  I’m sure you’ll get it with a little more practice” speech I gave her didn’t sink in well.  I think I’ll try to find both kids a few more lessons this summer to help things along.  
• Sunday we went to the beach with a bunch of friends for kid surfing lessons and general amusement.  Ruby tried very hard but only made it up to balancing on her knees on the surfboard.  Carl wasn’t interested in trying at all.  I thought it would be his kind of daredevil, fast-moving fun sport, but I hadn’t accounted for the intensive engineering focus he brings to sandcastle construction.  For about three hours, Carl couldn’t be distracted from the digging and filling.  We had to force him to drink something.  Finally, we were preparing to leave when he suddenly discovered the ocean in front of him and played in the surf for another hour or so. 
• Summer seems to be Carl’s favorite time of year.  All his favorite foods (watermelon, ice cream, hot dogs, corn on the cob) are abundantly available, there’s pool time and beach time and no school.  It makes up a bit for how much I hate summer.
• Carl and I spent a lot of time playing with Legos this weekend.  I did sort of enjoy myself, so perhaps we are related after all.
• There are one and a half days left of school, except of course Ruby will probably miss it all.   
• My friend who has been trying to get pregnant for years and years finally managed it.  I have somehow been appointed her official doctor visit buddy, and we have been there five times in two and a half weeks.  It may be a long eight months, but I still think good-news ultrasounds are really cool, even when they aren’t mine.
• Ruby says she loves me more than the universe.  This is far more romantic than anything Rod has come up with.
•  Carl observed, in the context of a discussion of his friends of various sizes and how tall he is compared to most of them, that I am fat. I said “yes, you’re right, I am fat….kind of.”  Carl replied, “no, Mom, you’re really fat.” The refreshing thing is that he doesn’t yet see anything morally wrong with being fat, so it was just an observation.  If only I could keep him that way.

A Car Ride is Like Truth Serum for Kids

Carl had a playdate this afternoon, so Ruby was my only passenger heading home from school.  I haven't had much one on one time with either kid lately, but boy, am I going to have to plan some.  Guess what I found out in just ten minutes:

1) Ruby wants to go to high school in Thailand. (One of her classroom aides this year is an adult Thai exchange student).

2) One of her male friends asked her if she has a boyfriend. I think she didn't really understand what he meant, but she did seem a little flustered about the whole thing.

3)What Ruby likes best about each of a long list of her friends. ("I like X because he's silly like me, and Y because he's very serious, and Z makes up funny jokes, and A is just so fun to play with, etc.").

4) She knows all about Faceb@@k, G00gle, and eB@ay.  I was a bit surprised to hear her talking about the first one, I admit.

5) Ruby likes to listen when grownups are talking because sometimes you learn interesting things.  (Well, I guess I already knew that.  I told her I do it, too, and she's smart to have figured that out. You are hereby warned to watch your mouth when she's around.)