The weekend around our house was BUSY. We got a ton done around the house. My favorite part of spring is getting my flowers in place on the front porch and the back deck, and all the plants in place in our tiny vegetable garden. I am 90% done. The flowers looks gorgeous, Emily helped me pick them out and I'm really pleased with the choices, they look so pretty. The deck especially. Emily choose yellow and orange zinnias that I totally would have passed by and I love how they look.
We spent a lot of time, or Emily did, playing with neighbor friends. It was oppressively hot so pretty much every time we were outside it involved a sprinkler or pool and Em lived in a bathing suit. She got her first sunburn which I feel bad about. It's just on her shoulders and I think it was either outdated sunscreen from last year or that we didn't reapply soon enough. She was outside all day and we used SPF 50 and reapplied at around noon. We gave her some baby aspirin and have been using aloe with lidocaine on the burn. I have very fair skin and burned often when I was younger, my dad is fair skinned Irish and also burns like crazy. He developed a very serious melanoma about 4 years ago that was luckily caught before it metastasized and was treated surgically but it made me even more judicious about using sunscreen every time she's out.
Had an interesting experience with a neighbor kid who has always been off in terms of behavior. This child is 5 maybe 6 and is pretty badly behaved but I see her mom trying her best to reign her in. She is sassy and talks back, uses words and a tone of voice you would never expect for a little girl. Sometime the look in her eye is worse than the words that come out of her mouth. There's a lot of anger in that little girl. When she does come over to play we keep a strict on her and I'm very quick to give her a single warning and tell her we don't talk that way to our friends and any more means she's going home. I had had that talk with her already when she was being sassy and rude to another neighbor friend that was over, a 4 year old. Sheeesh, who is rude and sassy to a 4 year old. This girl. Then I was inside starting dinner and Jim and another Dad where in the backyard supervising the pool/sprinkler activity. Emily and this little girl where on the deck, which I had a clear view of out of the kitchen window. I saw that Emily was practicing her baton twirling (her latest obsession) and this little girl was grabbing for it repeatedly. I knew this would not end well. After trying multiple times to grab the baton from Emily she held Emily's shoulder and pulled back her right hand, and balled up her first to punch Emily. I just about burst out of the kitchen to stop her. I've NEVER seen a little kid, let alone a little girl, pull back to punch that way. I was totally appalled. I told her "You're done, put on your shoes, you're going home NOW." She looked at me and said "Emily scratched me." WHAT?!!! I watched the whole thing out the window. I walked her home, had a long chat with her mom and after talking with Jim I think it's going to be a long time before we let this little animal over to play again. Even supervised. So completely unacceptable. I did get from talking to her Mom that she picks up the behaviors from her father who has a short temper and tends to punch the walls or table or something when he's frustrated. Nice right? Definitely putting some serious distance between the 2 kids. And of course her mom apologized but no punishment. I saw the little girl running around playing in her own backyard in the pool all afternoon, no apology was required... Had that been Emily she would have been marched back down to apologize in person and than would have been in the house without friends, screens, etc. for the rest of the day at the very least. Argh.
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