Keeping Meg's upcoming visit a complete and total secret from Gaby has been damned near impossible! We're still working out the details but as of this point in time, here's the basic scenario. Meg's flight arrives in Boston late Wednesday night. I go, pick her up, and hide her until Thursday morning after Gaby has already left for school. I bring Meg and Kennedy back to the house Thursday morning and Meg dresses in her Air Force ABU's and we head to the school at noon while Gaby is in a combined (there are two or three other classes with her when she takes gym) gym class, and where one of her gym teachers is a Air National Guard Sgt. Meg will walk in and surprise Gaby. It's a given that once that cat is out of the bag, there's no way Gaby will be able to spend the rest of the day at school. I can guarantee she will not want to let her big sister or her niece, who she's meeting for the first time ever (as am I - but I'll have an 18 hour jump start on her!), out of her sight.
As far as trying to keep Gaby in complete darkness about all of this plotting, scheming, and suprirsing, we're finding that to be extrememly difficult! Gareth and I (or is it "me"? I think it's "me" but it sounds really off. Now is not the time for my ADD-riddled brain to go off on a tangent of "I" vs. "me") find ourselves saying something about her and Kennedy's (squeeeeeee! And my brand new lens came just in time!) trip back home to the states, IN FRONT OF GABY, and stopping mid-sentence and having to make something up, pull something out of thin air before we let the proverbial cat out of the bag!
For instance, Gareth was standing in the kitchen drying dishes and I was sitting on the sofa folding freshly laundered clothing and I said, "It's going to be a miracle if I can get all this laundry done before The Queen of England and that gorgeous itty bitty cutie pie come to stay with us."
Gaby, who was sitting at the coffee table doing lines writing "I will not talk back to mommy and daddy." 25 times, piped up and said, "The QUEEN OF ENGLAND IS COMING TO VISIT US? Daddy, that's your Queen of England? She's gonna be in OUR house? HERE? To see US? And our cats?"
That's pretty much how some of our conversations have been going lately. Another, potentially amusing "for instance" goes something like this:
"Gareth, I'm running out to the store to pick up some diapers, baby formula and organic baby food. Be back in a few!" Meg's flight gets in pretty late on Wednesday night and I don't want to have to stop so she can pick those things up, on the way home. Having them on hand will hopefully make things easier on her.
Of course, the small child known as Gaby comes running to the door as I'm about to leave and exclaims, "Diapers! Baby food! Why are you getting those? Who are they for?"
I looked at her, picked my jaw up off of the floor and said, "Well you know, I might be asked to babysit and it would be a good idea to have those things on hand just in case."
Gaby's fairly intelligent and she continues her inquisition, "Mommy, who has a baby that you're going to babysit? There are no babies around here!"
I thought about it for a moment, and thankfully remembered that there is in fact a 6-month old who is the little sister of someone that Gaby cheers with. I grinned at Gaby and said, "You never know when Miss Cassandra might need to run an errand and ask me to watch Eva for her. So, I'll have this stuff on hand in case!"
Gaby's little brain immediately went into overdrive and she took things a step further. She started jumping up and down and in a singsong voice exclaimed, "Yayyyy that means Kiera Kiera Kiera is gonna come over for a playdate playdate playdate and we're going to demolish my bedroom play with Barbies and Legos in my bedroom and dance and practice our routines routines routines!"
Um, Cassandra, you wanna plan that playdate we've been talking about forever?
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Planning all the details of Meg's visit, dealing with the devil in those same details, fighting yet another round of the barfs, getting myself back on track physically and emotionally (more to come in the Emotional Fat series. It never ceases to surprise me that this is a battle I'll be waging the rest of my life!), Gaby having two back-to-back competitions in the last two weeks, and trying to get the house ready for My daughter and gra...gran...the spawn of my spawn (People, cut me some slack! Do I even look like I am old enough to have a granddaughter? Yes I am vain! ), I've had no time to write. Not only that, but I sort of look at the blog like something yummy that I can't have until I get everything else done. I feel really guilty if I sit down to write (and that includes two book outlines and a couple of freelance projects that aren't due until April!) if there's anything else that is not taken care of around the house.
It's a sickness I tell you!
I'll be back out here Thursday (maybe before if I can manage to make the house look like hoarders haven't taken over! Whoever said, "Having a tiny house is so much easier to keep tidy!" was a lying liar who lies!) with loads of pictures of the most adorable grandspawn you've ever seen! Until then, here's a cute picture of my very own little spawn, holding the 2nd place trophy that her team won at one of the recent competitions. Poor Gaby still isn't used to that make-up and is always looking under her eyelids!
By the way, Gaby has asked me to tell all of my blog readers, all three of you, that all she wants for Valentine's Day is her two front teeth . . . and the missing one on the bottom! I'm assuming she'll take her teeth in place of all that chocolate she was looking forward to. Or not.
