Pretty good week

Congradulations are in order to Jeff, who passed a very critical certification exam yesterday. Now, along with all the other titles that he has following his name, he can now add "Dell Storage Networking Professional" to it. Now, since I have no idea what that title means in respect to jobs, I'll just have to take his word for it that it's a good thing. It required another drive to Lansing to take the test, but that was fine. It was only an hour long & Emma and I were able to occupy ourselves just fine. Emma did really well on the trip so she was rewarded with a toy from Tuesday Morning. A "Cinderella" Barbie type doll that comes with about 15 different pieces of clothing that allows the doll to have about 200 different outfits. But the coolest thing is that there's this button on the doll's back that you push & her underskirt turns about a 1/3 turn & it's like she has a brand new dress on. Very high tech & nifty. Emma's been pushing that button since she got the doll. It goes from white to blue to pink. But, since it's obvious that this doll will not wear any other Barbie type clothes, I'm going to make sure we at least don't lose her shoes by gluing them to her feet. My father-in-law did that with another one of Emma's Barbies. Very good idea. Now, we've lost the dress that originally came with that doll, but not the shoes.
Emma's learning so many new things, and I know I'm not the one teaching her. She must be getting it from somewhere. This week she's been spouting off that her name begins with "E", which I'll admit I've been trying to teach her, along with getting her to write her name (which for the most part is good but her E's have about 5 lines across the one line, rather than just three, but hey, she's 4). But, she's started to recognize the letter "E" in street signs and other places when we're driving. She'll point it out everywhere we go. And she also can type her name by looking at her name on paper & finding the matching letters on the keyboard. She doesn't yet know the names of the other letters in her name, but she's getting there. She also came home from school on Thursday talking about dinosaurs. She had learned about them in class, and had made a very cute dinosaur for her craft. She proceeded to tell me that all the dinosaurs were dead (which she demonstrated by saying they ate (::pretending to eat::) and then died (::falls on the floor::). Very dramatic. She did have some confusion about WHAT the dinosaurs ate. She said all of them ate other dinosaurs, but I tried to explain that some just ate plants, but she wouldn't hear of it. I asked her if there were flying dinosaurs & she said yes, they were called "Tetri's". At first, I thought I hadn't heard that right. I asked again & she said that "Teetri" was a flying dinosaur. At last I remembered. PETRI was a pterodactyl from "The Land Before Time". This child has only seen ANY of those movies (not even the original, which is the best) once. And I was flabbergasted at the fact that she remembered the name of one particular character weeks after only seeing the movie once. It's crazy the things kids remember. This is particularly bad because I've been known, (as I'm sure all parents have been in the past) when your child is begging for something, and all you want to do is just get their mind off whatever it is they're pestering you for, so you offer something else, which isn't right there, hoping that they'll take the bait & by the time you get to wherever that other thing was, you're hoping that they've completely forgotten about it. I know this is bad parenting, but hey, whatever works in the situation. It's not like I do it all the time. But the problem now is, that Emma's memory has progressed so much (or maybe it's always been like this, but she's only now proving it to me) that this doesn't work anymore. She remembers everything. Which makes things doubly worse, because I can't remember squat right now. She'll politely (in preschool politeness) remind me that I forgot to do something, and sometimes I'll seriously argue with her, thinking that she's wrong, I DIDN'T say that, only to suddenly remember that I did, and I'll have to apologize. She's probably thinking I'm going nuts, which wouldn't be far off. If Jeff thought I was scatterbrained before I got pregnant, he's probably thinking that by the time this baby's born, I'll do something like forget to bring her in from the car or something. Which, as I'm sure all mothers will attest to, is a nightmare that you have. For example, last year when Jeff was out to sea, I had horrible thoughts that I would take Emma to the beach, fall asleep & she would wander into the ocean & drown. Crazy stuff like that. It really kept me from doing a lot of things without taking someone with me. Of course, I had those types of nightmares when I was pregnant with Emma, even after she was born. And now, when I go places without Jeff, I'm going to be outnumbered, which is going to make me even more nervous.