The girl sobbed all the way to school.
I ignored her. Went for the behaviorist approach. I suck at that approach.

I would only turn and offer her a muffin after she hadn't cried for a few minutes. 20 miles later, she'd finally take the muffin. By the time we walked in to her school, she wasn't talking to me, but at least she was done crying. Then, when we got to the classroom, she walked in. While I was signing her into class, her teacher asked her what was wrong and she burst out sobbing: "My dad wouldn't let me bring my mittens to school today." Then she fell into the arms of her teacher.

I smiled at the teacher, even though my heart was breaking, and said, It's not mitten weather. And the teacher, bless her, echoed that, and I said by bye and left.
I saw her peeping under her teacher's arm back at me as I turned.

Gaia loves Final Fantasy Crystial Chronicles.

I was hesitant to purchase the game because, frankly, who wants to play a Nintendo DS game on your big screen, but once you're over the terrible, terrible graphics, the game's not too bad. Fun, even. I love the action-adventure take on the Final Fantasy game, and the new Chrystal Chronicles games seem to fit that bill. I wish that the DS had a little more graphical oomph, though. Managing two screens on one play space is hard on a 16:9 aspect ratio, I can't imagine playing on a square television. Also, the internet play has not been kind to me. In fact, unplayable.

But best of all, Gaia loves to play. She's old enough now that she can understand how the controller works, so she runs her party around the overworld, and jumps and shouts. Awesome. And she follows the story.

Almost bi-annually, I hunker down in a new hastily named village in Animal Crossing and spend two or so months slowly playing my way through paying off the first few renovations to my little house.

And then the novelty wears off and I put the game down.

Along comes Fall of 2008 and Animal Crossing: Lets You Can Has City for the Nintendo Wii.

Interestingly, this time, I’ve actually resumed playing the DS version (Wild World) at the same time, which, is fun, considering that there is only so many things you can do in Animal Crossing in a single play session.

The most awesome thing in the world about Animal Crossing for the WII is the ability to take a screenshot and save it as a JPG on the Wii’s SD Card; I bought a 2 GB SD card exclusively for this feature.

As for the game, it’s pretty much the same-old, same-old. The Online Component is hysterically frustrating, the fishing as overly simplistic, and there are only about six personality archetypes between all the villagers.

What makes it so much more fun this time around is that Gaia and I are playing together. She has a guy, I have a guy, and we run around our little village (embarrassingly named “The Spot”) and we go to the city and get our hair did.

Even though a combination of game-crashing wifi-bugs and the insanity of Nintendo’s “Friend Codes” system has made any kind of online meet ups impossible for me, It’s more fun when you play together. That’s thanks to Gaia.

Gaia's Dance Class had an observation day on Saturday, so I made this little video. I try to keep my videos strictly flickr-able (under 90 seconds) but, I guess I was overzelous with the recorder. I did manage to cut 20 minutes of footage down to what I consider the essential 3 and a half minutes.

Enjoy.

Gaia was sick earlier this week with what her doctor described as a nasty roller-coaster of a virus. She was a little flushed on Sunday when we went to the Pumpkin Farm with her cousins, and so we knew she was getting something.
On Monday, Jeni stayed home with her, preempting the "come get your daughter" call from the daycare. By noon she was throwing up and had a crazy high fever, so to the doctor she went. I stayed with her on tuesday. And that's where it gets interesting.
I didn't want to have to keep Jeni updated on the phone all day long while I sat with the girl. It was hard enough to be with her; she was so upset and sick. Dashing to the phone to update a concerned mommy was going to be frustrating, and I didn't really want to stream video because you can never really be sure who's watching and I wasn't planning on being on a throw up gag reel on the You Tube.
So I set up a spreadsheet and a form on Google Docs and shared it with Jenifer. Then I set the form as my home/startup page on my browsers-- as to facilitate updating the thing. It turned out pretty well, actually. Jeni kept an eye on it throughout the day. She said it was nice to see what was going on at home.
And more importantly, I didn't have to struggle to remember when things happened. I had a place to write down what she ate and when she threw up. I had time-stamped entries of when I gave her medicine. I can never remember that stuff, I would have had to have written it down anyway-- and between Jeni's laptop and mine, I had one near me for any given moment. At my house, it's probably easier to find a laptop than a working pen most of the time anyway.

Have you used Google's Forms features for feeding the spreadsheet? They're pretty basic, but they're fantastically easy to set up, and they do exactly what you're looking for with a minimum of set up.

And as for the girl? She's great. She's finally back at school today (Thursday) and, although her sleep schedule is really broke, she's on the mend and has pretty much talked non stop since about 2 a.m. Tuesday.

This picture made me realize that I am raising some kind of a super girly-girl.

There's certainly nothing wrong with that. I'm pleased as punch as a matter of fact. You may notice that the things in her headboard include a live animal known to most as a "cat." She calls this animal "Merm" and he lives in her room. He is an older cat that we rescued from the Humane Society.
Look at how the girl beams, and tell me you could have resisted her repeated innocent inquiries into the acquisition of a cat. You say you could have stood strong against that face? I say you are a liar.

I forgot to tell you: Last night, I dreamt that I had fallen asleep on a hole in the ground that Raccoons kept squirming out of. I assume that I was sleeping on Gaia.

I peek over and see that Gaia is watching me type this, and I notice that she's smiling at me and she's cuddling one of her mother's cha-cha shoes.
Since she's not sleeping, "What are you doing with those," I ask her.
"They're Mama's shoes," she says. "They're cuddly, I like to cuddle them."
"Ok. Go to sleep."
"Do you want to cuddle Mama's shoes in the big bed?"
"No thanks."
"They're nice," she giggles.

She's wearing an Orange Shirt, Pink Shoes, Blue Pants and a Purple Headband. She asks me if I would help her put on her Lailac sweatshirt.
"Are you sure you don't want your green one?"
"Why?"
"Well, if you wore you're green one, you'd pretty much have all the colors on."
"I guess I need a Green Shirt then," she says.
"Why?"
"Because then I'll have all the colors, and I'll be as pretty as I can be."
"Aww. THat's cute, But I think you're already as pretty as you can be."
"Really?"
"Yeah."
"But with the green shirt, I'd be even more pretty!"

Created this in about 30 minutes in iMovie HD. Viva la Flip. Music Source