Life with Emma

Adam gave us the Christmas bear last night.  Braeden and Anna were staying here before their early morning flight to Virginia for Christmas so it was a good time.

Adam said it felt kind of anticlimactic and maybe, but considering the days we've had, I think we rallied some pretty impressive festivity.

Emma said we should name her Penny since she is the penultimate bear.

And I say Penny it is because this year, Emma is the boss of everything as far as I am concerned.

This morning Emma and I were considering the bear and decided maybe we'd name her Penny Candy.  When Mark was homeschooled, I read him a book about economics titled Whatever Happened to Penny Candy?  Emma asked me about it, "What did happen to her?"

She thought it was a murder mystery and Penny Candy was a person.

Meet Penny Candy:

This morning I found her wrapped up warm for the night:

In some ways, sick Emma has reverted to little girl Emma.  After she showers, she lets me braid her hair.  I'm really not very good at it but she doesn't mind.  (And actually little girl Emma never really liked me to do anything with her hair so maybe this isn't like little girl Emma after all.)

I told Marianne that just how we used to offer Blues Clues to cranky toddlers, Emma has been watching Wizards of Waverly Place on Disney+.  She used to love it when she was little and it still makes her smile and distracts her from pain.

I brought home an extra gingerbread house that I gave my students for an activity on the last day of school before Christmas break.  There were stickers to decorate it with.  I showed Emma and asked her if she wanted a craft project.  She smiled--all the way to her eyes, which is nice to see.

And she got right to work.

We entertained ourselves with a Christmas card we got in the mail.  We had no idea who the people were:

We made up a backstory for each of them.  We decided which extracurricular activities the kids were in and which of them were rebellious or sort of bratty and who was the nice one.  We described the parents for each other.  Then I googled them and Greg Hughes is running for governor I guess.

He may just get my vote because of the interesting backstory we created for all of them.

It's nice to have Emma around.