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Magic

Mallory attended a birthday party this weekend featuring BB the Magic Clown. About halfway through the program, she came over to me and whispered, "Can I be a magic guy when I grow up?"

"I guess so," I said, surprised.

"How can I do it?" she asked.

"I guess you'll have to go to magic school," I said. She said, "Okay!" and ran back to watch the rest of the show.

Now, some of you may think this is not the best career path for a 5-year-old to embark upon, but I'm a bit excited and I hope she goes for it. Because if she does become a Magician Clown, she can explain all the tricks to me.

I was baffled by BB the Clown. He was, frankly, kind of old and fat and he told really dumb jokes, but some of his tricks were amazing. He held up a coloring book and flipped through it and it was perfectly clear that all the pages were blank. He said that this was a poor excuse for a coloring book and waved his wand and flipped through it again and all the pages had words on them. Then he subsequently added pictures, and then color (but outside the lines) and then that changed to color inside the lines but not appropriate (green hair, purple skin) and then that changed to appropriate colors in all the right places in the pictures. Now how did he do that? He never switched books, he never added anything or took anything away. I am still wondering how he did that and frankly I'm a bit miffed that I was so thoroughly tricked by an old fat man named BB.

What's not so magical is that we're all sick, except Phoebe. Chris and I have colds and Mallory has a cold with a high fever; she's missed two days of school. What's annoying is having to go to the pharmacy counter to buy decongestant. Of all the dumb laws, this pseudoephredine-buying restriction is the worst. A few months ago I tried to buy infant's cold medicine for Phoebe and children's cold medicine for Mallory at the same time, and the Wal-mart pharmacist told me that I could only buy one at a time. I said I had two sick kids of different ages, so what did she expect me to do? I even had them both in the cart with me, runny noses and all -- clearly I was not taking the Infants Pediacare and the Simply Stuffy to a meth lab. Clearly I just wanted my children to be able to breathe properly. Makes me angry to think of it.

What's also not magical is my inability to write a coherent sentence because I'm not breathing all that properly myself right now.

What's not necessarily magical, but is nevertheless adorable, is what Phoebe said last night when she was (finally) ready to go to bed. I opened the door to the girls' bedroom (where Mallory had been sleeping for hours already) and Phoebe walked in and put her finger to her lips and said, "Ssshh! Kite! My-ee seep!" (Quiet! Mallory's sleeping!) As frustrating as it is when Phoebe won't go to bed on time, I do enjoy these late-night moments with her.

Comments

aimee said…
They are cutest at the moments when you are so frustrated at them, isn't that right?

Sorry you all are sick. And I think it stinks that you can't buy more than one decongestant (especially for kids). Stupid meth-makers. They ruin it for us all!

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