Susie's Leaning Tower of Chocolate for 2012 August 23

We are working on teaching Maggie her last name before Kindergarten starts. I think she's got it down now, but for a while she would answer "Margaret". She knows her whole name, so once I pointed out I was asking her last name, she was able to figure it out.

She's also learned how to spell it, which means she's ahead of the game on the ch and ck letter combinations (though she can't say "CH" very well).

Yesterday we were playing with ABC stamps and she stamped out her last name. I quizzed her on her names, then asked Dalton. He knows his last name, but when I asked what his middle name was, he answered "Target!"

We never use Dalton's middle name, and we do go to Target a lot, but I realized much later that he was probably trying to say "Margaret."

Five minutes later I informed Dalton he was going to have a haircut and a bath before bed. He responded, "A haircut and a bath? That's amazing!"

Today was a long-awaited pediatric dermatologist appointment for Maggie. She has white patches in a streak that started behind her knee and spread up and down her leg, showing up more and more as she tanned this summer. (That girl has some serious tan lines, by the way. No idea where she gets that from.)

The doctor took one look at it and said, oh that's Lichen Striatus. Rare, harmless, and will go away soon. Also, genetic, and the abnormal skin cells are formed in utero.

In related news, yesterday she was running around and whacked her head on an IKEA toy shelf. We went to the emergency room, which is right down the street, and an hour later we were home. Maggie screamed the whole time, so we opted for the hold-her-down-and-do-it-quick method. She's got three staples in the back of her head! Gross. Once the actual doctor part was over, she was fine. She even asked me which side of the head it was on. She did whine quite a bit about how it's going to hurt when they take the staples out. Hopefully she'll forget about that until we head to the doctor next week.

Also, she has to miss two swimming lessons, which is a bummer. Based on Dalton's lesson today, they'll both be level 3 by the time she gets back.