[Break for cute photos.]
Hannah on Skype with her Papa.
11 AM our time, 7 PM Doha time.
Hannah spent part of our hour-long talk making him a bead bracelet...
...which is good, because we needed one final item to put in our first love letter to Doha. Here Hannah is putting it in the mail.Thankfully, the university provides us with a P.O. box for flat mail only (no packages). So for the cost of a stamp or two it gets 1/3 of the way around the world in about a week, give or take. We'll see how long this first trial run takes.[Continue on with the tale...]
So after our morning together, we picked up the boys (Jack had Field Day and got third in the LONG JUMP?!? for a small kid, this is pretty fantastic!...I always knew he was part kangaroo) a little early to go in for Hank's orthodontist consultation and a couple of errands.
We got through the gas station, the appointment, and the HEB without major incident.
[Now let me insert a brief side note: Hannah has been having allergy drainage for a while, usually only at night, and we control it just fine with a snort of Benadryl and some saline mist. But I think she pretty much exists with gunk in her throat. When it's bad, she can have coughing fits that lead to gagging.]
After HEB, I had some groceries in the trunk, but Hannah and I needed to go in Target for bedding-related stuff. So the older boys waited in the running car (hurrah for Hank being old enough to "legally" leave him in charge for 10-15 minutes!). We got what we needed and headed towards the exit doors.
[Side note #2, because I cannot tell a linear story: we bought comforters for Hannah's and Jack's new beds. Hannah was very excited over that *and* the Little People set that she had "bought" with money her Dad gave her in her pink heart change keeper box. Yea...she paid 70 cents for the Little People set and then says to me, "Will you pick up the rest of the bill?" Back to the story...]
However, we didn't make it out of the store because a man was trying to steer one of those motorized scooters in through the exit doors (the Target people had parked them between the two sets of automatic glass doors). He completely blocked the exit, trying to turn inside. This was no problem. Hannah and I just paused to give him some space.
Hannah happened to pause standing with her back right in front of one of the automatic doors. So we stood there...very still...for a count of 10 or 15 (the chair was having battery issues or whatever), no problem. Hannah was rather fascinated by this gentleman trying to steer an electric vehicle into the store. I could see the gears turning in her head.. "Why does he have that? Where did it come from? I like pink and red! Look it has circles on it! I wonder if they have those in the Barbie Jeep model?..."
Then the automatic sliding glass doors tried to close.
All that really happened was that one gently bumped her back and then retracted immediately.
But the real consequence was that it startled the crap out of her. And being almost four and being a very girly girl, this immediately leads to public humiliation, which leads to immediate hysterical crying, which leads to a coughing fit, which leads to me trying to shush her as we hurry towards the car, which leads to more coughing, which leads to gagging, which leads to a huge loogie (sp?!?), which leads to a huge pile of neon-orange barf in the middle of the Target parking lot (no not Cheetos, orange-flavored juice).
She recovered and we got our act together, and life went on. I went in and got a wet paper towel and told the oh-so-pleased college student behind the customer service desk that we had made a bright orange Rorschach and they might need a bucket of water. Then upon wiping Hannah's face, I saw the literally hundreds of tiny, pin-prick bruises. She had broken all of these blood vessels with the force of getting sick--they're all around her eyes like a mask and around her mouth.
This has happened to my people before, but never to this extent and so quickly. I'm posting the picture out of amazement and so her Papa can be prepared to tell her she was a brave, good girl.
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