How's the patient?

When a fellow parent telephoned me earlier to check the homework for Poppet's class, he apologised several times for disturbing my evening. From the racket at his end of the phone I imagine it was Bedlam Central over there. Thank goodness video phones are not the norm, 1) so I didn't have to witness someone else's evening kiddy-carnage and 2) so that he didn't see what I was actually doing, which was building 'The Ultimate Thomas the Tank Engine Railway Track' whilst sporting a Sportacus hat on my noggin (he's a character in Lazy Town, don't go there). I had blithely volunteered to rake out the blue plastic train track in a final bid to get Pickle off the DS and back into the real world while he recuperates from bouncing his face off the asphalt. The hat was his personal touch. Pickle said it made me look like an elf so I must be an Elf Worker. I tried to explain I want to be a teacher not a nurse, ha ha, but the irony was lost on him... possibly because he's only seven ('ealth worker? boom boom! My Dad would be proud of that one).

Speaking of 'ealth, Mr Pickle had a checkup at the hospital today on the hole in his head. Despite it looking rather gooey to my untrained eyes the doctor was satisfied that it's healing nicely and he can go back to school. Hallelujah! I might actually get some studying done now without the pinging and beeping and repetitive annoying tunes of his DS and having to rack my brains for other ways to keep him from being bored. Trust my luck to get my lovely back-to-school celebration kyboshed within the first seven days. But pity the poor office staff who will have to put up with his verbal diarreah all break time while he's signed off physical activities.

More 'elf' - I've also taken the pair of them to the dentist this week. Poppet had a panoramic xray to check if the two teeth we've been waiting for for over a year are actually somewhere in her head. They are, of course, and she looked so tiny standing in the xray machine in a massive lead apron that I hope they make an appearance soon and she won't have to do it again. Pickle, on the other hand, hasn't lost a single tooth yet and none of them are wobbly (which is fine by me because wobbly teeth make me cringe). However he is growing two new ones behind the baby ones.

Now that's just showing off.