This weekend and Madge

It’s Madge Monday again.
The thing that sticks out from this weekend is how accommodating she was. She got to make the commute to the hospital three times, after all. Sure, she talked us into taking a cab home every time, but still. We took public transportation there. Julie reports that Madge had a short bath on Friday because “it’s not much fun without Coco.” They still take baths together. For two reasons, really. First, in case he has a seizure in the tub, there’s someone there right away. Second, they seem to enjoy it – though it does get kind of messy, what with the splashing and bubble throwing. But it seems that solo baths are only fun when the other one has been made to leave, not when the other one can’t be there.
She was also very brave during the application of the leads. Coco cried a lot because the glue is stinky and the whole process is uncomfortable. Like all of us, Madge doesn’t like it when Coco cries. So she went to another place in the room and read or colored, I’m not sure because we were busy.
What else? She got shorted on playroom time because the hospital’s weekend schedule has abbreviated hours for the playroom and the library. And on Sunday, she and I arrived to a disconnected Coco who was ready to check out and go home, so any sort of hospital fun time was really out of the question. She acted up a bit after that.
But much of this acting up stemmed from the fact that we all deal with stress and its relief in different ways. Madge gets calm and focused during stressful times and then, when the stress is done, she gets fidgety. And her fidgetyness coincides with other people’s desire to finally rest. Ergo: conflict.
Really, all child-parent clashes seem to be scheduling conflicts. One party thinks it’s time to go to sleep while the other party thinks it’s time to catch up on dinner which was forsaken because it occurred during reading time, etc.
Anyway, she was quite amazing this weekend.
And there was another moment of denial for me. When we got on the bus, the driver said, “Sir, just so you know, she’s too tall to be riding for free.”
Eek. Time to make her hunch over or do a duck-walk when we get on the bus.