Dear Reader:

I thought I was ready for Miss Eloise yesterday morning as I arrived at her house in the pouring rain…I had gotten her a new Touch and Feel book as well as Peek-a -Flap book, two of her favorite types Mollie promised…but there was no book, or toy in the world that would have bribed Eloise long enough to want to initially stay with Boo… when all she wanted was Mollie.

The problem, of late, is that with all my sickness during January and February (cough/congestion) and the children’s different bouts of colds and bugs, etc. I haven’t gotten to see the kids hardly any since the holidays and the last time I saw Eloise it was to babysit too….Eloise has the memory of an elephant.

As soon as I walked in….she pointed her finger at me and told me “Bye-bye…go home Boo Boo…Bye-Bye.” A variety of different versions of this same message repeated itself over and over as she became more agitated when Boo Boo didn’t leave but mommy did…to her conference in Asheville, North Carolina.

I pulled out some pink Peep (bunny) ears I had gotten her and she tearfully put these on, not overly happily (as you can see) in the first photo but at least they stayed on her head and she had stopped crying. Tearfully she asked for her baby dolls and held them for awhile as if giving herself time to comfort herself while she played mommy to them…good self-soothing technique Eloise!

And then the big break-through ( in a movie the sun would have shot through with the Hallelujah Chorus singing in the background)…*I suddenly remembered that as I had gone out the door early yesterday morning I (at the last minute) grabbed one of those tiny potato chip bags (2 for a dollar) and something now made me open the bag and offer Eloise a chip.

(I have always been a potato chip addict since I was Eloise’s age…I would refuse to eat any kind of sandwich without my beloved potato chips to accompany it…maybe just maybe some Boo potato chip genes would surface as a dominant gene. It did!

Eloise’s eyes lit up…she threw the doll babies down and made a grab for the bag…it was the potato chips that saved the day! Thank you Lord for dominant potato chip genes!

From there on out things improved greatly…Eloise took the chip bag over and climbed in the clothes bin that is her boat while watching the Mickey Mouse cartoon show…By the time it got to the very popular “Hot dog, hot dog, hot diggity dog” theme song…her hands were in the air dancing and she was happy again!

I fixed her lunch on one of the bunny plates Mollie had for the boys in the Easter theme and then I let her sit on a pillow and eat at the table instead of her high chair. She thought she was hot stuff….she loved it and obviously the food on it too….

Peek-a “BOO!” became the big game after lunch…Eloise is good at finding places to peek through like the slit between the back of a kitchen chair and the seat!

After eating Eloise changed into a “hot number” and let me take a photo of her blowing kisses to me and mommy so mommy would know her little girl was all happy again!

As if on clockwork….at 12:30 Eloise was ready to take her nap- a nice three hour one -…great break for Mollie and Boo appreciated it too.

The whole morning I had been trying to keep things quiet since Walsh had come in earlier in the morning from his job and was sleeping….when he got up we talked about the weather…it was flooded in downtown Charleston but I didn’t know that Summerville was getting so much rain until the road by the Main Street CVS was overflowing with rivers of water…while trying to pick up a needed medication I had to get to take last night.

Boo’s new pond greeted me pulling in while the water flowed down the driveway and street.

So until tomorrow….“Time heals all...even mother-child separation blues…especially when accompanied by potato chips!

“Today is my favorite day”  Winnie the Pooh

Donna Clark forwarded this precious picture/comment from author, Louise Penny’s post….don’t you love it?

“You might have already seen this, but over lunch here in NYC yesterday someone showed me this and I wanted to pass it along to you. Service dogs at Stratford Festival in Ontario being trained to be calm in live theatre. They’re watching Billy Elliot. Sigh…”