The Lunatic Fringe

"I don't want my scissors for a whole week," Veronica says, solemnly handing me a chunk of her hair.  She's just given herself bangs, only these bangs are on the side of her head, and she looks ridiculous.  I believe the French used to call bangs 'the lunatic fringe', back in the 1880s when they were invented.  Bangs, not the French.  

So now she's doling out her own punishments, or as we call them in my house, consequences. We're New-Agey like that around here.  I'm not sure what to do, so I take the scissors, and the hair, and say, "Ok."  Really, what else is there to say?  Or to do?  My precocious kid has taken all the fun out of parenting.  I'm sure by the time she's thirteen she'll be handing down her own sentence for shoplifting and driving herself to juvie, all cigarettes and tattoos.  Great.  Looking forward to it.

The reason I am up at 1:23 am is that I had to change Rex after I fed him, and that woke him up, so now I am waiting for him to stop grunting and go back to sleep.  Thank goodness he is no longer pooping at night, but now he's peeing what seems like quarts (is he drinking Gatorade when I'm not looking?) and I have to give him a new diaper around midnight or he wakes up soaked to his neck.  I'm not kidding.  That has happened exactly twice, when I've attempted to let him go twelve hours at night on just one diaper.  Not good.  Eventually I'll stop feeding him at night and maybe one diaper will do, or maybe I'll have to start using adult Depends on him.  And on myself, so then I won't have to get up either.  I'll just pee my pants, smile peacefully and go back to sleep.  Like Rex does right now.  In theory.

More to come in the morning ...