The bonus is the ninja wheel.

Twenty years of ACEN! Not all of them, of course--I didn't go from 2009-2011 because I was living in Japan, I didn't go in 2013 because I had a bit of a sour experience in 2012 and that was the point where schoolpsychnerd was deep in the throes of grad school and we had very little money, I didn't go in 2020-2021 because thanks to the Plague Years it didn't happen, and I didn't go in 2022-2023 because 2022 required full masks at all times (which I have no moral objection to, it just didn't sound very fun) and because sashagee was too sick to go and I didn't want to go by myself. But last year I went, and now here we are again.

It's been a while since I stayed at a hotel other than the Hyatt. This year, however, my luck finally ran out--when the hotel lottery happened I failed to get a room at the Hyatt, and then I failed to get rooms at the other hotels I tried. Fortunately, Anime Chicago as a community prepares for this. Several people grabbed extra rooms in the knowledge that there would definitely be people who missed out, and I was able to get one at the Embassy Suites. I've never stayed here before--I've stayed at the Doubletree, and at the Hilton, but this was a first...and honestly I'd go back. The rooms are huge and, more importantly for a couple with a four-year-old, they're suites. There's a front room with a couch, an armchair, a table with more chairs, and a little bar area, then a door between the two connecting rooms, so we don't need to turn all the lights out and immediately go to bed when it's time for Laila to go to sleep. I would say "You can't buy that kind of peace for money" but we obviously did.

And now, the daily accounting.

( Thursday )

( Friday )

( Saturday )

( Sunday )

And now we're home. We're tired. We're sore. sashagee took a five-hour nap just after lunch. But, she's already decided that Uzaki Hana is going to be the cosplay she sticks with--she's going to work on it a bit, get screen-accurate brown boots, get a tighter shirt (she has lost weight since I got the original for her), and maybe get a wig. She expected to wear it a bit and have some fun and was very surprised when multiple people came up to ask her for her picture.

She did say she was a bit suspicious, though. Uzaki-chan is a romantic comedy, but the shirt specifically says "Super huge!" (sugoi dekai), so whenever someone asked for her picture she was like "Hmm..."

The only downside were all the things we couldn't get to. We didn't get to see the Conbini panel and couldn't get into the Oregon Trail panel. We didn't go to the dance on Friday, which it sounds like might have had more music to sashagee's taste. We didn't get to go back to see lightninglychee and stephen_poon again. We didn't try any of the board games at all. We didn't get to see the AMV contest, which as I've repeatedly mentioned, used to be a central event that I always went to. There's always soon much to do and not enough time to do it.

Laila is going to come back with infinite energy and run both of us over. But we had a lovely time with all our friends. Looking forward to ACEN next year!

Laila is four years old! Happy birthday Laila!

This year, sashagee decided to have a smaller party this year, with just family. Unfortunately, almost no one could make it--her brother and my sister had to work and her parents were out of town on vacation, so it was just my parents that came. Laila didn't care at all, though, since she'd been talking for days about wanting to go spend time with papa and nana at their house and she was overjoyed at an entire day of attention from them. While I worked (at home, since my boss had offered that I could work from home on her birthday), Laila and papa and nana disappeared into Laila's room and read books, listened to stories on her Yoto (a gift from her grandma and grandpa), and drove cars around on her roadscape rug. When dinnertime came around we asked Laila what she wanted and she said tacos, so the entire family went on a short walk to sashagee's favorite local Mexican place, placed our orders, and walked back and ate. Shortly afterwards, papa and nana had to go home, leaving Laila with more Cars cars to drive around her rug, books, and some other presents.

Laila really loved her butterfly decor:


In more general updates, I already wrote about how we're worried about Laila's speech and we're going to get her evaluated, but she's been doing better in other areas. Today sashagee heard noise and woke up to find Laila had gotten up and gone to the bathroom all by herself! She doing better in swim class, and while she still has a bit of trouble with waiting her turn and with not messing with the floating toys the teachers use for helping to teach lessons, she understands that the appropriate thing to do in class is to "take turns." Or at least, that's what she tells me when I ask her, so she remembers it. Getting her to do it is another thing. On the other hand, she stuck her head underwater on the lesson after the one where the teacher told me that she had been asking to wear goggles, so that's progress! Only once, but I took Laila to a lesson where the parents spent the entire time trying to convince their son to get into the water and he simply would not do it. Laila has never had a problem like that.

We used to keep her door locked at night so she wouldn't get up and get in trouble, but since we're trying to teach her to go to the bathroom on her own, we've stopped. She used to bust out of her room just after we put her down for bed all the time, but she doesn't do that anymore. She's transitioning into a period where she actually wants to go to sleep. I don't expect this to last but I'll enjoy it while it does.

Lately she's been really into her Yoto, which is essentially a radio-esque toy. It has a daily short podcast or music on it at base, and then you can buy cards that kids can put in with various short stories or songs on them. Laila has been listening to a lot of the Little Mermaid. I was initially very skeptical of it because we have a rule about no flashing lights and no interactive buttons for Laila's toys, but I was won over by being told that there weren't videos to accompany the stories, it was just pixelated images and no more than one per chapter--so Little Mermaid only has three pictures (one of Ariel, one of King Triton, and one of Prince Eric). The music only has the image of a radio. We have been stopping her from skipping chapter after chapter, though, in the same way we don't keep reading if she skips ahead in her books anymore. Teaching patience is very important, even though Laila is definitely not happy about having to learn it.

She's turning into a fashionista as well. After five years, sashagee started wearing her earrings again and Laila immediately decided she wanted to wear them too, so we got her some shiny stickers that we use for "earrings." A couple weeks ago while we waiting for the bus, there was a woman wearing a bear of high-heeled gogo boots, and Laila physically put her hands on my cheeks, turned my head, and she, "She [I] like her boots!" Only four and she's very concerned with cuteness.

What other ways will she grow and change?

Final image: the cupcakes that sashagee baked for Laila's birthday.

( Butterflycakes )

Yesterday, we went over to a friend's house and her almost four-year-old was using short but full sentences and interacting with her mother in a conversational fashion. All this morning, Laila was barely saying anything. She was throwing tantrums at the drop of a hat, and when we asked her questions she just didn't answer. She would wordlessly whine if anything went wrong and would refuse to do anything by herself, just crying or at most saying "need help! " if anything offered any resistance at all. It was so bad that sashagee called in to the pediatrician and asked them if we could have another speech evaluation. I'm convinced that there's something the first speech evaluator missed and she should have had speech therapy this entire time.

However, this post is much more hopeful than it could have been. Just before lunch, Laila had an accident and we had to spend a bunch of time cleaning her up...but once that was done, it was like the floodgates had opened. At lunch she wanted to spoon miso soup into her cup "all by self!" and she was chatty the entire rest of the day. On the walk to swim class she talked to me the entire time. She went back to using sentences and telling me about things. It was like night and day. She had apparently been using like 80% of her brainpower on holding everything in.

We're still going to get her evaluated because I think it would be good to have confirmation (or not), but we're not nearly as worried as we were. She's just extremely stressed from potty training, the poor girl.