Slimey Sea Monster from the Green Lagoon

My 8-year-old child started feeling crummy on Sunday, with an off and on fever thing goin' on.  The school has this policy that a child must be fever-free for 24 hours before returning to school again.  Ok.  I get that.  I don't work on  Mondays so she stayed home with me.  Her fever reached 102 on Monday afternoon and then it disappeared.   She was perfectly fine all evening, slept great, and woke up Tuesday morning ready to take on the world.  But technically, I could not send her to school per the policy.  Tuesday is a work day for me.  I work from home, and brave girl that I am, I figured we could deal with this.  Lots of movies.  Have her read a big fat novel or something. 

The plan worked for most of the day.  She read.  She watched  TV.  She wrote a story.  Now, had she still been feverish and lethargic, she would have been content to do these things all day.  But....she felt wonderful and wanted to do all sorts of normalish things too.  Bike riding.  Baking cookies.  Hanging out at the mall.

Uhhhh.....Sorry little chickadee, but I'm pulling an eight-hour shift here and you need to entertain yourself for a bit longer.

So, I said to her, "Go forth and root through the crafting cabinet!  I don't care what you do or how big a mess you make (as long as you clean up afterward, of course).  Create something!"  I fired up the sewing machine and left her alone with a heap of fabric scraps, odds and ends, and an imagination as big as Jupiter (that's the biggest planet, she informed me).

She emerged awhile later.  So did Samy.

Samy the Sea Monster from the Green Lagoon.  Samy is not only cute, but extremely talented.  Here is Samy doing an interpretive dance:

I have a feeling that our house will soon be filled with lots of sea monsters, big and small.