Third Year

The Third Year from amber on Vimeo.

Things are not good in general right now: not with Mad, not with V, but all those outside annoying things that life brings. House woes, work stress, family strife, etc. I ran around all morning with the girls, attending to errands, jetted off to work in the afternoon, dealt with that, came home, made dinner, fed the girls, bathed them, tossed them in bed. And here we are.

Well, not exactly. Mad was in her room, calling for me, and normally this drives me batty. Sleep! It is time for you to sleep, and so you must! I normally have absolutely no patience for sleep issues.

But tonight, all tired and achy and beyond stressed and generally frustrated with life, I went back into her room and asked if she wanted me to lay down with her. "Okay, mama," she said happily, so I told her to scoot and laid down with her.

It was pitch dark, and she was holding her little Thomas the Tank Engine nightlight that changes colors, and talking softly. "Blue....green....red...." She told me a story about Halloween, and when we put the glowing purple skulls in her room. "Remember that, mama?" She asked.

"I remember," I told her.

"I'll get up when the sun is up," she told me.

"Yes," I confirmed.

"We can go get coffee and vanilla steamers!" She said.

(We have a Starbucks problem. Okay, me. I have a Starbucks problem.)

"Not tomorrow morning," I said. "I have to go to work."

"Remember we got vanilla steamers today? And I made a mess with the muffin?"

"I remember," I confirmed.

It went on like this for a few minutes, tiny conversations while we snuggled close in her new big girl bed, until I told her it was time for me to go. "No," she said. "I want you to sleep some more!"

"I'm going to sleep in my bed," I told her, "and you're going to sleep in your bed."

"Okay, mama," she said. "Remember you had to go to work today?"

"I remember," I told her, and gave her a kiss and a hug before I left.

Lesson learned: Make the effort to look beyond those moments of irritation, to take a look at the bigger picture. Stretched out on a bigger scale, all these moments are the same. Points of time that go by all too quickly, most of them easily forgotten. Looking past that regularly irritating not-sleeping thing and indulging Mad, if only for a few minutes, brought me the absolute best part of my day, and a seemingly mundane moment that I want to hold on to for as long as I can.

To Remember II

A few days after the "She likes you," incident, Mad climbed into our bed, pulled the covers over her, and said, "Come on, Mama! Let's go to sleep." She closed her eyes and fake-snored. This is a frequent game. I crawled into bed next to her, and she snuggled up close to me, pressing her face to mine.

Then she bit my face, clamped down nice and hard. Then laughed and laughed and laughed.

It was a bit....deflating? Disenheartening?

Sucktacular?

So that's what parenting is, I guess. One day it's all sweetness and "I love you," the next, your kid is displaying cannibalistic tendencies.

PS I blame this video. She thinks it's hilarious and frequently recites it, complete with the accent.

To remember

Our new(ish) cat, Sideswipe, will walk up to Madeleine and briefly press his nose to her face. "He likes you," we tell her when he does that. Today, Madeleine and I were playing on the floor when she crawled up to me and pressed her nose to my face. "She likes you, Mama!" she said. "Mad likes you."

And then I died from the cuteness.

Happy Vote Day!

This morning, when we went to vote, Madeleine walked into the polling place and announced to the officials, "It's vote day!" I talked to her about it in simple terms. I told her: It's vote day, Mad. Election day! We're going to elect a new president!"

"Yeah," she said. "We're gonna get a new president. New president's gonna play in the water!"

Puzzling.

Later: "New president's gonna say 'Happy Birthday!' President's gonna play in the water. I take my pink shoes off!"

So I think in her head, "president" equals "present," and she was remembering the last birthday party we went to, where there was a water slide.

If I asked her who she would vote for if she could vote, it would depend on the order I asked her. If I said, "Do you want to vote for Barack Obama or John McCain?" She would say, "John uh-cane." If switched the names, she would say, "a rock o-mama!"

Her snake, though, would always vote for McCain. "Do you have Republican snake, Mad?" I asked. "Yeah!" She said. "Orange snake is a publican!"

That snake is going to be disappointed in the morning.

Halloween! Part 2.

I am including this one because Oh My Gosh. What a big girl. We dressed up her snake as a cat, too. She really was thrilled, I swear. The picture would indicate otherwise; I know.

She bought into the "trick or treat" thing so much that when we were at Target the other day and I showed her the stockings and explained what they were for, she said, "Yeah! I'll say 'trick or treat' and Santa's gonna put candy in my boot!"

She really likes to "drive" the car. The best way to get a picture of Mad and V together is to tell Mad to kiss V, so we have a lot of pictures like this: Mad leaning in, V either looking pleased or cringing. Or both.In awe of the candy.

Halloween!

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Originally uploaded by ambuhlynn

Mad was a black cat.
A cute little black cat.

She got into the whole thing, saying "trick or treat" at most every door and saying, "thank you." Though toward the end of the night, she started whispering the verbiage or not saying it at all.

Later, she got to try her first Halloween candy. She chose a York peppermint patty. Actually, she first chose a big square of caramel, which I nixed. Then a Tootsie pop, which I also nixed. But she did like the peppermind patty.

(Please try to ignore my voice on this one; it sounds SO obnoxious.)