Good night, sweetheart

I had a long day. It’s the first day of what will be a long week.

But tonight, as I lay my head next to R’s on her pillow and she stroked my hair with her soft little fingers, I couldn’t be any happier. Or so I thought.

“I love your hair, Mommy.”

I opened my eyes and looked at her.  I told her she had pretty hair too, and that I loved her very much. Then I closed my eyes again. She continued to run her fingers through my hair.

“Mommy, you’re beautiful.”

My eyes filled with tears. I thanked her. I told her she was awesome, amazing, the best thing that ever happened to me.

Sometimes I get so tired, so frustrated, so hadituptohere with the “nos” and the “whys” and the “rightNOWs.” And it’s not like these little moments, moments where she touches my heart with her kindness and empathy, are the only times I realize that this is all totally worth it. I never doubt that she is worth it – not really.

But these moments make it something awesome, something incredible, something inspiring. I am watching this little girl evolve into a person. I get to be a part of this for the rest of my life. I just need to remember that.

Of course, being told I’m beautiful doesn’t hurt.

My Fall Vacation

R and Mommy, first trip to the ocean. She was doing great, loving it, wading around and picking up shells until a particularly large wave knocked her down and soaked her to the skin. This photo was post-dunking. She wouldn’t get in the water again.

At Butterfly World, before the dramatic meltdown in the lorakeet enclosure, she sprayed Daddy’s face with residual moisture. She loved the butterflies, the fish, the birds and the fact that Grandpa emptied his pockets of change so she could throw it in the water.

And, we went all the way to Florida so she could swing at the park by Grandpa’s house. She did enjoy the “Singing Gate” that we went into and out of at Grandpa’s, and she would dutifully sing a little Dora theme every time we approached it. Except when we were leaving. She was mad and didn’t want to go.

No pictures of Day 2 at Lion Country Safari (forgot to charge the camera battery), but Day 3, spent at the beach, was great fun for all. Aunt Lisa pointed out all the money we saved on microdermabrasion by taking R to the beach. And we had a 1:1,000,000 experience – whilst getting a bucket of water for the doomed moat to surround R’s sand castle (and in which her plastic mermaid could theoretically swim), I managed to catch a fish… in a Barbie bucket… from the ocean. Am very talented and skilled. Considering second career as deep sea fisherwoman.

Aforementioned plastic mermaid tail visible. See also: Silly Face.

R’s first meal on the beach: a hot dog and chips. Dave swears she ingested at least three tablespoons of sand with lunch. He could be right. Doesn’t she look appropriately appreciative of nature’s beauty? Unfortunately, the Juno Beach Pier did not offer her any pelicans, as they had on my two previous visits. Of course she was despondent over the lack of pelicans.

And here we are on the beach, post microdermabrasion and humidity hair frizz. Now you all know I have only one bathing suit that fits appropriately.

Cautionary tale

I’ve been at this for nearly three years now, and I’ve uncovered a dreadful, dreadful mistake that I was making, am making, have been making with regularity the entire time. Like many pregnant women, I devoured books about pregnancy, books about parenting strategies, What to Expect the First Year, the Happiest Baby on the Block, Baby Wise, and so on and so on ad infinitum.

A lot of these books, a lot of the Internet advice (at least the advice I chose to listen to and follow like gospel) explain that you can’t spoil a baby. If the baby cries, you pick her up. If she wants to be snuggled, you snuggle her. If she wants to be fed, you feed her. If she is thirsty, you give her something to drink. If she wants to be inside, outside, upside down; you adjust and accommodate. Just about the only thing on which I did not cave to the whims of the tiny dictator was sleep. And I do thank the heavens for allowing me to find some sort of resolve on something in the last three years, because this could have gone so much worse.

From a place deep inside me that resides right next to my insatiable need to be liked, I believed the advice, I took it to heart. All of it. And now, as R enters childhood and leaves her babyhood behind her (sob!), I am paying for it. I am paying for every time I answered a demand for “more juice” with an immediate sippy cup. I am paying for every time I obediently hoisted her onto my hip in response to outstretched arms. I am paying for every time I allowed her to throw her food on the floor with impunity, simply picking up the pieces with a gentle admonishment.

She’s spoiled. She’s not even pleasant to be around much of the time. If she asks for something nicely and is denied, she resorts to angry demands and temper tantrums.

The hammer is about to drop in our house.

As much as it has been hurting me to deny her simple pleasures like a few minutes of Cinderella after her bath or an extra story before bed time, I tell myself that I need to do it for her own good (how’s that for a parenting phrase?). She is becoming a little tyrant, and that is unacceptable.

Why is it that punishing her also punishes me?

A dream is a wish your heart makes

I think 2-year-olds are designed to drive their parents batty with frustration one second and then be so heartbreakingly adorable the next second that mom and dad look at each other with thinly veiled tears in their eyes and wonder how they created such a wonderful person during a quick afternoon roll in the hay in the Hotel Cai’ d’Conti in Venice.

R is in this stage – or maybe it’s her lifelong personality, God help me – in which she freaks out at the tiniest of perceived problems – a brownie crumb on her skirt, a missing Barbie shoe or wanting to go to Disney World RIGHT F-ING NOW, NOT WHEN WE SAVE UP SOME MORE MONEY AND I AM A LITTLE BIGGER. LET’S GET IN THE CAR RIGHT NOW.

Last night’s tantrum (and I mean the ENTIRE EVENING) was over Disney World. She saw a commercial that depicted Cinderella and Cinderella’s castle, after which she immediately decided she and Cinderella were best friends. Never mind that not 24 hours earlier, she and Mommy were best friends. I’ve been replaced by a fairy tale. Sniff.

It started with a simple request to go to Disney World. We approached the situation with a variety of failed parenting strategies.

Acquiesce: Okay, we said. We’ll go. Then she wanted to go to Disney World right now. She actually got up to go to the car.

Manipulate: We told her we would have to use money from her piggy bank, figuring she’d refuse. She went to retrieve her stash.

Stall: We told her we had to wait to go with other people in our family, she said she wanted them to go too. RIGHT NOW.

The truth: When we told her we couldn’t go now, we just got back from vacation and we don’t have enough money and she really isn’t big enough to enjoy (and remember) Disney World yet, the tantrums started coming in waves.

She’d scream and cry and demand to go to the happiest place on earth. When she calmed herself down, she’d raise her little tear-stained face to look up at us and tell us again, “I want to go to Disney World.” Following another refusal, she threw another tantrum. And so it went: through dinner, bath time and tooth-brushing.

I finally got her to bed (and asleep), only to begin again this morning, though her demands were not quite as vehement or angry. She has downgraded her attack to simply insistent. I am hoping that by the time I pick her up from school, she has thought of something else she wants right now. Hopefully it’s a brownie, cause that’s all I’ve got.

3-2-1 Blastoff!

She did great. I was a nervous wreck, but she did great. She hated the seat belt on the plane and wanted Mommy to hold her when it was impossible, but overall, it was not the worst nightmare I had anticipated. She even slept through take-off on three of the four legs.

Florida was awesome – too short, of course. We went to Butterfly World and Lion Country Safari and the Marine Life Center and the beach. I somehow managed to catch a tiny little fish in the ocean (not purposefully, I was trying to get a bucket of water for R’s sandcastle project) using only a Barbie bucket borrowed from my dad’s awesome girlfriend. And R showed off her brilliance and stunning memory skills by repeatedly asking us about Mommy’s sunglasses, which we told her (before the trip) had fallen into the ocean off the Juno Beach pier the last time Mommy and Daddy visited Grandpa – four years ago.

If you ask R what her favorite part was, she alternates between the ostrids (ostriches) and deer at Lion Country Safari and finding seashells and building sand castles on the beach. Which reminds me – I have a freezer bag full of sea shells that need cleaning and separating.

Since we’ve been back, Dave had surgery on his shoulder and is an invalid hopped up on a nerve-blocker pumped directly into his neck (he carries it around with him like a colostomy bag) and Vicodin, needing me to switch out his ice packs ever hour and open all his beverages (nonalcoholic. For him.) All this in between making Halloween crafts and playing Barbies with R, loads of laundry and climbing up on a ladder to kill wasps that are starting to build a nest in our bathroom window.

I’ll almost be glad to go back to work. Almost.

Shut up, shut up, Shut uuuuuppppp

So I’m going on vacation on Saturday, and this is disturbing and/or unusual to me on a variety of levels. I know, vacation is not supposed to be a disturbing or unusual thing, it is supposed to be relaxing. However, please let me delineate the reasons this is both disturbing and unusual (and not necessarily relaxing).

·         I haven’t had a vacation of longer than a four-day weekend since April 2005. Unless you count maternity leave, which I do not. And I do not wish to know anyone who does.

·         We are taking R on an airplane for the very first time. We have a layover in Atlanta both ways. God help us.

i)     However, she could surprise us and enjoy it.

ii)    But more likely, she will be in excruciating pain from the change of pressure (I’m packing sippy cups and (gasp) GUM) and miserable for the entire trip, there and back, despite the promise of Grandpa hugs, the ocean, sea turtles, lions, rides, butterflies and a swimming pool. What I will promise her on the way back, I don’t know.

·         R was sick this week with some unnamed ailment, but it kept me out of work yesterday and her up a lot last night with general malaise. We did some tests at the doctor’s office yesterday, but haven’t heard yet. She seems better, and even was able to make it to the potty yesterday before she… you know… #2 more like #1.. (Still not talking about potty training)(and you’re welcome for the description).

·         I have travel anxiety, which is bad enough when I am by myself, but throw in a husband who does NOT fly very much and a toddler who has never been to an airport and… oh God, I don’t even want to think about it. The possibility of missed connections! The parking! The checking in! Security! The CAR  SEAT! Do we check it? Do we take it on the plane? GOOD LORD PEOPLE WHAT DO I DO ABOUT THE CAR SEAT? I’M THINKING ABOUT IT. STOP THINKING ABOUT IT.

·         We are going to see my dad, which is fantastic and wonderful but also unusual. I haven’t been to see him since December 2004, which was a long time ago in real years and even longer in life-change years. For example, I now have a child. For a second example, he now has a serious girlfriend. Whom I will hopefully meet for the first time. (note: though I haven’t been to his house in nearly four years, he has been to mine many, many, many times and we have also seen each other at family gatherings like weddings and Christmas. So I get to see him. I just am terribly ungrateful and make him come see me all the time. But see previous bullet).

·         This is like a last hurrah for Dave, who has surgery on his shoulder next Friday. He’ll be in a sling for six-eight weeks but afterward able to pick R up over his head again. Which, yea for him. But also, sadness, because I don’t like to rake leaves and mow the lawn and do manual labor.

·         I am nervous about missing so much work (GAH! FIVE WHOLE DAYS! I THINK THEY’LL SURVIVE), and even more nervous about my return. And how much work I will have.

Pat my head and tell me it will all be okay, and vacation is a good thing and to please shut up already because not everybody gets to go to south Florida in October for only the (not-so-inexpensive) cost of a plane ticket.