Thankful

With the holidays rapidly approaching, I find myself at a bit of a loss about how to explain certain holiday traditions and ideas to my incessantly curious two year old. 

Being thankful wasn't hard, we've been working on that one for some time.  She woke up yesterday morning and hugged my neck and said "I'm thankful for you, mother!"  (She's been calling me "mother" lately.  I don't pretend to understand why.)  She even mentioned her gratitude toward her father in spite of his stench.  He said it was something to the effect of:

     "Daddy, I'm thankful for you.  I can smell you."
     "Oh.  Well, thank you.  What do I smell like?"
     "You smell like gross."

I really feel like we've got the concept of being thankful in the bag, along with the fallacies of judging someone based on their aroma.  Luckily for me, she hasn't asked why we don't celebrate being thankful year round.

But there are some other traditions she doesn't quite get.  Like, why can't we have chicken for Thanksgiving supper?  What is "football"?  Who is Uncle David?  Can we go see the Pilgrims?  Does baby Jesus need a bottle for supper?  The list goes on.  She thinks of questions that I never could have imagined myself trying to answer.  The more I talk to her about it, the more questions she asks.  I'm so glad she hasn't discovered the "why" loop yet.  I'm just not ready for that.

But Seriously...

How am I supposed to get anything done around here with these two laughing at me?  Eh, cleaning and scrubbing and babies don't keep and all that jazz...

Motorcycle Butterfly Fairy Princess Tea Party

Somewhere deep inside the mind of a child is a world where everything is pink.  Everything has wings.  Everything glows in the dark.  The constellations are Jupiter's dreams.  Meteor showers are falling candy.  Robots sing and dance.  There's a swimming pool on Miranda.  And a motorcycle butterfly fairy princess can have a tea party with Mommy.

Its my favorite place.

Never

Yesterday, I heard myself saying, "There is not any time of day I have left to work out.  All my time is taken!"  Of course, this isn't true.  I just had to do the same thing everyone else does and sacrifice one of my lazy activities.  I chose sleep instead of WoW because, lets face it, Catacalysm is coming out.  For those of you that don't know, that's a big deal. 

So at 4 am my alarm went off.  I shut it off and said to myself, "This is stupid" and almost went back to bed.  But I convinced myself I could do this for one day, at least.  Then I looked outside and saw it was raining and cold.  If that's not an excuse to go back to bed, I don't know what is.  And I said to myself, "It always rains every time I want to do something!"  But I put on my shoes, sweatered and leashed the dog, and set out on my morning adventure.  It was everything I had hoped it would be.

Last night, just before supper, my daughter walked into my kitchen, looked around, gave a long sigh, and said "There is never anything to eat in this house."  She's so dramatic!  Where does she get that?

The Apocolypse

This is Tuesday!  Time for my post about the amazing catastrophes I came home to yesterday.  There's just one problem...

...I haven't found them yet.  The house was not clean but not trashed.  My son was bathed, fed, and asleep.  My daughter was having desert, her bath was run and her pajamas laid out.  My husband was sane.  My laundry is not pink.  Nothing exploded in my kitchen.  Both of my children and both of my dogs still have the same amount of hair I left them with.  (The dogs were even bathed.)

I'm at a loss.  Its the end of the world as we know it, and I feel.....fine.

More Potty Adventures

Most of you know I have been trying to potty train Sam since before Caius was born.  She was mildly responsive until after his birth, when she was completely resistant.  Now that she's back to showing some interest, I really feel like we are starting to make some progress.  Only one accident yesterday.  I was so proud.  I think I have been approaching this whole thing the wrong way for her.  She's very independent, but I think she might be very private about this as well.  She still needs help, but the most successful attempts on the potty have been the ones when I find her in the bathroom trying to do it herself.  I help her a bit, then leave her alone.

Yesterday, I was feeding Caius in the living room.  Sam ran off down the hall and was very quiet for .... well ... too long.  So I started off down the hall saying as I went, "Samantha Davis, exactly what are you doing?"  By the time I finished the statement I had reached the bathroom.  I found her sitting on the potty with a book in hand.  She looked at me and said, "I'm peepin on the potty, obbiuss-wee (obviously)!"

Most days I try to make a big deal about these kinds of successes with her.  I get so excited about them.  But I just told her that was really good and let her finish.  We mentioned it to dad when he got home and left it at that.  (Honestly, I probably still would have made a big deal about it if she hadn't been so sick.  Our attention was slightly diverted)  And I think maybe she prefers it that way. 

So I learned more about Sam using the potty yesterday than she did, and we possibly came further in one day than we have in months.  Today, I'm going to learn how to not freak out about this fever that is plaguing her.  God, let her survive all the things I have yet to learn.

You're Driving Me Crazy

I have found myself more than a little distracted by the much deserved bite in my ass from karma these last several weeks.  The small chores that kept my days organized have become almost overwhelming tasks, and some days just haven't gotten done at all.  I watch my life slip more and more into chaos and the more it does the more helpless I feel against it.  What I need is a distraction from the distraction, something to snap me out of this funk.....

Enter Sam.  My own personal distraction for life.  No matter what has happened in the last several weeks, my daughter is still two.  No matter what is to come over the next several months, she will still be two.  And I don't think it entirely unusual that I've said to her (on more than one occasion) "Goodness gracious Sam, you're driving me crazy!"  Of course we laugh about it and go on about our day.  But it never occurred to me how a two year old sees that statement.

Today we built a fort with a blanket and some chairs and a laundry basket.  We filled it with toys, and when it was time to clean up, used the laundry basket to deliver the toys back to Sam's room.  Once the basket was empty, Sam jumped inside and sat down and I pushed her around the house, accelerating and stopping with much intensity and spinning wildly.  We were both laughing so hard we could hardly breathe, but she managed to get out "Wow mommy!  You're driving me crazy!"  And she was right.  I was.