The Troll and the Battle for Mt. Patience

Lil'Bug has been feeling angry and rude inside. She is very frustrated about it and has painted some lovely expressive art that starts with a rainbow of colors and ends with the spectrum being covered with black paint.

She said her feelings are turning her into a troll, that's how trolls are made you see. She wants to be a princess, not a troll. She said she needs patience. I think what she may be saying is that either she needs to be patient or I need to be patient with her more. Or both, maybe both would be better.

I'm not sure how to help her with what she is feeling. I am eternally grateful she is able to express it verbally and artistically. I thought that starting back with play dates and field trips and park days would help, but they don't so much. Also, aside from very few isolated incidents (usually at play dates) she's been cheerful, helpful, and awesome- the normal state of Lil'Bug! That's why I'm so surprised she is articulating her sadness and anger, outwardly she seems fine.

As for me, I am content and blank. I'm just not feeling super happy or super sad or frustrated or overwhelmed. No extremes. Just getting by. I decided to start getting up at 5 am when Blueberry does and in the morning I enjoyed the quiet and the sunrise. It was a nice start to the day. Then she shifted to waking at 4am and then sleeping until 7am. I'm not getting up at 4 and everyone is up by 7. Ah, it was nice while it lasted.

So while I am feeling very vanilla inside, little one is rocky road mud pie with sprinkles. Perhaps that is a balanced mix. Hopefully we will work through it well.

What I Did This Morning, aka the Tornado Tot Strikes Again

Tornado Tot strikes again and again. Her mess started migrating to take over the house, I knew I must hold it back, wrangle it into bins, or Dearest might have to send a search party to find us one of these days......


Didn't take long at all. I'm no Martha Stewart, but at least it is tidy and dust free. Lil'Bug, once transformed back into sweet child, said, "Thank you, Mama!" and started in on rebuilding the mess.




Ah. Oh well. At least I now have pictures to remember it clean by. My lovely floors.......I will miss you again in a couple of hours......

Adoption Gratitude

I've been pondering this all week and then Christine posted this today.

We have a legacy of adoption in our family. My Dearest was adopted, Nana was actually abandoned in a bassinet to a family that adopted her. There is so much love in our family, and I am so grateful to both birth moms, the sacrifices they made so our family could be the one it is today.

Having just carried Blueberry in my belly for nine months, the idea is fresh in my mind that not only is it traumatic for the baby, but for the birth family too; what a loss the families might feel too, the fathers, the grandparents. I had anxiety when the nurses held her to check vitals and even though I knew they would hand her back, I felt at a loss. My God, how would I feel if I never, ever saw her again? My heart cannot even fathom it. Yet my family is what it is because two mothers made the heart wrenching decision that their babies would be better cared for by someone else and after nine months of knowing and loving their babies, handed them over to very wonderful mothers.

And those mother welcomed the sleepless nights, the poopy diapers, the vomit and fevers, the heartbreaks, the ER visits (lots of them in Dearest Husband's childhood!), and trials of childhood. Those mothers get the love of and get to love those children. Those mothers get a lifetime of motherhood which is a full palate of emotions, grief, joy, anger, fear, and lots of love. Grandchildren, great grandchildren.

So today, I am feeling especially thankful for my mother-in-law and her mother and both of the birth moms that gave Nana and Dearest to our family.

Great Clippers

Lil'Bug really wanted to use scissors this week. So I let her. I even bought her her own pair of blunt tip kid scissors. She clipped and clipped and snipped all day, until the floor was littered with paper and glue and paint. An explosion of motor skills and creativity. Lovely.

Until.

Until she cut her own hair. That's a right of passage, isn't it? I was right there with her and she was simple too quick for me to stop her. She looked at me in amazement and said, "Mama, my hair is falling out?" Aghk. Luckily, she merely cut more of those stupid layers that the multiple Great Clips hair "artists" butchered her hair with so, really, you can't tell.

The bright side is that at age three she has a marketable skill, she can cut hair for Great Clips! Ha. (For those who don't remember we gave instructions for NO LAYERS and the hair cut lady cut lots of layers so we went to a GC across town and asked a different lady to fix it but cutting it really short to get rid of the layers and she cut MORE LAYERS AND GAVE LIL'BUG A SUCKER AND THEN TOOK IT AWAY FROM HER WHEN SHE STARTED CRYING! OMG).

Still, Dearest had been skeptical about letting Lil'Bug had scissor privilage. Upon seeing the carnage of her hair on the floor, he reminded me of his objections. Bah. He turns to her and asks, "Lil'Bug, how old are you?"

"Three!"

"Thank you sweety, now I won't have to do an I was right dance for Mama," he snickered.

Hmph.