Friday, February 15, 2019This Is Why Mom Should Just Do It
Last year I instituted a very good rule – thee who cannot decorate a Valentines box all by herself shall take a Target bag to school in lieu of a Valentine box. It’s not a rule that rolls off the tongue easily, but it’s definitely one that is easy to get behind.
Last year was a very good year.
This year, though, Mila was capable of decorating. Not just that, she had opinions. She started asking to decorate a box weeks ago and then went into intricate detail explaining exactly what needed to be done. I am weak and I am dumb, so I went for it.
She wanted an LOL Pet. Like, a cat. It was to be white and have pink and purple hair and a fancy tail and … I succeeded. I helped her put together exactly what she wanted.
BUT.
That pesky “decorate it yourself” thing turned out to be a problem. Mila wasn’t just capable of decorating her own box; she insisted. My minor league control issues played into the game, so I took care of all of the white paper, but there was no reason to stop Mila from helping with the kitty’s hair.
OMG. There were a million reasons I should have done it myself.
Mila wasn’t content to “help.” She wanted to do it all by herself, thankyouverymuch. Each and every little hair had to be applied by Mila or she would rip off my accomplishments and start over.
One.
Little.
Curly.
Hair.
At.
A.
Time.
That’s like 72 hours of my life I can never get back. Mila would apply glue, think about where the hair should go, realize the glue was dry, and go back to the beginning. It, no joke, took her 10 minutes per little hair.
Life was much simpler when Target bags were good enough.
She Is Technically MJ
I HAVE NOW SEEN THE CUTEST THING IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD.
I mean, of course it's Mila. I may be biased, but I'm also not wrong. The kid is adorable. She always has been, except for those moments when I want to jump off a cliff because she is terrible at following directions and defiant as all get out and ... I digress. The kid has spirit, to say the least, so I've been trying to find ways for her to express that which don't involve burning the house down. Since she's super competitive, recently I've settled on sports as a good thing for her.
And they are.
She has had hockey or soccer or whatever pretty much every week for the last four months. It's been FANTASTIC. She's getting much better at following directions plus she's running around like a loon the whole time, so basically it's a win. If I could get her to some sort of activity every day of the week, I would. We're all better off when she has something.
And right now she has basketball. Two things:
1. Mila really is the Tiny Human. Her tiny-ness doesn't come across in photos, but if you see her next to her peers, IT'S NUTS. She's a good six inches shorter than her friends. And so tiny. Therefore, basketball is a great choice. She's clearly genetically predisposed to play it. Ahem.
2. She's weirdly good at it. Like, she dribbled the ball about halfway down the court tonight, which is like WOAH for her age. I'm not saying she's the next Michael Jordan or anything (see #1), but girlfriend gets basketball. It's in her wheelhouse.
So! The cutest thing in the whole world happens to be very tiny Mila dribbling a very large basketball (seriously, a standard basketball is bigger than her) all the way to the basket and then attempting a shot. She missed, but she attempted and she was stinking adorable while she did it.
Little kid sports are the best.
