Little Notes

I spend every minute of every day charmed by my girls, even when they're on my very last nerve, and there's a few little things that I want to remember:

- Mila, she of many opinions, was born with some gender biases. For now, she thinks the world revolves around girls. As in, she will tell you that she doesn't like boys. She refers to Batman as "Batgirl's boyfriend." She thinks the Spiderman movie that is currently in theaters (and which is SO GOOD) revolves around the female Spiderperson. In general, her default for who is in charge or who is most important in a room is always a woman.

It's the best.

- I am on a "GET IT ALL OUT OF MY HOUSE" bender, which so far has taken the form of needing to clean out all of the closets. One of the targets was our pantry, which frankly is the size of a normal walk-in closet. Some things happened when I did that. First of all, I threw away six bags of stuff. How? HOW? HOW DOES A FAMILY ACCUMULATE SIX BAGS OF TRASH IN THEIR PANTRY? Everybody is fired. Second of all, I put Alexis in charge of cleaning out the sprinkles bin. I have an entire bin of sprinkles because I am THAT amazing, but some of them are ... old. My instructions to Alexis were to throw away anything that she thought was older than Mila. Which, it was most of them. A few, though, she felt the need to tell me were, "Really old, mom. They're not just older than Mila, I think they're older than you and that is SO OLD."

Thanks, kid.

- Penny and Mila are suddenly becoming best friends. It's a little weird because traditionally Penny has only wanted something to do with Mila when she has been holding food. Suddenly the pup is willing to accept hugs without the dream of food landing in her face. Like I said, it's WEIRD. I commented on it this morning and Mila replied, "Mom, it's not my fault Penny likes me more than you."

WELL, THEN.

I Need More Hours, Please

We've been back to our normal routines for, what? A week? I use the word "We" very loosely because while Alexis and I have mostly fallen back into line, Mila is continuing to be a beautiful disaster.

I should put emphasis on the "disaster" part of that.

The child is not going to figure out how to go to bed at a normal hour. Ever. I've decided that every day for her entire childhood I'm going to fight with her about going to sleep. It just IS. I didn't stop fighting with Alexis about it until ... I still haven't stopped. That kid is terrible at going to sleep, I just mostly don't care any more. I occasionally yell "GO TO SLEEP" into her room when I know she's awake too late reading, but I don't care enough to actually force the issue by taking her book away or whatever.

Mila, unlike Alexis, can't cope when she doesn't get enough sleep. Alexis functions fine on 4 hours of sleep. Mila doesn't hit "fine" until she's had 8 or 9 hours. SO SHE HAS TO GO TO BED. So I have to do more yelling.

When Mila doesn't go to bed at a reasonable hour, she pops up on the other side of things A TERRIBLE MESS. She's bad at mornings no matter what, but sleep deprivation just ruins her. On a good day she needs a full episode of Muppet Babies before she can join humanity. On a bad day, forget it. You might as well duct tape the TV to her forehead because that's the only way she's going to be tolerable.

And here we are, in the second week of the year, and the kid can't figure out that she's not staying up until midnight and then sleeping until 10:00. That is her natural state of being, but it doesn't work with the rest of the world. Thus, we're fighting every morning. A lot.

And then came the snow.

There were like four snowflakes on the ground when I drug Mila out of the house this morning. Apparently they were all calling Mila horrible names because she was PISSED. She ran over to stomp on them and then went on a long rant about how snow is dumb and the sun needs to come out and kill it and ...

I'm going to need it to be summer sooner rather than later.

It took half an hour to get the kid to stop being angry and just get in the car. I don't have half an hour to spare for such projects. OYE.

I Used to Be Cool

KIDS CHANGE YOU, MY GOSH.

It started with me giving the side-eye to a video. I don't know how I came across it, but I went from vaguely amused to hate-watching in about 10 seconds. It was a video filled with hacks for making Barbie clothes, which ... IS DUMB. THERE. I SAID IT.

Look, if you have time to stare at a balloon long enough to figure out how to turn it into a two-piece swimsuit for a Barbie doll, I have a very long list of things you can do to be helpful to humanity. My list of about 23502392175 things will provide FAR more value. Because seriously. A BALLOON DOES NOT NEED TO BE TURNED INTO A TWO-PIECE SWIMSUIT FOR A DOLL. Nor does a rubber glove need to be turned into a dress. And if you're thinking of making Barbie shoes out of hot glue? STOP. I just threw away about 100 Barbie shoes. I'll pull them back out of the trash bag. Even digging in the trash is a better use of my time than making a bunch of Barbie clothes out of crap.

Needless to say, I'm not linking to the video. If you're all that interested in spending your hours doing dumb things, holler. I will send you that list of solid things you can do to make the world a better place instead.

So, I was watching this video out of pure hatred for it. I was mocking every stupid idea in my head and laughing at the absurdity of it all BECAUSE OBVIOUSLY.

AND THEN MILA SHOWED UP.

Mila can't stand to let anyone stare at moving things on an electronic screen without her. If there's a snail four miles away watching a video on an iPhone, MILA KNOWS. She will show up and shove her nose in there. So basically she pulled up a chair and started watching the video.

You guys.

 

Paper towels. A cut up plastic bag. I lost 20 minutes of my life to a bossy little person telling me exactly how I too could make "beautiful" Barbie clothes.

I'm not kidding. "Beautiful" was Mila's word for this whole thing.

So, you know, when Mila had the idea that Barbie should go swimming in her fancy new paper towel outfit, I didn't tell her. That's what she gets for somehow convincing me to waste 20 minutes of my life.