I'll Try Harder After A Third Dance With Stanley

Prepare thyself to judge me ... I haven't even tried to get Mila to sleep in her own bed since hockey was on my television all of the time. Listen, I know it makes me a slacker parent, but playoff hockey cannot be interrupted. Small children who are supposed to go to sleep at some point around the first period either need to go to sleep quickly or adapt. I missed an entire game early in the playoffs battling with her to go to sleep. After that, I chose my battles a little more carefully. Or rather, let's say Mila chose to adapt by laying on the couch and falling asleep whenever she wanted because hockey. I was watching hockey.

So, hockey ended (With another Stanley Cup, thank you very much! Clearly my parenting choices led to that outcome.). In theory, the "go ahead and sleep on the couch just don't talk to me" shenanigans should have ended as well. They didn't, though, because Mila is a force to be reckoned with and sometimes I just don't feel like reckoning.

It's okay, though. I had a plan.

I had a plan that I would bust out ye old toddler bed and that would be the end of Mila running the bedtime show. 

For the record, Mila never did crawl out of her crib. She will stack chairs in the kitchen to crawl on top of the fridge, but for reasons I'll never know, she considered the crib to be an inescapable cage. That's part of why I waited to dig out the toddler bed - it seems like the sort of thing you go to out of desperation. But cages only work if the kid goes into them in the first place, so...

I kept putting off the toddler bed switch, but then I decided the time was right. I talked it up and made a big deal out of it and YOU GUYS, MILA WAS SO EXCITED. She crawled into that bed and tried to stay there all day on Sunday. She would have put her pajamas on and gone to bed at 2:00 in the afternoon if I had let her. 

I, of course, didn't.

But when 8:30 rolled around, I did expect that she would at least be a little interested in her fancy new bed.

News flash: she wasn't.

The kid who spent the whole day eagerly anticipating sleeping in her new bed has since talked about sleeping in that new bed endlessly. Constantly. SO OFTEN. She will only lay in it up until about 7:00, though. Then she turns into her usual couch-demanding self.

And it's all my fault. 

But, hey, at least I get to cuddle with a tiny little sleeping person. That is a definite upside.

She Is Bigger Enough

The hard drive on my laptop recently bit the dust, which isn't exactly a joyous occasion, but it was a good reminder that backups and complete stories stored in places that are safe are good. Thus, excessive blogging about a topic, AHOY! I don't want to forget the stories that go with the photos.

While there are certainly fancier places to beach, Ocean City has the Boardwalk. And the Boardwalk has things. Like, amusement park rides. 

Mila really super likes amusement park rides.

(Ignore the expression on her face. That's just her RBF that she keeps on hand for when I have the camera.)

As part of my always-evolving efforts to bribe Mila into acting like a respectable human, I kept telling her she could "ride the horsies" if she did all the things respectable humans do. Fortunately for her, she complied enough for me to get her a few tickets and let her go.

One spin around the horsies wasn't enough, though. Mila had a few more tickets to burn, so she asked to ride something else. And then something else. And then something else. And a magical thing happened - she was tall enough to ride all of the things in the kid area! By herself! Without obnoxious high heels or anything! And the signage was clear and there were visual indicators to know when she had wandered past "her space" and ... well ... Kennywood, take notes. 

And then we purposely wandered past "her space" and found a giant area where Mila was still allowed to ride, just this time with a "responsible person" at her side. I found me one of those "responsible people" and there was fun.

So much fun.

Basically, I now know that if I want to set Mila free and let her ride and ride and not run into moments of "you're not bigger enough," I just have to go to Maryland. It's totally worth the drive.

Oof with the 'Tude

If you're going to do back-to-back "vacations" (quotes because Vegas for a cheer competition is not really a vacation, in my book), may I suggest not doing it the way I did? Because OOOOOF. 

So. Mila. Mila knows how to push my buttons like no other person who has not yet mastered the art of wiping her own behind. The girl talks back more in one week than Alexis has in her entire life. And when I say "talks back" I mean it. If I tell Mila to put her shoes on, there's a really good chance that her reply will be, "No, YOU put your shoes on." Sit down, eat your dinner, stop jumping, please don't do something that would cause you to die ... it's all worth arguing about in her mind.

It's exhausting.

And I don't know how to make it stop. She's barely three years old, so she doesn't understand the weight of her words just yet. 

Anyway, an entire week of Mila talking back is exactly enough to make me want to run in circles screaming. Or go find a high cliff. Something. Anything. It's as if I need a vacation from my vacation.

WHICH I COULD HAVE HAD IF I HAD FLIPPED THINGS.

For as much of a challenge as Mila is these days, Alexis is a stroll down Easy Street. They're kind enough to take turns with their difficult stages, so I know it won't stay, but right now Alexis is fantastic and amazing. Give it a few weeks and she'll be hard, no worries, but right now? Man. Right now she's swell. A weekend in Vegas with her wasn't much different than a weekend with a friend. There's a pretty clear understanding that I"m mom and definitely running the show, but still. Think Lorelei and Rory. We're there right now.

(Again. It won't last. And tween talking back is infinitely more frustrating that preschooler talking back soooooooo.)

Basically, I should have done the vacation that was a lot of work and hard and all of that first and the easy one second. But noooope. I did things backwards.

::sigh::

So we all return to reality tomorrow and the memories of vacations will start to fade. The good news is that photos don't make noise, so I'll look at the photos of Mila at the beach and remember how much she loved playing in the sand, how she didn't want anything to do with the water, how much she giggled every time the big kids so much as glanced at her, and her general glee about absolutely everything.

I'll definitely forget all of  the attitude.

Maybe.