It Wasn't Me

The only thing more certain than death and taxes is that if Mila gets sick, she will forget how to sleep alone for the weeks that follow. We're in that cycle right now, but this time is special. Super special. It seems that Miss Mila has completely lost interest in sleeping in her own bed, even if only for a few minutes.

For example, the other night I sat upstairs with her, rocking her to sleep. Her breathing slowed, she became heavy, all of the things. She was sound asleep for at least twenty minutes before I slowly moved her to her crib. As I bent to cautiously lay her down, Little Miss I Swear She Was Sleeping rolled right on over, stood up, and climbed back into my arms. It looked like a carefully choreographed dance, except it wasn't because OMG I THOUGHT SHE WAS ASLEEP.

Last night started a little better than that. Mila fell asleep, I managed to place her in her crib, and then I ran away without having a koala climb me. It was MAGICAL. Bedtime hasn't been a thing that could be accomplished in less than an hour lately, so the 30 minutes and then flee thing was a huuuuge upgrade.

It didn't last long, of course.

That is the other thing that has been happening lately. If I manage to get the kid in her bed, she'll wake up an hour or so later and demand that I rescue her from her terrible loneliness. Usually she's content to just head downstairs with me. She goes right back to sleep, albeit on the couch next to me.

She did that last night, too. Or at least I thought she did.

I swear she was sleeping. She had been laying on the couch for over half an hour. Normally I could invite the high school marching band over for practice and she'd stay asleep, just as long as she's on the couch.

She was asleep when I walked to the bathroom to brush my teeth. I SWEAR IT.

When I returned, not only was Mila awake, she was also holding the sucker I had taken from her hours before. Somehow she had flashed her way into the kitchen while I brushed my teeth and she had stolen that dumb sucker from the table. She returned back to the couch and happily licked away.

And that pretty much sums up who got the last laugh yesterday.

Hint: it wasn't me.

February the 14th

Now that she has had three chances to make up her mind, Mila would like to declare Valentine's Day to be THE VERY BEST EVER ZOMG WEEEEEEE!

That might be the sugar talking, by the way. Somehow the kid managed to return home from daycare with a box filled with sugary treats, and that was on top of the giant cupcakes I sent with her to share with her friends. Which, you guys. This morning Mila walked into daycare carrying a tray of cupcakes bigger than her and she told everyone, "I have cupcakes for my friends" and it was the cutest thing ever.

I digress.

The point I was trying to make was that Mila came home with a giant box of candy. I initially was going to take the whole thing away from her, but then I decided to just let her go all in while I made dinner. If I did that with Alexis, she would eat two pieces, complain her belly hurt, and go back to not eating candy for weeks on end.

This is Mila we're talking about, though.

Mila tried to set a World Record for most candy consumed in under 10 minutes. She. went. all. in. I'm not sure if she remembered to breathe or not, but I do know she couldn't have shoved M&Ms into her mouth faster if her life had depended on it.

When it became clear that Mila wasn't going to self-regulate EVER, I cut her off. Whoever said it's easy to take candy from a baby was a liar, of course, so prying that sucker out of her hands very nearly cost me my life.

There was a lot of screaming and a lot of crying.

And then Mila punched me. She went from angry that I was taking her candy, to sad that I was taking her candy, to punching me.

Just.

Like.

That.

So basically I spent Valentine's Day patiently waiting for a super pissed off toddler to apologize for punching me because she wasn't allowed out of time out until she calmed down and apologized.

It took a while.

It took so long that she basically went from time out to bed. As we curled up in the chair in Mila's room, she was still doing that half-sob thing people do when they've been crying for a while. As her breathing worked its way to normal, she sighed. Then she quietly whispered, "I just wuv you, mommy."

So, yeah. Happy Valentine's Day.

 

Important List Stuff

I am a list person. I start every day with a fresh To Do list and then my lists grow lists and everything exists somewhere on a list. There are lists for the places we need to be, lists for the things I need to buy, and lists for the things that need to happen far in the future.

If I combine the lists, sometimes they make decisions easy. Will there be destruction? Is there a chance that things might catch fire? Is chaos likely? THEN MILA NEEDS TO GO THERE.

That's how we ended up at a Monster Truck thing this past weekend. Alexis has lived that adventure before and liked it, despite being completely out of her element, but Mila had not. AND HOOBOY IS THAT HER ELEMENT.

Mila spent most of the show sitting in my lap, eyes locked on the action below. It was all very serious business, so there was no smiling or laughing, but I think that may be because she was focused on learning. She learned how to flip a truck over just by driving up a hill. She learned how to smash a truck up just the right amount so that it both sparks a fire and remains driveable. That's key, really. It's no fun setting something on fire unless you can drive around with fire. Because fire.

Mila learned a lot that evening.

And so did I.

I learned that it's really super important not to block Mila's view of fire and big trucks. Because if you do? If you happen to prevent her from being able to see what she wants to see?

A post shared by Burgh Baby (@burghbaby) on Feb 11, 2017 at 4:42pm PST

She will destroy you with just one look.

I'm putting that at the top of my list. Never again will I anger Tiny Human quite that much.

I hope.