The Umbrella

In the midst of all of the chaos stands this little person who still depends on me for basically everything. Heck, at this point, she's not capable of sleeping unless she's touching me, so she's really not getting far in life. Mila is a delightful distraction from all that is frustrating.

Except not because she is her own kind of (admittedly fun) frustration right now.

She can do it, you guys. It doesn't matter what it is, she can do it. Now go back and read the first paragraph because NO SHE CANNOT. Mila can't make her own dinner. She can't wipe her own butt. She can't sleep unless I'm there to reassure her that sleep is good. She has returned to peak helplessness in practice, meanwhile her words insist that I can go fly a kite.

It's fun. For real. There is exactly one thing to do when a little toddler has made up her mind about something and that's to go along with it. With a smile.

Enter The Umbrella.

Mila is obsessed with umbrellas. She gets that they're only for days when it's raining, but since it's January in Pittsburgh, of course it rains every day. Why would it snow? That has never been a thing that has happened in Pittsburgh in January. Anybody who tells you that it did was one of those wacko climate change people who actually think something like an increasing daily average temperature means it's getting warmer. Such crazy talk!

AHEM.

ANYWAY.

Rain. We're getting a lot of it because humanity sucks and is ruining the environment, but that works out for Mila since she's obsessed with umbrellas. The second she sees a single raindrop, she finds her umbrella and happily toddles around with it.

She can open it herself.

She can hold it herself.

She can close it herself.

Back right on up if you think you're going to help with that whole thing in any way, shape, or form. She's got it.

That means that my mornings have been moving at a snail's pace this week. First Mila has to find her umbrella, then she has to figure out how to open it, and then she has to crash into the doorway five times before she remembers that she needs to open the umbrella AFTER she goes outside. Once she's safely outside with the umbrella, she has to stop and remind me that it's raining 15,330 times and then tell me that she has her umbrella 18,932 times. We have to admire the raindrops hitting the umbrella, we have to adjust the umbrella, we have to walk all of the slow because umbrella.

By the way, THIS is why kids are cute.

My reward for my stunning display of patience (seriously, I deserve a cookie) comes once we get to the other side of our morning. Tow days in a row now, Mila and I have arrived at daycare where she has insisted on using her umbrella for the six foot walk to the door.

Whatever. It's not worth fighting about.

It's especially not worth fighting about because the kid can't figure out how to walk through a door and close her umbrella at the same time. She tries to do both things, but ends up only half doing both of them, which is to say she keeps closing the umbrella on her own head.

Over and over.

And it is ALL OF THE AMAZING. I seriously cannot get enough of the Tiny Human's umbrella swallowing her head. Which, I think daycare already knew I'm a failure as a parent, but now they KNOW because I keep standing there laughing while someone holds the door. I maybe say, "Hold on. Don't help her." Because OBVIOUSLY.

She can do it herself and I am so glad for that.

An accurate representation of me trying to focus on anything right now

Slashing Would Have Been Smarter

Quiz time!

Let's say you have to work on the opposite side of town from usual, so your husband is in charge of picking up the kids. And let's say that just as you're about to leave that opposite side of town situation, your husband texts you to say the toddler just puked. Do you:

A) Take a knife to your tire and text your husband that you'll be late while you wait for someone to fix it.

B) "Accidentally" program the wrong address into your GPS and drive out of state.

C) Call the dentist and make an emergency appointment for a root canal. RIGHT THAT MINUTE.

D) Assume the whole thing was a fluke and carry on as usual.

Survey says ... the correct answer is A, B, or C. It is most definitely not D and it's not any other choices because OF COURSE YOU STAY AWAY AS LONG AS POSSIBLE. There are consequences to being the parent who rarely does pick-up and those consequences are that it should suck. All of the suck. Sucking helps to make certain that the parent who usually does pick-up is appreciated, right?

Right.

So if were to enter into this hypothetical situation, maybe last Friday even, I'd probably go with "none of the above." I'm that special kind of crazy that purposely drives home just like normal and plunges herself straight into a bad situation.

I knew it would be bad. I went home anyway.

Yes, I want a cookie. But not the cookie that Mila puked on me within 2 minutes of me walking in the door. I'd like to never see that particular cookie ever again, thank you very much.

Or the one after that.

Or the next one, either.

That's to say, Mila had that thing that seemingly everyone has had lately. It's 12 hours of sick followed by 24 hours of tired followed by TOTALLYFINECLIMBTHEWALLSZOOOOOM. She wasn't fine Friday night, but she is now and most of what fell between was a blur.

Except, there was something pretty spectacular that happened. Mila generally only has two moods - she's either really happy or really angry. She has a super effective RBF, but still. Happy. Mad. Those are her states of being. It turns out that her stomach churning makes her OMG SO ANGRY. When she's angry, she yells. It took us about three tries to figure out a routine, but with a little practice, Mila and I figured out how to deal with her getting sick.

She would get angry that she was about to throw up again and yell. I would grab her and quickly run to the bathroom. She'd puke in the toilet. Lather, rinse, repeat.

There was a point in my life when I thought kids learning to deal with their own sick was the best milestone possible. Now I've decided that kids telling you about their sick is pretty spectacular as well.

Oh, and I decided I should keep a knife in my car. You just never know when you might need to slash your own tires.