Tag Team

I don't know where to thank the girls or knock their heads together, but they decided to have tooth drama at the same time. Is it better to get it over with? Or is it just another way for the universe to laugh harder in my face?

In case you have forgotten, I super duper hate teeth. I most especially hate that part where the tiny people suffer through teeth coming in only to lose them a few years later. It's a giant pile of stupid, you know. SO LET'S HAVE BOTH THINGS HAPPEN AT THE SAME TIME.

Mila has been fighting the molar wars for a while now. I remind her to get her hands out of her mouth approximately every 2.3 seconds. The good news is that she's mostly pleasant through it all. She's just ... off.

Still. Getting teeth is stupid.

But losing them is stupider.

Somehow it didn't dawn on me that we weren't done with loose teeth with Alexis. I don't know why, it just didn't occur to me that there were more than we dealt with a few years ago. Alas, all of the bigger teeth are a thing.

A sudden, gross thing.

The good news is that Alexis understands how very much I don't want to hear about wiggly teeth hanging by a string and all of that. I don't want to see the loose teeth, I don't care for the bloody void when they fall out, and I basically don't want to know anything. All of that is why Alexis jumped into my car the other day and declared, "I lost a tooth today! I won't tell you about how it was all bloody and hanging by a thread after I bit into a cracker because I know you don't like teeth."

It was sweet of her to spare me the details. OR NOT.

She then proceeded to "not" tell me many, many more details.

And then it happened. I yelled, "NO MORE ABOUT THE TOOTH I CAN'T TAKE IT LA LA LAAAAAA!"

Seriously. Literally. I yelled that. I am a mature adult and stuff.

Alexis, caught off guard by my sudden yelling, jumped and then started falling over laughing. It's hilarious when I squirm, don't you know.

In the midst of her giggle fest, she dropped the tooth. SHE DROPPED. THE. TOOTH. IN MY CAR.

She never found it. I didn't help her look for the most obvious reasons, but the point is she couldn't find it. It's still in my car. That makes TWO teeth loose in my car, which means I really super need to just go ahead and set the thing on fire. Shhhhh! Don't tell the insurance company!

She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not

Mila is and will likely always be the tiny person with the big independent streak. For as much as she is very much so 2, she's also very much so 22. She can do it herself, thank you very much.

It doesn't matter what "it" is. She knows she can do it. Alone. Without you. Buh-bye.

I've often wondered how far she is willing to take her "I don't need you" thing, so when we happened to be at Home Depot essentially alone, I decided to find out. We had the outside area to ourselves as I sought out a few things for the pond, so when Mila ran down an aisle towards the back, I made like Elsa and let it go.

"Bye, Mila," I said, just to make sure she knew I wasn't chasing her down.

"Bye, mommy," she threw over her shoulder as she kept running.

It's lovely that she cares about being left alone and stuff.

As Mila ran off, I surveyed the scene. There was nobody around, save the cashier across the garden center. There was nowhere for Mila to go thanks to walls and fences. Really, the only damage she could do would have been to pick up a giant brick and throw it. Which, well, the bricks weigh more than her. That's why she's still the Tiny Human. If she wanted to pull off a Herculean moment, so be it.

So I let her take off.

I watched from another aisle to see how long it would take her to worry that she didn't know where I was.

And I waited.

And I waited.

Mila couldn't see me and she TOTALLY DIDN'T CARE.

I gave it over 10 minutes before I finally snagged the kid. LITERALLY. Ten minutes. There was not a single second in which she cared that she didn't know where I was. She poked at the bricks, walked in circles, talked to herself, and basically gave no honey badgers that she was alone in a giant scary store.

This. This kid who will wander into the big world all by herself without hesitation - she is the same kid who recently hasn't slept more than 10 minutes without touching me.

Nobody ever said toddlers make any sense...

I Should Have Known

There are a lot of weird things about the 8-year age gap, but one that smacked me in the face over the weekend was that the Big Kid dictates how our time is spent a LOT. Between cheer and sleepovers and swimming parties and all of the things she managed to do between Friday and Sunday, it was like Mila was an afterthought.

Which, well ... she doesn't complain when she gets drug to all of her sister's things, so ...

Somewhere between Mila happily entertaining herself while Alexis was on a football field cheering and Mila NOT AT ALL HAPPILY ENTERTAINING HERSELF OMG ::PassesOutFromToddlerInducedExhaustion::, I decided the holiday would be a day spent laboring to make sure Mila did something fun. For her. All her. Screw the Big Kid, she would have to sit back and entertain herself for a change.

Hello, Water Stairs.

The plan: Alexis would sit around and watch her sister have fun. Paybacks and all of that.

The reality: Go ahead and guess.

I can't get a decent photo of both of the girls to save my life, so you'll have to trust me on this. They BOTH had fun.

Mila had fun in a "no way are these people going to let me play in the water while wearing real clothes OMG WHAT IS HAPPENING THEY AREN'T STOPPING ME SPLASH" sort of way. Alexis had fun in a slightly more subdued way, but go ahead and guess which one was easier to drag away from the water when the time arrived to move on to the next thing in our day.

I'm just going to plan the next few weekends around Mila activities. Apparently big kids can have fun doing anything the little kids will do.