The Cobbler Has No Shoes

There are some things you just don't do in this house. You don't open any canned foods unless you have a can of cat food handy, for example. I mean, you can, but I wouldn't. Two of the cats consider it a federal offense to open a can and not give them food. They act as judge and jury as they read you your rights and then sentence you to death by meowing.

You also don't open the one kitchen cabinet unless you have a few hours to spare. It's the cabinet where everything gets hidden when it should be put away. Piles of mail, coupons, photographs, all sorts of things end up there. Some of it is important and some of it belongs in the trash, but it all gets shoved in there in some sort of terrible filing system.

To open the cabinet is to commit to sorting and cleaning.

I made the mistake.

I needed to find some envelopes and I knew they were in there. I was 100% positive they were in there, even. So I opened the cabinet door and hoped I would spot them right away. If I had, I could have grabbed them and ran without committing to a search.

It didn't work out.

Two hours later, a giant pile of useless crap was in the trash can and the needed envelopes were in my hand. As a bonus, I encountered lots and lots of photos as I sorted.

The photos were mostly of Alexis. The toddler days, baby days, all of the days were represented. The growing pile of photos led to Alexis go on and on about how cute she was (and is, if you ask me) and questions about why the photos aren't framed and on display.

Good question, that. Mostly it's because when I went to hang a bunch of frames in our dining room, I learned that the sticky two-sided tape stuff that I prefer to nails wouldn't work on those walls. Frames fell faster than I could hang them, so I stopped trying.

There are about 10 photos of Alexis in frames and displayed in our home.

Which is 10 more than there are of Mila.

When I started thinking about it, I realized that the only photos of Mila that are on display in our house are the photos from her ultrasound on December 23, 2013.

Whoops.

I think maybe it's time for me to get around to framing some photos. It's not like there aren't a zillion of them.

Take 2

There are lots of reasons I don't so much as make eye contact with other moms during dance class. The most important one is that I don't like people. I especially don't like talking to them.

Alas, being in public with that creature named Mila is basically an invitation to converse for hours. She has a way of making more than enough eye contact for the both of us and then she does that adorable little "blah blah blah" thing and it's all over.

I get to pretend that I'm not a socially awkward introvert.

Most of the time the conversations are fine. I fully acknowledge that I'm just a whiny baby who wants to stare at walls during that hour. Sometimes, though, the conversations are weird. See also: there is a reason I don't like talking to people. I mean, there's really nowhere good to take a conversation that starts with, "Oh. Wow. I could never start over like that."

The stranger was referring to Mila and the giant age gap between her and the dancer. In a few weeks, there will be NINE YEARS between the girls. NINE.

It's a lifetime. I know.

The well-intentioned woman who couldn't start over went on and on about all of the things she's glad to be done with. Diapers, messy meals, fully dependent little people, baby gates, baby-proofing the kitchen, potty training ... she talked for days.

I didn't really reply because Mila was in full-on BREAK ALL OF THE THINGS! mode. She was grabbing and pulling and generally trying to see if she could fit the entire building in her mouth.

(By the way, she can't. She's mad about it, too.)

But the thing is, for every thing that's hard to start again, there are two that are abso-freakin-lutely fantastic.

We got to do that first smile thing again.

We get to celebrate first words again.

There's going to be all the toddler-isms. Alexis may not say "ska-betty" for "spaghetti" any more, but Mila will likely have her own variation. She's going to learn to play "Lello Car," too.

At some point, we will change our last Mila diaper. It will be a victorious day.

She's going to go through that crazy toddler phase when she will sing silly songs all of the time, she will learn to read, and she will talk so much I will think all of the words in the whole wide world are used up.

All of the joy that Alexis has brought to us will get repeated. And, it's getting repeated with enough of a gap for us to be able to pause and enjoy the encore. While Alexis is telling me about her first crush, Mila is discovering that veggie straws are the BEST THING EVER. They're in such very different places that there is no chance for it to blur together.

And it's really pretty fantastic.

 

It Had To Happen Eventually

8 years, 348 days, and 16 hours.

That's how long Alexis went without breaking any electronic devices.

In that time, she managed to keep my old iphone 3 in rather good shape. It was hers to destroy for well over two years, but it held up to her shenanigans. Then there was her Kindle Fire, which somehow is now in its third year of life and is still in new condition. You might have to ignore the layer of sticky goo that kids seem to leave everywhere they go, but I do know for a fact that goo can be wiped off and beneath it all is a sparkly new Kindle Fire.

It was a nice run, kid.

Today Miss Alexis felt the pain of dropping a phone and watching the screen crack into a million little shards of glass.

It was COMPLETELY her own fault. She has been told repeatedly that there is no reason to take it with her when we run errands. It doesn't have data or even a phone plan, so it's really only fun while connected to wifi. Games in the car are fine, but why she was looking at it while walking around Pier 1 is beyond me.

The same kid has also been told repeatedly to walk nicely because the ground attacks her enough when she does. There is no reason to hop or skip or walk on her heels or whatever because that's basically the same as looking at the ground, sticking up her middle finger, and yelling "COME AT ME, BRO."

Clumsy people shouldn't pick fights with the ground.

But she did.

And the phone flew and landed on its corner and BAM.

The second Alexis picked the phone up from the ground, she burst into tears. The tears quickly escalated to sobs and before you know it, the kid was even more devastated than she was that time she watched Dolphin Tale 2 and saw the dead dolphin at the bottom of the pool.

For the record, she sobbed for an hour after that scene in that movie. AN HOUR. I need movies to come with an Alexis Rating System that tells me that an animal dies in the movie so I know to run really fast the other direction.

I might have screwed up the whole Letting The Sensitive Animal Lover watch Dolphin Tale 2 thing, but I didn't screw up the phone thing. I wanted to scream "I TOLD YOU SO" in her face and do a little I'm The Smartest dance, but she already felt so bad.

So, so bad.

So instead of gleefully gloating, I reminded her that she couldn't undo that which was done. I waited as she beat herself up and then gently nudged her to find the sunny side of the situation.

The phone still works.

Alexis' birthday is coming up so she'll have money to pay for replacement glass.

And then I let her discover for herself how much that will cost.

It was a bad, bad day for the kid who loves that stupid not-really-working phone with all of her heart. I hope that maybe now that she has gotten the whole "totally her own fault she broke it" thing out of the way, perhaps she won't have to repeat the scene when it's a phone that is actually worth a few dollars.

I hope so, anyway. That feeling of watching your phone land on pavement is so awful.