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.

Comments

[Susan]

Why do we not get a video? Or at least a picture. It's actually kind of mean to post this without either one.