love her madly

I love my kid so much. That may seem like such an obvious thing to say, but sometimes in the day-to-day struggle to keep everyone in the house clean, fed, and occupied the important feelings get squelched underneath frustration and exhaustion.

Until they come roaring back to the surface, that is. Yesterday was one of those days when everything Daughter did and said was adorable and surprising and sweet and hilarious. At her age (22 months) she is unpredictable, so I am always bracing myself for questionable behavior. Sometimes I am simply amazed by how wonderful she can be.

I took her to Joann Fabrics for the big Presidents' Day sale (isn't that what all good patriotic Americans do on federal holidays? Shop the sales?) and she wasn't too happy about it. As I was putting her in the car and driving away she kept whining, "hoooooooome," but man, we needed to get out of the house and stop watching videos. The outside temp got above freezing yesterday for the first time in weeks so darn it, we were heading out. And actually, I did have good reason to be going to Joann Fabrics in the first place - read Karen's post about an excellent charity sewing opportunity. I needed to get the skirt pattern for this project.

At the store I let Daughter walk partway through the parking lot, holding my hand. When I got her out of the car she stood next to me while I got out the diaper bag, and when I said, "don't touch the dirty car," she did not. She just pointed to the tires and said, "ABCs, Mommy!" Yes, yes, sweetheart, there are letters on the tires. You're right!

We got to the door and I said, "ok, how about you ride in this cart?" And she said, "cart? Ok Mommy!"

I let her carry my little swatches, which are from fabrics I bought last year. As the solids were on sale for $1.99 I was trying to match some for little coordinating tops/bottoms. I took them from her one at a time to hold them up against bolts, saying, "hmmmm, let's see. Does this one match? What do you think? Let's check this one..." And after a few minutes, she started doing the exact same thing. Holding the swatches against bolts on the wall, saying, "hmmmmm. Check this one!"

When I would pick out a bolt I liked, I would lay it across the bar of the cart so she could see it. I would say, "I like this one, what do you think?" And she would yell loud enough for the whole store to hear, "Oh, I LOVE it, Mommy! I LLLLLLLOVE it!"

As we walked down the wall of calicos she would holler out what she saw, both color and pattern.

"Ladybugs, Mommy!"

"PINK!"

"Oh, flowers!"

She is unbelievable. My kid. What did I do to deserve such a great kid?? I figured she surely deserved a treat for being so well behaved, so I asked her if she'd like to go look for some playdough before we went home.

"OH! Playdough! YES MOMMY YES!"

We got a 6-pack of playdough, oh yes we did. She talked about it all the way home. When we got home she refused her snack. It was playdough time. She asked me to cut out a "girl" and a "guy" (guy?), so I did it with my gingerbread cutters. When I rolled the dough with the rolling pin she said, "try? try!" so I gave her the pin and she tried, grunting and exclaiming the whole time because she couldn't push hard enough to flatten the dough. When I cut out the girl, she said, "try? try!" so I gave her the cutter and she pushed too.

She made the girl dance around, and when one of the arms came off she immediately stuck it on the girl's head, and told me it was a hat.

I cut out a "guy" and she started pulling bits of playdough off a hunk of a different color and pushing them into his body. I asked her what it was and she said, "jammies on!" People. She was putting playdough jammies on her playdough guy.

The child played with the playdough for AN HOUR. We haven't had that much fun in ages. I even had enough time to wash and dry all the new fabrics we got. She was so blissed out that when I said, "I'm going in the laundry room to switch the stuff to the dryer," she flipped her hand in my direction and said, "ok, bye."

I know, I know, this is cheese-o-rama. And believe me, sometimes Daughter can be a booger. Not too often, though. She's really a good kid. I just wanted to write this out to help me appreciate it. I love her madly and can't wait to see what adorable things she comes up with today.

Enjoy your Shrove Tuesday/Fat Tuesday/Pancake Day/Pazcki Day. Buffalo is still multi-ethnic enough that you can't walk 10 feet today without tripping over a pazcki or a fastnacht, so Daughter and I may just go out and find one of these tasty sweets.

Photos of our fabric adventures to come...