bits & peices

I had this great nap-dream where Nathan Fillion and I were speaking eloquently on a multitude of topics. So clearly I fell asleep while I was watching Firefly and studying for the GRE.

Lena has this book about this bunny called Marshmallow, and it has this great line about how the bunny is really sad and if it was a kitten it would meow, and if it were a puppy it would howl, and if it were a baby it would cry, but because it was a bunny it just sat there feeling sad. WTF bunny!

Credit

When Lena says thank you to someone, unprompted, or when she shares a toy with a younger kid, or she doesn't run out into the middle of the road when there are cars around, friends or passersby might compliment me on how well-behaved Lena is. They might even go so far as to say that I am doing a good job as a parent. 

Ha. Well let me tell you. 

Last night, Lena was being a complete monster at bedtime. It was late, she she was over-tired, the usual suspects. And then she comes out with this gem:

You are a bad mommy.

She's standing at the door of her room, sherbet orange pajamas with neon yellow and green butterflies on them, snot running into her mouth and tears running into the snot and she just yells the worst thing she can possibly think of at that moment:

You are a bad mommy. You hurt my feelings. 

In retrospect, this is cute, right? The world is so easily black and white, people are bad and they are good, and the worst thing you can be in the world is bad and the worst thing you can do to a person is hurt their feelings. 

Here's what I didn't do, and what I wanted to do. I wanted to say, Look here kid, You are hurting your own feelings. If you had just listened from the beginning, and oh, you know fallen asleep, we wouldn't be in the situation we are in right now. 

Instead of releasing this passive aggressive vitriol, I took a deep breath, counted to ten, sat on her bed, and got her to sit on my lap to calm down. To which she then says, I need some water. 

Now. Unbeknownst to her, I had already gotten her ice water, her beverage of choice in the evening. So as I got up to go get the water from her bedside table she says, her face buried in the pillow, No, I want cold water. 

It is cold water, I say. Look, there's even still ice in it.

And I pick up the water and sit down next to her on the bed holding it out to her. 

Of course, she didn't actually want water, she really just wanted to ask for something and to have me go away and have to get it for her so she could regroup and decide what her next tactic of bedtime delay would be--so I'm sitting on the bed, holding the water, and Lena is just sobbing into her pillow.

Friends, 

It took every fiber of self-control that I had to not dump that cup of ice water on that kid's head. 

And honestly, I really just need a little credit for that. 

Teaser

This post is a teaser for a longer post filled with pictures and wonderful things, but I just had to get this down.

I was talking with Rachel Valentine about the prospect of moving to California or Colorado or anywhere, and I was saying that whatever happens I'll rise to the occasion because, you know, what's the worst that could happen?

And then Rachel says, "And when you found out you were pregnant, you never imagined that you wouldn't rise to the occasion then," and she's right, and four years later, I don't even remember how freaked out I was, and I'm sure I thought that I couldn't do it, and what the hell was happening, and four years later, it's not even a blip on the radar. Because of course I did rose, there was never the possibility of not rising.

Makings of a good weekend

I'm looking forward to this weekend. I'm sort of counting as it starting today.

I'm going with Aspen and Jack to see Ben Sollee in Raleigh, which is remarkable, because it means that Aspen and I have seen Ben Sollee in every concert that he's played in the Triangle, for the past four years (Cat's Cradle, the Casbah, and now Kings), since we discovered him playing with Abigail Washburn and the Sparrow Quartet in Memorial Hall.

Needless to say, it was swoon at first listen.


It's also Mother's day, which I'm usually more or less not a big fan of because what's the point, I'm a mom every day, but this year I got myself something wonderful, and I'll share that here then, and my mom and I had the wonderful idea that we would go for a hike in the morning, and then go shopping in the afternoon. A wonderful day of mothers indeed!

Ok, some more music for your Thursday.

:)