What a fabulous night we had with our community!
Grandma Mary, Daddoo, Dori, Gary, Cate, Leia, Bodhi, Mica, Karole, and Bruce
. We met at Tower Grove Park for a picnic first from our favorite Gyro Express on Grand and then went on to the circus! Cotton candy, popcorn, and sno-cones oh my!
Or shall I say Mother's Weekend? What a lucky gal I am. I had a brilliant idea about two months ago during an exceptionally difficult period Scarlett was having regarding whining, crying, complaining, and just being plain difficult. The dads would take the girls camping to give us moms a break! Oh may I pat my own back and say what a fabulous, wonderful, and even miraculous time I conjured.
They did in fact go camping, much to the delight of the children as well. Our good friend Gary and his daughter Leia accompanied my now behaving child ,who is back to herself, (Praise). The went to Pierre Marquette and had a great time! Of course they took turns squabbling like sisters and prompty flipped to getting along well. But, did I care? No! Because I did not have to break up or mitigate one single fight. Why, because I was at home luxuriating in my Mother's day dream!
Look! See how happy she was too! Win win for everyone!
I went out to eat and did not talk about my kid (very little at least maybe uttered one or two words) one single iota! Not one word! Came home and did not miss anybody. Nope. Not me. Next slept in very late (although I woke up once at the normal time to let the dogs out and then another time when I dreamed my little smiling girl was waking me up! agghhhhh) and luxuriated on the couch. Did not make breakfast but ate leftovers. Then, I worked in the yard the rest of the afternoon without interruption! Oh joyous day!
Sunday morning I went to our normal Sunday morning brunch at our friend's house. The boys, the ticks, and the girls were back from their adventure. She ran into my arms!!!!! Talking happily and filling me in on her weekend I realized why this weekend was so good.....because she missed me yet had a wonderful time without me.
This makes me so happy as a mother that my daughter loves me and is happy and well rounded. She has a father that she loves and I love. What a nice family I have! I loved to see them go and took a deep breath in and did a little happy jig once they finally walked out the door to go camping but my heart did the jig when they returned.
Maybe what I most want you to know is how much I like you. Of course, I love you. I have too! :) But really how much I like who you are becoming is what makes me smile so much. Sure, there are some days where "mommy needs space" but you also tell me that you "need space" too so I guess we are even! Considering how much time we spend together (I hate missing even a minute even though I need those minutes) we still want to be in each other's presence.
"Let's talk mommy, let's talk" If I heard this once today I heard it one thousand times. You make me use your Snow White doll, that your Grandma Marlyn gave you on their recent visit, to carry on a conversation. I, Daddy, or any victim that may be close by talks to you about what is happening in your life. The good, the bad, and the ugly is discussed with full disclosure. How adorable you are as you practice your hand movements like an Italian mafioso and say "because" too many times in one conversation.
You are mommies little parrot. You regularly copy me including moments like when I dropped a jar out of the fridge and said a favorite word of mine....oops. You walked around tonight saying shit, shit, shit practicing several times. I must change my language..I must increase the good words...I must. On a good notre I see you mimicking the lovely things that I want you to do. Like when you lovingly pat a friend's baby when he cries. Or when you delicately stroke a kitty and whisper sweet pet nothings into their furry ears. Hmmm I just love you so much. Too sweet. I also adore when you come up and pat me on the back just to make it clear you love me! Pure sugar!
Hurricane talking comes from those lips! Talking up a storm just does not cut it. You love to speak fast and are just now learning to speak fast enough to do that but the last few weeks to compensate for the lack of words that you could get out fast you just mumble jumble nonsense. LOL. You speak quite well when you are talking normally but when fast talk happens this is not the case. We taught you to say excuse me when you wanted to politely intterupt but I think that I may have taught you a tool of mass control. You hold up your little dictator hand and say no no no no mommy excuse me. Of course I will see what you want because you were being polite and the fact that certain days I think I may have met my match. The minute you detect Daddy and I may become the Bickersons you put up that same hand and say MOMMY MOMMY mommy getting higher pitched until we are laughing and you know that you have taught us kids a lesson in how to get along.
Trampoline. Nonstop. Bouncing bean of a little thing. You like it so much that Christmas night we were out jumping with you at 2 in the morning! I met my bad mother quota for the day and you got to jump. Two birds with one stone.
You had a blast and were a blast during our Merry Hannuka/Happy Christmas celebrations. We somehow blended both parts of the celebration which turned out to be a mini marathon present fest for you. Thank you dollar store for presents that thrilled a two year old. How fun it was that you
grasped the concepts of what was happening. You helped me wrap presents, bake cookies for Santa,
set out carrots for the reindeers, cook latkes, spin dreidels, assemble traditional Guatemalan Christmas eve tamales, dance in merriment, and circle the many parties we went to with ease and late nights.
I hate to label you as shy but when you are with someone new or in a new place you tend to be reserved. Make sure that you do not think that I believe you to be a wallflower...oh no! Just reserved. No amount of pushing you forward makes you budge towards being social. However, the other night I had a gentleman come to the house to purchase a chandelier I was selling. Your friend Leia was over and you both were playing while I showed him the light. You walked in and he said hello and I expected you to leave but no you said hi back! Then you even introduced Leia to the man! Shock. "Hi, this is my friend Leia"!
Mirror, mirror, on the wall. Who is the fairest talker of all? You carry on conversations with the mirror. I cannot help but secretly watch you as you converse with yourself/mirror. So cute. If you see me looking game over. So I sneak looking at you.
You adore your friends. Your best galpal is Leia. You frequently talk about her
when she is not here and when you both are together it is nonstop giggling. It warms my heart to watch you both play.
I hope it is a lifelong friendship that is started this early. I have friends that I grew up with and Leia is like your family. We do Shabbat every Friday together, babygroup on Wednesdays, and the Perry's house on Sundays!
I miss when you were a baby. I love the age that you are now. I cannot wait for tomorrow. I like all of your ages. You are such a happy child!
What does a mom say about Halloween? Should I tell my kid how seriously she needs to plot which houses to hit up or how to calculate the speed in which her two year old legs can carry her. This is about an ambush during a specific allowable time to acquire the goods. Ultimately the candy was always going to be for us. Tsk. Tsk. I know. Since we allow her very little sugar and usually on special occasions I surely was not going to let her eat it all. But us....oh how I could not wait to marinate in the yummo goodness of crappy candy.
and then there was the melamine scare...duh duh duuuuuuuuuuuuu. No worries I plowed through the m and m's and my kidney's are fine thank you. And of course I let my sugared up kid indulge too much. She lollipopped to her heart's content and danced to the tune of milk dud's. Proudly, she held up her freshly caught prey.
Her co-conspirator, who might I add had quite the halloween spirit, Leia urged her strongly to run Scarlett run to the next house and get more candy! Oh the joie de vivre touched my Halloween heart.
Halloween and Shabbat go hand in hand. At least for me who plotted all week of switching the challah (ceremonial bread gorily sacrificed on Fridays) to a scary life size scary head named man. Leia pulled the Challah cover off and instead of yummy bread-like butter transportation was a scare. The kids cried. Yeah that met my daily quota of bad mother moments for the day and I guess um it surpassed it. Proud. yes I was.
What would the night be without some pumpkin stories. We got a bit carried away when the church across the street from our friend's house was giving away free pumpkins after 8. Needing chicken food, decoration, and great compost material we bit. Combine with the sugar high we were highly riding on it got scary.
It started innocently enough when we filled the trunk. Up to the brim of a witche's hat. Bur then the hysterical giggling started and it went downhill. Out of control.
Pumpkins were overflowing all orifices of the car. We filled and filled and filled some more. I will even admit to some stuffing and then some more stuffing.
In the pic to the right shall we play a little bit of Halloween Where's Waldo? Find the little girl dressed in a pink ballerina costume.
My mother sent Scarlett a card for Halloween. Sweet. S walked around with that card for a week. She even named all the characters in the card. The mummy is Daddy. The cute pumpkin is herself. The witch? Guess who? Me. Scary mommy witch. Why did she choose that character for me? Surely her two and a half year old mind has not made the connection between witches and bitches. As I always say. Everyday every mother must fulfill her bad mother moments quota daily. Apparently I meet mine.
My litte honey girl. One of the things we have done over the last year was to become beekeepers. Scarlett refers to them as "my bees" like some kids refer to their adorable kitten Fluffy. See the gleeful look in that honeycomb eating thing as she chomps down on its waxy sweet goodness! In the next pic notice the honey oozing down her legs :)
Now I am playing catch-up for the past year. The next pic is the obligatory Fourth of July parade-dogs-candy-sweaty-people-pic!
My daring Guatemalan girl who was lullabied to sleep by fireworks in Antigua is now a bit more shy of the noise. Demanding that we go inside when my pyromaniac-who-spends-his-annual-salary-on-fireworks-neighbor was setting of his pre-fourth of July display. The dogs, however, loved the fireworks and would run around checking each one out as they went off. One I am sure exploded directly into her mouth and she kept going with joie de vivre. I had a heart attack as the rogue firework started shooting in our direction. Screw the municipalities fireworks. I am staying home from now on!
What would a pic post be without the "yeah I went potty!" pic that I can torture her with as an adult. Come one honey let us sing the song....Pee-pee on the potty! Pee-pee on the potty!
Saturday morning cake making.
This was her second birthday party and Passover combined.
And the next...ahhh the family photo. We had a friend who is a photographer do a shoot. We got some great photos but we also wanted to do a certain picture here but we did not get what we were going for. The mosquitos were biting furiously two chickens ran off, the cats were chased back into the house by the neighbors dog, I sweated through my shirt and our little model was sick of taking photos. However, in the effort to get the funny photo we were going for we happened to get a pretty accurate family photo strangely enough! This just about sums up our life. Chaotic. Unkepmt. Funny. Fun. Goofy. Loving.
Finally, a picture. Not an updated one though..hanging my head in shame. Our lovely friends the Perrys are Hawaiian and brought shirts and outfits home from their trip last summer. So enjoy our family day taken last year. 
Scarlett was not having a good day. Teething. So the only way to get her to smile was her usual prescription of toddler air time. Always a sure-fire way to make that child smile. 
