Team Spirit

This past weekend Gracie wore her Bears jersey for the first time in ages. She was so proud to match her daddy and was overjoyed with our rendering of the Chicago Bears fight song, despite their loss in the end.

That morning during our weekly trip to the grocery store, the Sunday football jerseys were abound. I don’t think she quite understood that they stood for allegiance to different cities and teams, but she did know they weren’t like her navy and orange jersey and spent a good chunk of her time giving other shoppers the hairy eye.

Every time we saw a different jersey she would slap her belly and declare, Mama. I wear ‘Cago Beers. Yes love, yes you are. At home, the trend continued. Every half an hour heard a same declaration of, Mama, I wear ‘Cago Beers. When Gracie went to bed that night, I confiscated the jersey with all her other dirty clothes to run through the washer. It was air dried and put away for another day.

It seems another day is already upon us. Yesterday morning, out of the blue, she demanded to wear ‘Cago Beers to school. I am told by many sources that she once again spend the day slapping her belly and telling everyone who would listen (and some that could care less) that she is wearing her ‘Cago Beers. I warned the teachers at pick up that I had a feeling they would be seeing a lot of the jersey.

Despite this warning, I myself was unprepared for this morning. My child no longer wants variety in her wardrobe. She no longer wants dresses and feminine ruffles. She only want the Bears jersey, which by the way, was still unwashed this morning, covered with a days worth of food smears and snot, and therefore un-wearable.

*Enter the meltdown*

I know, I should have just put in on her, but it had ketchup smeared on the front. I know I should have just put it on her, but she didn’t want to put on a long sleeve shirt underneath to battle the December weather. I know, I should have just put it on her, but I’d she already had a super soft light blue fleece jumper dress laid out for today’s wardrobe damnit and if I have to wrestle her like an alligator to force clothes on the body she is wearing what I want her to!

So tonight, and every night in the foreseeable future, the jersey is going in the washing machine. Someone needs to explain to this child that I don’t do mid-week laundry though. And if you’re looking for a Christmas present for Gracie, more jerseys might come in handy, 3T please.

The Spring Birds Take Flight

Yesterday was the daycare graduation / spring program.

For the last few months, the teachers I deposit Grace with kept telling me that Grace had a very special roll in the upcoming graduation ceremony. She was going to count to ten for everyone because they were so dazzled with her ability to say the numbers.

I asked them almost every day if they were sure that was such a good idea. They kept assuring me that it was. They were practicing daily, and in the weeks that led to the ceremony they were practicing in the auditorium every day.

Ok, whatever you guys want to do....

And they did. She had her very own byline.

Do you see the 'Counting 1 to 10'? It's right there between 'Twinkle, Twinkle' and 'Who Left the Juice'? (Yeah, I can't make this stuff up.)

Well, as soon as Grace hit the stage with Ms. Hagi, there was a Meltdown of Epic Proportion. It's like she could feel the eyes of 40 families burrowing into her soul. One look into an audience of unfamiliar faces and the whole take was lost.

I knew it was coming though. She is her mother's daughter. I have been know to have an onstage breakdown once or twice in my time. I had warned them. Not only was there no counting, there also no singing. Only the shrieks of a very pissed off child trying to sabotage the Twinkle, Twinkle melody of her classmates.

I knew it was coming, so I laughed.

Despite everything though, Gracie ended the day with a lovely award and a piece of cake.

And I left one very proud Mama.

Thank God It's Monday

This past weekend was horrible.

HORRIBLE.

It was the kind of weekend that makes you think, “How can people possibly deal with more than one child?”

Grace has fallen into some kind of precursor to the terrible twos, along the lines of ….

I’m one and you can’t tell me what to do.
And you can’t make me do what you want me to do.
And you can’t make me eat what you want me to eat.
And you can’t make me take a nap right now even though I’m exhausted and have only had two 20 minutes naps since I woke up at 5:30am and it now 3:15pm.

Examples of this deplorable behavior are …

She would sit in the middle of the kitchen floor and just start screaming. Nobody touched her, no dog licked her and there was no injury of any kind. Just sudden screaming like she’d been stung by a bee….

….Unless we were out of the house shopping. And then you HAD to keep moving. Any stopping to browse or compare labels and it was all over. Luckily, at 7:30 am there aren’t too many folks in the grocery store. So when necessary I would stop. Otherwise I turned it into a game of trying to remember what was down every isle, so I could just grab items off the shelf while still moving. Sometimes we did several swoops up and down before I had completed the purchases. Sometimes I would just push the cart to keep it moving and then run to catch up. Grace thought it was great fun. Frankly, it would have been if I wasn’t so tense….

….Until 6pm last night, she refused to eat. Anything. She would drink milk, but only at 2 ounces at a time. This made for lots of dirty bottles and wasted formula. It also made me constantly try and feed her, because she MUST be hungry. Nope. She would take two bites of the 20 I’d just given here and then start flinging it over the edge or just flat out scream and buck….

….Finally, ½ an hour before she normally goes to sleep, she decided she was hungry. We went outside to gather ripe tomatoes, and before I could stop her (because it looked slightly funky and had a fresh worm hole in it) she chomped into the tomato. I tried switching it out with one that an insect hadn’t been feasting on, but she freaked. OK, you want a wormy tomato, fine, go for it. And she did. 10 minutes later, and completely covered with tomato snot and juice, she had devoured the entire thing.


Then she spotted the dish of mashed carrots I had tried to feed her earlier. She grabbed it and started scooping food into her mouth with her hands. Between that technique, and a first try at self feeding with a spoon, she ate 2 containers of carrots.


This was topped off with a baby who happily splashed in the tub for her longest bath ever, drank an 8 oz bottle and then slept through the night for the first time in what feels like forever.

This parenting thing isn’t so hard, right?