Flashback Friday – It’s Only Funny Now

Funny Story.  Of course, like most funny stories, this one needed a bit of hindsight before it could officially be called a ‘funny story.’  With ten years behind me now, it is finally official.

My oldest daughter began walking and talking at a ridiculously young age.  I chalk that up to my dedication to my full time job as her mother.  At the time, I wasn’t just a mom.  I was a new mom – the new stay-at-home kind of mom.  I jumped right in to my new responsibilities, taking them quite seriously.  Possibly a little too seriously.

I was that crazy mom who began teaching her kid sign language when she was only 4 months old.  By the time my daughter was 9 months old, she was using sign language to tell us that she was hungry or thirsty or that she wanted more of something.  She could sign her own name and our names and most of the alphabet.  It was adorable really, but yes, I was a little crazy.

In our downtime, I thought it was important to begin strengthening my daughter’s little legs.  This was a purely selfish move on my part.  You see, I hated carrying around that 50 pound bucket of a car seat everywhere I went.  I couldn’t wait until she could walk on her own so that I could simply unhook her from her seat and watch her toddle out of the car.  She was finger walking by the time she was 9 months old and walking completely on her own by the time she was 10 months old.

Of course, being the new mom that I was, I hadn’t given much thought to what it might be like to live with a walking, talking 10 month old.

We moved to our new home shortly after my baby began walking.  In our new town, there were no baby sign language classes that I could find and so we spent most of our time strengthening those legs even more.  We walked to the playground and into town.  We walked around our neighborhood and in nearby strip malls too.  We walked, we walked and we walked some more.

I always took the stroller along on our outings, but discovering the freedom that her toddling legs gave her, my walking, talking toddler generally refused to sit in it.  Instead, she preferred to push it along herself.  She called it ‘helping’ and whenever she felt the urge to push her own stroller (which, of course, at 2 feet tall she couldn’t effectively do on her own) she would turn in my direction and say, “Help.”

Cute – right?

Well, it was cute until….  One day I decided to take a ride to a strip mall that I had been eager to explore.  As usual, my daughter hopped out of her car seat when we arrived and watched me unfurl her stroller.  She held the side of the stroller as we crossed the street and she alternated between toddling alongside and in front of me throughout our trip.  It was when I decided it was time to go home that things went terribly awry.

My daughter was smart enough to understand that if I couldn’t catch her we couldn’t leave.  She managed to cleverly slip away from me each time I had her in my grip.  Eventually, of course, I began to lose patience.  Recognizing this, my little angel made a last ditch effort to prolong our outing.  She looked up at me and pleaded “Help?”  Hoping that allowing her to ‘help’ push the stroller to the car would quietly allow us to exit without a scene, I agreed.  But she didn’t want to go to the car.  She wanted to go in any direction other than the car.

Having had more than enough, I picked my cherub up, tucking her under one arm in a football hold while pushing the stroller as fast as I could towards the car with my free hand.  As I murmured through clenched teeth, she began screaming “Help!”

Do you have this mental picture in your head?

She screamed so loud and I began moving so quickly that heads began to turn.  People in the parking lot began to question why this poor, sweet child was yelling ‘help’ while some manic woman swept her away from the store.  I made eye contact with only one person;  an older woman who stopped dead in her tracks to look at us.  I heard her quiet mutterings as she looked me over and only one thought popped into my mind – thank goodness she wears glasses.  She’ll never be able to catch my license plate from where she’s standing.

And with that, I miraculously tethered us both into the car and took off just as that eyeglass wearing old lady reached into her purse for her phone.  Phew.

In hindsight, maybe I should have let the authorities come.  Some alone time in lock-up likely would have been a welcome surprise.

No Distance Required

Remember those toddler days that you thought would never end?  The days of sweating through the aisles of the grocery store, hoping that your two year old could somehow suppress that brewing meltdown.  The mornings that began at 5am and the nights you bargained with the man in the moon, imploring him to show up early just this once.  The years of referring to nap time as happy hour.  Remember those days?

Distance makes me recall them now with a warm sense of nostalgia.

Tonight I tucked my little one into bed and lay down beside her.  In her toddler years, she insisted that I lay beside her every night until a deep sleep took her over.  Each night played out much the same.  Lying quietly next to her, I waited impatiently for her eyes to close, hoping – praying – that I could quietly escape when the time was right.  And each night her eyes would flit open as soon as she sensed my impending desertion.  It was a vicious, seemingly unending, cycle that left me wondering when will it end?  

Eventually, it did end.

Tonight I laid down with my little one and prayed that her eyes wouldn’t grow heavy too quickly.  I wondered if there could possibly be any better place to escape the world and I silently wished that this time would never end.  A sense of blissful contentment took over – no distance required.

 

Full Blown Laughter

I’m finding it difficult to want to sit down and write again tonight.  This is becoming a recurring problem.  It’s summer’s fault.  Sitting down to write when the weather tempts me to do so many other things – well, this requires some discipline.  Let’s hope I have enough of it.

It was another one of those wonderful weekend days.  A day with nothing planned, nowhere to rush to and impromptu meet-ups that simply made the day happy.  It ended with my girls and I crashing a friends’ family night out and, somehow, I came home with one less kid.  How does that always happen?

Somewhere in the middle of the day, my youngest daughter gave me a good laugh with another one of her crazy thoughts.  It reminded me of some of the silly things that I used to journal and, eventually, blog about.  Those silly things that kids say, in the middle of a crazy day, that make you sit down right where you are and laugh just when you need to most.

When my oldest was just two years old and I was newly pregnant with my youngest, I had one of those moments.  It was shortly before the holidays and I had a million things to do.  Like most stay-at-home moms of toddlers, I felt as though I’d lived two full days before serving lunch.  I remember desperately trying to get a load of laundry in the wash while my daughter waited impatiently for me to sit down with her and read a book before her afternoon nap.  She was picking up clothes, then adding more clothes to the pile, then trying dirty clothes on her head.

I just wanted to do a load of laundry!

“Mommy has lost her patience,” I was breathless by this point.  “Stop it and go sit inside until I’m done.”

I turned my back to her, leaning down to pick up the remaining laundry.  That was when I heard her little voice behind me.

“But Mommy,” she said, “where did your patience go?”

I collapsed into the laundry pile, a deep breath escaping, before bursting into full blown laughter.  I needed that.

Fast forward to this afternoon.  My youngest daughter and I were busy planning a trip to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.  We buried our noses in my laptop, reading about all of our options.  We decided that we didn’t want to simply stand at her base and stare up at Ms. Liberty.  We wanted to climb to her crown.  My daughter took over and started scanning the pages of information.  She found a close up view of the Statue – her face and crown on full display.

“Wait,” she stared for a moment before going on.  “You mean to tell me that when we climb up there we’re going to be looking out her nose?  Like we’re her boogers?”

I stared in total disbelief for a moment.  Where did this child come from?  And then I fell over, bursting into full blown laughter.