The Forgotten

When your child is sick you quickly forget their typical everyday personalities. All you can seem to think of or remember is the non stop crying and whining, and the pulling on your leg with the need to constantly be held. Its like your memory of that once sweet and vibrant child has been quickly been replaced with a monster that terrorizes you at all hours of the night and wee hours of the morning. You go to bed dreading the morning and you wake up dreading the evening, you're constantly living in fear of your child and for your child. I lay in bed at night clinging to they happy memories that haven't been vanquished by the untamed beast lay sleeping so lightly two doors down. I lay there completely still, unmoving. One wrong breath or if you blink your eyes to fast it may wake up and storm your room with anger and vengeance. Daggers gouging from its eyes and fire forcefully shooting from it's mouth. So I lay there still, hoping, praying that tonight the beast lay silent in a deep sleep and tomorrow my little girl is the one that opens her bedroom door.

Lucky for me this morning Amie was the one that opened the bedroom door and skipped happily to my bedside this morning. Oh how I have missed her sweet songs, her giggles, and her smiles. Today she actually played all on her own, she no longer needed mommy. I am happy about that, but a little sad too that she no longer wants to cuddle and give me hugs. She is happy now, she feels better now. How quickly we remember all that we have forgotten about or little ones. You know, when I think about it I don't think that we truly forget, I think those memories have just been misplaced!

Nasty Case of the Yuckys

Most of the time I truly love being a stay at home mom. I love being the one to teach her all the things that she knows and watching her grow up before my eyes and not through some daycare persons eyes. I love being the one that gets to potty train her and and explore the world with her, I love just being with her. I love watching her smile, sing and dance. There is one thing that is terribly hard for me to watch though, and it is her suffering. I have watched her for a little over three days now crying in pain because she can't get comfortable because she doesn't feel good. I have watched her temp go up and down and back up again. I have watched the tears roll out of her eyes when I tell her that there is only one more bite of medicine, and she only needs to blow her nose one more time. I hate watching her like this, there is so little that I can do. It breaks my heart to shove medicine down her throat and having her fight back gaging because it tastes so bad. It kills me that she can't sleep because she is uncomfortable and she really needs to be sleeping. I hate that every time I touch her she feels so warm and I have to tell her that we can't go out and play. I hate looking at such beautiful days from inside, I hate watching Amie looking at beautiful days from inside. I hate it when Amie is sick. I hate that there is so very little that I can do for her.

But...

I do love the cuddles, loves and all the extra snuggle time. I do love that she wants me and she at least feels better when she snuggles in close to me. Soon she will be better and will want nothing to do with me again and to tell the truth, that is OK with me!

Zero to Sixty

Why is it that little kids are like an emotional roller coaster?? They are like menopausal, bipolar, pubescent, menstrual, and tweens all rolled up into one hormonal little body all under the age of three! How is this possible?? Should I be dealing with this all now?? Don't I have more time?? I feel like I should have more time! Here we are sitting here having fun, enjoying ourselves and WHAM I have royally pissed off my daughter by merely looking at her wrong and she is throwing a fit of a life time, A LIFE TIME!! At these times it can be hard to stay calm, especially when the overly sensitive behavior has been going on for an hour and it's just getting to be extremely ridiculous! I should be able to look at my daughter with out her throwing herself on the floor, or touch her with out her squealing and screaming at me. Just when I am about to pack her up and send her back, she is fine. All smiles and happy and playing again like nothing ever happened. Is this a joke? Is this really happening to me? Is this officially the terrible twos?

Amie can be so sweet and loving, like my mother always told me ( she told me this A LOT), the nursery rhyme : there was a little girl with a little curl right in the middle of her forehead and when she was good she was really really good but when she was bad she was HORRID! Well, I can't believe that I was EVER that bad, but surely that nursery rhyme is Amie to the T! Is it true of all little girls? I'm sure there are children out there that are just horrid all the time ( I feel for those parents). But, during times like this when Amie is screaming and crying at me periodically all day long I could go insane! I feel my blood boiling, my face turning red, my blood pressure rising, and I scream at her , "WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO??". The truth is she doesn't know what she wants me to do or even what she wants to do about it. I see it upset her even more, then I feel down right terrible. I screamed at my baby during a moment of weakness. Have I scarred her for life?? Will she ever remember my red face, bursting in anger yelling at her? I feel like she will never forget. I now feel horrible despair. What if she grows up to hate me? I feel like a terrible parent, like a horrific mother. 90% of these times I just let it roll right off my back, and ignore her. But today, fits like these are very hard to take. it's like she continually pushes the "don't push" button over and over and over and over again.

Then, just now she goes and puts herself in bed for nap. She lays there quietly, singing to herself. Maybe a little scarred, maybe not. She is sweet now, and I only feel worse. Now she has forgotten, I feel a bit better, little kids are so resilient.

The Simple Life

Ya know, my daughter has it all. She has the best most simple life anybody could ask for. If I could just see for one minute the world how she sees it or think for just one second how she thinks, I believe I would be living in a constant bliss. Just this morning as Amie lay in bed next to me smiling, and talking about her boo boo that she got on her knee yesterday from her bike. Ever since she got her boo boo she hasn't stopped talking about it, how is it that something so little effects a little child for several days after?? Anyways, in mid sentence while talking about her boo boo she stopped and looked at her tummy. She watched it go up and down, up and down as she breathed. Then she put her hand on her tummy and watched her hand go up and down, up and down. She was absolutely fascinated by this. At that point I would have loved to know what she was thinking, what was going through that beautiful head of hers?

Just this morning I was going through some pictures on my digital camera and found several pictures that Amie had taken her self, secretly! She had probably thought that she had gotten away with it, but I had the whole crime scene that she caught on camera. I could see how she got on top the counter. Yup, she took a picture of it , she used her booster seat literally to boost her to the counter. Then she proceeded to take several pictures of her self, all by accident I'm sure. I have a picture of her eye, a picture of her nose, a partial picture of her face, a picture of her feet standing on the booster seat. I bet she had a blast. Then I think to myself, "what the hell was I doing that she was able to play with my camera for so long and then conceal the evidence for several days"?? I'm sure that when she put the camera back she had thought that she got away with it, I'm sure that she has forgotten that moment by now, or maybe not. Maybe she still thinks she's gotten away with it. As far as I am concerned it's done and over with no point in bringing it up. So yes, Amie did get away with an almost perfect crime. If only in the future when committing crimes she would do me the honor of catching it on the camera again. To live in a world where you commit a crime, get caught on camera and all if forgiven and forgotten.

To live in this simple happy world of hers where everyday she lives in the moment and at that moment she is obsessed with a boo boo, or elephants. For like a week strait when we were in CA all Amie could talk about was elephants and the noises they made. Everything everywhere was all about elephants! I wish I could have that again. Just live in the moment. Kids are so simple yet so complex at the same time. I think that's why they are so great!