Conversations with Brigid

Warning: This story is about poop. It's a funny story about poop (well, I think so, at any rate...), but it's about poop, nonetheless. Sorry.

Me: Why are you putting on new underwear?

Brigid: Because I like Rapunzel. 

Me: It's almost time for your bath, you don't need to be changing your underwear.

Steve: Did you poop? 

Brigid: Yes. 

Me: Did you get poop in your underwear? 

Brigid: A little. 

Me (pulling the underwear out of her hamper): Brigid! We do not put poopy underwear in the hamper. 

Brigid: I thought it could be mud. 

Me: Were you playing in the mud? 

Brigid: Yes, at Ty's house. 

Me: Were you playing in the mud in just your underwear? 

Brigid: No. 

Me: Then just assume it is poop, not mud, and don't put your poopy underwear in the hamper! 

Brigid: Why not?

Me: .....

(Lesson #1: You have to teach children not to hide dirty underwear in their bedrooms. This is not a knowledge with which they are born.)

(Lesson #2: Kids are gross.)

(Lesson #3: She was trying to hide her accident from us, which just proves that my eldest daughter is a sneaky, SNEAKY little turd. TURD!)

Thanks For Playing, 2013...

I had promised myself last year, after we faked a midnight countdown at 11pm, because Steve and I were the exhausted parents of a one-month old, and there was no way either one of us wanted to stay up until midnight, no matter how much Brigid wanted to do so herself, that I would make more of an effort to fully celebrate the end of 2013.

With my parents and sister in town, having a few more people at our house gave us a built-in excuse to buy champagne and noisemakers and sparkling cider. We made a ton of food and celebrated with fancy crackers/poppers/whatever you call those things you pull apart with a bang that have a toy and a crown and a cheesy joke inside of them. Brigid wore a tiara, because you should always welcome in the new year in something sparkly.

And then my family decided that if everyone else in the vicinity was going to set off fireworks and shotguns and who knows what else was making all of that racket at 12:30am on New Year's Day, they were going to shoot the bb gun into the ground off of the back porch. So they did.

(I mean, WHAT ELSE would you wear to an impromptu backyard shooting session, right? Rainboots, a nightgown, and a pink fluffy jacket. NAILED IT!)

Like Auntie, Like Niece

Oh, hi. We went to the beach weeks ago, and my daughter and my sister made fools out of themselves along the way. And I've been meaning to post the pictures of it, because what kind of mother/sister would I be if I didn't show it to anyone who might want to see it, for all of us to giggle over publicly?

 Framers. All of them.

Bed Hog

Steve was off on an out-of-town three day work trip earlier this week, and Brigid managed to find the silver lining behind missing him by telling me several times during her bedtime routine that the big bed was just my bed, since daddy wasn't home, then sidling into my room while I was trying to work at 9:30PM to weasel her way into sleeping with me.

For my own good, of course. I'm sure she just didn't want me to get lonely.

Of course, Tuesday night, she slept RIGHT NEXT TO ME, with her legs draped across my body, following me around the bed in her sleep when I tried to put some distance between us, before waking me up at 3AM to tell me she didn't want to cuddle with me anymore, like it had been my idea to have her sleep on top of me all night.
She looks like she feels bad about the whole thing, doesn't she?

They grow up so fast...

When I got home last night, Brigid was playing out in our front yard with two of the neighbor boys, including the two and a half year old next-door neighbor that she's been referring to as her 'boyfriend' for almost a year, now. Whenever those two get together, each one of them tries to scheme their way into the other kid's house, because, you know...it's always better to play in someone else's house with toys that you don't have access to on a daily basis.

But because we were closing in on bath and bedtimes for both kids, I left Steve to stop Brigid from pestering Mrs. Neighbor, while I took Caitlin in for the night. Brigid, of course, came home sobbing because we'd dared to stop her from doing something she wanted to do, even though we promised she'd be able to play with her friend again today.

And I don't know for sure, but I'm guessing that whole incident had something to do with her telling us, while getting a bath later in the evening, that she wanted to go live with our neighbors now. And when Steve told her that we would miss her if she left, and that poor baby Caitlin would be sad without her big sister?

'I'm going to miss baby Caitlin.'

So. Yeah. Guess that settles that, then...
(Also, there was that moment this weekend when Brigid claims Steve said it was ok to kiss a boy when she turns five, apparently having missed the 'thirty' part of that conversation. And this little story will someday be used to explain to Brigid why we locked her up in a convent at such a young age. The end.)

Someone had a good time here...

When I walked into Brigid's room yesterday, this was what was waiting for me:
  That is NOT what things looked like when I left her room the night before, I can tell you that much. At least my three-year old has has the look of a drunken frat boy down pat, yes?

(A brief note to Future Brigid: What I left your room the night before this disaster occurred, and you told me you weren't tired, even though you could barely keep your eyes open? And I left you with some books to read until you got sleepy? And the next morning, you told me that you didn't read most of the books because you had been, in fact, already sleepy? And then you followed that up with, 'And I'm STILL sleepy, mommy...'? And then I made you get up and go to school, anyway, because I TOLD YOU TO GO TO BED BEFORE TEN O'CLOCK, YOU RAGING GOOFBALL?

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I hope you have as much fun taking your childhood trauma out on your own kids as I'm having taking mine out on you.

Hugs and Kisses,
Mommy)

The Weekend

Sometimes, your kid looks all sweet and angelic as she's feeding the birds at the zoo, and you think you can never love anyone as much as you love her, and if she just so much as pointed at a pony, you'd buy it for her because she is just THAT awesome.


And other times, she poops in the box holding all of the magnetic wooden doll clothes, and you have to spend 20 minutes disinfecting anything and everything that poop might have touched, and if a band of gypsies even glanced in her general direction, you'd give her away in a heartbeat.
Lucky for the both of us, we seem to be short of ponies AND gypsies in our neighborhood right now.