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We had a success at Play and Learn, and I wasn’t there for it.  To preface all this, we’ve had problems with Buttercup wanting to hug and kiss and generally maul any available child with physical affection.  She’s enormously demonstrative and loves to hold hands.  The kids at Play and Learn haven’t been into it lately.

Daddy took her the other day so I could work while they were out and about.  I was kind of concerned about this because he usually doesn’t take her to things like that without me.  Well, apparently, it was a total success.  I swear she behaves better for him.  I really think she adores him and wants to impress him.  With me, I think she feels comfortable enough to act up and raise baby hell. 

She shared, she held hands nicely, and she listened to him perfectly.  Despite my delight that it went so well, I’m kind of peeved that it was so magically easy for him :)  Is that wrong?  Maybe, but all the same - is there something to the expression, “Daddy’s girl?”  Do little girls just adore their fathers so much that they behave better for them?

One of the things that I love the most is when my husband gives my daughter guitar lessons.  It breaks me up into a million pieces to watch them play together.

Today, little beauty was singing, “She’ll be coming around the mountain when she comes,” while strumming away on the Gibson.  I just hold my breath and listen.  It’s enough.  In that moment, I am content.

He’s played with her since she was a newborn.  When she was little, he’d play so softly on his acoustic - so gently that everything sounded like a lullaby.  She loved it.  As she grew, she’d bang away on the guitar while he played, finding rhythm easily as he does.  Now, she strums away with him.  He’ll hold the chords while she strums, and it’s beautiful.  I don’t know if you can tell in the picture or not, but she’s holding the neck of the guitar correctly and strums just right with a pick.  It’s enough for me.  I can’t quite say what I mean, but that moment– my daughter and husband playing the guitar together might be the happiness I’ve searched for in all the places I’ve been in my life.

Recently, we’ve gone out to a series of restaurants w/the Grannies.  It’s been interesting, as taking a two-year old into a restaurant is always fun.  On the first trip, we went to Red Lobster.

It was a really nice time, and throughout the whole meal, Buttercup sat like an angel quietly doing her puzzles that I had brought along to keep her entertained.  She drank pineapple juice and ate a shameful amount of French fries.  Afterwards, when we were leaving, the hostess stopped us at the lobster tank and kneeled down in front of Buttercup.
“Would you like to see a lobster?”
“YEAH!”  The hostess took the lobster out of the tank and held it out to her.  Buttercup was not touching that thing until I touched it.  It felt like a lobster to me.  She finally touched it and squealed like a hyena.  The hostess, who I’m really not sure was supposed to be doing this, turned the lobster over and showed Buttercup how the tail was soft and said it was a boy lobster.  I didn’t see anything to indicate it as male, but I’m not a hostess at Red Lobster.  When she put it back into the tank, she asked Buttercup if she could walk backwards.
“Can you walk backwards like a lobster?  Do the lobster!”  I couldn’t believe this little show, and my parents and grandmother laughed the whole car ride home.  It really is always an adventure when you’re out and about w/her.  Nevertheless, I think I’ll go back to Red Lobster again.  It’s not everyday you get to pet a lobster.

Despite my growling rumblings of loneliness, there were two birthday parties to attend this weekend.  Our friend a couple of blocks down had her party, and it was gorgeous.  There was candlelight, wine, tapas, and the most pleasant and relaxing atmosphere of comfort and luxury.

My beloved husband helped Buttercup settle down for the night while I went.  I was just there for two hours and back before bedtime, but I feel like I’ve had a weekend at the spa.  Three of my favorite mothers were in attendance, and we talked about so many things from the local politics to bras.  It felt so good to sit at a table covered in candlelight from a chandelier around candlesticks drinking a glass of wine and holding a full conversation over delicious food and wholesome company.

On Sunday, we went to my mother’s house to celebrate her birthday, my grandmother’s birthday, and my little brother’s.  It was great to be with all the family, and my sister-in-law and I cooked dinner for my mother, who still has a very bad problem going on with her leg and back.  We made a stuffed pork roast and all the sides.  My mother has been cooking all her vegetables for meals in a huge stock pot filled with the broth from the vegetables and a choice piece of meat.  Then, you just lift them all out and mash the turnips, and then the potatoes, and put the carrots out on the platter with the pork roast.  She had most of it set up for us, and she is the most amazing cook in the whole world.  Dinner was fabulous, and my mother had a little bit of rest, which was most of the goal.

I suppose I have no reason in this world to feel lonely.  I have so many people to love, and after years of careful deliberation on this topic - being loved isn’t as much of my goal as loving other people.

Like the rest of the world, friendship means a lot to me.  It seems that right now, I’ve been put into a place where I’ve lost two people I love.  I had a random disagreement with an old friend, and my best friend moved away to Mexico.

I have lots of folks to hang out with and play the social game, but there are only a few people who I’ve been able to really be honest with and shed whatever veneer I keep up and running for the majority of the human population.  Two of them have gone MIA.

My husband always says that I’m good at glossing over people.  Whatever nonsense is going on in a social setting, I generally am able to smooth it over.  He says it’s because I’m always a neutral party.  Now, for the most part, I relish being neutral in social settings, but it has taken time to become that way.  Unless there’s some kind of personal connection between myself and another person, I’ve stopped investing myself.  I don’t offer opinions or words of wisdom.  I try and listen, which is really what people want, anyway.  I just want to wade; I don’t want to swim.  As my boss would say, “Don’t get involved.”  I didn’t used to be like that, but I’ve found that there’s a lot of potential for hurt out there.  I don’t like getting drawn in, because I fall in love with people like a heroine out of a trashy romance novel - full fledged, unreasonably, and usually - something goes wrong.

Nevertheless, with my dearest and nearest friend moving to Mexico and the ties cut with one of my only true confidants, I’m left with a situation where I should find someone outside of my immediate circumstances to befriend.  This is more horrifying to me than dating.  It’s been so long that I’ve had everything I needed in terms of intimate friendship that it’s like getting a divorce and being thrown into the dating pool again.  I really dislike it.  How do you know who to trust out there?  How do you know who has some traits sympathetic to yours?  I suppose there’s instinct, but in my life, it’s been much more trial and error, and I am dreading the error.

Recently, there was an afternoon where little gal and I had to get out of the house or we were going to drive each other bananas.  For the most part, we were both exhausted and cranky.  I hadn’t slept the night before at all, I have been keyed up about a variety of very serious and personal matters - I wasn’t operating at the highest level of functioning. 

We went to the mall, and she played for a while before getting into the, “I want to run free through the mall without my shoes on - aren’t I cute?” routine.  Of course, she is cute.  All the same, she can’t run free in the mall.  There was a brief but loud tantrum about that.  Then, she threw a fit regarding the food court.  She wanted to eat.  I finally caved, and I ordered a couple slices of pizza for there along with a pie to take home for Daddy’s dinner.  With her, a shopping bag, and my purse in my arms, I went to get a couple of bottled drinks out of the restaurant’s case.  Almost immediately after getting our drinks into my hands, Buttercup moved quickly in my arms, and I dropped the orange juice bottle in the middle of the food court where it exploded with an unbelievable range of spray.  I think that some of the patrons may have been hit with the mist. 

For a moment, I stood there contemplating the situation with a sense of humor.  Then, I looked up to see the entire food court staring at me.  Promptly, tears sprang into my eyes, like an idiot, and I carried little Buttercup over to grab a handful of entirely useless napkins to try and stem the flow of our orange juice catastrophe.  Buttercup, very aptly, patted me on the arm and said, “That’s otay, Mommy, accident happens.”  Oh, dear God - that did not help with the watery eyes situation.  Now, the nice lady came and told me to stop, she’d clean it up, and she called me honey which didn’t help my uncontrollable urge to weep.
 
Now, if it had been possible, I would have bailed and hustled out of there with my tail between my legs.  Since I had ordered two slices and a pizza to take home, I was stuck.  The man eventually gave my blushing, embarrassed, almost stammering self, the slices of pizza.  We sat down and ate while I calmed down.  I was mostly over it when I saw him holding up my pizza box.  It was huge.  I looked at Buttercup, I looked at my shopping bag and purse, and I looked at the pizza box again.  How in the hell was I going to carry it all across the mall without spilling the entire contents?

This took me to a completely new level.  Thank you, Jesus, I waitressed in high school.  Had it not been for that experience, I don’t think I would have made it out of the mall without the pizza being spread all over myself, the floor, and the baby.  I planted Buttercup, the purse, and the shopping bag on one arm/hip, and I held the burning hot hell of the bottom of the pizza box on the palm of my other hand.  There were times when I thought I was going to drop it just because of the heat factor, but I didn’t.  I had to reconfigure this entire arrangement to get us into the car, out of the car, and up the steps into the house, but I made it without bursting into tears until I was in the privacy of my bathroom :)  This is kind of how it goes sometimes - I just don’t have enough hands.  I truly don’t know how people with more than one child do it, but I’m reasonably sure I’ll find out one day.

On a brighter note, Buttercup has her first tricycle from Grandma and Grandpa!  Oh, it’s a speedy devil, and she loves it.  It really is the cutest thing on the face of the planet.  Daddy had spotted one in the park and liked it.  I think tricycles are somehow the man’s territory - like men love cars or something.  Nevertheless, he had his favorite picked out for his mom and dad.

It’s a Radio Flyer Tricycle with a handle for us to control the steering.  Basically, we can push her all over the park in that hot-rod, and she loves it.  She was busy, busy, busy in the park collecting pine cones for the little trunk on the back.  I pushed her around the duck pond for what felt like a thousand times with her little sneakers pedaling as fast as they could go.  No one was using the tennis courts, so I took her inside of the court, and she had a field day.  She slept very well that night as did I!

One of the challenging parts about making decisions for your child is the comparison to other methods used by other mothers or fathers.  The problem primarily occurs because most parents, I think, put very deep and considerate thought into how they raise their children.  There aren’t a whole lot of snap decisions, at least in the parenting world I’ve encountered.  Deliberate time-consuming reflection goes into every resolution.

I’m not someone who believes there is just one correct way to raise, discipline, teach, feed or nurture a child.  In fact, I can see where a lot of families are coming from in most of their methods.  Unless you’re hanging the kid out the window by their toes, it’s none of my business, is how I feel about it.  Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be the case with a lot of other parents.  Open-mindedness is something people save for their public politics, if that.

Recently, someone said to me, “If you’d spank her and put her in a time-out, she wouldn’t do that anymore.”  Now, the comment was regarding nose picking.  The child has had a runny nose.  It’s not like she was doing something to another child or harming anyone.  We don’t spank la Buttercup.  It’s just not something we’ve needed to do with her.  However, when I told the person in question that we don’t spank her because we feel she’s too young, I got a look that could kill.  You see, rather than accepting my decision for my child, the mother took my choice as a direct opposition to hers.  Honestly, I was almost amused, but what could I say?  “My child doesn’t need it, but I can see where ___ would need spanking?”  I even deliberately gave her a route out of comparison between us because her child is older than mine.  This route was a ruse, as I would never spank Buttercup:  it’s not how I discipline her.  I don’t think spanking is the devil; it’s just not for her or me.

To take it one step further, the mother in question is not a close friend or a member of my family.  To me, unless you’re one of the two, how to discipline my child is not a topic of discussion I really care to pursue.  Not just because I consider it private, but it leads to hard feelings between people.  It’s a very difficult to discuss and important conversation that is best left to dear friends and family.

It comes up so much, this little tug of war.  Here’s what I have to say about it:  Just because I’m raising my child differently from the way you raise yours doesn’t mean I think you are wrong nor does it make me wrong.  Can’t we spend our time supporting each other rather than battling one another?  After all, we’re on the same side:  most of us just want to raise a happy and healthy child in the best environment we can provide.

Personal as these choices are, I can only expect so much from another parent who disagrees with a certain train of thought.  There’s little room for the idea that there are difference between children’s personalities and inclinations that dispose them to certain methods or techniques.  It’s not that I think a system is wrong - it just may not work for my child.  Nevertheless, it’s always strange how it has to be, “I’m right, you’re wrong, because if you’re right that would make me wrong.”  I know we can’t all be right, but I think it’s deeply important to show parents of children support rather than disparagement.

It’s been a rough day.  To start the madness, I promised Buttercup we’d go to the pet store.  For us, going to the pet store is a blast.  She loves the animals - if they have puppies out to pet - God help the puppies.  It’s as fun as going to the zoo with half the hassle.  Anyway, we got ourselves dressed, primped, and ready to rock.  I turn the ignition and nothing happens.  My battery was dead as a doornail.  Poor girl didn’t understand this - and I had to tell her the car was broken.  Well, all you-know-what broke out:  she was upset, and I can dig it.  I’d promised her a trip to one of her favorite places.  I thought about finding some lunatic to give me a jump, but the street is mostly empty during the workday.

To get her back in the house, I promised her we would go in the backyard and ride her new tricycle.  We get upstairs, and I hear the whine of a chain saw.  A couple days ago, we had a hell of a wind storm.  The neighbor’s tree had lost a lot of branches, some very large and still suspended in the tree.  So, the tree guys were there doing their thing in a cherry-picker.  So, we couldn’t go in the backyard.  Gladys, our cocker spaniel, would have been barking like a satanic fiend, and I really had my doubts about the proximity of the tree to our yard and the somewhat questionable looking gentlemen wielding chain saws.  So, I took her to the window and showed her the men at work.  I explained they were fixing the tree.  She looks at me and says, “Mommy, why car broken?  Why tree broken?  Oh, no, Mommy!  Daddy come home and fix.”  By this point, we had three emotional catastrophes:  the car, the tree, and now, she wanted Daddy home right now.  Oh, the emotional epic that followed this little sequence of events was on soap opera level.  She was not having it.  I eventually calmed her down by drawing pictures of our crazy day to show Daddy.  It sorted things out and helped her process what was happening, and it gave her something to show Daddy when he came home.  So, it all worked out, but it’s just another wild day around here.

To make matters more interesting:  that wicked squirrel is still haunting me.  I haven’t heard him or seen him, but animal control is MIA until Monday because of the holiday.  On the bright side, I’m thinking karma may be at play here.  The branches that the neighbor’s tree lost might have been helping the little pisser climb onto my roof.  I really felt like opening the window and calling out to the men at work, “If you see a squirrel while you’re up there, I really wouldn’t miss him…”  Here’s hoping those chain saws scared him away…

Lately, we’ve been going on some pretty large play dates.  Large play dates are fun, but they’re always chaotic, and I don’t think Buttercup has been responding well to them.  Just two weeks ago, she was thriving in the large play date environment.  Suddenly, she’s just not happy in them.  She becomes protective of what she’s playing with and really doesn’t want to share.  We’ve talked about this, and she knows that if she doesn’t share a communal toy, she can’t have it.  It’s a tough one to deal with really, because she’s in a group with a lot of two and three year olds.  No one wants to share.  So, while I’m asking her to share something, she’s looking over her shoulder at the child who just took the baby doll from her.  Then, she looks at me, like what, are you kidding me?  When she shares, the other child takes the toy and won’t give it back.  It’s a challenging situation, and I have to find the balance.

I’ve found that when she’s in a play date with one or two children - we have so much more success, because it’s generally a calmer and more controlled scene.  When you get upwards of six two/three year olds, it can get so ugly fast.  They’re all almost in a frenzy of ownership, afraid that another child will get to a toy before them, take a toy away from them, or they just won’t have a chance to play with one of the common favorites.

There’s a boy in particular who is always at these play dates.  He’s really a very sweet little boy until he isn’t.  It’s like a total flip of the coin in a second.  Anyway, the last play date we were at, he hit her twice in the head with a toy before I could remove her from the situation.  Basically, I think the problem was that all the kids were jigged up, in a large group, and out of control.  She didn’t want to play with his cars with him, and he took his truck and hit her twice with it.  I suppose this is all part of the process of “socializing” children, but we’re going to drop it down to one-on-one play dates for a while.  When we’ve done this, the same children are so much more loving and kind with one another.  It’s not a whirl of keyed up kids, it becomes a nice friendly afternoon.  I feel pretty confident about this - it’ll be a better arena for her to learn, share, and socialize.  We’ll still do large play dates once in a while, but we’re going to switch the focus from large groups to one-on-one play.