Get through It

Around this time last year, mama roy and i were starting the path of our labor assistant training. Here are our girls chillin in the hotel room while we learn all about how to support women in labor and birth.
Yesterday was such a fun day full of learning and growing for lil toddler E and I. First, e and I went to the library where we had just missed story time. But that meant there were still lots of tots roaming about the kid's area. She played with puzzles and toys while I chatted it up with two other preggers. One, I had seen the previous day at the playground so she must think I am stalking her...or that we both just live in the 'hood. We read some really great books. One was about a kid who had the chicken pox but her best friend sent her gifts via large animals all week. Three cool things about it were that 1)the mama wore her baby in a carrier as she 3)hung up laundry outside and 2)ez is learning the days of the week right now so she totally was down with each day's gift. We checked out a few more books and a DVD. Then, we had to shamefully admit to coloring in the library book about Penguins. In my defense, she was with dad when this occurred. The librarian suggested we try to erase the crayon before buying the book.
So, off to the big box store to find a "crayon eraser" but only lil pink rectangles were to be found. While in that area, we did pick up a pair of much needed safety scissors. E loves cutting paper, especially cutting pictures of animals out of magazines and gluing them as a collage then ripping them all off the paper three hours later. She used every pair of scissors available with the help of dad, steph, ashley dink and i last weekend as we all collaged our hearts out. maternity clothes happened to be on sale so we browsed those and the toddler sale rack to give dad some WAHD time. You know, e and i are sacrificial like that.
As she begged to play with the trains, i knew we needed food first so we had a sort of random stop at CPK for pea soup and a huge asian salad. She has loved their pea soup since she first began slurping down something other than mama's milk! The weather was unseasonably warm so we sat outside, coloring and laughing until our food arrived. After devouring most of the soup and two pieces of bread, we walked on over to the bookstore which houses the trains. She had happy feet the whole way there. A lil toddler with a blond whale spout on her head holding "fluffy" the penguin and a slice of bread, dancing all the way is such a joyous sight to see. Her laughter was contagious to most passersby. Too bad the train table was a bore. She climbed up into the chair and said, "mama play with the trains for me." We nixed that idea after about 12 seconds and were off to take a sleepy car ride home.
I will have to skip what happened next b/c it involved me with a full bladder, a screaming toddler, tears over a stroller that lives at the store and not our house, a penguin, a container of pea soup, a bag, and stumbling through the parking lot. Parking lots of stares. Fabulous.
After an exhausting and intense car ride home, she needed to sit in the biovehicle all by herself for a little while. Before going inside, I climbed in the back seat with her and asked if i could put my arm around her shoulders. she sobbed, "yes" then crawled into my half lap and laid her precious red-eyed head on my chest. We had a little chat about how hard it is to understand that some toys live at stores and how that is one of the things we have to learn about as we grow up. The way she seemed to understand blessed my heart. Then, she happily crawled into the front seat and got my beeping phone. We finally made it inside to retrieve sherpa and explain to dada why we'd been chilling in the driveway for two hours. The long walk on the trail was just what everyone needed!
Screaming kids are really hard for me to handle. Some parents just deal so well. Not me. I am like a mirror or something and just reflect whatever is happening instead of being the calm one most times. Yesterday, I hated how I felt carting her out to the car. I hated my thoughts as I buckled her into the car seat. It broke my heart and eardrums that she could not be consoled. But, after we cuddled and talked, I was so glad to have gotten through it. I could immediately see the trust she has with me and how that grew through this meltdown.