These days fall upon my skin like a rash, slightly nagging, but not altogether unmanageable. I think fear of the impending unknown weighs most heavily, although it is not as though we haven't faced that before. Uncertainty comes with the territory we have chosen.
As usual, motherhood is the constant(k) that stays with me and keeps me grounded. This child, still so wondrous with her lashes and curls and gravely voice. She teaches me something everyday and I feel genuinely sorry for people who are to busy to notice all that there is to learn from these marvelous little people. She picks up things, words, expressions like a magnet picks up metal filings. Little scraps here and there, spouted back at me for approval. Her latest thing is declaring herself to be 'ambidextrous' - something I explained to her a week or so ago and which she pulled out of her hat the other day as we were painting our holiday wrapping paper. Plonking away with her paints, she said 'Mommy, look - today I'm using me right hand. That means I'm ambidextrous' - and again, I am amazed. Not quite as funny as 'Look! These are my boobies, they're from China!' (don't know where she got that one). The other night, apropos of nothing she suddenly looked at me very seriously and exclaimed 'Boobs!', which naturally cracked me up and caused her to repeat it for about 20 minutes. Funnier still is that it took that long for it to actually stop being hilarious.
I'm in the throes of the whole Christmas thing - which is quite funny when you consider that I have been a hater for many years. Suddenly I am combing stores and doing research and have finished all my shopping - and it's only mid-November. All my fears and cries of consumerism seem to have been set aside and I am looking forward to Christmas is a way I haven't since I was 10 years old. I cannot wait to look at that child's face when she comes downstairs and sees the bounty before her. Who knows how the future will provide for us? But for this year, there will be more than enough for her and I know it will be wonderful.
The thumbsucking is improving, although I may be giving her a complex (why not, I have many to spare!). I heard her telling her monkey the other day that his teeth were crooked and I cringed. I have changed tacks and am working with the 'nasty germs' angle instead, in an effort to spare her worrying about orthodontics at such a young age. And I am trying to make peace with my imperfect teeth and not make that my first official crappy thing I pass onto my emotionally absorbent daughter. Whatever works.
Besides, natural teeth are beautiful too, right? (Please say yes, my complex is not fixed yet...)
All in all, even as we are in the midst of the next big who-knows-what, we feel pretty good. Some days I wonder where all my drive and ambition and relentless forward pace has gone, and some days, I just don't care. Some days I don't do any particular homework and I don't try to claw my way up to anywhere and I just live in the now.
It's not too bad.
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