ONE QUESTION........GO!

This is the plan anyway:  Each year on Mother's Day Leo Rose will have a chance to ask me a question.  Granted, she asks five questions a minute, but this will be different, I hope.   As she gets older, I want this to turn into a time when we connect on a level deeper than the everyday jabs and laughs.

Here are the rules:

• Any question is OK.  Nothing is off limits. 
• The question has to be answered.  "That's none of your business," is not an acceptable answer.  But, I do reserve the right to shelve a question until she is mature enough for the answer.   Perhaps in return she gets two new questions that year?
• No grudges or retaliation for a painful question. 
• The conversations that follow will remain a secret, unless both of us agree we can re-tell the story. 

What's the point?   I want her to know that she can talk to me even if it's uncomfortable and that I will hold her concerns and fears near and dear to my heart.   I want it to be a life-long lesson in trust. 

So after all of that heaviness, here is Leo Rose's first question:  It's light.  It's fun.  And, she got two in because she's a jabber mouth.  

THEY BLOWED MY MIND......

Leo Rose has a sweet tooth.  The kind that takes over every part of her day.  She works for treats.  As many treats as she thinks she can get.  Every day she has an angle:  If I eat green food, will I get a treat?  If I'm nice to my friends, will you give me a sweet snack?

I'm pretty tough about raising her in a flourless, non-packaged, fresh food only way, but I recognize the need for cheating.   So, I pick her up from preschool each day with a sweet snack to share in the car on the way home -- chocolate-covered pomegranates, snack-sized M&Ms, yogurt pretzels.  It's a gluten-loaded, white sugar ritual that makes us both happy.

Today I had something special.  Something really out of the ordinary.

"I have a sweet snack that will blow your mind, " I gloated.

"What? What?" she asked.

"All that I'll say is that you're going to die!"  I was still gloating.

And because she's so stinkin' literal right now she shot back, "Oh, I don't want to die."

"Well you're not actually going to die.  That's just a figure of speech."

Relieved, she ran to the car, jumped in her car seat and squealed, "Give it to me! Give it to me!"

Out of a box came the sweetest little squares you've ever had.  Petit fours from Rhodes Bakery on Cheshire Bridge Road. The best cake square ever.

"Do you know what this is?" I asked.

Little Miss Sweet Tooth said confidently, "A cupcake."

"Nope, it's a petit four.  The best cake snack in the whole world."

First she licked off the blue flower on top, then dove into the white cake.

Thinking I already knew her answer I asked, "So, do you like it?"

Oh, she liked it alright.  "They blowed my mind! They really blowed my mind."

And ya know, she was right.  Exactly right.  They're not just delicious; they blow your mind in a way that confuses verbs.

She tackled a second one. She was mad about them.  "Oh, I could just die with this in my mouth."

By now she was drunk with sugar, eyes half shut, head back.  She barely spoke the rest of the way home presumably still considering what she had just eaten.

But all along her head was spinning, thinking about other sugar treats and about the impact these carefully meted out goodies had made on her life. 

"Remember that time we had a cake pop?"

"Yep, I sure do. "

"That blowed my mind, too."  

QUOTABLE QUOTES - MARCH 2013

March 3:

It's early Sunday morning and Leo decides to lecture David on how he should ask her first if he wants to use her toys.   They had just had one of their morning scuffles that takes place in the bed. 

"You have to say, 'Will you share your toys, please'?"    She reminds him that sometimes people won't want to share and they might scream and yell.

Then, with arms raised, palms up, in a very calm voice she imparts this advice, "It's all about life...and nature."

Hippy.
 

PIRATES DON'T DO TICKLES!

Every parent is exhausted.  The hours.  The whining.  The questions.   But I'm convinced, the more my super-charged toddler pushes back, the more interesting she is going to be.  Still, there are times when it's really hard.  Not always, but sometimes. 

A week ago today I was looking forward to a girls' night get-away - a yoga pants, 80s music and wine party.  Just women with kids who also needed a break, but I was too tired to get away from the thing that was wearing me down. 

For three days I sat mostly in the same place, wearing the same socks and the same sweat pants that I thought I'd be wearing to dance around to Blondie's "Rapture."   Instead, I spent Saturday night watching Leo Rose run - back and forth, back and forth - singing and dancing, with David playing back-up, until I managed to muster the energy to turn on my iPhone and capture just 30 minutes of the activity that had been exploding for days in front of me.

Thirty minutes on tape from a toddler's three-day weekend boiled down to two edited minutes.   It's all about what wears you down, then suddenly, a few moments that make it all important again.

I mean, what three-year-old isn't quoting "The Princess Bride".....

The running and laughing punctuated by the constant refrain, "Let's do it again.  Let's do it again," reminds me that she's all toddler.     But there are glimmers of her comic timing buried in there.  Just like her father she has the natural knack for breaking up a tense moment with laughter, or pausing and waiting to delicately drop a one-liner.   And the death scene, come on, the death scene.

"Pirates don't do tickles," re-energized me,  a little anyway. 

QUOTABLE QUOTES

WEEK OF FEBRUARY 4TH

7th

LR gets into trouble.  Legos taken away by Dad.  Half hour later asks Mom for Legos.  Gets them.  Gets caught by Dad and is getting into trouble for being sneaky.  Instead of accepting blame she says, "Mommy didn't know, so calm down."  

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Balks at cleaning up her room.  Says to Dad who tries to push her along, "I'm retired."

David asks, "Do you know what the word retired means?"

She didn't, so Dad explains to her Nana doesn't work.  She's retired. She worked a long time, saved money and now doesn't have to work.

"She just picks me up?"
 
"Yep that's what she does," he grinned.  

                                                      ---------------------------

6th

Leo Rose has been particularly prolific this week.  Just happens that way sometimes. So tonight, David and I are spatting in her room while we're putting on her night-time diaper.  Nothing terrible, just run-of-the-mill 'I do more than you do' spats.

She throws her arms in the arm and yells, "Guys! Guys! This is my room.  You said I'm the boss of my room and I say no adults can fight in my room."

Quite frankly, we were embarrassed, apologized and promised not to do that again.  Only in her room, of course.


                                                      ---------------------------
5th

Having left-overs for dinner.  Putting LR into her chair.  She looks down, sees her meal and wails, "Oh, nooooo!!!  Not again?!?!?"


                                                      

HE DIDN'T UNDERSTAND ME

Leo Rose, while she is the oldest in the class, stands a good few inches shorter than many of her UEP classmates.  But she's still an imposing little sprite who happens to be an introvert, at least for now.  It's an interesting combination that expresses itself often in the textbook phrase "reluctant leader" or in the real world application "bossy pants."

Combine "leader," oldest classmate, only child, fierce girl with a boy in class crawling around under the table making a mess, and you have a scenario that could take place between the opposite sexes at 30 or at three.  It wouldn't matter.

The story as told by Leo Rose.....

"(BOY) was crawling around under the table again, and I told him, 'You only crawl under the table if you're being chased by monsters.'"

She's relating this story with narrowed eyes while waving a finger in the air.   I said, "Good advice," because it was.

 

LR says in a flat, resigned voice, "Then I told him there's no such thing as monsters."

Naturally I ask, "What did he say?"

Finger down now and with a slight shrug, "He didn't understand me."

We both paused after the story and she stared out the window.   I realized I had witnessed one of those great brain leaps that happen, truly, overnight.   Just days before she had gone to bed with the typical toddler whining that makes me put my head in my hands and wonder, "Is she a bad kid or am I a bad mother?"

But today, cause and effect seemed to finally snap together.   I had seen glimmers of this possibility in the previous 48 hours, but I wasn't really sure until she piped in as we pulled into the driveway, "Mom, I won't whine so much.  I'm growing up, ya know."

FOOTBALL PLAYERS NEED LOVE TOO, I GUESS

 It's a cold, windy winter's day in Atlanta.  David and I are settled in watching the History Channel:  First the Nazis, then the KKK, next cults.   Leo Rose pops in....

LR:  Is this a good show?
Mom: Well, it's about bad things, but we are learning from it.
LR: Learning what?
Mom:  That we are the kind of people who love and accept everyone - all colors of people, all of the animals.....
LR:  (Pause) Do we like football players?
David: (Long smirky stare.)
Mom: Yes, yes we like them, too.
LR:  And baseball players?
Mom: Sure, them, too.