#ThisIsHowWeParent #TrailMixIsGrossTho #PoorDouglas #NutOverloadIsTheNameOfMyNewAllGirlsSoccerTeam
parenting
At Least I Got Frequent Flyer Miles Out Of It
Billie wakes up at 3:30am screaming bloody murder about her ears hurting.
Our flight leaves at 6:15am.
We rush her to the E.R. Despite some waiting room weirdness we get her checked out relatively quickly. Ear infection. Antibiotics prescribed. Pain relief meds given. Doc clears her for take off. It’s 4:50am now.
Our flight leaves at 6:15am.
We rush home quickly to have Doug’s mom drop us off at LAX. Freaking L.A.X. It’s packed. We have to check bags. I flag someone down to help us and they inform us that 2 out of 3 of the bags are overweight by 7 and 6 pounds respectively. It’s 5:25am.
Our flight leaves at 6:15am.
Billie is exhausted and screaming beside me. She’s tired and in pain. I’m calming her down while shoving everything I can into my carry on bag. I wrap t-shirts around my waist. I shove underwear in my pockets- I do anything I can to get the weight down. It works. Our bags are under the weight limit. Barely. It’s 5:33am.
Our flight leaves at 6:15am.
We rush inside to security checkpoint and watch a tour group of 50+ students get in line in front of us. We take the elevator while they take they escalator and get hung up by a TSA agent checking their IDs. We swoop in front of them and get through security. I throw our several shirts and sweatshirts on the security belt and walk through the metal detector with panties in my pocket. It’s 5:50am.
Our flight leaves at 6:15am.
We get to the gate and they are boarding. Billie is delirious. The pain meds are hitting her. She’s wearing neck pillows as crowns and demanding a photo shoot because she “looks so fancy.” She cracks jokes about my panty pockets so that everyone within a mile radius can hear. We board the plane at 5:58am.
Our flight leaves (on time) at 6:15am.
3 minutes into our flight I realize I’m sweating from rushing around like a maniac. Billie looks at me, calm and without any hint of irony, and says, “Mommy. I’m bored. This whole day is a day of boring. Can we do something fun now?”
…
……
……..
Kid. Shut up. Mommy loves you. But shut up.
When Borrowing A Friend’s Car:
Billie: “I can’t do this. The windows don’t roll down and it smells like someone is cleaning mushrooms.”
Understandable complaints. Oddly specific… But understandable nonetheless.
Everybody Do Their Share
This is the text I just sent to Doug:
“So I was brushing my teeth and I hear what sounded like a wave crashing in the kitchen. Knowing full well that there is not an ocean in our house, I ran toward the sound to find Billie standing in 2 inches of lemonade crying. We get towels to clean up, but she is so out of her mind bereft that she can’t calm down enough to wipe up the mess. So we stand there, together, in a pool of lemonade and do our belly breaths until she calms down. I finally get her calm, go to grab the lysol, and she moved to walk out of the room to get another towel and does this cartoon style flip and lands ass up on the kitchen floor. I can’t help it- I laugh- and in doing so, I lose my footing, slip, and shower us both in Lysol. We just sat there, in 2+ inches of Lysol lemonade, giggling manically until I realized I was the adult and had to handle the situation.
Anyway, what I’m trying to say is: I mopped the kitchen floor. Sorta. You’re welcome.”
He is one lucky guy.
My Daughter Is My Soulmate
When I was little I never fully grasped the concept of a soulmate. I understood it like this: the soul was a pizza missing a slice and someone came along with a slice that exact size (with the same toppings and everything) to complete you.
And, honestly?
That seemed lame.
One dimensional.
It excluded a world of people, possibilities, and circumstances that I had yet to imagine.
I couldn’t stomach limiting myself that way.
Lately I’ve started to view the soul as a galaxy.
A vast and deep neighborhood of constellations circling in, out, around, and through you- unbound by time, physical form, or logical necessity. Just stars. And energy. And light.
And, by that logic, a soulmate is anyone who enters into your self-made universe (with stars and constellations all their own) and expands it. They give you more to explore, they offer answers to questions you didn’t know you had, they challenge and inspire you to get outside of the comfort of your own silly solar system and stretch into infinite darkness until you find whole communities of light you didn’t know existed. They bring parts of yourself to you that you didn’t realize were yours. They offer you a complete sky’s worth of different viewpoints.
A soulmate is anyone who gives you growth in that way.
And you can have hundreds, hell *thousands* of soul mates. You can expand your world an infinite number of times in an infinite number of directions, never limiting yourself, going as far as you can before the fear freezes you.
Your universe is only as grand as the souls you let complete it.
And, for me, my favorite little soulmate of them all is Billie. It will forever be Billie. She offers me parts of my heart that I didn’t know were missing. She challenges me, enrages me, scares me, and makes me hysterical with love. She’s the most brilliant galaxy that I’ve ever been able to set my telescope on. She’s precious and ferocious and terrifyingly astute. She has the ability to shatter my heart then completely re-inflate it in one sentence. She’s the perfect mess of emotions and tenacity.
She’s my soulmate, my heart, and everything that makes me smile rolled into one incredibly ridiculous child with the most insane comedic timing. I thank my stars every day for her.
And on this and every day I am simply thankful.
For her.
For whatever fate that made it possible for me to be her mommy.
For the opportunity to be invited into her universe.
I am grateful to have found a unique soulmate that completes me in surprising ways.
And I look at the sky now and I’m filled with peace.
Art.
The Enforcer
Billie: “Mommy?”
Me: “Yes?”
Billie: “Did you eat my candy last night?”
Me: “…Yes? (sigh) Yes. I did. I’m sorry.”
Billie: “NO! NO, MOMMMY! No. You did not listen to your brain. YOU DID NOT LISTEN TO YOUR BRAIN! Your brain was telling you, ‘That’s Billie’s candy. She is going to want that’ and you just said, ‘Nooooo brain. I can’t hear you, brain. I’ma eat up the candy. Eat it right up into my belly!'”
Me: “Billie, I’m very sorry. I will replace the candy–”
Billie: “Your eyes and your brain are best friends, did you know that? Your eyes and your brain are best friends. Your eyes see and your brain remembers. When your eyes and brain don’t talk then bad things happen. Like you EATING MY CANDY.”
Me: “Bills, I get it. I said I was sorry.”
Billie: “Ok. Ok. It’s OK. I just… I wanted that candy for breakfast.”
Me: “You can’t have candy for breakfast.”
Billie: “Well, I can’t NOW.”
…She is going to be a force to be reckoned with during Halloween…
Deep Thoughts
Billie: “Humans are just skin bags filled with pee.”
Gravity is Bringing Us Down
Billie: “I’m thinking about a piece of string. If you put something on it, that thing will just fall down. That’s gravity. But if you tie a knot in the string, that thing will stop. Gravity is put on pause there. But it’s always there. I like gravity. It keeps me on my bed. If I didn’t have it I would float up above and I wouldn’t be able to rest on my bed or feel my pillow. Gravity is like magic that you can’t see but feel everyday. It’s like love that way. But love doesn’t keep my pillow on my bed. So I like gravity better I think.”
Babies and Science Projects
Billie: “Mom. That baby is screaming. He screamed right in my ear.”
Me: “That’s what babies do, dude. You’re the one who wants a baby brother. If you had one- that’s what would happen. He would scream in your ear.”
Billie: “No. That’s not what I want. I want a baby that would scream in *your* ear. And I would just love him and put him in my machine that makes him a puppy dog.”
Me: “Why don’t you just ask for another puppy dog?”
Billie: “Because a puppy- dog- brother- baby is cooler. And I wanna see your belly grow big.”
I can’t tell if she’s a total creeper or a mad scientist.
Billie's Momma 