Ah, April 30th. The day I always hope will be sunny like it was the year of 2006, so I can relive that feeling I had with the sun streaming in, holding my tiny baby. I was born into motherhood that day. Maddy’s growth amazes me, but when I think about it, so does my own. My efficiency, steadfastness, and dedication are qualities I regularly work on, and it shows. I don’t think about how to be the best mom, I think about how to live up to my own expectations of myself, and all else follows. I don’t know if I could have found that without being a parent.

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Here is the view I had when I first woke up with baby Maddy. I looked down and saw this tiny, strangely familiar, body, and watched her waking up to her brand new life.

This morning, birthday girl Maddy decided her first order of business being a big 3 year old was to make her own sandwich for breakfast. This involved getting out the bread, the jam, the knife for spreading the jam. And leaving the fridge door open, of course! She spread the jam herself, and put the bread (unclosed) and the jam back in the fridge.

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she later asked me to put some peanut butter on the sandwich

Not only can she make her own sandwich, she gets her own water from the brita tap we have in the fridge, and brings me water on occasion! Maddy amazes me every day in the ways she is maturing out of toddlerdom. Just yesterday she wanted blueberries in her yogurt, but we were out, so I offered jam instead. She was so upset over no blueberries that she cried, “I don’t want jam!” and stormed off. She went to sit in the front doorway, which was open, and quietly stared at the scenery and appeared to be in deep thought. Then she calmly returned to the kitchen and said, “ok, I’ll have jam.” Her ability to collect herself with no direction from me totally blew my mind, and reminded me that I can trust Maddy to find her own ways of dealing. Her emotions are very quick to fire up and equally quick to cool.

Maddy’s party is on Sunday, but our neighbors brought her some presents today. Here she is assembling her body layers puzzle.
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This evening I watched a friend’s daughter, who is five. The girls played together and went from initially being a heavily weighted social situation in which the five year old bossed Maddy around and Maddy, just grateful for the attention, was acquiescent. I was beginning to worry but just kept within earshot. Five year old pushed and pushed until Maddy asserted herself and said, “no, I don’t want to play that.” Not sure exactly what it was, but it involved her wanting Maddy to grab her with a grabber-claw thing on a stick. When Maddy came to me, I simply stated, “You don’t have to play anything you don’t want to play,” and that was that. They found something else to play, and had a generally pleasant evening. The whole dynamic changed, and it was a much more equal situation. I’m so proud of Maddy, I could just burst! This is exactly what I want from Maddy… for her to be able to speak up, and seek out assurance when she needs it.

It takes a lot of trust, patience, and care to let situations play out and be effective life lessons for Maddy. I’m glad I have recently challenged myself to step up on my creative thinking, and also to take a moment and not act on impulse. After all, isn’t like 99% of parenting just modeling the desired behavior? I realized as I was pondering all this, this evening, that I actually look forward to the mistakes Maddy will make, as those are the greatest opportunities for growth. Perseverance is one trait I managed to develop without really thinking about it, and I hope I can pass that along in a passive modeling way.

I’m thinking about other traits I possess that I may be getting rusty on, like creativity. Today, feeling totally uninspired in the kitchen, I nearly told Cliff to just buy lunch today. I normally tell him to come home for lunch to save money, since he works so close to home. However, with a fridge full of food and a number of expenses on the horizon, I sucked it up and put something together. It was a beautiful chicken salad with pecans, cranberries, cucumbers, and an orange vinaigrette. It was amazing! I was anticipating cheese sandwiches. Practicing creativity makes me a better mama. It takes the edge off. It fosters creativity in other areas, like problem solving and coming up with boredom-busting activities.

By the way, that picture up at the top was looking out of the room that is now Maddy’s room. Here are some pictures of it’s near-completion. It would be done by now, but the flooring took an extra month getting to us.

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Cliff hand folded all these precious little light covers with his big man hands, and made me swoon!

Amelia has a had a difficult couple of days. She’s a pretty happy baby in general, so it’s not so bad, but she has been a little less “talkative,” more sleepy, needs me to hold her a lot. And when I’m not holding her, she needs to be holding something she can explore and/or bite. Her teeth have been threatening to pop out for nearly 5 months… maybe we’re getting close?

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