The Five Strands of A Sedentary Empress

She's Hilarious.

Like I said in a previous entry, the thing that bothered me the most about losing my other two journals was losing all the material I had written about my daughter. Though it's sometimes mindnumbing to read about other people's children, I have to admit that things change when you have your own. I love to listen to her ideas, the way she sings songs that make no sense, or the way she is so proud of herself for being able to jump two inches off the floor. I can't decide what it is about her that makes me so different than the woman I used to be. It's not ego, as some might think, that makes you want a child, at least not in my view. For me it's about learning to love for the first time in my life. This is the kind of love that makes you ready to give yourself up for another, the kind that makes you enjoy sharing a fork with them, or even the kind that makes you smile when they toddle into your bedroom two hours before you're supposed to get up, just because they are happy to see you. I look at her and I see myself, but I also see M., my dad's chin and my grandmother's expression. What M. sees I don't know, but I know he sees other people too. Most of all, though, she is herself, and she is unique and curious and beautiful. I didn't plan on her, but now that she's here, she's everything there is.

Tonight, she hopped onto my lap as I watched television and I could sense she was looking at me. I looked down at her, and sure enough she was looking up, beaming. I asked her what she was smiling about and she said 'You, mom. You're more beautiful than a sparkling star in the sky.' Well. How do you respond to something like that?

But she's also saucy, which I'm sure I'm supposed to be annoyed by, but I'm not. She can be a little saucy if that's her way. I don't mind that she has opinions of her own, because it shows a little independence, and god knows I could use more of that. She takes a little bit on herself, smacking my behind while I am cooking dinner, but in a playful way (she sees her father do this to me), and she has taken to calling me a 'boob sock', which I don't know the meaning of. Mostly I'm a 'peeko', which is something else she came up with over a year ago, and has used as a term of endearment as well as an insult since. Frankly, I think she's hilarious, and like most mothers, I think everything she does is amazing. Yesterday, when she met her teacher for the first time during our parent/teacher interview, I was amazed at how she intuitively developed a more mature, respectful manner, sitting down in a chair with her little hands clasped together, politely beginning questions with 'Umm...Mrs. Murphy why does...'. I am sad that she'll be starting school next week, and all of the reasons are selfish ones.

Some of the things she's said recently that have had me heaving with laughter in the corner....

*I’m sorry mom, but are you hearing okay today? I don’t think you can hear too good today. I told you what I wanted for lunch, and this sure isn’t it.

*I have sand in my shoes! There’s akshully sand in my shoes! I have sand in my toes! Ugh…I feel like such a dirtbird

*This is more fun than picking my nose, said while dancing to 'Skip to the Loo'.

And then there was the incident when I was rubbing her leg and she tried to move toward 'her area', which little kids are prone to do.

Excuse me, but no. No one should ever touch you there I said sternly.

Why not? It feels good she said, confused.

Because, it's just not right. That's your private area, and no one should touch it, that's all there is to it.

She thinks about this for a moment.

Well, akshully mom, I do it all the time when you're not in the room, so what's the problem?

That's a weird kind of innocence right there. I don't want her to have any sexual hangups like my mother bored into me with her statements about 'dirtiness' while I was growing up. My girl is still three, and I know she has no idea about what she's saying or doing most of the time, so getting upset over her honesty would do nothing more than create boundaries in her mind, and there's not a lot of good in that. Still, it's a weird thing to talk about with someone so small, because she doesn't understand what's going on when it comes to sexuality, and won't for ages. When I told M., he just said that he's glad he didn't have to talk about it with her, although he is generally pretty good about these things. We are both slightly repressed, though we try not to be, and we are in agreement that if she happened to see a film that was restricted, we'd rather it have a sexual theme rather than a violent one. That said, neither of us are comfortable watching really raunchy material, and I could watch 'The First 48' over and over, so it's not like we know what we're talking about.

My favourite, though, was last week when I heard Meika, the Siamese cat with the issues, make a loud, snarly growl from her corner of the couch in the family room. I turned around to see Katriona pull her hands back from the cat's back, which looked as though tiny fingers had been running through it, and put them on her little hips.

Come ON Meika! Ya know ya love me!

It would be impossible not to.

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