Four Year Old Fiascos

Update: This post reminded me of two children's book recommendations I have: For a book sure to make you cry as you remember your child's "lasts" you need Karen Kingsbury's book, Let Me Hold You Longer. The Barnes and Noble description reads, "As children grow, the blankets and pacifiers, ball games and dandelion bouquets fade into distant, tender memories. Most of us remember and faithfully capture our children's "firsts." Karen encourages readers to try to recognize and savor the bittersweet "lasts"--those milestones that often go unrecorded.

Lastly, for a sweet story and keepsake of your child's handprint, I love the book, No More Handprints by Michael Hetzger. The Barnes and Noble description reads, "A heartwarming story of a mother obsessed with keeping her walls white. One day her son hides one of his handprints. Years later when he is grown and helping her move out, his handprints are revealed (from behind his childhood bed). Instead of scrubbing it away, she cuts the handprint from the wall and takes it with her (she frames it in her new home). The book includes ink strips that enable your child to make his or her handprints part of the story." It is such a sweet story. I found it on vacation a few years ago. It reminded me of myself! A mother obsessed with a clean house is always fussing about handprints (I could substitute blue footprints here!) and she wipes the handprints away...but one day when her son is grown she finds a set of his blue handprints hidded behind his bed frame and she cherishes them and cuts them out of the wall and frames them in her new home.) So, if you have a young child, rush to your nearest book store and order these two books..I promise you will cherish them forever!

I will start with saying that I will probably edit this out of my blog book that I am publishing for our family. I don't want Emma to think I'm always writing about her mishaps! It just happens that she is the youngest, the most free spirited and sometimes careless and she is still at home all day with me, so she has more opportunities to mess up, right??????

Well, once again we have had an interesting morning. It all started because I got up at 4:00 am to get a jump start on work. For those of you that know me, you know two things: I don't like mornings and I need lots of caffeine to get going at 4:00 a.m. and when I am covered over in work, my house is proof positive of this. I don't work neatly. Once I get going, I work fast and efficiently, but never neatly. So, this morning I've been tracing about 300 fabric pattern pieces for my bags. If I wasn't so prideful, I'd take a picture of my living room and you could see first hand how messy I am when I work. It looks as if someone ransacked JoAnn Fabrics in the middle of my living room floor. I have fabric of every shape, size, and color sprawled out on the floor. I have pattern pieces traced and cut out lying all over my living room chair. The love seat is covered with folders and packets of materials for my bags that I was working on last night er4and my ironing board is set up in the middle of it all with all kinds of colorful fabric scraps adorning it and the surrounding floor. So, this is where the story gets hairy. I had fixed Emma and I a snack of Texas Caviar and chips (see the recipe below...it's amazing!) and since I need lots of caffeine on days like this, we were sharing a diet coke straight from the can with a straw. Well, Miss Priss decides she needs her own Diet Coke poured in a cup, so she swipes the can and gets a cup off the drain board and pours herself some in the kitchen. Well, surprisingly enough she does this without spilling one drop. She returns to the living room so proud of her accomplishment and as she enters into the fabric war zone, she proceeds to spill the entire contents of her cup onto my pile of fabric. It didn't fall straight down and thus allow the fabric to absorb most of the mess. The cup first hit the floor and continued to splatter everywhere, the floor, the wall, the coffee table and then onto all of my fabric! So, in typical Emma fashion she immediately begins repeating, "I'm sorry Mommy, I'm sorry Mommy, I'm REALLY REALLY Sorry Mommy."

It is at this very moment that I have to stop and breathe and close my eyes, because the sensible side of me knows it was an accident. She never meant to make such a mess. In fact most messes that occur in our house are usually innocent accidents. So, how does an overly tired, stressed out Mommy respond in this situation? Well, I must say that I didn't overly react. I admit there are times when even though I know it is an accident I let the anger get to me and I fuss at her. However, this morning, (maybe through clenched teeth) I said, it's okay Emma. I will clean it up. Please go back to your art table and finish painting the picture you were painting earlier. So, she left the room and I cleaned up the mess while I pondered how to correct her. I don't mean disciplinary correction, but I do think she needs to be reminded to be more careful. She is very careless at times and if I give her a sippy cup she NEVER drops it, but if she is allowed to drink from a big girl cup she ALMOST ALWAYS spills. I know you aren't supposed to say always because she doesn't ALWAYS spill...but ALMOST ALWAYS...are her little hands physically not capable of holding onto a cup? Why doesn't she drop her sippy cups? Well, that is a question for an avid studier of child development, but I am clueless as to why she always fumbles big girl cups and never one with lids!! Anyway, if the story stopped here, I'd be over it and back to work and not venting on this blog when I should be working!

Unfortunately, the story didn't stop there. I quickly banished her into the playroom to finish her painting while I cleaned up the diet coke fiasco. As I am finishing up I hear a SWOOSH, SWOOSH, SWOOSH sound coming down the hall. I look up to see Emma sliding down the hall with art paper under each foot. She is skiing down the hall. I then notice the blue...the blue, blue, blue paint all over her feet and paper. She had run out of room on the large paper I had covered her table with (She had painted earlier in the morning and I didn't realize she had already covered the entire 6 foot paper with blue and red paint)So, she had gotten bored and pulled out some regular sized paper and painted her feet blue to make footprints on the paper. So , here she comes down the hall with a big grin on her face to show me her big blue footprints.

Once again, overly tired, overly stressed out Mommy has a decision to make.... To revel in the beauty of her footprints and creativity or scream with disbelief that after making one big mess, she would dare to think she could make another one! So, without talking...because I'm afraid I will yell, I calmly pick her up off her blue footprint skis and carry her to the bathroom. I gently set her down on her freshly washed yellow flower floor mat and turn on the bath water, (because I couldn't put her directly in the tub because her bath toys were everywhere in the tub.) So, I finally get the bath water running, remove her blue and red paint splattered clothes and dump her in the tub with her toys and Barbies and hope that this will at least buy me a few minutes of quiet time to recuperate from this morning. Emma loves her bath and she will play nicely for 15 minutes or until the water gets cold. So, I leave her splashing with Barbie while I go to access the damage in the playroom. Surprisingly, she had only dropped 2-3 drops of blue paint on the hardwood floors, so they easily wiped up with a baby wipe. At this point I'm pretty satisfied that I just have one messy bathmat and some splattered clothes to wash (and a pile of fabric covered in diet coke!). As, I turn to leave the playroom to gather up the laundry in the bathroom, I hear wet feet running down the hall. Wet feet that will leave water spots on the freshly mopped hardwood floors! She didn't feel like taking a bath, so once she rinsed her feet she decided to get out and drip dry down the hall without a towel on the beautifully clean floors that Joe just mopped for me last night. Our hardwoods have this beautiful yet very annoying finish on them that spots when large amounts of water are left on them...or if they are used as a drying mat for Emma's wet feet. So, I now have a washing machine full of fabric with diet coke embellishments, a yellow flower bath mat with two beautiful blue feet, and a floor in need of mopping. Let's just call it a day, crawl back in bed and start again tomorrow.

But, even as I type this, I am reminded of how God forgives me OVER and OVER and OVER for all of my imperfections...most of which are not accidents, nor from immaturity, like Emma's. Emma is young and one day she will not spill diet coke on my fabric (at least not a regular basis) nor will she find it fun to paint her feet blue or streak down the hall dripping wet without a care in the world. So, even though I didn't react with gushing kindness and smiles this morning, I am glad that I didn't yell or condemn her for being little. After all, it was my fault we were drinking diet coke. I would usually serve us water...which wouldn't have hurt a thing...and while painting your feet without permission isn't something she should do, it was done out of innocence and creativity. So, Lord help me remember she is little and today may be the last time she ever paints her feet or runs down my hall naked (Well, probably not the latter because she loves being naked!) but Lord, make me mindful that she won't be four for always and that each day she gets older and more mature and there will come a day that won't need me to wipe up her messes or wash her blue stained feet. As I drain the blue tinted water from my tub, Lord Help me to remember her "lasts" and cherish each day. For, there will come a day when I will long for blue stained bathtubs and floor mats with sweet silhouettes of small, four year old feet.

Well, my sweet Emma is sitting here at my feet waiting for me to play tea party with her. She has set it all up behind me and is patiently talking to her baby doll and telling her the tea party will start promptly when mommy finishes typing her business! If she only knew what I was typing...I wouldn't trade her for all the money in the world...but maybe a one day hiatus to a spa with no blue feet or diet coke (well, at least no diet coke on my floor) would be nice!

Oh, here's the Texas Caviar Recipe...Really Yummy. My sister Catherine makes it and always shares it with me and it is so good! Be ware, you might want to purchase your favorite low fat tortilla chips, because if you're like me..you'll look down at your bag of chips and wonder if you really just ate that many chips at one time and the guilt will rush in! Even though you just ate your weight in veggies you also inhaled half a bag of tortilla chips and you'll regret it! (I will admit the chips with lime juice are to die for with this dip but next time I'm buying fat free chips!)

2 cans black eyed peas, drained
1 can shoepeg corn, drained
1 can black olives, drained
1 bunch spring onions, chopped
6 Roma tomatoes, chopped
1 green pepper, chopped
1 green chili, chopped
1 8 oz Zesty Italian dressing

Mix well and marinate 24 hours. Serve with tortilla chips

Optional ingredients: fresh garlic, Jalapeño peppers