I laugh at how worked up I get about Sara.  Can she do it?  Is she ready?  Can I over-think HER LIFE until we both explode from the THINKING?  And then there’s Kelly.  Funny, horribly 2 years old Kelly.  Tonight at dinner Sara said, “Thank you Mommy for taking me to lunch with my friends”, and I wanted to die from happiness.  I looked over and Kelly had taken a spoonful of mashed potatoes and smeared it across her nose.  A marvelous feat of food gymnastics after she spent the day chasing her shadow.  Sara kept telling her it was only a reflection, to which Kelly replied, “I don’t care!  It’s mine and I want it!”, while madly grabbing at the wall.

As I tucked them in, Sara wanted to visit her “question theme” of the day.  Yesterday was “General Princess” and today was “Why do we all look different, and do we actually all look different, and are flowers and frogs and ladybugs also different?  What makes a yellow flower yellow?  Why are my eyes brown but Daddy’s eyes are green?  Why is Kelly’s hair yellow and when will my hair turn black like Mommy’s?”  I’m so tired right now.  Four is less fun today, and more exhausting.  I described DNA like an internal map we all have, and suddenly Sara started making lists of alive things, and things with bones, and how they are all different.  This could go on for hours.  She is four.  It might take days.  I looked over and old Shadow Chaser was lying in her bed, banging a doll into her head saying, “Headbutt, headbutt, headbutt”.

My pointless point is this…we never freak out about the 2nd kid, and yet they seem to turn out just fine.  My wise optometrist once told me, “You give the first kid the best toys, the best clothes, the best of everything.  You fret, you worry.  The second kid gets a stick as her main toy and they turn out to be the most brilliant of the pack.  Go figure.”  Had Sara headbutted her doll at age 2, I would have called a child psychiatrist.  THE BEST!  Kelly does it, and I laugh my head off, give her kiss, and tell her to go to sleep.

I can hear them up in their beds right now.  Kelly is trying to convince herself to stay in bed, “I must stay in bed.  I stay in bed.  But I TAN’T!  I TAN’T stay in bed!  I get out of bed!”.  Sara is still making her lists, “Snakes slither, so I don’t think they have bones, but they are alive, and they have DNA.  Trees are alive, but don’t have bones, but they can stand up, but they aren’t animals… ladybugs only look alike until you look at them through a magnifying glass, and then I will see that they are all different….”

And you know what?  I secretly think Kelly might be smarter.  Come on….grabbing her shadow out of sheer bossy will?  That’s funny. Never judge a book by its cover or a kid by its headbutt.  After all, Miss Ducky “Mendel” Wigglebottoms was flicking purple paint ALL OVER my kitchen not more than 5 hours ago.  I mean EVERYWHERE in the 2 minutes I had my back turned.  She told me she was bored.

Oh my girls.  My sweet, sweet girls.  I love you both so much…so much joy, so much frustration…what did Daddy and I do before you got here?  Some stories are cohesive.  Some are rambling (see above, oh yes, and below).  And some nights I just want to write these words down so I never forget that while I spent most of the day wiping up paint and mashed potatoes, I laughed a little as well.