A Welcome Home

We mothers tend to think that our children, until a certain age, only feel safe with us. They wait by the front window starting out until we get home so they can run to the door and hug us and not let go. They dream about being snuggled in our arms holding them close. When another person is holding them we know their little minds are thinking "this lady is nice but she sure isn't anything like my mama."

(enter record screeching to stop here)

This is not the welcome home occurring at the Walker house. In fact, almost entirely the opposite. So much so that Bella gets big crocodile tears and precious quivering lips when I show up to pick her up from pretty much anywhere. Once she cried when she was picking up dog doodie in the back yard and I came home after a long day and told her she had to stop what she was doing and come talk to me because I missed her. (wha???)

Ivy is 2 and a half and pretty much ready to move out. She spends time with her Nana and cries when she has to come home, she spends time with her Papa and cries when she comes home, she spends time with a random babysitter and cries when I walk through the door. Today my mother-in-law and her friend came by and the friend was holding Ivy. Ivy started crying when I walked in the door and went to grab her from the friend. She said (in a crying voice) "no, I don't want you -- I want Sylvia."

Who's Sylvia? I guess that is the friend's name -- the woman that she had known for a few minutes. Nice.

But my very favorite is coming home, putting my bags down, looking for my girls to hug and kiss and hearing the sour patch kid around the corner say "go back to work I no like you. I like my dad."

Welcome home.

Life: 1/3 sleeping, 1/3 working, 1/3 re-rolling toilet paper

Where to start? It is more difficult than I thought to capture life with 2 girls. I set up this blog a few months ago for several reasons. One being that my girls do so many freakishly funny things I wanted to capture them the best way possible. Two, I feel mom guilt at least once a week for intentionally overlooking the baby book duty. Bella has one and I made a lame attempt to create something that she could carry with her forever. There are 3 AMAZING pages...

Ivy doesn't even own a baby book.

I know, I am terrible but I find myself feeling anxious when I look at all the pages asking about height and weight and other things normal people don't have time to track. Thus, My Daughter Diaries were born.

Today's title was an epiphany as I stood in a familiar place in the girls' bathroom re-rolling the toilet paper to my best ability after Ivy had her way with it. The craziest thing -- she sits on the toilet (makes me proud because we are potty-training) she asks for her privacy, I go around the corner to fold laundry or some other nearby household duty, she calls me in an excited voice, I am thinking she wants to tell me she is proud of her accomplishments, and the entire roll of toilet paper is in a pile on the ground. This happens frequently, like all the time. It feels counter-intuitive to yell at her while she is sitting on the toilet potty-training but I do it anyway, and spanked, and scolded and begged. She still does it...with pride.

So I do feel like I spend a lot of my awake hours re-rolling toilet paper. The silver lining? I am getting really good at it.

-Mom