When Alli was born I started not one, but two baby books. They had places for me to record the dates of all her "firsts" and fill in the blanks of sentences like, "Baby's favorite books are______ and Baby loves to________," alongside glued in pictures. I had a really hard time filling out those generic sentences, but I kept my shoulder to the wheel because I loved my new daughter and wanted to do the Mother-thing right. Alas, once Maddie and Annie came along I had already thrown out the rule book, and no baby books will be forthcoming... Instead, I've tried to write little snapshots of their life. It isn't as thorough as I'd like, but I hope they know I love them all the same. Here is an apology for time lost and an anthology of conversation snippets I recorded last year:
Since my girls love to pretend, I'll start with a couple in that vein. Over the past few months, even Annie's learned the lingo, which happens to all my girls at about t-minus 3 1/2 years old. I've observed that to initiate a pretend game, you have to first set the stage for the players, assign parts, and use a lot of past perfect conjugations like, "So pretend I was the monster and you were scared..." In fact, at breakfast this morning Annie said, "pretend you were my mom, and I was your baby?" said in the characteristic valley girl uptalk used to initiate a game. I replied, "Um, I don't have to pretend. I already am?" I recorded the following two conversations from car rides during the beginning of 2012.
"Pretend we were teenagers...?" Alli began.
"Ok, pretend I was getting married to Batman," Maddie replied.
"We're teenagers, Maddie. We're too young to get married."
After thinking for a minute, Maddie finally said, "Fine. Pretend I was getting married... tomorrow."
This was enough to totally derail the game. Alli was ticked. "MADDIE! You can't just get married. You have to date and date each other first."
I have a feeling I'll hear this exact conversation again in 20 years.
Another day, Maddie started the game with: "Let's pretend you're the Mom, and I live in an orphanage with Anne."
This time I couldn't help interjecting, "why are you in an orphanage if you have a Mom?"
"You aren't our Mom yet. You have to come buy us." (What a lovely commentary on adoption.)
Alli got involved at this point, and there was some disagreement about who was going to play what, so Maddie had to amend her original plan. She tried again with, "Pretend I'm 16, and I have a purse...because I'm big enough."
My girls are really intrigued by orphanages for some reason. I tried to tell them that kids in orphanages have to scrub floors all day and don't get toys, but that only lead to them scrubbing our floor while singing "it's a hard knock life..." Just call me Miss Hannigan.
On another day in October, Maddie was again pondering marriage.
"I can see my future, Mom," she said, seriously.
"Oh, really?" I laughed. "What do you see?"
"I'm going to get married and go on a mission. I'm going to live in the best house... and I'm going to live in Florida."
"Oh, great. I'll visit you there," I told her with a big smile. Wouldn't that be the best? Grand kids to visit in Florida? I was liking this conversation.
"Wait!" She said suddenly, interrupting my idyllic twilight years fantasy. "Does Santa come to Florida?"
"Yep. Yep, he does," I said.
"Ok, then, yeah. I'm going to live in Florida."
I love Maddie's sense of humor. It's so funny because it usually involves her saying hilarious things in all seriousness. It's really endearing. My favorite Maddie one liner happened last summer when we were driving past a brick storage shed next to the Draper Temple. The workers had the garage door up so we could see the lawn mowers and tools inside. Maddie turns to me and asks, "Is that Jesus' garage?" We laughed for days after deciding that, yes, it was his garage.
Having three girls has been quite an adventure. I've laughed and cried lots with them, and I wouldn't miss it for the world.
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1 comment:
Love it! So glad I found your blog.
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