Dear Ella. . .

Dear Ella,

We have not had the best day today. My mommy brain is trying desperately to understand what the big difference is between the clementine I handed you for a snack and the one you said you wanted. They are both orange. They are both round. They are the same size. Neither one of them has splotches.

But you wanted "dat one." As in, the one that I hadn't already just peeled and painstakingly de-seeded (for the love of all things holy, why aren't ALL clementines seedless?) And because it was only 9:20 a.m. and my second cup of coffee hadn't fully kicked in, I decided I was too tired to peel "dat one right dare."

That was apparently the wrong thing to say to you this morning.

And then about an hour later, I tried ever so gently to explain to you, sweetie, that blueberry muffins don't just materialize out of thin air. I know it hurts. Mommy has wished the same would happen with peanut M&M's and Double Stuf Oreos. But now, our next door neighbors have also been made aware that we have no muffins.

Remember when we played hide and seek this morning while Milo took his nap and I was hiding behind the shower curtain in the downstairs bathroom? Well, I wanted to say I'm sorry. I'm sorry because I didn't actually tell you that we were playing hide and seek. I just went and hid there and played Words With Friends for six beautiful, solitary minutes while you took a brief hiatus from whining and danced to the Fresh Beats.

It was just one of those days, I guess. And the rain didn't help. I hated that it rained this morning, which meant that we couldn't go swing. Believe me, I wanted nothing more than to go to the playground too. All mommies know that the playground = long naps and God knows Mommy needed that kind of a nap from you today.

I just want you to know, Bug, that I'm trying to see things from your perspective- really, I am. I understand that you didn't want to put your pants on before we went to Target. And although I do want to indulge your flair for the dramatic, I draw the line at letting you hop down from the cart and walk around on all fours, pretending to be a cat while we're in Target. I'm also sorry that your legs aren't long enough yet to reach the pedals of Mommy's car that you wanted to pretend to drive when we got home, which somehow meant that I was supposed to carry you up the front walkway into the house, but in doing so, made you scream even louder that you wanted to go back outside and walk in the house by yourself all over again.

Oh, and I'm sorry I laughed in your face today when you cried so hard that you farted. Mommy doesn't mean to invalidate your feelings, sweetie. It's just that if I don't laugh, I'll cry too. It just seemed like the better option at the time. I did cry though, while you were reading your book to me at naptime. Two little wispy tears that rolled out of the corners of both of my eyes that you couldn't see while I tilted my head back and gazed at the ceiling in your room and listened to your sweet sing-songy voice. And in that moment, I prayed I wouldn't remember that, barely five minutes before, I was pleading and cajoling- practically selling my soul to the devil himself- to get you to go upstairs and take your nap. I just prayed that I would only remember you "reading" to me about the little boy and his penguin who wanted to fly.

You know how you like to pretend to fill up the gas tank in your car? Well, Mommy's tank is sitting on empty today. "Running on fumes" is probably a more accurate description. But it doesn't mean that I love you any less. It just means Mommy is tired. But that's why God invented 7:30 bedtimes. I used to think it was because that's when YOU go to bed, but now, I think it's because he knew that parents would fall into their own beds, exhausted, at ten minutes after eight on a Thursday night. I've come to terms with the fact that some days, being "mommy" to you and your brother takes extra amounts of a lot of things that I don't have even sufficient amounts of-- patience, energy, grace, humor, humility, perspective, adventure.





Oh, and blueberry muffins.






So, thanks for being patient with ME.







Love you to the moon and back....