Truth

February, you beauty. There is so much to like about February: it's my dad's birthday month, it's the anniversary of my first date with Chris, Valentine's Day (the third best candy holiday), fewer days, more light and this year especially, lots of pleasing dates. Like today, 2/1/12.

Anyway, I do want to check in on my Not Resolutions but a couple of orders of business first.

1. At the ripe old age of two years and nine months, Brighton told me her first real lie. I had just finished strapping Pacey into the car and came back inside to get her. She pointed to her hand and told me it was "really owie." There was no evidence she had actually been crying, and no visible marks on her hand. I gave her my usual light sympathy (too much tends to reinforce the fake injuries) and she said, "Simon bite me." Now, I know dogs are animals and you never know when a dog could snap and all the rest of it, but Simon did NOT bite her. I know this for a fact. I don't even need to go into all the reasons why I know this, because the most irrefutable is that he was nowhere in her vicinity.

It's interesting actually, because she's been really focused on biting lately. She talks a lot about monsters biting her and I repeat about 35 times a day "There's no such thing as monsters, monsters are just pretend." (side note: I always feel uncomfortable telling her this because I know full well that there are plenty of monsters in the world. Just not the sort she's imagining. I hope it's many, many years before she realizes my own lie). Anyway, I think this was just another experiment to see my reaction. I didn't make a big deal out of it, but it's a good indicator that we can start working in some discussions about truth into our days.

2. I read one of the best blog posts I've ever read the other day. I literally got chills reading it. Although I am ashamed of the feelings, I am not ashamed to admit that I had a moment like she describes with each of my babies. If you can't or don't want to read the post, the author talks about a moment of complete and utter frustration with her fussy baby interrupting an attempt to spend time with her husband. She was just at the very end of her rope and found herself in that ugly place where you can imagine doing something awful to your baby. The vast (VAST) majority of us never do that thing, but it is easy to see how someone could find themselves so overwhelmed, so isolated and so blinded by what motherhood asks of us that a bad thing could happen. A big trigger for me used to be trying to put a baby to bed so I could eat dinner, only to hear crying as soon as I was about to take a bite. In retrospect, the solution is so easy - eat a snack before putting the baby to bed, or even eat dinner earlier. But I felt, like the author of this blog, that I just wanted to do this ONE THING (eat dinner with my husband) and the baby wouldn't LET ME. Anyway, one of the things I find so amazing about blogs in general is the opportunity to connect with other people and share experiences - both good and bad. Maybe you'll find solace in knowing that babies (and kids in general) bring us all to the brink sometimes.

3. A commenter asked me about the snow painting we did; she wondered whether we used food coloring to color the water because she thought that would stain. Well, Amy, funny story about that. Snow painting was one of those ideas I'd read about and thought yeah, that would totally make me a good mom if we did that. I'd read that liquid water colors work well but couldn't find any at the particular store I went to so I did use food coloring. When we got outside, I discovered that the kids couldn't spray with their mittens on so they had to take them off. Luckily it wasn't too terribly cold but it wasn't ideal.  So then Pacey started spraying the house. We have vinyl siding and I wasn't sure whether it would stain that, so I was frantically going along behind him rubbing at the sprays with snow trying to get it off. Then the kids started spraying each other. I'm not too anal about stains and stuff on clothes, but they do have to wear their snow gear for another couple of months so I wasn't too happy about that. Then one pushed the other down. Recall they were not wearing mittens and cue meltdowns about cold, wet hands. At this point I may or may not have completely lost my temper, hauled everyone inside and abandoned the spray bottles in the garage, muttering all the while about stupid freaking winter "fun."

So, Amy, I've heard liquid watercolors work great, or maybe powdered tempera paint if you can find washable? Alternatively you could just throw some dye on your kids' clothes, rub their hands with ice and get your dog to pee in the snow and save yourself getting cold ;)

Hmm, this post is long enough already and I have a school run to do. Resolution check-in tomorrow.