Snapshot From Tonight

Amy was running late and the girls were hungry, so I started dinner. Their first "course" was frozen corn. Eleanor likes it warmed in the microwave. Calliope prefers it in its "natural" frozen state. (She also likes to eat frozen (but fully cooked) breakfast sausage.)

Then there was cherry tomatoes, possibly slightly over the hill and roundly refused by everyone.

Until the piece de resistance, fish sticks with ketchup. Mmm!

I was always against the idea of fish sticks, but Calliope has seen my freshly baked salmon about a hundred times and still refuses to have anything to do with it. So fish sticks seemed like maybe a reasonable way to introduce her to fish?

You know, I had all these grandiose ideas about how my child was never going to be introduced to processed foods, and thus would never know to ask for them. (Stop laughing.)

And then I got a kid who had no interest in solid food. And stopped gaining weight. And fell off the growth chart for weight.

And so I decided to lower my standards. And she decided to start eating. Unrelated to my decision, but not unnoticed by me.

And now she eats pretty well -- a decent variety and reasonably well rounded -- and it's not tons of processed stuff. And she's got a nicely rounded little belly now, though she's not what you'd call rotund. But she just got introduced to fish sticks last week because it just didn't seem like salmon was going to work out anytime soon. And because Eleanor likes them. And because it's one more option in a not very long list.

But hey, they are organic! I think.

Fish sticks, and later rice cakes, went off without a hitch.

Then Calliope announced that she needed to pee. And didn't want me in the bathroom with her. A first.

So I waited patiently in the kitchen until she called for me... only to discover that she had peed all over the bathroom floor while jockying the toilet seat ring and stepping stool into place.

Sigh.

Eleanor and her mom finally left and we began the bedtime routine. I asked her to get two books. She wanted to read in the living room for a change. Fine.

She got her books and settled down next to me.... and announced, "Don't read the book, Abby. Don't read it, Abby."

Oh yeah, she's been calling me Abby more and more lately. No idea why. Maybe for added emphasis.

So she "read" for a while, then she gave me a turn, then snatched it away from me. I took it back, and told her she had to ask me nicely for it.

Cue meltdown.

Then she started to swat at me.

Story time over.

I brought her into the bedroom for tooth brushing. She tolerated it with only a little crying.

I put her in the crib. She asked for Boppy, aka a pacifier. She's a hardcore thumb sucker, but got interested in the pacifier again when she was sick a while back. I think because Eleanor has one.

I handed her the pacifier. She sucked on it for a minute, then threw it out of the crib. I picked it. I asked if she wanted it. She wouldn't respond.

Fine. I put it back in the dish. I had no reserves left for singing. For the first time, I just pulled down her shades, turned on the fan, and issued a quiet "good night."

She cried quietly, off and on, for a bit. She turned on the lights in her room. I went back in and moved her crib away from the wall. I've threatened to do this if she turned on the light in the past. This time, I didn't give any warnings. Last time's warnings should've been enough, no? I just moved her. No energy for warnings.

She cried some more.

Thirty minutes later, all was quiet in her room. I peered at the murky darkness on the screen of the baby monitor, and saw what looked like a naked shoulder. I went back in to investigate.

She had taken off all of her clothes, including the diaper (which she wears some nights but not others, depending on the patience of her mother) and was attempting to put on the giraffe costume that normally is stored out of reach of the crib (for this very reason).

Sigh.

I didn't have it in me to fight. I started to laugh. She looked up at me and giggled, too. I helped her put the costume on and closed the door.

I just went back in and she was sleeping peacefully. Wearing her pajamas. Giraffe costume piled next to her. I'm astounded she managed all that without help. And I'm grateful she's asleep at last.