Colds and Babies

I have a cold. I guess this is what happens when a small child who has a cold coughs directly into your open mouth. So I am all sniffley and sort of achy and super tired. The tired part is really nothing new, but now I have another excuse, on top of being pregnant with an almost 15 month old.

Speaking of, my daughter is a little girl. I mean, a real, live, little girl. She loves her babies. And my loves, I mean that she can hone in on one in any room within about 30 seconds and immediately declares it hers. Her daycare teacher actually asked me how we handle it when she gets “attached” to something and that something needs to get taken away. The example given was her baby. Oh dear. She carries her babies (yes, plural) around most of the day, occasionally disregarding their safety and tossing them aside for a drink of juice of perhaps a “bear” (aka Teddy Graham). She must sleep with them, and if you have to wake her in the morning, she has to eat with them as well. She has this same attachment to her blanket, only a little less severe. She seems to know that the blanket is for when you are tired and cranky and crabby and crying all. the. time.

So she is a little girl who already has a preference of which barrette she wants in her hair, knows that when she is wearing a dress she looks pretty, and is developing this new high-pitched squeal/scream/cry that I have been dreading. She is also a little girl who has a nice, high tolerance for pain, and thinks nothing of knocking her head against a wall or falling down and scraping her knees. She isn’t a huge fan of grass, and when she touched it when picking up Easter eggs, she always brushed her hands off, as if to tell that dirty, dirty grass to suck it. (I hope that she gets over the grass thing, one of my favorite childhood memories was running around the yard.)

Yesterday, my sister and mom took my twin nieces to the American Girl store in Chicago. They each came home with a set of little twins, and also a wheelchair as an accessory. (Not quite sure how that came about.) Sam immediately decided that the babies, yes, ALL FOUR, were hers. And they belonged in the recliner, or the wheelchair to be pushed around. She could’ve played for hours. Fortunately, my nieces are very good about sharing and knew damn well that those babies were going home with them. And Sam was just so darn cute. And no, I did NOT think to grab my video camera so everyone could enjoy my child’s adorableness. (Yes, the Flip video camera that I bought so I can keep in my purse where it is ever so handy to just grab when something sweet is happening.) We had to sneak the babies out of the house, and since Sam’s attention span at this point is just longer than that of a gnat, there wasn’t too much trauma.

I always knew that little girls could be fun. I was just convinced when I was pregnant the first time around that karma would rear its ugly head and I would be challenged with a child that put me straight into the insane asylum. And yes, I know that could still happen. But for now, she is so darn cute, and sweet, and easy-going, that I can’t imagine it any other way. On Thursday, we go in for our 2nd ultrasound, and we can find out the sex of this baby. Don’t get all excited folks…there are 19 more weeks of waiting for you and me alike. We WON’T be finding out if this is a boy or a girl, it’s just more fun that way. (Plus, I don’t think my credit card could take it…once I know what I am having, let the online shopping commence!)