365 Days of Twins: How not to be furious at your kid.

Possibly one of my favorites of Abigail to date.

It may not be readily obvious, but she is crawling here. Crawling like a mad woman. What made this little post-bath Crawl-o-Rama so darn satisfying is that she instigated it herself (she wanted to crawl towards - and attempt to electrocute herself with - the humidifier, just to my left), and also it was a joy for her. Efforts at crawling have so far been exactly that: efforts. It is by no manner a desirable event, plopping her down and prodding her miniscule little butt to scoot. She cries (see picture two from a couple days ago); we get annoyed. It repeats. This time, she went up and crawled, and fell, and crawled again, and repeated, goofball smile pasted on her face the whole time. She is a goofball.

Now that I've lauded my little girl to lofty heights, lets bring her crashing right back down. She's changed her schedule on us, with no apparent motive, and certainly without consulting us. Bedtime is still remaining dependably in the 7:30 neighborhood, but her wakey time - normally 7am - has abruptly popped its unwelcome self up to 6am.

We were blindly hopeful that this extra hour could be passed playing quietly in her crib, which they have been known to do from time to time. That's not the way it's shaking out.

Our strange arrangement now is to wake with them...oh yeah, it's Them, because Lily does not allow these transgressions to go unpunished. She wakes the moment our toes hit their floor. She could probably sleep another hour and a half, but not when there's action in the room. So we do the prudent thing: make two bottles, feed them both, and put them back in bed for another hour.

It's not a great solution, and I'm not sure what the long term answer is.

This morning, I was groggy and annoyed at getting up. Very tired, very cranky. The truth is that Abby only woke me (us) about 1o minutes before my alarm anyway, but I did not let that fact cloud my annoyance at her. It's so much easier to be mad at a bawling kid, and she was bawling at that point because we tried to let her put herself back to sleep for a few minutes, which only increased her furor. So we went in. Lily bolted up like a moron springing a trap (I believe I've written about this earlier), and we set about feeding them.

The entire bottle I dozed in between fits of frustration. Look at the clock...zz....so ..mad...zzzz...let the bottle drop, whoops....let the cat drink whatever just dripped on the carpet...zzzz

It's easy as well to be ticked off during the bottle. She's getting what she wants, while I can feel myself aging by the minute.

She finished her bottle by throwing it down. She sat up quickly and reached for my shirt. I was wearing an ancient, threadbare Section 7A track meet t-shirt that my siblings bought for me; I'd placed first at the meet my senior year, sending me off to the state meet in Blaine, so they bought it for me as a memento. Abby loves the shirt, loves the writing on the front of it; it's purple, and that seems to please her intensely.

I am, of course, still mad as hell and tired beyond words.

Abby runs her dainty little sausages over my shirt for a few seconds, then looks at me and laughs (reference the picture below for an idea), and belts out a "da daaah!" Da-da.

I laugh. It's one of these laughs that I've never known until parenthood. It's a laugh that shoots out like a dam crumbling away, a laugh that surprises me how closely it stradles the line of a cry or a swear word but ends up as something better. It's the laugh of my life snapping back into focus. My annoyance fades like the clang of a baseball bat off a metal pole. Abby senses that she's dispelled the fog, so she laughs again, and this is how my day begins.

Day fifty eight.

I'm not sure you can start pole beans inside, but I'm trying anyway. This eager little beaver looked to me like a guy jumping up out of the soil. "Ta daaah!"