Mommy's a Princess....Today!

The day didn't start particularly well. Last night continued to follow the same pattern of earlier in the day and Claire was in trouble more times than she wasn't. I thought we put her and the attitude to bed last night, but her memory is sharp and she began immediately this morning taking it out on me, her comfort zone!!!

I woke up this morning with every intention of pulling myself together. You can atleast look like you have it all together even if you don't. So, though on the inside I was falling apart, I polished the outside, putting on jewelry (I rarely wear jewelry), straightening my hair (a rare luxury) and ironing my clothes (an extinct practice of mine).

As soon as I woke her up, she was screaming at me. Changing her diaper...screaming at me. Getting into the car...screaming at me. We have a routine when we are about 2 minutes from Becca. As the sun rises in the east (at 6:30 in the morning...maybe that is why she is so mad at me!), we tell Mr. Sun good morning and then look for the birds on the wire. And then we are close enough to Becca's to start anticipating Sophie and Jonah. This routine always changes her disposition...for the good!

Which immediately reminded me...children need routine. I have been traveling non-stop throughout August and Bill has been building the house. While Bill and I feel like our world is topsy-turvy, I cannot imagine what Claire feels like. She needs routine. She needs me. She needs stability. And several wise and great friends had the courage to reiterate that to me today. How I am thankful for truth.

So when I picked Claire up from Becca's this afternoon, I had every intention of making the evening all about her (within reason). So, we ran around and played in the grass with Sophie and Jonah. When it was time to leave, I put Claire in the front-passenger side to just get her in the vehicle until I could get her bags loaded on the other side. As soon as I closed the last door, I heard "click". She locked herself in the vehicle! I immediately called Bill to come help us, but he was atleast 10 minutes away. So I stood outside the car trying to coax her to push the button again. And she did, it was just the lock button...again and again. Dave, Becca's husband, came out to give re-enforcement. He stood there and kept saying, "Claire, push the button." She just looked at him as he continued to coax her. She finally said, "Pwees, pwees." So Dave said, "Claire, push the button, PLEASE" and she did! Still the wrong button, but we laughed at her. At least she's learning some manners in the midst of these tantrums.

So Bill arrived and we went to Sonic for a banana split. Then we went home and played, played, played. We got all of her basket of toys down and just dumped them out (it has been MONTHS since she has played with many of these toys since the house is for sale and I felt the need to limit toys that she played with to eliminate mess...maybe that's another reason she's mad at me!)

Now, to the point of this long story. When she was eating dinner, because it was an evening all about her, I let her drink out of her non-sippy cup Princess cup. It's just a regular cup that her Aunt Patty and Cousin Payton gave her for Christmas and it has all the Disney princesses on it. I was eating my supper and heard her saying, "Mommy, mommy, mommy." I looked up and she was spinning the cup around and pointing to each of the princesses.

"Mommy's a princess?" I asked. And she looked up at me with that sweet, loving smile and pointed once again to the prettiest princess and said, "Mommy!"

Thank you, Lord, for seeing us through today.