Today was Makayla’s last day of kindergarten. Matt went and picked her up from school at noon since it was a half day. I hadn’t gotten home from work until 3:45 and after I showered and wound down, didn’t get to bed until after 4:30. So I was still sleeping at noon. I was asleep in her bed because I wanted her to wake me up when she got home from school. I had been so tired this morning as I got her ready for school that I did her hair, brushed her teeth, and all the other in my underwear which she found hilarious.
“I didn’t even know I didn’t have pants on!” I told her, “Oh my gosh, how silly. I’m just tired.”
So she got home from school and I was passed out. I was startled awake my her little hand caressing my forehead.
“I brought you some water, Mommy,” she said, “do you want me to rub your back? You are like a fairy when you sleep.”
“If I am like a fairy when I sleep then fairies must drool,” I said, sitting up, “you’re so sweet to bring me water. Thank you.”
“You’re so funny, Mommy! Fairies don’t drool!”
“I would rather be a ninja than a fairy,” I told her.
She looked at me with huge blue eyes and I thought I was about to get a lecture on how un-cool ninjas are compared to fairies but she said, “You are the sweetest lady I have ever known before. And you are really funny. A lot of mommies aren’t funny like you and they aren’t as nice as you. You are always making me happy.”
I was a little uncomfortable with the compliments but said, “It is easy to be sweet to you because you are so awesome.”
“You are sweet to everyone. Sometimes grown-ups are not nice all the time like that. Are you even a real grown-up yet, Mommy?”
“Yes. Maw Maw is a grown up and she is even sweeter than me. Did you know I have never, ever seen her be rude to anyone, not even once in my whole life?”
“Maw Maw is not a grown up though. She is an old Maw Maw. Have you ever been rude to someone?”
“Yes,” I told Makayla, “I have a temper sometimes and when people annoy me, sometimes I say something that isn’t nice. Or I guess I used to do those things. But you know what? Since I know that saying rude things to people is not OK, I learned how to control my temper and not be rude. I’ll always have a temper but I can control how I handle my temper. Does that make sense?”
She nodded. “You did not have a mean tempter to that little boy yesterday at the park. Or at that mean man. I wanted to kick that man but I bet I would have gotten in trouble.”
“I’m glad you didn’t kick that guy,” I told Makayla, “not only would that have been mean, that guy was clearly a raging idiot. He might have done something scary. It’s best to just leave people like that alone.”
“I would save your life if he was scary to you,” Makayla said.
“I appreciate it but if that guy had actually been stupid enough to hit me or something, you would run away and find help and stay out of it.”
“No I wouldn’t. I would save you.”
I figured the chances of me getting into an altercation like that again were pretty slim so I decided not to argue with her.
“You are the sweetest, best little girl I have ever met before and I love you with my whole heart. And my whole toes,” I told her.
She laughed at the toes part and spread her little arms as wide as they would go, as she formed a dramatically excited expression on her little face and said, “I love you even bigger than this. Bigger than the whole universe. What is bigger than the universe?”
“I have no idea,” I told her, assuming she’s too young for my theories on such a thing, “but I love you so much my head could just explode.”
She laughed hysterically and demonstrated with sound effects and jazz fingers what an exploding head would look like. Then she suddenly stopped, looked at her fingers and said, “Mommy! Bones can’t move! So how do my fingers move?” She started pumping her arm, and in an anxious, alarmed kind of way said, “Mommy! Then how do your arms even move!”
With an anxious, flabbergasted expression, she examined her moving fingers and arms.
I am not a professional bone scientist so I tried to find a simple way to explain to her. While I was thinking, she basically screamed, “I don’t UNDERSTAND! I’m CONFUSED!” She spoke like this was a critical emergency.
“Hang on Makayla, I’m trying to find a way to tell it to you,” I said.
She looked at me intently which was distracting but I was able to say, “OK. Your bones cannot move but there are things called joints in your fingers and arms and other places that…bend so you can move your arms and fingers and stuff.” I pointed out the joints in her arm and fingers.
“The bones stay still but the joints around the bones help us move stuff on our bodies.”
“I know all about joints,” Makayla said, “My grandma is always telling me about them. I thought joints were things that make you sick all the time.”
“Some people’s joints start hurting when they get older. Joints just make your body move and stuff.”
“Well, if your bones broke then they’d move,” Makayla said.
“Yup,” I agreed, “Good point.”
“Are you still sleepy?” she asked.
“Yes,” I told her, “do you want to lay down with me? I don’t think I can go back to sleep. I’m just going to rest for a minute.”
“Your breath smells like a burrito,” she said. She sniffed again, “and milk.”
“Gross,” I told her, “I’ll brush my teeth shortly. Want to lay down with me?”
“Nope,” she said, planted a smooch on my forehead, and hopped off to go play with Matt. I lied down and felt total happiness and pride for Makayla. I did end up going back to sleep for a little while and when I woke up, Makayla said, “I missed you! Let’s do stuff together!”
Matt left for work and she hid her various child items around the house and drew me a treasure map so that I could find them. The map was really good but she would get so excited as I got close to discovering one of her treasures that she would tell me exactly where it was.
“Makayla, it’s not as much fun when you tell me where stuff is,” I told her, “let me use the map.”
She laughed and made a show of putting her hands over her mouth so she wouldn’t tell me where stuff was. When I found the last item on her list, she said, “OK, now go find the stuff that isn’t on the map!”
“You just hid stuff from me and want me to find it? How can I find it if I don’t know what it is?”
“You have to figure it out,” she said.
“I’m not doing that,” I told her.
“Then you ruined everything!” she wailed and presented me with a look of utter travesty.
“If you put it on the treasure map I’ll look for it,” I told her.
“No! That’s not the game! You’re destroying my soul!”
“That’s a little dramatic, Makayla,” I told her.
“YOU’RE dramatic!” she wailed, “You ruined my whole day!”
“Cut it now right now,” I told her, “calm down. Let me get you some water.”
“I don’t want water! I’m not going to drink it!” she yelled from her room as I fetched her a glass of water. When I went back to her room to give it to her, she took the cup from my hand and angrily slammed it onto her desk, splashing water everywhere. How annoying.
“You know better than that,” I told her, “you can stay in your room until you calm down. Relax. When you stop acting like this, you can clean up the water you just spilled. And then we’ll talk.”
“I’ll talk now, I’ll talk now!” she screamed, “Don’t leave me in here! I’m calm!”
“I’ll talk to you when you’re all the way calm,” I told her as I left. She yelled at me from her room, “I AM all the way calm! Please, Mommy! I am So CALM!” She started blowing on her harmonica as hard as she could, I’m assuming trying to annoy me because she knows how much I dislike that dumb thing. I went to her bedroom door, and said, “That’s probably a good way to get calm. Blow into that thing as hard as you can. You’re doing great.” I have her a thumbs up sign and closed her bedroom door. She opened it and blew her harmonica right at the door. I went back to the door, guided her to the middle of the room and said, “You know to shut the door when you’re playing that thing. You can open your door when you’re done.”
I left. She blasted her harmonica a few times and then opened her door. It was quiet for a few seconds and she started blowing on her recorder, which is equally as annoying as her harmonica. This amused me so I had to wait until I could stop smiling and went to her door and said, “The door stays shut when you’re playing that thing too.”
“But you SAID to close the door with the harmonica!” she wailed, “this isn’t fair! I’m calm. Just look at me!”
I did. She was all red in the cheeks with a very un-calm look on her face.
“Get calmer,” I told her and shut the door.
She opened the door after seeing that blasting her recorder wouldn’t get her any attention. Then she stood at her open door and whistled for a few minutes. I ignored it. She started making herself burp. I ignored that too. Then she got a pair of shoes and clapped them together. She would clap them for a while, stop, wait a few seconds, then start again.
“I bet you don’t like that noise!” Makayla hollered at me, “I bet it’s annoying to you!”
“It sounds great!” I hollered back to her, “it’s like drums!”
She clapped them a few more times and then stopped. Then I didn’t hear anything for twenty minutes. Usually when Makayla is told to go calm down in her room it doesn’t take more than ten minutes. I finally went in to see what she was doing. She was sitting on her floor, surrounded by all of her shoes, and they were all upside down. She was using various things to hit the bottom of all of her shoes.
“What are you doing?” I asked her.
“I made some drums. Look Mommy, all the shoes make a different noise. And if you put stuff in the shoes and then hit them, then it makes and even more different noise. Come do it with me.”
I sat with her and we pounded shoes. As we pounded she said without looking at me, “the thing is, is that I hid a lot of my stuff and I wanted you to find it because I forgot where I put it.”
“Why didn’t you just tell me that?” I asked, as I continued pounding shoes, “if you told me that, I wouldn’t have minded helping you. But if you tell me to find things and you don’t even tell me what those things are, how can I find them?”
“I forgot what I hid too,” she said, “and actually, it was your stuff I hid, not mine. I thought you would have fun finding your own stuff too but then I thought you would be mad at me for losing your stuff.”
“I’m not mad,” I told her, “we can still find it. Try to remember exactly what of mine you hid and maybe we can figure out where you would have put it.”
She stopped pounding shoes and tapped her lips with her forefinger while looking up at the ceiling. I looked up too but realized she was just contemplating.
“Your flip flops. Your make-up bag. Those little things under the cabinet. The ones Bubba thinks is candy.”
Tampons. Lovely.
“Did you hide the box or just pull the little things out and hide them?” I asked.
“I took them all out and hid them all.”
“In the same place or did you hide them all in different places?”
“All in different places.”
Dang it. Searching the house for twenty plus tampons did not sound like a fun idea to me.
“Don’t get into those again,” I told her, “anything else?”
“I don’t remember. I’m sorry I was yelling at you.”
“I forgive you,” I told her, still a little distracted that there were tampons hidden everywhere, “Do you remember earlier when we talked about a temper?”
She nodded.
“Well, when you get scared or upset, you have a temper too. It’s OK to be mad and scared but you have to figure out a way to get the mad out without yelling. Like blasting on your harmonica. Or turning shoes into drums.”
“How do you get your mad out?” she asked.
“I shoot the BB gun. Or I just clean stuff. And then once the mad is out, you can talk to people and figure stuff out.”
“I feel bad that I was being mean to you,” she said, looking at me with a total look of regret, “I feel like, just terrible and sad that I was mean. I was just playing with my harmonica to make you annoyed and I feel sad to do that to you.”
“Well, remember how you feel right now the next time you want to yell and do things just to upset someone, and maybe it will help you figure out another way to calm down. And you apologized and I forgave you and so all that stuff is POOF!” I used my chopstick as a wand and flicked it as if to flick away all “that stuff.”
She thought that was funny. We put her shoes up and started looking around the house for my stuff. I still have not found a lot of the tampons. I’m sure they’ll show up. After we were done looking for my stuff, she asked to watch TV and I told her I’d rather her do something creative. She went to her room to work on a masterpiece and I got to work cleaning stuff, totally proud of her super sweet self.
