Expect the unexpected

At the risk of this turning into a Bill Cosby-esque "Kids Say the Darndest Things" post, I had to share the following transcript from a conversation this morning:

Daughter: "Is Buzz [Lightyear] wearing his ice clothes?"
MOM: "It's called a spacesuit, honey. It protects him from heat as well as ice."
D: "But he needs his ice clothes to fly."
M: "I'm not sure what you're talking about, honey. His spacesuit has wings."
D: "But he told Woody in the movie that he can fly across the room with his ice clothes."
(MOM pauses and thinks for a moment)
M: "Do you mean with his EYES CLOSED?"
D: "Yeah, mama. With his ice clothes!"
(MOM nearly steers car into light pole while laughing.)

Tough love

Sometimes we all wake up on the wrong side of the bed, but when a 3-1/2-year-old girl wakes up on said wrong side after a couple of nights of sleep deficit, making it through the day is like navigating a minefield. You never know what's going to make her blow.

The sleep deficit comes from her newfound realization that she can get out of bed with her flashlight, find books and toys in her room, and stay up until 10 or 11 playing. Now, we thought it was just a one-night thing (poor, misguided souls that we are) and let her have the flashlight again the next night. Surprise, surprise -- it happened again. So, tonight -- after meltdowns that occurred over getting out of bed, getting dressed, not being able to change tutus, not being able to eat dinner downstairs in front of the TV (where did THAT come from?), having to rinse off after her bubble bath, and not being able to select War & Peace as her bedtime book -- she has been put to bed sans flashlight in the hopes that maybe she will be asleep before we watch the episode of West Wing we TiVoed over the weekend.

We're trying to teach her that actions have consequences, but it's not a lesson she wants to learn.

Through the looking glass

I encourage everyone (yes, all three of you) to head on over to Blog Mommy Blog and read mom2zayna's post on the difficulty of raising girls in today's world. I could have written her post (and, in fact, have written on the topic before), but she said it thoroughly and eloquently.

On dreams and reality

I've had a variation of the same bad dream for years now. I'm headed to the airport to go to Paris, running late for my flight, and realize as I'm about to check in that I've forgotten my passport, and I don't have time to go back home and get it. There's probably some big underlying reason for these dreams that is rooted with in my subconcious about insecurity or feelings of being unprepared for work, parenthood, life. However, I just think it means I really, really want to go to Paris. Once I dreamt that I was actually there, standing in front of the Eiffel Tower, and I couldn't believe it and broke into tears of joy.

It's not that I'm untraveled. I've been all over Italy and Switzerland; to Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, and Vienna; to London, Mexico, and the Carribbean. I've just never been to Paris. This is especially galling as I attended a French school for five years and took eight years of French classes.

However, this is a roundabout way to say WE BOUGHT TICKETS TO PARIS YESTERDAY! I am FINALLY getting to go!! It's our tenth anniversary, we've found someone to take care of the little girl for a week, and we have a hotel that is actually somewhat affordable in the center of the city. It's like a dream come true...except for the passport thing. And, yes, I'm such a basket case that I actually have already checked our passports to make sure a) I knew where they were, and b) that they weren't expired.

So, I am off to resume my floating five feet off the ground. I will soon return to my regularly scheduled angst.