ME: Did we just heat up moldy muffins for breakfast?

DANE: Looks that way.

ME: … And the day is off to an excellent start!

You know what kind of sucks? Deciding to dust the computer keyboard, going and getting q-tips for that purpose, sitting down with every intention of dusting, only to realize that what you were planning to clean? Is not, in fact, dust. It’s some kind of hardened crusty thing. Which not only makes all your predusting effort obsolete, it’s also just kind of gross.

The end.

SAYS DANE: Did you just start blogging while we’re sitting here talking?

ME: No, I STARTED blogging three days ago. I’m just trying to FINISH the post now.

HIM: Oh! I see.

Sadie turned two this week. Two. Two, two.

Two.

She seems so very new to me still.

Maybe that’s because she still is new in comparison to her older siblings, or because she’s a wee peanut of a person next to them.

Or maybe it’s because she hasn’t fallen asleep before 10:00pm even once in the last two weeks, which puts me in mind of her newborn days. Could be that.

Probably it’s not the sleep thing, but having an awake (awake! A-WAKE!) toddler night after very late night has sapped my ability to form coherent thoughts, let alone coherent sentences. (There’s nothing wrong, she’s not sick or anything, she’s just been spectacularly unsleepy. Either she needs to nap less, or she’s adjusted to the time change three weeks too soon.)

Last night the three older kids were in bed by 8:00, and Dane was out, leaving Sadie and I to our own devices for the duration of the really long evening.

“You know what?” I said at this point. “Let’s get out the sewing machine!” She can put pins in the pincushion, I thought, and maybe stack the extra spools of thread. Often she enjoys such activities.

“Sewing?” she said, all scorn and condescension. “I don’t wanna do sewing,” she said, as though I had just offered her a snack of soggy bread, or suggested that she might like to sleep in wet grass.

“Oh,” I said, “right,” and instead we settled in for yet another evening of sitting on the couch with Bear and Doll and Blanket and Quilt (which is entirely different than Blanket).

We read stories and sang quiet songs. She tried to jump on the couch, I said no. She undressed her doll. I redressed her doll. She reundressed her doll. I kissed her on the forehead, she kissed me on the nose. When I could think of nothing more to do, it is possible that we watched an inordinate amount of Sesame Street: Old School.

And I suspect we get to do it all again tonight, and tomorrow night.

Ah, two.

Hypothetically speaking, if you were to chop vegetables for soup at noon, but never get around to making the soup until, say, six o’clock—if, for instance, after you chopped the vegetables, the three-year-old were to be the sort of cranky that indicates she needs a nap, but the one-year-old wasn’t ready to sleep and everybody else needed lunch, and then when the one-year-old did fall asleep for her nap, the three-year-old woke up cheerlessly, and somehow between that and providing assistance and direction to the (homeschooled) six- and nine-year-old, the afternoon got away from you—after sitting on the counter for six hours, it appears that the veggies will be a little wilted, but the soup will turn out just fine.

The fact that it then takes you another forty minutes to peel the garlic to start the soup—possibly because you need to peel ten cloves, and you are interrupted after each and every clove by “requests” for “help” with “inter-sibling problem-solving”—will also not harm the soup in any way.

For future reference.

I was washing the dishes at the kitchen sink. Sadie, who is almost two, pushed a kitchen chair up to the stovetop directly behind me, climbed onto it, and began twisting the dials to turn on the burners. She did all this in maybe twenty seconds. Luckily I was right there. Luckily I grabbed her, soapy hands and all, and set her unharmed on the floor. Not one of my older kids has ever tried to mess with the stove. Not one. Not ever. The dials are up high, far out of reach, and mostly out of sight, I thought. Sometimes I think that even if we had twenty kids, every one of them would come up with some new thing to get into, some new way to surprise us. (Um, not that we’re going to have twenty kids. Just to be clear.)

A good friend had a baby this week, had a lovely, normal birth that turned complicated and could have ended very, very badly. The baby is fine—strong and beautiful, I’ve seen her myself—and her mama is recovering quickly. But still, this wasn’t what we expected.

Some days I’m reminded how little we control, even when we spend our days pretending at being in charge, with our childproofed homes and our safe neighborhoods and our reasonable expectations. There is so little, so very little we can really claim to have a handle on. I can accept that for myself, but the thing is: even if I can’t control anything, I’m still responsible for these little people who need me to be in charge of a thing or two.

Or maybe they don’t need that, maybe I just want to give that to them. An orderly world, where if we follow the rules, do the things we’re supposed to do, we’ll all be safe. We like to think we live in a world like that. Most often it works that way. But sometimes not. And there’s not much I can do about that.

Those stove dials, though, they can be removed. I’m keeping them in a locked drawer for now.

The three-year-old asks: “What’s so magic about Puff? Isn’t he just like any other dragon?”

ME: “Um…”
3YO: “Aren’t all dragons magic?”
ME: “Um…”
3YO: “Is he MORE magic than other dragons? Does he do something magic?”
ME: “No?”
3YO: “I think he should just be called Puff the Dragon.”
ME: “Okay.”
3YO: “Actually… Puff the Magic Dragon sounds better than Puff the Dragon. Maybe that’s why.”
ME: “I would believe that.”

Later, Dane home from work, kids still singing Puff song.

DANE: Did you ever think about why it’s Puff the MAGIC Dragon? Is there really anything magic about him?
ME: [giggle.]

I am fighting something germy. A cold or something. Nothing exciting. (Please, nothing exciting!) I will go ahead and state for the record: juice with Echinacea in it is sort of gross.

So, here’s something else to talk about: are you doing NaNoWriMo this year? How about NaBloPoMo (for November)? NaSomethingElseMo? Do tell.

ME: [talking to computer, over which I am trying to order fabric] I want a knit—I think modal or something similar.

COMPUTER: I have that!

ME: Excellent, I need—

COMPUTER: I have SUNSET ORANGE and NEON YELLOW.

ME: Um. Do you have something less, uh, bright?

COMPUTER: I have SUNSET ORANGE and NEON YELLOW.

ME: Yeah, okay, but it’s for clothing. For me. So, maybe, like, charcoal? Espresso? Sage? Something blue?

COMPUTER: I have SUNSET ORANGE and NEON YELLOW.

ME: I’ll keep that in mind next time I need to dress like a pumpkin or a… a… a pineapple.

DANE: Are you talking to the computer screen?

ME: I’m trying to buy fabric.

DANE: And to do that you’re talking to the computer screen?

ME: You just can’t hear what it’s saying to me.

DANE: Right…

It is possible that I am unequal to the task of conversing with one-year-olds.

When Sadie woke up from her nap today, she called for me.
It sounded urgent, so I came running into the room. “What is it?” I ask.
“Elephant,” she says. She’s not upset.
“Oh?”
“Elephant.”
“Yes,” I say, though I have no idea what elephant that might be.
She sighs. “Yes. Elephant. Perhaps.” And then she gets out of bed and sets about her afternoon play.

And yesterday, when I asked her to hand me her dish instead of dumping it out:
I say, “Are you all done? Can you give mama the bowl and say ALL DONE?”
She looks at me, her face serious. I expect to hear “all done,” in her chipper toddler voice. Instead she hands me her bowl without cracking a smile and says: “Goodnight, sunshine.”

Some days I think she has a fully adult brain inside that toddler body, and she’s just messing with me.