It's The Little Things

Yesterday was bad. Really bad. If you follow me on Twitter, you may have witnessed my pathetic live-tweeting of Josephine refusing to take her nap. 

It didn't end well. As in, she didn't take a nap, and then the rest of the evening was a vicious cycle of screaming and crying, screaming and crying. She melted down and didn't pull herself together until she fell asleep last night. 

Let's put it this way: The last time she skipped her nap, she ended up like this ...

Yeah.

Considering my nerves are already pretty shot from dealing with two very demanding kids all day, having Jeremy work very late, and then getting only short bursts of sleep at night (when I get any at all), after she fell asleep, I cried a lot last night.

Then this morning she got up nicely (after sleeping twelve straight hours without a peep) and asked for a Mickey bandaid. (She's doing that now -- demanding bandaids on imaginary boo-boos. Doesn't that seem a little early?) When I put the bandaid on, she smiled and said "Thank you for the Mickey bandaid, mama!" and skipped off. 

I stopped and counted on my fingers -- a SEVEN-WORD sentence? Wow. With that, she sent me back to the warm fuzzies I was feeling at her (rather late, I KNOW) two-year well-visit the other day. 

Our new doctor is wonderful and knows just what to say. She told Josephine she was perfect and brilliant and beautiful and wonderful. She told me that she was off-the-charts advanced for her age in language and social skills. She even said I would have to be careful not to compare Genevieve to Josephine, because if Genevieve developed normally, I might think she is behind the curve. She said "A kid like Josephine is hard to top!" 

I know she is supposed to make moms feel good about their kids. It's part of her job. But ... come on. If she had said that about your kid, you would be bursting at the seams with pride, too. 

And that seven-word sentence this morning reminded me that the doctor said Josephine only needed to be using two-word phrases right now to be on track for language development. My kid is fantastic, she really is, and not just because she has language skills that blow my mind, but for so many reasons. She's a great kid, she really is, and I was so happy to be reminded of that after a day of pulling out my hair and a night of crying and berating myself for my sub-par parenting skills.

I love that a single second can take you to a whole you new place in this parenthood thing I got myself caught up in. 

However, it looks like she's going to have to say an eight-word sentence after naptime today, as she has been in her bed for an hour and a half but is currently NOT SLEEPING and Jeremy just sent me a text that he is going to be home very late tonight.

Hold me.

If you have a great idea for what eight-word sentence Josephine should say to make up for her naptime shenanigans, leave it in the comments. I'll choose a doozy or two and try to get a video of her saying them. :)