Redhaired Challenges

Capricious.
Petulant.
Easily upset.
Sensitive.
Creative.
Messy.
Articulate.
Precocious.
Inquisitive (to a fault).
Advanced.
Snotty.
These are some of the words I would use to describe my sweet little Laney Lou. As you can see, they run the gamut. Some days, it's "Mommy, I love you so, so much and I love spending time with you!!" Minutes later it's, "Mommy. I. WANT. TO. BE. BY. MYSELF. WITHOUT. YOU. GO. AWAY!" It's exhausting and scary.

Tonight, she said from the back of the car, "Mommy, who was that on the phone, was it Grammy?"

I said, "Yes, how did you know?"

She said, "I could tell by that bossy little voice."

I said (snickering), "Grammy's?"

She said, "No yours..."

She does crack us up regularly! Last week she told my mother who is early childhood educated, in a voice that appeared to be without emotion, "Grammy. I don't think you're very good at taking care of children." HAHAHAHA!! All because my mother had lost her temper, ever so briefly, with Elena.

It's just very hard to be the mother, and grandmother, and brother, and grandfather, and father of a spirited little redheaded four-year-old.

Wish us luck.

Send us prayers.

I Love Two-Year-Olds

I love it when my kids are starting to cobble together language. Liam is starting to migrate from a noun-only vocabulary to one that leapfrogs from adjective to verb to noun. An example?

Where he used to say: truck, truck! beep! beep!
He now says: beeping sound! truck backing up?

Where he used to say: mailbox! mailbox!
He now says: uh oh! broken mailbox! oh! another one mailbox!

It's so cute!

Broken Mailbox, Wrong Way, Beeping, Pees Car, Fire Tuck, Trash, Yick...

My walks with Liam continue to be punctuated by his observations. All things wheeled or mechanical are of particular interest. We think he has a career in civil engineering. Seems the mailbox obsession has morphed into his recently accepting a position as a mailbox inspector.

Black maillllllbox
White mailllllbox
Green maillllbox
Grey mailllbox
Uh oh....broken mailbox...

A broken mailbox is any mailbox not in pristine shape, rusty, crooked, bent, dinged, or (and this was funny) just a 4x4 sticking out of the ground is a broken mailbox. Apparently any post must have HAD a mailbox on it in Liam's world.

New to the vocab is the phrase "wrong way" (thank you, Ketra). So now, when we are walking, if we turn off the straightaway, I hear a nervous voice from behind me, "Uh oh...wong way...wong way..." Very cute (for now).