All is delightful in my world today – had a WONDERFUL Thanksgiving. Every year, Jessica and I (and now Julianna) head down to my mother’s house on Wednesday. We get up at the crack of dawn and make stuffing and get the turkey in the oven bright and early. It was a smaller crowd than usual this year, we had twelve people total. And it was perfect. Everyone there was happy and content, there was no conflict, no hidden resentments – it was just a gathering of people who were happy with each other and happy to be there. I loved it.
HOWEVER, my poor little Jessie Bug Noodle last night – she was so incredibly overtired. We went to Marc’s aunts house on the way home and had dessert with his family. Which, slight digression here, was also lovely. Nan runs a daycare, so she’s got lots of fun toys for the kids and Julianna is such a social baby. I walked in and immediately plopped her down in my mother-in-law’s lap. I could NOT have done that with Sam. Sam still hates social settings and has to eased slowly into them, with a lot of alone time with one of us and slowly integrated into a party – and sometimes he doesn’t ever get comfortable and spends the entire party hiding behind my legs. Jess was sort of in the middle, she liked people, but needed some time to warm up. But Julie – she’s just delighted to see everyone. People love her, she knows it and is instantly comfortable and relaxed. I can’t get used to it – but I do absolutely love the smiles on everyone’s faces when my beautiful baby girl is loving them.
Back to Jessie… so we got home and she was so tired. She had gotten up at five and cooked her little heart out. I was so proud of her, because she was right there, totally involved, mixing stuffing and cramming it into the turkey. But five o’clock is crazy early for my girl, and she was so done by the end of the day. I was scurrying around the house, cleaning and Marc was in the living room with all three kids. Jess and Sam started pushing and shoving each other, fighting over which one was going to play with Julianna. Marc tried, ineffectually, to tell them to stop and finally had to reach down and snatch Jules up, and explain to them that she wasn’t a toy and they didn’t get to fight over her. Both of them instantly started screaming and Sam stormed off and started hollering at me about it. I tried to talk to him, but he was just screaming so I popped him into his bedroom to cool off. I came back into the living room, pretty aggravated at the whole situation, and told Jess that her choices were to either stop yelling or go to her room. She kept yelling and I told her to go to her room and she got up, yanked up Julie’s play mat and hurled it across the living room. I marched her to her room and told her to go to bed.
I never do that – just send her to bed crying. I felt awful – although I knew it was the right thing to do. She was so exhausted, she just needed to sleep, and she also needed to know that chucking toys across a room is not an appropriate way of expressing her feelings. I went in to check on her and she had curled up in bed with a box of tissues and fallen asleep, with her little angelic face all tear stained and tissues scattered and crumpled up across the bed. Felt like a terrible mother… but she still loves me, woke up this morning and crawled into my lap for a good morning hug š
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