Lessons

Lessons I have learned from my children over the past 24 hours:

1.) No matter how carefully you try to guide your child through drinking lemonade from an open cup at a restaurant, chances that she is going to spill the lemonade are very high.  If you happen to be sitting next to her, she will almost certainly spill the full cup into YOUR lap rather than onto herself.

2.) Whoever coined the phrase "it's like riding a bike," obviously did not have a Nervous Nellie for a daughter.  In said daughter's case, the first few attempts of re-riding a bike after the winter's hiatus resulted into a) crashing into a tree, b) veering off the sidewalk onto the lawn and pitching herself off the bike into the ground, and c) immediately tipping over sideways the moment after mounting the bike.

(Luckily, once Julia remembered she DID in fact know how to ride, she was back in top form:)

3.) Sometimes you will be so anxious to get out the door with your kids, and so glad that your child FINALLY agrees on a pair of shoes, that you will take her out to the store dressed in a (way too small) toddler sunhat, tee-shirt, floral skirt and a pair of snow boots without batting an eye. 


4.) When you allow your child free range in a bookstore to pick out any ONE book she wants to buy, she will, of course, skip over any variety of books by top-notch children's authors, and will ABSOLUTELY judge a book solely by its cover.  Thus, you will wind up paying good money for a poorly rhyming book about a coat written by none other than:

Dolly Parton

5.) When your child sees the above picture of the author, she will wind up having the following conversation with you:

MADELEINE: But...but...why does she have that kind of mouth and look so EVIL?  Like Aunt Zelda's evil TWIN?

ME: Uh...does Aunt Zelda have an evil twin?

MADELEINE: Yeah.  In "Sabrina the Teenage Witch."  And her evil twin looks JUST like that girl.  

ME: Oh.  Hmm.  Well, that girl is named Dolly Parton, and she's a singer.

MADELEINE: (wistfully) I wish I could have THAT kind of mouth.

ME: What kind of mouth do you mean?

MADELEINE: Like, really, really DARK.

ME: Well, her mouth just looks dark because she's wearing lipstick.

MADELEINE: (brightly) Oh! Then I'm gonna wear LIPSTICK!

Yes, folks, the book has spoken to Madeleine in more ways than one: she now aspires to make herself up to look just like Dolly Parton.

6.) Nothing beats a post-bedtime-story snuggle with your kid.  Even if the kid's newest favorite thing to do is make gross swishing and slurping sounds with her saliva, just because, "I just really like doing that with my MOUTH."