inner nerd

A ways back, maybe a couple years ago, I read an article by Martha Beck in the Oprah magazine that was about perfectionism. Do you know any perfectionists? I sure don't. (clears throat) Anyways... In the article, Martha Beck suggests you put your inner perfectionist in a corner when she gets to be too much. I liked this idea - a humorous way to detach and put your perfectionism in perspective. Last night, I decided I needed to do that with my inner nerd - the voice in my head that harkens back to middle school and high school and into college and possibly beyond. This is the voice that admires a quality in somebody else, wishes I also had that quality, and if I don't have it, my inner nerd reminds me how "uncool" I am. It's quite funny when you write it out. So my message to my inner nerd is to go back to middle school and get over yourself, seriously. Embrace your good qualities and if you admire a quality in somebody else so much, either adopt it for yourself or don't. If you don't, that doesn't mean that the person with the admirable quality is cool and that you're still just a middle school nerd. My inner nerd also needs to be reminded that she doesn't have to be good at everything. She seems to be pretty good friends with my inner perfectionist. Anyways, haven't you realized that nerds are the cool people by the time you get to adulthood?

So I'm sending my inner nerd to sit in the corner to ponder the bigger questions of life. She's a bit awkward with glasses and frizzy hair and not quite the right clothes. She's quiet and unsure of herself. Sometimes I love her and sometimes, she needs to go to the corner and be quiet because she's not being very helpful.

sisters

I love watching sisters being sisters, except of course when they're fighting like sisters. But when sisters are being nice to each other and are being sisterly, I get the warm fuzzies all over...

remarkable oona moment

Just now, Oona was taking spice jars out of the cabinet. I told her "We don't play with those. Can you put them back?" And she did it with no fuss or anything. I was very impressed. Every now and again, kids do things that really surprise and impress us, don't they? Other moments, though... a bit less remarkable. Like right now, Oona is fussy fussy and pulling on me and falling over and crying. What is it that she needs? If only I were that psychic, eh? Amazing how they can be so good one minute and so not so good the next.

naked baby

I wish I had a picture and I wish I was better at taking pictures more frequently. I'm standing at the stove stirring brown sugar and butter together in preparation for making Brown Sugar Bars, a bar cookie from my childhood. I look over, and there is Oona standing very proudly half naked with her diaper off, taken off like big-girl underwears, and her pants off. And she's saying poop and looking at me hopefully, pleadingly. Surely she'll get a gummy bear for going poop like Gemma gets a gummy bear when she puts her pee or poop in the potty. I stand there not knowing how to react - a glimmer of hope that Oona will potty train easily and effortlessly and early (you can hope, right?) and also fear that I'm going to be cleaning up pee and poop from the carpet ad nauseum and wanting to laugh my head off. And wondering if I was doing the right thing by letting Oona have a gummy bear when she tells me she has poop in her diaper. Surely she'll get the connection some time, right? And she's sooooo jealous of Gemma for getting gummy bears. Which brings us back to the endless question of whether I'm being a good Mom or doing the right thing or or or...

BTW, we're all healthy for the most part again. And are staying warm with our functioning pellet stove. :)