How does she know that?

This evening, Ruby came up to me and said, "Mama's sunglasses! Where mama's sunglasses? In the car. Sunglasses in the car! How do I know that? How do I know that? How do I know that?"

Blah Blah

Yesterday, playing out in the snow, she said, "Ruby jump. Ruby jump over moon!" This morning, Ruby was softly singing to herself, "beh deh wehddy badda ba... Ruby guitar on the back..."

She's talks all day long, mashing nursery rhymes with references to her growing repertoire of songs and books. It's really fun to listen to. Well sometimes. She was sniffing loudly this morning, breathing in and out really hard, and said, "booger in there."

Bedtime drama #1

I told Ruby a story about a bunny that plays with her friend in the morning, has a snack, goes out to play some more, comes in to have lunch, pees in the potty, takes a nap, wakes up and pees in the potty again, plays some more, has another snack, plays some more, comes in to have dinner, plays with blocks, reads some books, gets her pjs on, brushes her teeth, and goes to bed.

She loves it, and wants to hear it again and again.

Which leads to a story about the other night when she refused to go to sleep. Among the many tactics she used that night, was the incessant request for the bunny story. And speaking of many tactics, she went from none (seriously easy to put to bed) to all the classics. I was completely unprepared for the hour and half it took to get her to sleep. It first started with, "No bed! Downstairs! Blankie downstairs too! Cuddle downstairs with abba (dad)!" Once upstairs, we had a nursing saga where draining me of the little milk I had just wasn't enough. "More milk! More milk!" Then it became, "Jingle bells, sing jingle bells. All the way. Jingle jingle jingle jingle." Then, "bunny story, bunny story. More. Another story." Then, it was shrieking, "pee! pee! Downstairs! Pee downstairs!" After failed pee attempt after which I was already exhausted, "More pee! Ouch! Crotch hurt! Butt hurt!" Insert huge yawn. After more wailing and squirming, "Back hurt! Waaah! Jingle. Mama, sing jingle. Aaargh! Neck hurt! Leg hurt!"

That's obviously the greatly truncated version of the story. Insert more yawns, about 20 repetitions of each sentence, lots of screaming, and lots of sighs and rolling eyes on my part, and you get a better picture.

My own little dictator

It was bad enough when she was an infant. Now she has the power of words behind her demands.

Put headband on! Ruby put headband on! Now mama put it on! Take socks off! Sing goat song! Sing doeadeer song! Sing twinkle song! Sing tree song! Sing turtle song! (It turns out that the last two songs are one-- The Twelve Days of Christmas) Ruby hold it! Ruby step stool! Ruby talka grandpa! Papa hold you! (meaning "me"-- she doesn't have the pronouns down yet) Mama hold you! Papa use it! Ruby do it now! Ruby cook! Cookie cookie cookie! Watch blue monster TV! Mama hoodie on! Mama glasses on! Mama blanket downstairs!

And all those exclamation points are there for a reason.

I feel like all day long I'm either wearily obeying her shrill demands or I'm whining (yes, that makes two of us), "no I don't want to...". When I'm being a good mom, I tell her to be polite and say "please" and then whine that I don't want to do what she says. I always thought of myself as a very unsentimental and pragmatic person, and difficult to manipulate. And I tell myself this as I trot over to the kitchen to give her a second cookie.

Good Bye Bali

So the new betta which we got probably a week ago, died yesterday. Or rather, I killed it. By accident-- well, actually on purpose. This is so depressing.

We found Bali (yes, it was even named) yesterday morning with some fuzzy white stuff on his skin. I've been painstakingly feeding him one pellet of food every several hours, so I know it wasn't there before I went to bed. Well, there it was. It looked kind of harmless, but in several hours, the poor fish was practically laying on its side and refusing to eat anything. The white fuzz took over his back, gills, and tail. After staring at him forever, trying to decide what to do, I decided that he was probably going to die very soon, and I wasn't going to bother going to get antifungal solution or whatever it was that might save him. I couldn't bring myself to just flush him, and I couldn't stand to watch him slowly die. So I did what anybody who saw that deadly white stuff would want to do: I held the listless fish in my hand, and tried to rub the stuff off under running water. It was actually a lot slicker than I would have thought, and after I put him back in the bowl, he swam around a little. But most of it was still on him. He looked momentarily a little more lively, but in retrospect, it was probably just stress. Anyway, I felt just awful. Like I'd made his last moments on earth just a little more horrible. So feeling like complete shit, I ran him outside and dumped him out on the snow so he would die immediately. Which he did. But I couldn't really tell at first because it was dark and I lost him in the melted hole in the snow. So I felt around in the snow until I found his poor dead fish body, scooped him up, put him in a glass to make sure he was totally dead, and then sent him on his way. I'm sorry Bali, I wish we could have enjoyed a longer time together.