Madness and Art

Beautiful Art
Originally uploaded by georgiegrrrrl

We have been having a less than fabulous time lately, what with tantrums and naps going AWOL (which makes bath time and toothbrushing a living hell) and assorted schedule upsets. But still, some good things are going on.

Art is the big one. Today Gaz made the adorable installation you see here, in addition to drawing her first ever smiley faces all over the whiteboard on her easel. We're also into the color wonder stuff, and usually have to make footprints every day. Her footprints. She always tries to color my feet for a footprint, but I dissuade her by pointing out that my foot is bigger than the paper and my footprint would cover up hers. I'm sure she'll find a way around those reasons soon enough.

She's still saying new random things that amuse us. Like when she makes an emphatic statement like "Everything ohkay. That's a fact!" And we haven't even shown her The Kids in the Hall yet. And . . . being sleep-deprived, I can think of no others now. But I assure you that I laugh every day. Which is good, because the bad days are very bad around here. Most of the time we don't go out for more than necessary trips to visit playgrounds on pretty days and run errands, because thirty minutes of carrying a violently thrashing, screaming child. That was last night. I'm not doing that again any time soon.

But even with the bad days, she can still make me laugh. Sometimes unintentionally, like the evening when she was hysterical over being bathed and it took both of us to get her in her diaper. While Mark was hoisting her back side by her feet (a hard thing for me to do with my tenosynovitis) she was trying to get her feet free and in the process was wiggling her bottom so much that not only could I not get the diaper on, Mark and I were both incapacitated with laughter.

So we won't be making many public appearances for while. Papa Charley assured me earlier today that this phase doesn't last forever, so maybe we won't be hermited for too long. But you never know. This kid is pretty strong-willed. We'll see who wins. ::crosses fingers::