To the 4th power

Dear Baby Girl, Happy Birthday, sweet lady. You have willed this Turning 4 not to come since you've had beaucoup fun being 3, and like Nana Red says, When you have to age 25% of your life by turning another year, who can blame you?

But four is going to be stellar, my love. For starters, you're going to the CIRCUS! Hurrah! And as you twirl your way into this new year of life, we take stock of the many blessings of health and half-eaten cupcakes you have enjoyed.

Please allow me also to take stock of four significant things I have learned from you, Baby Girl:

1. Home is the best.

You are a homebody. You love to make nests and stages in every corner of our home with an entire cast of stuffed animals. You are always curling up on the couch to watch videos with your brother. You oscillate between inside and outside to your swingset, looking hopefully to see if the neighbor gals are coming outside to play, as well. You just love being at home. I am inspired by your comfort and appreciation of home, never begging to be elsewhere, never complaining that you are bored. I am the opposite of a homebody, wanting always to see all the things and meet all the people, finding sanctuary in train stations, museums, cafes. But I am learning to love our home and to build it up as another kind of sanctuary, where we laugh and snuggle and grow.

This would look better in a tutu.

At last count you owned 5 tutus. Baby Girl, that is madness. In fairness, you are not hoarding them. You wear them everyday. Often multiple ones at once. You used to wake up in the middle of the night, look down at the disappointing pyjama ensemble, and hastily throw on a tutu to ice that cake. As if some kind of Sandman Fashion Police were going to arrest you for too-plain pyjamas. You drive us crazy with your penchant for swapping out various costumes and accessories throughout the day, but we love your confidence and pinache. There are many bleak days that are brightened by your tutu fabulosity. You have effectively put a tutu around the darkest of days for me so many times.

Just pray about it.

You always humble me with this one. I'm supposed to be teaching you this by modeling this. Instead, you are always telling me to just pray about it, and you are always so right. I am convinced you are actually the angel Gabriel in the vessel of a little girl.

You can be a friend to everyone.

Your teacher completed a student evaluation for you just before Christmas. Among other praises, she noted that, "Madigan is a friend to everyone." I cannot say that anything could have made me as proud. These last four years with you have taught me that all the money and degrees and prestige and publication credits will not a happy life make. I have had many long days with you as a mother, particularly in your first couple of years when I was home with you full-time and trying to finish grad school and Daddy was working so hard for us, often overnight. The only thing that got me through those days when you needed me to meet your every need was the love and support of our wonderful family and friends. I'm just so glad that you have figured this out early, that being a friend is not only a nice thing, it is the only thing, along with your faith and your character, that you can carry into the next life.

Love, Mama

Stray bullet

Twenty-four hours ago, I was in a horizontal position, like someone hit by a stray bullet. And that bullet's name was Surprise Stomach Bug. I remained in that position for the better part of the day, except for the moments when I was reacquainting myself with the marvelous receptacle that is our commode, oh how wondrous is your wide open maw, so mighty is your power to flush, so splendiferous is your proximity there in the bathroom where I just noticed that the tile is sort of shifty in this one position waaaah why am I still sitting here?....End: Ode to the commode. As I lay (lie? I never remember. Good thing I teach writing) along my miserable line of latitude yesterday, when laughter hurt and reading hurt and the very thought of food was OWWW, I had a very long think. I thought how in the dim light of my nineteen year-old wisdom when I was dreaming of my future husband, a requisite was probably someone who would bring me a rose (so cliche!) on important anniversaries.

But yesterday? Yesterday I was giving worshipful thanks for the man who brought me ginger ale and kept my glass full. (I would have given worshipful thanks even if he were covered in a pelt of back hair and a Ron Paul 2012 sticker. As long as he took care of me the way that Loverpants did yesterday.)

Ladies, forget the J.Crew centerfold you are desiring. Pray yourself a husband that will love you through the days when you both feel and look like a moldy bath mat in a high school boy's locker room.

<3 Lovey Loverpants <3

***

In other news, Little Man turned 20 months and he enjoys great literature. His big sister is pleased.

Achtung, mama

This morning my alarm was a perfume sample giver-outer standing in my path at Macy's. She did not want to be ignored. Wake up. Take the sample. Acknowledge me. Or I will not stop. I acknowledged her. I got up at an hour that rhymes with hix o'flock.

I got up and spent some time in Exodus, chapter 3. God was just hanging out...in some shrubbery...on fire...just having a deep and meaningful with Moses.

God was like the perfume giver-outer. The one who's got something to give does not want to be ignored. Can ya dig it?

***

No one with the exception of Little Man was in a jocund mood this morning. Baby Girl was flexing herself into some petrified scorpion position when we were trying to get her dressed and ready for school. Tears ensued. There was no time to put on my cosmetic face. I believe more tears ensued for my students because of this.

***

Class went well despite a student showing us a propaganda video about how textbooks are for cavepeople and soon every baby will come into the world, his parents having registered for a baby iPad with the Dr. Seuss I Can Read series locked and loaded. Not really but that's what one could project.

***

I hung out with Little Man at the campus cafe while Loverpants attended a networking event. Little Man yelled MAMAMAMAMMMMAMAMAMAM? MAMA? MAMA! MAMAMAMAMAMA! even though I was standing right next to him. One of my students said she admired how whenever she runs into my husband or me, we are always with our children. I explained that this was both intentional and incidental. They are, for better or for worse, very much a part of every fabric of our lives. I appreciated that she recognized this, however, since I spent four years of college reading Steinem and Woolf and thinking that children were a great idea. If you liked having a really lame life. And a purse full of crusty Kleenex.

***

I then got an e-mail from a person who holds our financial future in his pocket and that sent me into a tailspin.

*** I then got angry with my husband because of this e-mail from the person who is not my husband.

I then told my husband that he should leave me alone because I was about to say something really mean.

I then went for a run in the rain.

I then ran up a hill in the rain and rolled my bad ankle and fell on the ground and scraped up my knees.

A woman came running to see if I was ok and offered to drive me home which was so nice.

But I walked down the hill because frankly I like pain and crying and limping and walking downhill in the rain.

*** I am now typing here with a bag of frozen vegetables on my swollen ankle. I think this is where I need to be. I think I have been anxious for nothing lately. I think God really wants my attention right now.

Happy sabbath.