Earthquakes, hurricanes, and worst fears

So there was an earthquake here yesterday. Other than it being a creepy sign of the times it was no big deal. A hurricane coming this weekend could be a big deal for people on the coast. I'm hoping not. But anyway, for me, the scariest moment of the day, week, and possibly year happened yesterday and had nothing to do with natural disasters.

Here's how it went down:

The weather has been so wonderfully mild recently that I left the front door open after LCD went to work (closed the storm door of course) for some extra light. Little A and I ate and after breakfast I let the toddler scamper off to the next room (living room) while I did a little basic clean-up. Then I brought a sippy cup of milk in to the living room. "Here ya go, sweetie." Normally she will run for the milk and say something, but she did not and I was in a rush because I had just remembered somewhere we needed to be so I just left the room, closing the basement door as I passed it. Then I noticed in the bathroom mirror that my bangs looked ridiculous so I went in to wet them down and such. About thirty seconds later I came out of the bathroom and went to collect Little A in the living room, but she wasn't there and the milk was untouched. So I looked around in the other rooms and then I thought maybe she had gone upstairs so I went up there and looked in all the rooms. No kid. Okay, maybe she's hiding, I think, as she has escaped my view before by being behind a chair or something similar. So I start calling her name, running back downstairs and looking behind everything. Then I notice the front door that is still open (storm door still closed). Has she learned how to open the storm door? So I ran outside calling her name, starting to panic, and getting flashes of invented-sexual-predator in my brain. I look in every direction I can think of, it really has not been that long for her to get very far, but I see nothing. I run back inside trying to collect my thoughts. Could a sexual predator have run off with her that fast? Maybe. Now I am screaming her name and dashing around the house when I notice the basement door, still totally closed. I throw it open, run down the stairs, and there she is, playing quietly with her stupid alligator toy and blocks (what? she does not play quietly!). I burst into sobs on the spot and hugged her, all of which upset her a little bit since all the while she had just been chilling. My heart was racing and I couldn't get the image of invented-sexual-predator out of my mind.

Even though most of this happened in my head, it felt very traumatic. Now I wonder how I will ever deal with losing her at the mall one day when she's nine. Later, when the earthquake started and I picked her up and stood in a doorway I felt such relief that I was able to help protect her and keep her safe in that instant. When it was over I told her, "That was an earthquake," and it felt very comforting and parental to be able to say it.

It blows my mind sometimes to think about how mom-like I have become, but what else do you do when something so fragile, complicated, exasperating, and wonderful is in your solitary care most of the time?

Oh, I figured out that she must have already been in the basement when I shut the door, just in case you were wondering.

Le Sigh . . .

Finally, I finally got myself a nice camera (not SLR or anything, just a decent point-and-shoot). It got here on Thursday but I didn't really start taking many pics until today b/c I needed an SD card. So Little A got ahold of it for a minute and there are teeth marks on the corner. Nice.

Two hours later it stopped working.

ARRRRRRRRGH.

I can't even prove I had it since I can't upload any of the photos I took.

Yes I'm sending it to the manufacturer to see if they will repair it. I don't know for sure that it was destroyed by Little A since it kept working for a while, but those tiny bite marks will probably not be earning me any cred.

I'm not mad at her as she is a toddler and it was my job to keep the expensive electronic equipment away, but I am frustrated that the camera I've been thinking about getting for over a year conked out the day I started using it.

Grumble.

Grunt.

My birthday present.

Okay, deep breath and a cute story about Little A before I teeter over the edge of the self-pity cliff into the abyss of loathing.

She is learning to pray and it is super cute. Today she bent her little head down and said "Heavenly Father. Thank you day . . . Papa D . . . Amen!" ("Papa D" has been sick so he gets mentioned often.)

Little A's Catch Phrases

"I hear it now." (often closely linked with "far away!" and said whenever she hears anything out of the ordinary like a siren, train, plane, dog barking, etc.)

"Don't you do that!" (once she said "Don't you do that on purpose" which was pretty hilarious)

"Froggy do it." (also insert any other stuffed animal--basically means mom gets to pretend that the stuffed animal is doing something, e.g. throwing/catching a ball)

"One more!" (said holding her finger in the air--often used as "one more book" at bedtime, though yesterday she used it after we saw a plane fly across the sky--yes the child thinks I can somehow make planes fly by)

"Bye bye Daddy. See you later!"

"Find the woozles!" (still obsessed with Winnie the Pooh, we get our fix via youtube, and currently one of her favorite activities is to walk around outside looking for "woozles")

"Nigh nigh kiss!" (another delaying bedtime tactic, but oh-so-cute)

"Oh boy!" (said like the man in the yellow hat on Curious George)

"I fell down!" (starting to make herself fall down and then look up with a grin to say this--pretty funny)

**added later: "Rococo modern kids!" (can't believe I forgot this one--she is obsessed with the Arcade Fire song "Rococo" and requests it constantly)

I'm sure there are lots more but this is what comes to mind. She's quite the talker at 20 months and starting to be quite hilarious too. It's lots of fun.

Most interesting parenting moment of the day

. . . so far, anyway.

Little A was being a stinker at lunch and throwing food on the floor (she's been doing this for almost a year now but it has slowed down recently as I think she pretty much "gets" gravity). So we went through the same routine as always where she does not get back anything that went on the floor and afterwards she has to clean it up. I'm not sure how much she learns from this, as she seems to think cleaning up is a game, but what is discipline if not consistent repetition ad nauseum?

So first she picks up all the pasta she threw down and puts it in the bowl--no problem. Then I ask her to pick up the string cheese and put it in the bowl too. "No," she says, and tries to hurry away. So I grab her, re-explain the situation, get another flat refusal, and then hold her while she screams and yells "no! no! no!" We continue in this fashion for a minute or two, me telling her what she must do over and over, her continued refusal, each of us getting more and more frustrated, and then my brain starts to work.

What is the goal here?
To get Little A to clean up her mess.
What about putting the string cheese in the bowl?
As long as she cleans it up, the message gets across.

So, I ask her if she would rather put the string cheese in the garbage and I get almost instant compliance. And from then on she's happy as though nothing had disturbed her.

Um.

My guess is that it seemed very wrong to her to combine the pasta with the string cheese in the bowl. It upset her sense of order.

So there we were in the middle of the power struggle and I'm sure it seemed very important to both of us that we win. But Little A doing EXACTLY what I say was only important as far as my ego was concerned. For the lesson to be learned, the methods could easily be modified. I'm reading this parenting book called Kids, Parents, and Power Struggles and it talks about (among other things) how power struggles are really an opportunity to learn from your child and discover what sort of emotions drive them. It was interesting to experience what the author talks about today.

Toddlers are strange little creatures, but I'm finding more and more that there is a weird sort of logic to their madness.