One Step Foward, A Gaping Silence of a Step Back

It's a beautiful day and we should be outside soaking up the sunshine but the girls enjoyed an expanded quiet time today and post quiet time absolutely calls for Elmo and/or the Wonder Pets. And who am I to challenge the routine. So instead of picking up the clothes project I started during not-naptime, I em enjoying the weather by myself. And by enjoying the weather I mean I turned the computer so it is facing the window.

The few glimpses of the sunshine I do catch taunt me with whispers of "good mothers would be outside teaching the children how to ride tricycles." Oh sunshine, good mothers would buy their daughters tricycles instead of spending all the money on wine and fancy laptops with surprisingly subpar battery life. Why fight it?

As if the sunshine wasn't enough I am torturing myself by reading mommy blogs. I have a love hate relationship with "mommy blogs". For me that term refers to blogs written by "good mothers" who often post pictures of their children and their accomplishments along with recipes and pictures of their decorated homes. So sadly most of my friends with your hilariously awesome snarky blogs, you are bad parents like me. Sorry to be the one to break it to you.

Anyway, I don't know why I love reading the mommy blogs but I do. They are like visual candy for me and make me happy in the same way that the Sound of Music does. They are just so good. But sometimes they make me sad. Because their kids are all so adorably verbal. Evidently in their worlds children throw out amusing bonmots about the tres hilarious things their preschool classmates do during the day. Dinnertime is rife with observations about crafts and story time and made up adventures.

Contrast this with our own tortured mealtimes where we try to eek out anything about the girls' day. We ask all sorts of leading questions and I often end up doing a call and response where I say something that happened and the girls then repeat it to Daddy. It's crushing.

Sometimes it feels like we have come so far and really we have. My sister heard my daughter speaking words to her for the first time last week. That's huge. I need to remember that. And treasure it when we're suffering through another silent supper. Oh well, at least they aren't screaming through it like they did before we instituted the three bites and you're excused rule.

And I am just going to pretend that the mommy bloggers spend hours making up their child's observations. Poor, poor deluded mommy bloggers.