Thursday Morning Thinking...

I wake up in the morning, the two of them squashed between us (because frankly I hate Madileigh not being there so I put Easton in the bed with us only to have Madileigh show up between 1-3 in the night) and sleeping in the first light of dawn, and what I feel is simply in love. I sneak into Madi's bedroom at night and watch her sprawled in her underwear in the moonlight and I put a hand up to my neck. At the rate things are going, by the time Madileigh is 6, she'll be ready for the lead part in a daytime soap opera. She's been honing her dramatic skills lately. Mood swings are her specialty. Life is either really great and hysterically funny, or it's really sad or really frustrating or really, really challenging, so much so that she sometimes just "can't do it." (Funny, now that I see that in writing, I realize that's basically how life is for me. Hmmm.)

I've been hyperconscious lately of the fine line between exercising my authority over Madileigh in the guise of keeping her safe and healthy, and stripping her of any control over her life whatsoever. I'm trying to use more discretion with my "no's" and "don'ts." This is not easy, as they flow very freely after having said them so often for these past couple years.

Of course, there's the lifesaving kind of "don't", as in "Don't you

dare let go of my hand," said when we're standing by the water at the park or in the parking lot. And then there's the more micromanaging kind of "don't," as in "Don't use that voice," or "Don't scream in my ear," or "Don't pick your nose." I have to be less demanding tho because it seems that my telling her not do something is being ignored more and more lately. Not fun.

I realize that, whereas Madileigh's infant and most of her toddler time were spent in the equivalent of an elite private school with an unheard of student-to-teacher ratio (one to two), where said teachers (Mom and Dad) were always available and eager to the point of being overzealous, Easton has been demoted to what more closely resembles an overcrowded daycare center, where the caregivers (Mom and Dad) are sometimes frazzled, distracted, and hard to pin down. This makes me also realize that Madileigh and Easton are two very different people. And that's how it should be.