How do I love thee? Let me share the ways...

WARNING: long post to follow...proceed at your own risk

I've decided to do lemons to lemonade this time. I just don't know what it is about Mondays and rather than bore everyone with another "Mondays are hard for me" post I thought I'd share all the hardships I endured yesterday - and HA! if you thought you'd skate by w/o a Monday whining post, lol. Photography may well be my saving grace these days. I'm thinking differently, a little more creatively that is. I used to see events and milestones as really the only blog-worthy topics {although I may have some readers that agree and want me to stick to that, lol - to that I say HA!} But even the most mundane of all daily events can find a way into my blogging, and maybe - just maybe - make some of you out there laugh or shake your head thinking 'oh, I've been there, done that and got the t-shirt too!' Motherhood is certainly challenging, I won't lie to ya there.

Neil came home yesterday and asked if I had blogged and when I said I hadn't he called me a slacker.

**In his defense it was in a loving way ;-)**

I started trying to find the good in the day (a real challenge in and of itself). It's hard to find the good when every time I'd turn around, Paige was literally into something all day long. Talk about tested. She's like my boy in girl skin. What do I mean by that? Let's see...things she's gotten into in the past:

• nearly poured hot cocoa on herself
• nearly sprayed herself in the face with febreeze
• wrote on the carpet with a Sharpie
• wrote on the piano bench with Sharpie
• wrote on her then brand new pink hippo chair with...what else? yup, Sharpie
• used ball point pen and in the span of a literal minute wrote all over the arm of my brand new sofa and wall (I was standing next to her - this is how bold she is! - and talking with someone on the phone at the bank at the time)
• found a pair of Ashley's scissors and cut her shirt (her BRAND NEW SHIRT)
• we're pretty sure she's responsible for burning out the motors on two swings - breaking one and causing us to send back the other to the company b/c it's still under warranty. Even though we can't prove she did it, it's the easiest explanation based on her weedily ways.
  

Needless to say, you can't turn your back on her. Exasperated, Neil looked at Drew last night and said to him, 'Paige is into everything and soon you'll be crawling everywhere...grrrreat, that'll be fun...'. Now I'm not one for spur of the moment purchases, but for five minutes yesterday a brand new super duper expensive playscape crossed my mind as a possible deterrent to Paige's non-sense - then I snapped back to reality. I didn't really just think a $4K playscape would fix things, did I?

So, now that you have an idea of what she's done in the past, let's get started with what she got into yesterday and heck, let's just lump in what she did Saturday & Sunday too - makes it that more interesting:

1. we found her wandering around the house late at night eating ice cream pops from the freezer...her hair was all sticky and her jammies were caked in dried ice cream.
   
2. Sunday morning she decided to finish the job by starting in on Neil's mint/chocolate Drumsticks (ice cream). I found her eating one in the pantry and threw it away only to find two others she had started on. She was only eating the top and throwing away the rest. Sound like the muffin episode from Seinfeld? Did I just date myself there?
3. She smeared toothpaste on the floor in the closet.
4. I found the Icee ice cream pop (later, not the same day) dried and smeared in the carpet at the top of the stairs and I'm staring at one right now on the floor next to me in the office. Yeah, did I mention we spent (what I consider to be) a fortune on cleaning all of the carpet in our house less than a month ago?
5. She takes most anything she can find in the fridge and takes it upstairs to eat and store away like a little squirrel. Her bed is like a hodge podge catchall for all her finds. I haven't figured out how she sleeps on top of everything!
6. She used her little Radio Flyer ride-on toy to put one of the last two Keurig single cups into the coffee maker, leaving coffee grounds all over the counter.
7. She rammed her other ride-on toy into one of the cabinet doors causing the paint to chip off the door - a *lot* of paint...in fact, prior to that, I had been wondering what was causing all that black paint to chip...grrr.
8. She climbed up the playroom bookcase with me standing right there!! Thankfully, Neil and I had it secured to the wall when we put it together!
   
9. She drew all over one of the cabinets in her room (see pic below)
10. I frequently find her paw prints all over my bathroom sink. She has figured out how to undo the child locks and likes to get under the sink and find my nail polish and paint her nails...herself.
    
11. And the pièce de résistance - a simple (and usual) evening poopie diaper turned into a full-blown smear job, thus requiring (what I call) a business bath before sending her back to bed...yet again.

{the lovely bookcase she wrote on}

{the pink hippo chair that, let's be honest, never stood a chance}

{nail polish on the carpet}

Her saving graces, though not as many, by far outweigh all that I listed. And they are:

• her doe eyes
• she says "I love you" a LOT...and means it!
• she made her first successful outing as a potty-trained girl today
• she's genuinely affectionate
• she has the best little kid run and makes the funniest horsie 'neigh'
• her current phrase 'I was living the day of the park of the city' is adorable
• and when she crosses herself, the Father is almost always the back of her head and on her crown, lol

Sharing the not-so-fun parenting stuff isn't always fun...but I like to think of this blog as my online diary and I know I'll look back and forget all the stuff she did to aggravate me to no end. This post will help me remember how I tried to find the good despite all the (ok, not bad) ridiculously challenging aspects to parenting...Paige. At the end of the day, and even as I sit here, I know I'm forgetting like ten other things she did, but you know? It's no big deal anymore. It was what it was and it's time to move on. I love my Paigey Waigey puddin' 'n' pie. I think I'll keep her, lol.

If you've made it all the way through, find a sticker and put it on your hand. You deserve it!