August 7, 2008

Occupation Choice at Two???

After getting a thorough tour of the college campus where I’ll be teaching yesterday, I had to fly across town to meet Mr. BBM and the girls in order to pick out our bathroom lights for the new house. After an hour of sitting there, we made only one decision and it was regarding the ceiling fan in the family room, no bathrooms.

Despite the fact that the very nice woman put "The Polar Express" on for the girls, they were still wound up. I can’t blame them. Looking at lighting choices when you’re 2 and 7 can’t be much fun.

We left there, drove by our lot to see if there was any progress and saw that our lumber has been delivered! We were ecstatic. We stopped home for a quick snack (no time for dinner) and then headed out to pick our countertops for the new kitchen.

We were only there for about two minutes when Lil C started acting up. The girl doesn’t know how to walk. She runs everywhere, so she was running around just looking for a way to get into trouble. I picked her up. She then entangled herself in my necklace to the point that I thought she was going to break it. I handed her over to Mr. BBM.

We chose our countertops easily, but had many questions about installation and care of them. The girls were totally wound up so Mr. BBM took them outside and put them in the car with a movie running. (We were on private property in the woods, with a perfect view of the car, so no need to go call Child Services on us).

When we left there, the girls were hungry, tired and loud. We arrived at a restaurant and I was the unlucky one, meaning I was assigned to the booth side with Lil C. Getting that child to sit and not try to interact with the people in the booth behind us is next to impossible. She’s not poorly behaved in a restaurant; she just likes to make new friends.

A short time later, I was talking to Mr. BBM when both Big I and Mr. BBM cracked up laughing to the point that they could barely breathe. I quickly snapped my head in Lil C’s direction and was shocked to see that this child, on only two seconds time, had removed the halter part of her shirt from around her neck and was pulling it down to show the entire restaurant her belly.

I quickly pulled the halter back over her head and told her that she shouldn’t take her clothes off in a restaurant, but because the other side of the table was still snorting with laughter, she tried it a few more times. Sometimes it’s impossible to hold the laughter in, and while I thoroughly understand this, I would prefer my daughter to be raised to not strip in restaurants.

When Lil C finally decided to leave her clothes on, Mr. BBM pointed at Big I and said "our future artist." He then pointed at Lil C and said, "future stripper." I argued that she won’t have the genes for such an occupation, but still, it scared me nonetheless.

After dinner, we went to visit our marooned cats and were feeding them in my sister’s basement. I turned around to see Lil C swinging herself around one of the basement support beams in circle after circle after circle. Mr. BBM just pointed with a knowing look on his face.

If poles are in her future, I think I’d rather she become a firefighter or perhaps an arctic researcher.