doing nothing

When I woke up this morning (much too early for my liking) I said to myself, "Lisa, what do we HAVE to do today?" Lisa answered with an exuberant "NOTHING!" (Lisa's pretty good at overlooking her house chores). So we got up and did absolutely nothing that we had to, only things we wanted to. We went on a walk with our neighbor, we sat around lazily, we went to the library for storytime and to Target just because we wanted to. The kids and I ate lunch at Target and it was fun, partly because I wasn't in a rush, and partly because it wasn't my floor that Tyler was spitting all his mac & cheese onto. And when Jeremy gets home tonight I think he's actually going to be around to join us in our "doing nothing" state. And the best part about this is that my house isn't even a complete disaster...only a partial one.

Yesterday we had a bit of a crazy day. I was watching my nephew (which is fine, I like doing that), but we had about a bazillion different places to go and since I had an extra kid in tow I didn't get to ever sit down and talk to Alexis much. Now I'm not sure if her behavior yesterday was a result of that or just a coincidence, but she was really kind of M-E-A-N yesterday. She yelled at me and refused to do anything i asked, then told, then demanded, and finally forced her to do. She fought with her cousin and was even mean to Tyler *GASP*. And when it was time for bed she screamed and cried. She never never never cries when it's time for bed and she's rarely mean to Tyler. She must have been having a bad day. So after listening to her crying in bed for long enough I went in to talk to her and she asked me to lay by her and scratch her back. As I laid with her she started talking about what she had done at preschool that day without any prompting from me. And she told me lots of things about school that she's never told me before. When I got up and left she was happier and ready to go to sleep, and I realized something about my daughter that I always knew deep down but had forgotten lately as she's been trying to be so independent, and that is that,

She needs me!

She still needs her mom to talk to her about her day, to help her sort through things so she knows how she's feeling, to process things she's learned or been thinking about, and she needs to know that no matter how busy I get or how many little people I'm in charge of, I still care about her as much, no, more than I did when it was just me and her. So even when she goes through these independent stages and is seemingly pushing me away, I will wait until she wants me again, and then she will know that her mama is always there for her.