Birds and brachioradialis

Life with a toddler is hilarious.  Last night, while getting to bed, the girl ran around yelling "Brachioradialis! Brachioradialis!" Why? Because she likes the word, and learned it in daycare that day.  She is totally uninhibited.  She is energy and life and movement and joy encapsulated. I love it, even when it makes me crazy and challenges every fiber of my patience.

She is helping me to grow. I recognize that that's the reason why she makes me so crazy sometimes. She presses me to the end of my self, and there, I hear my automatic responses coming out.  And honestly verbalizing automatic responses? That's priceless growth material, baby.  I hear myself being short with her when she is taking too long, enjoying something that OUGHT to be enjoyed while responsibilities are waiting.  But hearing myself say, "there's no time to look at the flowers..." well, it helps me to remember that, probably, I could find some time.  Last night, we spent twenty minutes watching a hawk try to stay balanced on a thin, high, branch in a gale- force, pre-thunderstorm wind.  He kept getting blown off, flapping his wings, flipping upside down.  A was giggling hysterically.  We cheered and whooped for that bird and his valiant attempt to sit in the most high-maintenance region of that tree.  And I will remember that.  Hopefully, I won't remember that there were chocolate syrup drips on the white lower cabinets that I never did get around to wiping off.

Every now and then, I look around for a minute.  In the unbelievably busy stream of moments that equal life with a full time job and two kids, these moments are very, very good.