Ugh ... Spring is here

I can hear all our irritating neighbor children playing outside now that the weather is nice. Ugh. I hate them. Not true. I just wish they were mute. And that they didn't have bikes, scooters, or skateboards that make those annoying p-kuh p-kuh P-KUH!!!!! sounds along the cracks in the sidewalk. Or even better, that we were surrounded by old people with quiet, indoor kinds of hobbies, rather than loud selfish kids who fight over squirt guns and threaten each other with the loss of their friendship when things don't go their way. Ugh.

This is a true story: One Sunday afternoon Eldon and I were laying in bed about to take a much-needed and anticipated nap. Chiara had just gone down and we were so tired. Dead tired. Just as we were about to drift off into peaceful slumber a neighbor child decided to go for a skate. Right outside our window. Ugh. Kill me now. Eldon shoved his head under a pillow and I just laid there and tried to will myself to deafness. It didn't work.

The next week, I promise to you, the exact same thing happened. It's like the child knew we had a nap scheduled and plotted a mean-spirited sabotage.

The following week, so week #3, Eldon and I laid down. We were both thinking the same thing ... We hope the skateboarding wonder child is sick. Or perhaps laying on the couch with a broken femur. Laying down for a nap under these conditions is like waking up eight minutes before your alarm, thinking it's 3:00am, and realizing you're really going to have to get up soon. Those eight minutes are torture. Sleep evades you because you're cringing in anticipation of the alarm. Like sitting there at the Optometrist's office waiting for them to poof air into your eye. Unpleasant.

So bearing all that in mind I made the following statement.

"Is it terrible that I want to cover our sidewalk with gravel, or branches, or tar, or something else that would inhibit that kid from riding his freaking skateboard right outside our window?"

Eldon laughed at me, and our conversation sunk lower and lower on the charitable scale. Before we knew it an hour had gone by and we were still laughing and talking. And you know ... That friggin' kid never came. We squandered our nap time plotting our hard-hearted fantasies. It's just so ironic.

In other news we have recently - as in, over the last 36 hours - taken away Chiara's binky. Binkies. I told her they were all gone, bye bye, and she has been an emotional mess ever since. It reminds me of a picture ... let me see if I can find it.

One smile for the camera and she was popping that bink right back in. There is a better picture on Eldon's phone with all her binks neatly lined up next to her on the counter, but you get the idea. Binkies are very, very important to our little lamb. She gets out of the tub at night and tells us which color she would like us to bring to her, and which colors she knows are still up in the cupboard. Sometimes we splurge and let her sleep with all of them. :) Not anymore though ... because her life has officially gone to pot.

In the car today on the way to Costco my little sister called. Shauna is engaged to be married on July 1st, so she is both excessively busy and hard to get a hold of. Except for Corey ... I hear he has no trouble. :) Anyway, she called me while I was driving, so of course I was thrilled to hear her voice and see what she was up to. Chiara, in the meantime, had dropped her toy whistle from the Dentist's office, her book, and her water bottle on the floor and was wailing for me to retrieve them for her. I could not reach them, so she was literally impossible for me to please. But wait. There was a stash of binkies in the diaper bag ...

I'm a weak woman, and in my desperation to talk to Shauna, I handed Chiara a bink. Her crying stopped immediately, her eyes got wide, and she let out the longest, most dramatic sigh I've ever heard. "Aaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh ..." Then she popped it in her mouth and settled into her car seat. I didn't hear a peep from her until I hung up and got her out of the car.

Tonight we're going on a family date to the Cheesecake Factory and coming home to sew little bean bags with her binks inside. We hope she will snuggle with them, knowing her binkies are inside, and be contented. My personal opinion is tomorrow morning we're going to wake up with her room covered in beans and all the binkies (we have six) in her mouth or clutched in her hands. We'll see.