Bedside Conversations

Somewhere, tucked in between New Year’s Day and Martin Luther King, Jr. day, Maggie started to talk. Her noises and grunts magically transformed from one-word grunts to sentences preceded by lots of panting as she chose her words and stories and tall tales. It was a miracle.


It has also been funny.

For quite awhile we’ve been entertained by the couple-word phrases – for instance, every time she sees a balloon on the ceiling at Walmart she points it out to me and says, “Mommy! Sad day!” Or how she started to say, “Bummer!” every time we told her not to do something.

But now, now she can tell a story. Sometimes she even sings it! She tells me about the adventures in her class at school, who had to sit in time out, who was pushed and who did the pushing, and one day she told me that she had to sit in the time out chair because she was determined to eat the carrots in her lunch bag during reading time.

Just this week she’s had two situations that I want to remember for posterity (which means that you’re along for the ride too, my lovely friends who are willing to read about the antics of these weird children!):

A few mornings ago Maggie came running into my bedroom and basically attacked my midriff. (The stomach that right now has me concerned that someone in Walmart is going to pull me aside and see if I’m trying to shoplift a basketball.)

“Wake up, baby!” Maggie howled, using my belly button like the base of an antique telephone. “Wake up, Mikayla! Are you there?”

At this point she removed her mouth from my belly button and replaced it with her ear.

“I hear you, Mikayla, Mickey, Mickey Mouse!” she crooned. She looked up at me with a devious grin. “She’s crying! Miki says, ‘I come out, come out, come out!’” She turned her attention back to my belly button and continued, “Soon, sister! I love you! Good morning!”

And with that she hopped off the bed and ran out of the room.

On the opposite side of the sleeping spectrum is our nighttime prayer routine.

Isaiah has been saying the Lord’s Prayer with the girls every night. We used to do Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, but that was before Mia clued in that she was asking God to take her if she died and had lots of questions about death and which one of us was going to go first. That, then, brought up the conversation/plan of what she would do if I died before her. It went something like this:

Mia: “Daddy, I think we should have a cat.”

Isaiah: “Mia, we will never have a pet cat. Cats make Mommy’s nose itch.”

Mia, considering this and then, with relish: “But one day Mommy will die and I won’t – and then I can have a pet cat!”

Now Isaiah just says the Lord’s Prayer.

Then I usually ask them if they have anything specific that they’d like to pray about and either Isaiah or I wrap their requests into another, freestyle prayer.

Mia’s prayer: “Dear Jesus, thank you for all you do for us. We love you and we’ll see you when we die. Amen.”

Maggie’s prayers are mostly in the form of requests right now. She likes to pray for:

Grandpa & Grandma
Popi & Mima
Granpapa and Granmeme
Nana
Auntie Ne-Ne & Uncle Claton
Uncle Geoffrey, Auntie Sami, and Baby Aspen (Aspen usually gets several prayer requests a night, both of the girls LOVE her)
Mommy
Daddy
Mia

(and then it gets more amusing)

Jack & Jill
Humpty Dumpty, that he wouldn’t fall
Diego, Alicia and Baby Jaguar
Dora, Boots and Swiper
That no giants will come
That she will sleep in her bed all “day-night”
Rachel’s cast (our friend who broke her leg)
Miss Evelyn and all her friends

While I think at some point we’re going to have to explain the difference between reality, rhyme and cartoon, in general Maggie continues to show us that she has a really sweet heart. She’s a determined bugger, but she’s also very sweet and strangely generous. Not only will she willingly get things for Mia to play with while Mia is on the naughty bench, she’s also sharing lots of things with Mia, which according to the expert sources (!) at BabyCenter.com, is quite unusual for her age.

As of two days ago, she can do a handstand on the sofa. Since birth, she hasn’t stopped moving. She mostly doesn’t stop talking, either, though she prefaces most every comment with, “Excuse me, Mommy...” She still doesn’t have much hair. Her smile is still contagious. She still has a crush on Owen.

Basically, now that she can talk we’re realizing that that’s it. With the activity level and personality she’s now displaying... we’re done.

As our friend Andy, who we joke is going to marry Maggie when she grows up, said, “Maggie should be the U.S. Foreign Relations Ambassador. That face could stop a war!”

Isaiah and I both thought that was better than Helen of Troy, whose face started a war and “launched 1,000 ships.” Small blessings!

Wait. Oh Lord. Please don’t give us our own Odyssey in the form of rearing our second child! Please. (Deep breath, pause to think.) Oh heavens. Please, no.

Does anyone else just crave boring sometimes?!


JJ