Today

Unlike for ol' Ice Cube, for me, today is not shaping up to be such a good day.

Little A puked this morning (twice yesterday) so I decided to keep her home from the play room at the gym, which meant no "break" for me. Worse, no cardio stress-relief. She wanted popcorn for breakfast. Why not? It's a whole grain. Popcorn and breastmilk. She ate a couple pieces and lost interest. She maintained great interest in the breastmilk, though. Ouch. When a toddler nurses as much as a newborn, it can be very draining.

She then insisted on watching Dance Party for five minutes, then Elmo. After Elmo I had to pull the plug (literally) on the TV. I am not by any stretch an anti-TV mom (especially DVDs and "educational" programming), but I was not going to let her sit there and watch hours of TV. Honestly, the sing songs were just getting too aggravating for me.

I decided we needed a change of scenery so I went to rearrange and straighten up my office while she colored and played. She colored her $75 Made-in-China German piano with expo markers. Luckily they wiped off. Meanwhile, Theo got into the leftover popcorn in the living room. There was a constant cleaning up (me) and mess-making (child and dog) dance going on all morning. Then the child wanted oatmeal. Awesome. She has an appetite. Somehow the lid flew off and oats snowed down all over the kitchen. Another clean up. She ate about 3 bites of oatmeal. More breastmilk.

OK, we had to get out for a bit. I wanted to return to the library the books that were kind of burning a hole in my brain (Opting In, Parenting from the Inside Out, and The Mother Trip) and be free of them (and decline the one I'd previously had them holding for me, The Mommy Myth). I wanted to deposit my tax refund, grab a fancy water bottle at Starbucks as a treat to myself, and some flowers to plant. All stops within just a few minutes of each other. We finally got out the door and all was going well til we were in line to buy the water bottle and poor A projectile vomited a beautiful pink puke all over her and me. (Blueberries mixed with oatmeal.) Lovely. We quickly got cleaned up. Hardly anybody noticed except some guy who handed me a napkin. We managed to complete all our errands. (Starbucks was second to last, and I figured why not just grab the flowers since we were right there.)

So, the day is getting better. A even ate a little quesadilla at lunch and is now napping. The funny thing is I felt so annoyed with all the mess/clean up/mess/clean up earlier, and I was thinking grrrrr my husband is going to another rock show tonight that he originally sold his ticket to, but when he heard a different opener was playing the second night of the local stop, he had to re-buy a ticket to that show...and I was thinking how I should be cranky about that, since I don't get to go out that much (my own choosing, I don't insist) but then I came back to the fact that on normal days, I am just really content to go through my daily life of hanging out with A, working out, doing my design and writing work...so that even having a "bad" day is just not really so bad after all.

Then I saw this...