Monday, July 17, 2017

I’m going to have to go in and backfill with all the pictures and funny stories of last week, but it’s far easier to actually write extended thoughts on my computer — not on the phone where my pictures live.

Selah June has turned this corner over the last few days where she’s really experiencing jokes, finding humor in jokes on tv and in movies and trying her hand at telling jokes right along with the bigger kids. I didn’t expect her to think of her own jokes at this age. And they don’t make much sense… but she’s clearly putting the pieces together that you ask something inane and then provide an unexpected answer. I’ve gotta start teaching her knock knock jokes.

And then just the other night she was playing games on Grammy’s phone, and Grammy chose a spelling game. Nobody knows how exactly she knew how to spell “red” or “dog,” but we watched her drag and drop the letters into their appropriate spaces under the picture of the thing. It’s crazy!

And just yesterday I was doing my hair and I heard her singling “Baa, Baa, Black Sheep.” First, she’s never sung that song all the way through. Secondly, I didn’t initiate it. And third, there was a completely different cartoon going on with it’s own music. She was lost in her thoughts and had a song on her brain.

At another time, we were just laying around in the bed upstairs and talking about how much she needed a bath. And so we were talking about when that was going to happen, and she started sticking her feet in my face for kisses. And I said “Awwww…. those feet are sooooo stanky!” She looked at me with the most serious face and said, “That was so mean.” The emotional rollercoaster just gets more and more complex and nuanced. 🙂

Daddy told her yesterday that she needed to go upstairs and get her underwear and shorts on so that we could go to the store, and she said “seriously?” with as much smarty pants as she could muster. We both died laughing (on the inside, of course).

Chris and Carrie were visiting this weekend, and the guys played a couple of songs through Alexa that they knew the kids would like. Carrigan started dancing, and then Selah June was on it! She was shaking her booty and having a great little time. It really struck me how much changes between 2 and toddlers just being adorable and 8 and young girls being unknowingly promiscuous. How does that happen? Every day I think about what she sees and hears in her little world. What are the teachers at school (20-year-olds who are getting married and shopping at Claire’s) saying to her? What is coming into her view through the television and the radio? What’s perfectly fine and fun, and what’s damaging and dangerous. I see the extent to which I worry over the technology in our home, and then I see the extent to which technology has taken over the world, and I just don’t know what will happen and what to do about it. Is she going to feel like she’s unimportant to us because she doesn’t have our attention? Are we going to fight to get her attention? Is she going to feel alone in the world because she knows how to carry on conversation and yearns for it but can’t find anyone else interested in (or capable of) the same thing?

I’m exhausted. I hope she doesn’t feel like I am too tired for her. I hope she doesn’t feel like she wasn’t the most important thing to me in the whole world. Coming from a family with a stay-at-home mom, I didn’t spend so much time doing stuff without my family. We weren’t all exhausted physically and emotionally by the time we actually could see each other. I worry that I’m not doing enough to carve out special days or activities to do together.

I guess mostly I just worry.