My Awesomely Radical, Adorably Hilarious, Endearing, Enchanting, Beautiful, Little Girl

It's a shame how little i say about my little bug because she is the light of my life and the center of my universe and all the other cheesy cliches you can think of put together. So this post is just some cute little snippets of my life with the cecy gwen:

♥ a few days ago i had a massive migrane and cecily is familiar enough with them that after i take my medicine, i hand her a timer and tell her not to come in mommy's room until it goes off. this one was such a doozy that she had to come back a few times. after one check up on mommy she got a blue sharpie and wrote "cecily ♥ mommy" on my door. i couldn't be mad because it was so sweet! but seriously! permanent marker???

♥ she likes to tell me how many kids she wants me to have. yes, i have explained to her that i have to be married to have them, but she still likes to pretend. usually she tells me two brothers and two sisters. the sisters would sit in the back with her and one of the brothers would drive while the other sat in the front seat. i ask her, "where will mommy sit?" to which she replies i can sit on top of the car with the dog. then she found out that if i get married that the daddy will stay with us all the time so he got put up there with the dog and i.

♥ classic kid cursing story: cecily was playing with two barbie dolls in the back seat of the car while we were driving somewhere. i over heard her have one doll say to the other (and excuse my french): "you stupid bitch!" i freaked out! calmly of course. i asked her where she heard that, to which she replied "sometimes i just know these words mommy" and then told her that it was very, very mean and that we shouldn't ever say that. she seemed repetant enough and continued playing. a few minutes later i heard her say the curse word again!

"cecily! we don't say that!"

"but mommy i said that she wasn't a stupid bitch." ahh. now that is perfectly okay.

(she has since then asked if santa clause and jesus know that she said those words. i told her yes but they were pretty big on forgiveness)

♥ we recently welcomed a new member of the family, the invisible dog ashleigh. it was fortunate in that he showed up right after the fairy friend we had left to go back home to her family. ashleigh perfers mice to eat, but will eat whatever cecily has for dinner, and prefers to sleep on her bed with a little pillow and stuffed animals. they both insist on bed time stories and goodnight kisses (though i usually have to ask where the dog's head is) and yes there are times when we open the front door and let the dog out to go potty. just a few nights ago i had to go back inside my parents' house to get little ashleigh who got left in the rush to the car. cecily told me ashleigh can only stay until easter when she fully expects to get a real dog. hmmm...

♥ being an only child, cecily has a few peculiar habits. when she says something funny, she immediately repeats it with the introduction of "i just said..." and laughs at it again. yes she does this when i am not in the room, almost more often when i'm not. she also prefers "disappearing friends" as she calls them. though i have asked they only come out at home and not in preschool. she also assumes that at all times she is the center of attention and the boss of all the adults in the room. sadly, it is my mom, dad, and i that have fostered this. you should see how bad we are at bending to her every whim.

♥ cecily is incredibly dramatic, which i find highly entertaining. the other day she was rather warm in the car and asked to roll down the window. as she did she exclaimed, "oh mama! i cried for you!!" yes she was referring to the wind as mama. i... don't know...

she can't walk anywhere but must prance about. she lives in a world of fairy tales and is at any one moment one princess or another. i've learned not to try and guess in case i get it wrong. i've also learned that my child never gasps unless she's playing pretend so it's best not to get worried about what might be wrong unless i want to get sucked into the fantasy world.

♥everyone should be told they are loved the mostest.

♥it amazes me that no matter what size she is, she always fits perfectly in my arms and her head seems to be made for the crook of my neck.

♥ nothing is better than being greeted at the end of a long day by a genuine and enthusiastic grin and the biggest hug a little body can muster.

♥ every saturday morning begins with some snuggles and tickles.

♥ kisses are currency at my house. and as cecily told me today, "mommy you should never say sorry for too many kisses!"

they say parenting is a thankless job...

and in some ways perhaps that's true. and in those ways being a custodial parent is even more thankless. today cecily told me that her daddy was cooler than the fair. high praise. i on the other hand was not. i understood though, if the fair happened every day i'd get tired of it, too.
on the subject of my little one i thought i would address her seemingly tireless endeavor to find out who she really is. as a young child she asked her daddy where we came from. monkeys he told her. simple enough.
later the main competition was whether she was a rock star or a princess. i would call her a goober and she would insist that she wasn't. she was either a princess or a rockstar and you couldn't tell from one moment to the next which one she was. and heaven forbid you got it wrong! sometimes i convinced her that she was both, at the same time. although that seems like it would be easy enough, it didn't always satisfy her.
then it became vastly more complex! we kept rock star and princess, but also added ballerina and astronaut. and there were combinations! sometimes even she would get frustrated that she didn't know which one she was. i would try to be the diplomatic mother and tell her she could be whatever she wanted to be because of how smart, and kind, and wonderful she was. didn't fly.
my favorite was the stage when she started adopting names. she asked if i knew she was a cecily when she was born. i told her that actually we didn't and that we had to decide between several names. i listed them for her and she decided she liked leila. so for a while her full name was cecily gwen leila leisten. although if you catch her in the wrong mood she doesn't want to be anything but cecily.
we are now somewhere inbetween those two stages. she wants to be addressed as princess sometimes, it seems to be the favorite. but other times she wants to be hermione from harry potter. i like that one, honestly. i mean she's brilliant! she wanted to paint a picture for her bedroom wall (when she has one that is, still at the 'rents) and wanted to write hermione on it. she forgot about it while she was painting though so i think we're okay. she has been combining the last two and has become princess hermione as well. whatever works, kid.
while sometimes this can get a little unnerving, just because i never know who she is going to be, i'm very proud of her efforts to understand herself and what she wants to be. i think it takes a lot of skill as a person to put yourself through all of that self examiation and come out on top like she always does. i'm hoping it gives her a head start in her teenage years, or even in her twenties when she's trying to find herself. i'll send her a huge painting for her wall that will say: "i am rockstar, astronaut, ballerina princess hermione cecily gwen leila leisten and i can be whatever i want!"
i ♥ my little girl.

One way i'm proud of my daughter

i have a three year old and for those of you who have heard of the terrible twos, the reason you haven't heard anything about three year olds is that people can't say it without cursing. My little bug has been really good at being three, she could make a career out of it and i sometimes would gladly sign a contract to sell her to some agency or studio.
However, this summer i was lucky enough to score a job working with my ten year old autistic nephew. N, as i will call him, has a very severe form and cannot talk, among other things, and so it is very hard to communicate. My little bug has had a hard time figuring out how to deal with N's physical way of communicating. Most people do, he hits and scratches when he is upset, or excited, or tired. My little bug started out just dealing with it, but that quickly got old so she started hitting back. Then she went a little on the aggressive and would wind up and swing at the slightest movement towards her so we had to nip that in the bud. So now when he gets that way she will simply grab onto the offending hand, or both if he is really going at her, and gently lead him to me so he can sign sorry to her. i was thrilled at her problem solving and the sweet way that she dealt with the situation. I wish i could take credit for it, but she long ago proved that she is beyond my bounds of teaching.