I do it

Greta.  Oh my.  How to sum up that girl these days is quite the challenge.

In the morning she immediately wants to know, “Where Maren?  Where Daddy?”  She is so social and always wants to know where her people are.

She inspires me to start my day with that much enthusiasm.

Today I was trying to do the dishes, and unload the dishwasher.  I was being ambitious and also trying to clean the microwave and wipe down the appliances.  I’d set up a few toys and turned on some cartoons in the hope that she and Maren would entertain themselves while I beat back the dirt and grime in the kitchen.  Greta, as usual, kept coming into the kitchen and telling me to “Hold you, hold you,” which is what she says when she wants me to pick her up.  I would pick her up and plunk her on the counter where she could see what I was doing.   Since all of the jobs I mentioned have no interested whatsoever for a 20-month-old, she would get bored, and wiggle, and go play for a few minutes.  Repeat.  Finally, I gave up and went into the family room with her.  She said, “Sit!  Couch!”  So I did.  And she climbed up on the couch on my right side and sat hip-to-hip next to me.  She then took my right arm and wrapped it around her while she leaned into me to watch some cartoons.  She found her comfy position, then looked at me and smiled, and then turned to the TV.  She was perfectly content to sit and watch cartoons as long as I was right next to her.

That’s my Greta: she’s all in, all the time.

She’s teaching me that couch time is more productive than doing jobs, just in a different way.

She loves doing buckles: the ones for her high chair, car seat, and shopping cart are her favorites.  Each time she moves to one of the aforementioned seats, she flaps my hands away with “I do it!  I do it Mom!  I do it!”  And I tap my foot (im)patiently while she works at it.  If I see an opportunity, I sweep in and line them up so that the process goes faster, but often that results in more flustered “I do it”‘s, so it’s not worth it.

She’s teaching me patience.

At the end of the day I was looking for something that would entertain all three of us.  Maren wanted to play babies, so we walked around the house and found all the baby dolls.  We also got the basket of “baby stuff”: bottles, baby food, toys, diapers, clothes, etc.  For an hour, we played together on the family room floor.  Greta was holding everything up to me.  “What’s this Mom?”

“A bottle.”

“Oh.”  She said, “Bottle.”  Then she would pick up the next thing, “What’s this Mom?”

“That’s a bib for the baby Greta.”

“Oh,” she said, “bib.”

She wants to know everything.

We finished playing babies by playing Ring Around the Rosie in the family room.   There were six of us all holding hands: Maren, Greta, me, and three baby dolls: Red Baby, Rosie, and Blue Baby.  Each time we fell down, Greta stomped her feet and said, “Do it again!  Do it again!”

I can’t wait to see what she does tomorrow, and every day after that.