The Craziness That Is My Life

So, I love dooce. This is one of the many blogs that I check up on daily. Heather Armstrong keeps me laughing with just about every post. Out loud. I was completely inspired by her monthly newsletters to her daughter so I decided to do the same thing for Lil. We are now in our 2nd year of Lillian's life and monthly I write to her. Just so I won't forget the little things that happen between the big moments. After the first 12 months I uploaded everything to shutterfly and made a photo book out of it. It's a keepsake that I hope she will treasure forever. We are now in the 23rd month so another book will be ordered soon. Some months are very sentimental, some are funny and some are just REAL. I'll share with you one of the real ones here. Please keep in mind that I love my daughter to no end and that perhaps I should have shared with you one of the more loving entries first but that would be no fun. Having said that, here's Lillian's 22nd month:

Dear Lillian,
You are now 22 months old. WOW! You will be a 2 years old in just 2 months. That’s a lot of twos. And speaking of twos. I vow to never allow the TWO of us back into Walmart at the same time. Our last trip was a fiasco. An absolute nightmare for everyone involved and I mean EVERYONE. The meat man, the pharmacist and even that little boy who was busy showing us how well some kids can act while shopping--WITHOUT opening five different snacks or being slipped some Tylenol PM.
Anyway, it all started when I decided to try Spin Class for the first time. I have been avoiding this class as if it had herpes because I knew my body would feel the effects long after the herpes had cleared. My plan: First I would go to work, then I would rush home to change, then I would go to Spin Class, then I would pick you up, then the two of us would hold hands and skip merrily into your own private hell---Walmart. That was a fool proof plan for sure but for some reason, I didn’t take into account the amount of sweating that I would do in this class. I probably didn’t think about it because I don’t sweat much. Instead my face turns so red it looks almost purple for two full hours after I’ve exercised. It’s embarrassing. Well, this class caused my face to turn purple AND caused me to sweat like a 400 lb man. Seriously. My hair was soaked. But anyway, I’m not the one who turned 22 months old today so on with the story. Okay, I looked like crap obviously so I drove over to pick you up with the air going full blast. Now the only difference is that my face is cold and purple and my hair is cold and wet and a little wind blown. When I arrive, you had evidently just finished jello wrestling with one of your buddies. I was initially relieved that you had gotten this out of your system at such a young age AND with your clothes on then I remembered that we had to go to Walmart. Your dress was covered in red jello stains. Wait, not just your dress but your shoes too. And Daddy hadn’t put a diaper cover on you that morning so your diaper was sagging below your dress. And not only that, but your face was stained with jello too. Right across your cheek so that when we got to Walmart, and you were screaming bloody murder because you were so excited to be there, it looked as though you were screaming bloody murder because I had just smacked you across the face. Hard. If this gives you any idea of how the rest of the trip went you‘re probably still way off. Not only was everyone staring at us because you were loving life so much but when they looked at us to see what the heck was going on they saw two humans who quite possibly had just been involved in some sort of disaster. A major disaster that had caused us both great harm. Anyway, I’ll never take you back to Walmart. You win. And, by the way, I know you put the tortillas back on the shelf after I put them in the buggy. I couldn’t find them when I got home. You didn’t have to do that. I had already decided not to take you shopping ever again when you started screaming because I wouldn’t let you eat the frozen fish sticks. You didn’t have to put those tortillas back. That was a low blow.
Love,
Mama