Emotions

There are those people in life that no matter how angry or mad you get, they always seem to turn it around in an instant.

Bear is like that. She has this way of making anger and sadness melt away.

Like any human being, I do get angry...at her, especially when I've asked her 10 times in a row not to touch something, or when I'm trying to keep her away from something potentially dangerous and she just chooses to endanger herself again and again.

But she has this way of always turning those situations around...and somehow I end up laughing with her, hugging her, enjoying the moment where a few minutes ago I was ready to pop out a vein.

Throughout our day together, I have to keep myself from bursting out laughing because of all the silly things she does when she thinks I'm not looking. Her most recent antic is to yell "Abre! (is that how it's spelled?)" at the most random times, imitating her favorite tv character Dora when she wants things to "Open" like the door, a book, or even at laundry as she throws it up in the air.

Other times when I'm feeling blue, she tries to cheer me up in her own special ways. Often that means offering Sonja or her cup of juice to me. Sometimes if I have to cry, she sits in my lap and cries with me. Once she even offered Sonja's hand to me, because for her sucking on Sonja's hand is comforting.

And I feel for her when she cries...Somehow a broken dish or spilled milk all over the floor just doesn't matter when your child is whimpering and feeling bad for what she did. The comforting hug always comes first...clean up comes later.

So wiping up all sorts of biological messes, finding irreversible pen marks on favorite books, waking up in the middle of the night of an already shortened sleep, is nothing. Realizing that your child needs you and you love your child, is absolutely something.