I don't want to cry

I had a few errands to run today, but I got a late start getting ready this morning because I kept getting sidetracked by my mess maker. At one point, Grace came out of her room shaking her head and saying, "It's a mess in there!" I took a peek and sure enough, there were books strewn all over the floor, the contents of half of her organizer bins were dumped out, and her bed linens were in disarray.

By the time I was done doing damage control in her room, my room, and the living room, it was already lunch time and too late to run any morning errands. So I scrapped my plans and decided we were going to have a lazy day in. The weather was cold and cloudy- perfect for lounging around and doing a lot of nothing.

We napped and snuggled on the couch and watched all the Christmas specials we could find. And lest you think we were complete couch potatoes, we managed to tackle a few loads of laundry, too. Grace's favorite part is folding. I dump all the clean clothes on my bed and while I'm busy trying to fold them, she asks me to turn on the music and then climbs up on the bed and dances. She calls it dancing, but I call it undoing all my hard work since she manages to knock down my folded laundry while shaking her booty. Still, it makes me smile to see her having so much fun so I don't mind the extra work her dancing makes for me.

Not in the mood to make dinner, we made a quick run for some take out. While we were waiting for our order, I let her play with my keys. But she became quite upset with me when I took them back so we could drive home. I managed to buckle her into the carseat and then she looked at me with all seriousness and said, "Mama, give me the keys. I don't want to cry!"

I don't know if it was an appropriate parent response or not, but I bust out laughing. Did I really just get threatened by my 22 month old daughter?

The other day, we were in the car and I don't remember what exactly she wanted then, but she started bawling. Mike and I just ignored her and she took a brief pause in the water works to say, "Look at me, I'm crying!"

I am loving this phase of her childhood. She is constantly cracking me up!