do it myself

i am so depressed because i SWEAR i made my credit card payment last month, but somehow the online transaction did not go through. so now my payments went up from 28 dollars to 93 dollars. fabulous. i CANNOT afford 65 extra dollars a month! m i can barely pay my babysitter anyways! so depressing. i hate money. i don't even use my credit cards anymore. i just barely manage to make the minimum payment but i always make sure it gets paid on time. i check it off on my organized paperwork as soon as it's done! aaaaaargh! i swear this has to be an online banking mistake, but i can't prove it of course because they will have no record of it, since i indeed can't find online record of it being paid. this sucks. now we are having to think about another baby and i still have to get a big cavity fixed, but it looks like i'll have to wait another month... again. just hope it doesn't turn into a root canal. i need help. this stuff depresses me immensely at least once a month.

anyways, on a happier note, sparrow was eating gold fishies today and she said, "so good!" which is the cutest thing ever and made me laugh outloud. thomas and i always say "so--good?!" in this certain way (based on a french lady we know) whenever we are eating something delicious. i wonder if it will always baffle me how much this girl picks up when i don't think she's paying attention. i mean, the other day we were looking at a bunch of clothes from gymboree, and she kept saying, "i love that!" (well, "eyauv dat!") about items i would pull out. more recent little sayings include saying "no, m-m," or just "m-m" when she doesn't want something. she also says "do it myself." oh dear. not even two yet. this evening she was trying to pull on a pair of leggings all by herself, and would get quite upset if i attempted to help her at any point. But of course leggings are so…narrow and difficult! She did manage to get both legs into the same panthole, however. Then I gently helped her while making it seem like she was still doing it herself. What’s funny is she now applies the “myself” bit to me, even. She likes to regularly do things and then say “mama do it.” Like if she takes a drink of water (she relishes the part at the end of her drink where she gets to go, “aaaah”), she ALWAYS hands me the glass afterward and says “mama do it.” Now, she will say, “mama do it myself.” Hahaha. Climbing up the jungle gym, then looking back at me, expecting me to follow: “mama do it myself.”

One particular difficult area in the “do it myself” world is shoe-tying. Oh yes. Thomas and I have both shown her once or twice how we tie her shoes, and let me tell you—that was a big mistake. The next one is getting shielded from shoe-tying until the dexterous age of five—minimum. When we know it is humanly possible for the fingers to actually start tying shoes. Because even though sparrow’s one-and-a-half year-old fingers are way too tiny and uncoordinated to really tie her shoes—even if she DID properly know how to make a bow—she insists “sparrow tie it!” every morning, and it is quite the ordeal getting her shoes actually tied, and everyone out the door, while she squeals and struggles with her laces! I have to let her deal with one shoe while I rapidly tie the other, and then I have to let her try to undo the first one (so she can tie it herself!) while I tie the other one! And half the time she succeeds in untying the first one, too! Then I am really over it! Seriously people—do I really have four more years of this before she actually learns how to tie them??!!? i have desperately abandoned her lacing shoes and gone back to the pull-on boots that are already a bit too small...