now with a picture AND a video

Joshua travels for at least one big work event every summer, sometimes more. This year he had two, plus the frequent weekend trips he took for his new business and it made this summer long and often lonely and not exactly filled with the same kind of golden memories as summers past. He knows I am extremely proud of his hard work, so with great affection and support for his endeavors I say: thank God this summer is over. Joshua's arrival home from California tomorrow marks the official end to the traveling circus and there are no more trips planned other than ones we are taking together. There is some kind of intense emotion that I feel about this, a mixture of joy and relief and despite my best efforts, a lingering sadness over how stressful it was. Kind of like the way a dog feels right after a bath, I imagine. I am the wet dog, and this summer was my bath.

I'm not sure how to recover from that analogy (I'm clean now? this is going badly), so I will move on to the fact that these summer trips have gotten so much easier now that Matilda is older. The stressful part of the trips is the part where I work 56 hours in 6 days in order to be off the entire time Joshua is gone -not the part where we are home together sans Daddy. I really look forward to having time just with her - especially now that we can just chatter away to each other and paint our toenails and go on long walks where she demands to sip my coffee every few blocks and I let her because hello, antioxidants.

I loved Matilda's babyhood because she was so happy and content and squishy but this age is far and beyond my favorite (I did not love 18-24ish months. There was a lot of climbing furniture and falling off furniture and rageful head banging and rigor mortis tantrums and not a lot of talking. We are verbose people, Joshua and I. We needed this child to speak and voila! She also sings). She has strong opinions on what she wants to wear and where she wants to go and what she wants to eat and do and play with and it is incredibly hilarious and more seriously, incredibly satisfying for the part of my soul that wanted to be a mother above anything else in the world. Today I took Matilda to get custard and as I was buckling her into her carseat for the ride home, she said, "thank you for the treat, Mama." (Naturally, I cried right there on Belmont outside Scooters). She also says the things we've always told her about herself, "I am really smart! I am really strong!" and I feel like if I literally did not accomplish one more thing in my lifetime other than for her to keep saying that into adulthood, that would be more than enough.

(She also says, "I am really cute!" and I'm going to check it off in the positive self-esteem column as opposed to in the reinforcing shallow stereotypes for girls column. For now).

Of course, this morning a sweet older woman was passing us as I navigated the sidewalk of our busy street with the dog and Matilda, who insists on walking "by myself. No help, Mama", and the woman made the mistake of saying hello to Matilda in the middle of one of her declarations of stroller independence. My really smart and really strong daughter told her, "STOP IT! I'm not talking to you", and then I died on the inside/passed out from embarrassment/disciplined her promptly/choose your own adventure, mine was shame. Parenting is humbling, in a literal scrape yourself off the sidewalk way. 

And then we have this video, taken moments before the sweetest thank you she's ever given me - I apologize in advance for how loudly Eleanor Rigby was playing and for the fact that I laugh like someone who has recently hit the sidewalk.