Bronwen TV

Bronwen has started to write her own songs. As you might expect, this utterly delights me. Every song she makes up fill me with dreams up future stardom, or at least dreams of her life being filled with music.

Dan gave me a mandolin for my birthday. I have always wanted to learn to play the mandolin. But it is also the perfect size for Bronwen to play.

The night I opened my present, she sat with it for half an hour playing and making up songs. The best song was the one that described everything I was doing as she was singing. It went something like:

“Mommy is cleaning up. She is picking up my shoes.
Mommy is throwing away the trash. There is a lot of trash.
Mommy wants to give me my juice…” (At which point I did indeed give her the juice.)

This kid is hilarious, and an absolute pleasure to sit back and watch. As Chris likes to say, “You’ve gotta love some Bronwen TV.”

Mother's Guilt

Truthfully, I feel a little guilty about the whole potty training thing. I was so anxious about what would happen, how it would happen and if it would happen, I kept putting the whole thing off. Then the lady at daycare started bugging me.

“Bring in panties,” she would say to me everyday.

“Oh, she’s not ready for that yet,” I would say sneaking out of the door.

“Bring in panties. She’ll be ready.” She kept bugging me and I finally felt like a jerk not bringing them in, so one Monday I picked up a 10 pack of underwear and brought them in.

“She’s doesn’t really want to wear these,” I said smugly as I left them in her storage box at the daycare.

A week later Bronwen was potty trained and only wearing pull-ups at night. a week after that, no more pull-ups.

So, I feel pretty guilty because I didn’t have to do any work. We had two accidents (which, frankly, were hilarious) and then nothing. No stress, no worries, nothing.
Sometimes, when I start feeling that “daycare guilt” that working mothers can fall prey to pretty easily, you know, where you think that you are a bad mom for putting your kids in daycare, like they would be so much better off if you stayed home with them. But then, daycare potty trains your kid in a week and you realize that they actually know what they are doing and that your kid is thriving and healthy. Of course I wish we could spend everyday hanging out, but it does make things feel a little better.

Breakfast

Bronwen in the Garden

There is nothing like a bean straight from the plant or a tomato, still warm from the sun. This morning before Bronwen and I got into the car to speed off to our respective day jobs, we took a walk together in the garden. After last nights thunderstorms the air was clean and cool and the plants were vibrant and healthy looking. Bronwen stopped to touch every developing tomato and pepper; she poked every flower. The string beans had doubled in size since yesterday. I snapped off bean after bean and we munched them in the cool morning of the garden.