Not a Fan of Precious Moments, but I'll Keep These

The Little Miss has finally figured out how to slither out of her toddler bed by herself. She's been in her big girl bed for a couple of months, but has, till now, lacked the confidence to leave it herself. Which was cool by me, because I wasn't quite as ready as Mr. Me to do away with the crib. But that's all gone now and she's mobile, baby.

With her new found skilz she has decided that when she wakes up in the middle of the night she needs to tootle on into our room, pat me on the ass and say "mama" loudly until I pick her up and plop her between her dad and I.

Then she curls up and goes back to sleep.

This has happened 4 nights in a row now at 3:10AM. I realize that stricter parenting could make this stop, but 3:10AM is a particularly weak time of day for me. Every morning I resolve to fix it tomorrow night, and every night I reach over and pick her up and tuck her in so we can GO TO SLEEP ALREADY. So, much to my disgruntlement, she sleeps half the night with us, the middle bar to our capital H (feet must be on mom, head and patting hands on dad).

This morning was particularly awesome because the Little Man had a night terror about 4:45, so he wanted in too. So I slept sandwiched between the two little moochers until 6:45, when I think someone kicked me in the head? stomach? both simultaneously? and I decided to get up.

I managed to sneak out from between them and into the bathroom for a shower without disturbing them. Or so I thought. As it turns out, I woke the Little Miss, who in turn screamed for me and woke her brother,. He patted her on the head and sang her songs -"Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star", "Rock-a-bye Baby" and the Transformer's Theme Song - until she went back to sleep. I'm so SO mad I missed it.

Cut to this afternoon, on the swing set out back. I was pushing the Little Man on his swing, and trying to simultaneously play catch with the Little Miss. It was sort of working - catch with the Little Miss doesn't require much movement on my part - but the Little Man was in a whiny mood anyway and went into Full Scale Whine-o-rama when he realized he did not have my undivided attention. He whined that I was pushing too hard. Then not hard enough. Then too high. I finally told him that I wouldn't play with him any more because the whining was making my ears bleed, and immediately there was whine-induced fake crying. Upon seeing his (fake - did I mention he was so faking it?) dismay, his little sis dropped her ball, walked over to him and patted his back and muttered at him, trying to console him.

They are SO UNBELIEVABLY CUTE together I almost can't stand it. It causes huge goofy smiles to spread across my face every time I see them being so sweet to each other. Then I remember they likely won't be able to stand each other in a few short years, and that I'll be able to drag out gooey stories like this and watch them stare at me in shock and horror.

And then the smiles spread from ear to ear.