Caroline was up bright and early this morning at 6:15. It’s all her daddy’s fault, really. Not that he woke her up, but it is his gene pool that has given her this propensity for early rising. At least he takes some responsibility for it and he was the one to go get her out of bed. She came and got in our bed and immediately started demanding that I get up.
I refused.
6:15 is just too early. It’s a decent hour if you’re a farmer and there are cows to be milked and crops to be tended, but we live in the city and our milk is in the fridge. It’ll keep until 7:30.
Anyway, she went to play in her playroom and entertain herself until I finally stumbled out of bed a little after 7 a.m. We ate breakfast, we played Hungry, Hungry Hippos, we played Candyland, we looked for caterpillars on the back porch, we fingerpainted and painted with paintbrushes, then glitter glued sheet after sheet of construction paper, and finally we calculated the national deficit and figured out a solution to the social security crisis. It was a full day and I was exhausted.
I looked at the clock to check the time.
It was 10:15 a.m.
I was out of activities and it was barely 10 in the morning. I knew we should have spent more time crunching those numbers on the federal deficit.
Fortunately, the Disney Channel was airing The Tigger Movie which gave her something to do until lunchtime so that I could concentrate on filing my fingernails and growing out my bangs.
And then we had rest time.
Or technically, I had rest time while Caroline came out of her room every 5 minutes to ask if rest time was over. Her energy knows no limit. If I could harness it, I could solve the global warming crisis or whatever other crisis requires alternate sources of energy.
After she finally wore me down and I conceded that rest time could be over, she went in her playroom and put on what I like to call her “Copacabana outfit”. Because although her name isn’t Lola, she is definitely a show girl, albeit a show girl without “yellow ribbons in her hair and a dress cut down to there”.
Now y’all might think she put on that outfit so she could do the merengue or the cha-cha or to just look pretty, but you would be wrong. She picked that particular outfit so we could go dig for worms in the backyard. Because if you’re going to be digging for creatures that can regenerate themselves after being cut in half, you want to look your best. At least that’s what I read in Emily Post.
Along the side of our house in the backyard, is what should be a flowerbed, but since we have two dogs who hold no regard for flora or fauna, it is instead just a bed of dirt. P recently added some sand to the dirt and sprinkled the whole thing with cornmeal because, apparently, this creates the equivalent of heaven for earthworms, and he and Caroline decided a person really can’t get enough of the earthworm, which is not an opinion I share. Nevertheless, digging for worms has become a new favorite activity at our house.
For Caroline, not for me.
My new favorite activity is figuring out how to keep my hair out of my eyes.
We head out to the backyard, and she stands over me like a well dressed prison warden, while I get the shovel and dig in the dirt. She stands over me and keeps asking, “Have you found any yet? HAVE YOU FOUND ANY?”
Four years ago when I saw that ultrasound and found out I was having a girl, I dreamed of the day we would brush Barbie’s hair together while we talked about what color we should paint our toenails. I dreamed of shopping together for beautiful shoes. I dreamed of frilly dresses and big bows.
And naturally, I dreamed of digging up worms in the backyard like I’m on a chain gang while she barks orders at me to dig faster because those worms aren’t going to dig themselves.