Doodle

Gulley and I both watch Beth Moore on “Life Today” every Wednesday. And this is where I have the desire to be like Nena and tell y’all, “It’s on channel 181. Turn the television to channel 181.”

Anyway, about a month or so ago Beth talked about the power of words and how potent they can be. She made the comment that if someone says something to you that doesn’t line up with who you are or what God says, then you can just reject it. You can just say “I reject that”.

Anyway, a few days later, Gulley and I were discussing it while the kids played outside. Gulley said she wished she had learned at an earlier age to just say “I reject that” and how it could have helped her. I agreed and we got into a long discussion about the power of words and various other things.

A few minutes later Caroline came in from the backyard and told Gulley that Will had told her she couldn’t play with any of his toys ever again. (Will is two so he is pretty much required by law to say things like that) Gulley laughed and said, “You just go outside and tell Will, ‘I reject that!'” and she threw her hand up in the air for emphasis.

The other day, after I picked Caroline up from school, we came home and talked about her day.

“How was your day, sweets?”

“It was good.”

“That’s good.”

“Well, except Emily wasn’t nice to me in chapel. She made a face at me and turned her back.”

“Did you tell her that wasn’t very nice?”

“No, I told her I REJECT THAT!” (complete with the raised hand in the air)

P has been out of town for the last few nights and so Caroline and I have had a lot of quality girl time.

Last night she begged me to build a fire in the fireplace and I agreed to attempt it even though my fire-building abilities are hit or miss. It took me a long time, and half a bottle of lighter fluid, but finally I managed to build a roaring fire while she cheered me on as if this fire was going to be our sole means of survival.

As we sat side by side and admired our fire she put her little hand on my knee and said, “Mama, when you get older you’ll remember special times like this.”

She is the light of my life.

And also, for the past three nights, the stealer of my covers.

First, let me thank y’all for staying civil in the comments yesterday. While I realized the Veggie Tales are very near and dear to many of your produce-loving hearts, I didn’t realize the intensity of the devotion. In all fairness, I have never heard the hairbrush song, so I could be missing out on musical greatness for all I know.

And I won’t get into my thoughts on why would a cucumber need a hairbrush in the first place. That’s a whole can of asparagus that I don’t care to open.

Thank you. I’ll be here all week.

Plus, we have reached crisis level at the house of Big Mama. This whole wardrobe issue is OUT OF CONTROL.

And I’m not just talking about P and his closet full of camo and Columbia fishing shirts.

Yesterday morning, Caroline had school and most school days I can manage to get her dressed in an appropriate outfit while she’s mesmerized by “Wow Wow Wubbzy!” without her realizing that her clothes actually match. Oh sure, she’ll add in a headband or three and perhaps clip her hair back with eight different clips, but at least she’s dressed for the right weather and only has on one pair of underwear as opposed to two pairs with some bloomers for good measure.

However, all that has changed. She now insists on going into her closet and picking out her own outfit. I already mentioned this led to her “WORST DAY EVER” on Saturday and then yesterday morning we reached full crisis mode.

She wanted to wear one of her zebra dresses (and yes, it’s a testament to my stellar fashion guidance that she owns more than one zebra print dress) so she disappeared into what I am now referring to as the closet of doom for about fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes, by the way, that we don’t have to spare on a school morning, because if her class leaves for chapel before she gets there then I have to wait another hour before I can drop her off.

Tragic consequences.

I finally entered into the sacred closet to see what was holding up the process. I found her sitting on the floor of her closet wearing a long-sleeved zebra print dress while trying to pull another long-sleeve navy striped dress over the zebra dress. I am all for layering, but no way was that going to work. She’d look like an overstuffed oompa loompa waddling on the playground.

I told her she couldn’t wear two dresses at once, which led to the phrase that is quickly becoming a tagline at our house, “THIS IS THE WORST DAY EVER!” And what I wanted to say is “Sister, you don’t know worst day until you wear two dresses at once and the temperature gets up to 70 degrees this afternoon.”

Instead, I told her she could wear the zebra dress with leggings, tights or her jeans. She chose her jeans. With the zebra dress. With light-up tennis shoes. And a long, hot pink sweater coat.

She looked much like a four year old bag lady.

And as I passed the mamas walking with their darling two year old girls who were wearing precious smocked dresses with darling socks and maryjanes, I wanted to say “Don’t judge me, because your day? It is coming.”

Then, when she got home from school she changed into what she believed to be the best possible outfit for a little afternoon tree climbing in the backyard.

She is one side ponytail and a bottle of bleach away from looking just like Chrissy Snow.

Well, if Chrissy Snow wore socks pulled up to her knees with black patent shoes.

The girl has her own unique style. Which is going to require me to put the summer clothes up on a very high shelf.

P left town on Thursday to go guide some hunts for a friend. Technically, yes, this was work since he was getting paid, but it’s essentially the equivalent of someone telling me they’ll pay me to go shop at Anthropologie.

And if any of y’all know how I can get that job, then hook me up.

So, anyway, it was just Caroline and me this weekend. I could tell by how hard she cried when P left that she had totally bought into my promise that we were going to have an AWESOME girls’ weekend, just the two of us. She just knows that time spent with me isn’t going to involve any dead animals (God-willing) and WOW, who can blame her for thinking I’m a big pile of NO FUN?

We got our girls’ weekend off to a roaring start by going to eat Mexican food with Mimi and Bops on Friday night. Caroline wanted to sit outside but it was too cold. Of course she doesn’t care about shallow things like temperature, so she spent the first half of dinner pouting into her chips and guacamole. Finally, I’d had enough and we headed to the ladies restroom to have a little discussion about the consequences of anymore pouting, which may or may not have included serious threats like leaving without eating our cheese enchiladas. I don’t play around.

Saturday morning she woke up bright and ready to conquer the world. I, on the other hand, had no idea what we were going to do with the twelve hours that stretched before us. But, after 853 times of her asking, “What are we going to do today? Where are we going? What’s our plan for today?”, I realized I better come up with a strategy, because, apparently her plan was to keep asking until my brain leaked out of my ears.

We called and invited her friend Emily to go see the new Veggie Tales movie with us. Emily was thrilled, her mama was even more thrilled, and Caroline was the most thrilled of all. We packed my purse full of Sour Patch Kids and went to pick up Emily.

And here’s why I like Emily, she brought her Barbie purse packed with her own supply of Sour Patch Kids. Her parents are raising her right and it warms my heart to know Caroline has befriended a little girl whose family has values so similar to our own.

The girls seemed to like the movie. I’m just going to go out on a limb and risk total ostracism by the parenting community and confess that I don’t really like Veggie Tales. I think all that produce hopping about and wielding swords when everyone knows cucumbers and asparagus don’t have hands is just unnatural. All that fighting and rescuing is going on and all I can think is who cares about a green pea in a pirate’s hat? And why is there a blueberry? Aren’t blueberries a fruit?

I realize the Veggie Tales are worth some kind of Christian mega-fortune and obviously I don’t know a clever marketing scheme to save my life. I’m just being honest. I don’t want to talk to tomatoes. I think they’re a marginally decent vegetable at best.

Anyway, we came home from the movie and the girls played in the backyard. I’m not sure what they were playing but it involved carrying all the firewood off the back porch and loading into a wagon. There was also some sort of elaborate trap using a Little Tikes lawnmower and the dog leash.

Caroline and I had plans to go to dinner again with Mimi and Bops. I got us all cleaned up and then she ran in her room to pick out her own outfit. It took her the better part of thirty minutes to get dressed and then she finally came out wearing a sundress with spaghetti straps over a pair of capri pants. It was 50 degrees outside.

I told her she absolutely couldn’t wear that, it was too cold and those were summer clothes. She threw herself on her bed and I am not kidding, said, “THIS IS THE WORST DAY OF MY WHOLE LIFE!”

Which immediately made me feel so good. Because if we’ve managed to make it four and a half years only to have the worst day of her life be a day that involved getting to go to a movie, eat massive amounts of candy and popcorn, and have a friend over to play, then I am doing a fabulous job with this whole motherhood thing.

In spite of the fact that I don’t like the Veggie Tales.