leaky snot faucet

This pretty much describes my current state. I don't feel too death-on-toasty, but my nose will not stop running. Let's hope (please) that I feel better by tomorrow. We have an early walk scheduled.

In the meantime, a blast from the past. I posted the following on Thursday, February 14, 2008 at 2:44 a.m.:

goodbye toddler, hello preschooler; or, my baby always

In eleven hours and twenty-nine minutes, Pic will be three. Everything, every "milestone" feels big at the time, I'm sure (I think...I can't quite remember), but this feels strange. What have I been doing for the last three years? In a way, I feel like I haven't moved, changed, grown. Can this be right? It's probably the eternal lack of sleep.

I feel the same way about Pic...that she's the same now as she was when we brought her home, a bundle of screams in her carseat, an enigma for our wary cat, on a snowy day. I have to look at her pictures to remind myself that she is different. (I *know* that she's grown, but it seems to easy to forget that she hasn't always been this personita, this size, with this level of awareness and intelligence and crankiness.) I look at the pictures we had taken a year ago, she clad in a mismatched outfit we let her pick out, topped with a green bandana, and I think, 'that's exactly how she looks now. She's no different now than she was twelve months ago.' Poke's mom recently told me that before I know it, Pic will be getting married and I'll still be imagining her as a tiny miss ('Hold on to mommy's pocket,' Poke's mom reminisced). I don't imagine the wedding (will she marry when she's grown?), but I do imagine me still thinking of her as 'my baby, my love, my baby love,' as I often refer to her, when she's twenty, thirty, sixty.

On Sunday we're having new pictures taken. I'll bring them home and compare them to last year's and this will be the 'proof' I need to admit that she's different (but not completely).

Three? Do I still get to refer to her as my 'baby'? Sometimes, like now when I'm running on about twelve hours of sleep spread out over the last three days, I feel a desperate need to hold onto this time that wants to slip by so quickly.

The other day, my dad told me that I am a good mamma. Sometimes I feel like I let so many other things get in the way of living up to this. 'I have to read this for school.' 'I have to prepare for my students.' 'I have to rearrange the books into categories.' Sometimes, quite often actually, I feel like I'm rushing her around. 'We have to hurry if we want to get to the library to see Ms. J.' 'We need to hurry and get you to school to play with your friends.' I have a constant, sometimes silent, conversation with myself that I need to slow down, focus on now and just freaking breathe. I'm working on it. We go to the library. We walk to the park down the street and slip around on the ice under the swings and at the bottom of the slide. We read books (hers and mine), even if I have to read horribly saccharine and mind-numbing Disney princess books along with _The Piggy in the Puddle_ and _Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day_ (or any of the other 900 or so Pic's books we have). We watch _Lions_ (_Between the Lions_) and sing 'Grow, Mane, Grow'. Now, if only I could be here entirely and not always inwardly slightly, or not-so-slightly, freaking out about the dozens of cantos of _Faerie Queene_ and _Orlando Furioso_ I have to read before class. As I said, I'm working on it. It's a lifelong project, I believe.

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A special Happy Happy Happy Birthday to Indie. Pic was due on her birthday but held out for VDay.