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Parenting 2: A Portrait

I just locked myself in my bedroom on a Friday night to pay bills in silence, if you're wondering how it's going over here. While we are most often doing swimmingly, there are moments of disbelief and frustration that result in a responsible adult making the decision to walk away slowly.

C: I'm going to eat this plastic bag.
R: Don't.
C: I'm going to! I'm going to eat this plastic bag!
D: Well, just so you know, if you do eat a plastic bag, you will probably choke and we'd most likely have to take you to the hospital where they may need to cut open your throat. And that just doesn't sound like a fun Friday. So how about you put the bag where it goes and I would love to play Monopoly Junior with you after dinner! And I'm sure daddy would like to join u--
C: No.
D: What?
C: He'll say no.
D: How do you know that?
C: I just do (she twirls out of the dining room and into the kitchen, still holding the aforementioned god damn plastic bag).
D: But you haven't asked him yet...
C: I've asked him for like 240 years.
R: You just got that game for Christmas and the two times you've played it, I've played too. You beat me both times.

I should mention that it was as I was asking how she could possibly know that Ryan wouldn't want to play that I was actually sliding up the stairs and into the bedroom (it's the only upstairs room with a lock). I took a deep, cleansing breath and took out my laptop to be fiscally responsible and pay my bills (hey, new year, new me, blah blah blah).

Shit.

I left the notebook that I use to budget downstairs and have to sneak back into the lion's den to grab it and hopefully get back up without being noticed. Fail. Just epic fail.

The moment is gone, she's back downstairs doing something else and I am reminding myself that someday, she won't want to be by me at all and I will, in fact, miss our discussions and her tiny person logic and inability to grasp time concepts.

So now I'll pay my bills and then jump right back into our chaos because it is beautiful and it is ours and there's nowhere else I'd rather be or anyone else I'd rather lose miserably to in Monopoly Junior on a Friday night.

But there will be wine.

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