We had the sister missionaries over for dinner last night. As part of their spiritual message, they asked our children what their parents do that make them happy. Babs said that we play with her. (As infrequently as we can get away with, but yes, we play with her.) Kiddo answered without guile, "They give me chores. Helping out by doing chores makes me happy." Ironically, chores do not make her happy. (Do they make any one happy?) It is in fact the quickest route to tears and shouts of "it's not fair!" Even the easy chores, the actual fun chores, are hard and left undone without some encouragement. But she believes in her heart that she wants to do chores all day long. Except that she doesn't.
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Today Babs shouted to me "It's not fair!" about some injustice of parenting. (I believe I wouldn't let her watch TV, after she'd already watched a bunch.) I looked her in the eye "Have I ever told you life was fair?" No. "Has Daddy?" No. "Did you learn it at preschool?" No. "Good. Because life isn't fair. I need you to know that." My follow-up thought, that I'm sure she's not ready for, is for us, that's a good thing, because we have a lot more than we deserve.
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Kiddo lost her next tooth! I pulled it after the dentist said that her three current loose teeth were all ready to go (I haven't pulled the next two yet). She has a slight missing tooth lisp. This one does not have an immediate tooth following in, so there is actually a big gap, which I'm enjoying. She luckily doesn't think about it much, because the night I pulled it, she looked in the mirror and said "Oh, this is terrible. My smile is terrible." It's not. It's adorable.
