My daughter is strange.

I just hung up with my MIL who is helping care for Lily while Mark is out of town on a gig. I hadn’t had time to check in with her all day and figured it was about time. Here’s what she told me about what Lily had done today:
Around two o’clock she went down for a nap without a squawk. She was out for about forty minutes when she suddenly screamed! Heidi went booking it in there to find her not really awake but with eyes open and thrashing around dramatically in her crib. Heidi plucked her up and Lily fought being held but didn’t want to be back in her crib, no way, no how. So the two of them go cruising into the main house and Lily, still sobbing, decides she must eat. OK. Sure. So Heidi lets her pick out some yogurt from the fridge, gets her into her chair, sets her up with a bib, opens up the chosen yogurt, sticks a spoon in it and… WAHHHHHH! More screaming; as though the world is ending, screaming. Heidi gets her out of her chair and Lily throws herself across the room to the window looking out on the pepper tree (which, btw she told me a whole story about this morning), and wails some more. Heidi said Lily finally worked it all out of her system and then took little tiny, one inch steps all the way back to her Grandma who was waiting patiently for her at the stairs. And then she was fine.

Only thing we could fathom is that she had one heck of a nightmare and it took her a while to work through it. She’s never done that to Grandma Heidi before and a little part of me was like, “See! See how she’s insane sometimes?” She’s such an angel around people who are not me and usually reserves such behavior for her dear mommy. I also get all the hitting, kicking, pinching and biting. Us mamas are lucky, because you know why our babies do this kind of thing? Because they know that no matter what they do, we will love them. So with us, they push the limits. With us, they see how far they can go before we show them the boundary. We map their world and dammit, sometimes it hurts. You know you are loved and trusted when your toddler takes your face in her sweet, grubby little hands, strokes your cheeks while whispering “nice” and then gently and tenderly leans into you and BITES YOU ON THE FREAKING NOSE.