Monday Morning Mia

Every time Monday morning rolls around, I am always stuck with what to do. On the one hand, there is so much to share. Mia changes day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute, and this space offers us a chance to document these shifts. We don't keep a baby book or anything like that, so the blog is our way of remembering the moments, good and challenging, of Mia's life, and our life with her. I doubt anyone finds these snippets particularly interesting. I like having the ability to scroll through our archives and see what Mia was doing at various stages, but the small details don't really make for very good reading.

On the other hand, it's difficult to capture the bigger moments, the sweeping landscapes, that also make up Mia's life. Part of me wants to keep them private. Another part of me doesn't know how to commit them to words. It's fun to share the stories, the dramas, the ups and downs that make life with Mia that much more special. So, I struggle with how to tell these stories in a meaningful way to others.

When I turn on the computer on Monday mornings, I never know which way to go. Of course, I recognize that our dwindling readership really just wants photos, which I am happy to oblige.

Bearing that in mind, this Monday's edition will probably be less than exciting. This week, it's really just about documenting the changes. There will be more exciting stories, more meaningful moments, in the future, but for now, it's just a record, a snapshot, of life at sixteen months.

We're currently in a battle of wills with young Mia. It's a bit early to be entering into the "terrible twos," but it really feels like that's where we're going. Up to now, discipline hasn't really been an issue. Mia was always a lap baby, happy to sit in any available set of arms and cuddle. But now that she's walking, it's an entirely different story. She is a highly adventurous person, without much in the way of fear. She has taken to climbing on everything she can, and climbing off, too. The off part is a bigger problem. We're trying to encourage her to sit on her bum when going down stairs, or to get on her belly to get off the couch or bed, but Mia has no use for our parental advice. She's only fallen off the bed once, but I see a lot more spills in the very near future.

The problem isn't that she's into everything, or rather, onto everything. It's that she has no use for the word "No." Perhaps we need to find a way to redirect our pleas, but whatever we are doing just isn't working. If you tell (or probably more accurately, if I tell) Mia "no," she will look at you, smile, and continue doing whatever it was she was doing, typically while repeating "no, no, no." It's kind of funny and it's certainly adorable, but it's not very effective. You can actually see the twinkle in her eyes as she tests the limits of acceptable behavior. I don't care if she falls down now and again, I just don't want her to get electrocuted or crack her skull open. To that end, we really need to find some way of letting her know when things are really dangerous and when we'd really prefer she not be doing whatever it is she's doing. There is no shortage of toddler discipline books out there, I just don't know if a book is really the answer or, if it is, if we're really ready for a disciple strategy for our baby. I mean, please, look how well we disciplined Walter. Can we really handle the gentle disciplining of a toddler?




In addition to taming a toddler, we are also trying to tame the wild that is our backyard. This weekend, we saw two amazing gardens, both inspirational and both most likely out of our reach, financially, time-wise and skill-wise, for a while. But, we still want to make our backyard both more liveable and more beautiful.
So, here's our small veggie patch.





And here's where our shade garden will go. We got some hosta, salvia, impatiens and begonias, and if you come visit soon you'll be able to sip iced coffee on our back porch, watching the cardinals and blue jays, and enjoying the flora and fauna of Backyard Garden, Take One.