One at a time

 












is so stinking easy, especially if you have a little bit of a crush on the one. It's spring break next week, so I'm doing the working mom shuffle to arrange child care. Ma and Pa took DDs 1, 3 and 4 out to the home place this afternoon until tomorrow afternoon when they need to leave for funeral in Idaho, so Tuesday is still up in the air, hmmm, I need to knit a thicker support net. So here I am tonight with only the charming, easily pleased, uberadorable YuYu because she has a Brownie event tomorrow afternoon and will need to go to work with me until I take her to the SAHM-planned (obviously) event to celebrate their epic victory in the cookie wars with great feasting and feats of skill and awards for bravery (Little Ceasar's pizza, swimming and new badges).
There wasn't enough time to do much together, a bath where I got creative with the tub crayons, carrying clean laundry up the stairs and singing She'll Be Coming Round the Mountain with YuYu giggling go hard at the crazy lyrics I was making up that she got a side ache, then folding great mountains of laundry (with only two pair of Ellie's clean knickers to be found in the whole entire heap, hmmmm, not a good sign) when YuYu wanted to know if I was boring, well yes, but what she really wanted to let me know was that she was bored, so we talked about the meaning of bored and she said: "Mom, you really do know everything." Easy to see why I have the mom crush on her, yes?
But what was most noticeable, sadly, sadly, noticeable, to me was how relaxed I was without Nora. How easy it was to sing and be fun and make up games and not have to worry about Nora spinning it out of control and into the badlands of competing/needing me to focus the fun on her, or at least demanding and making sure in loud and intrusive ways that she gets her fair share of the fun which usually sucks all the fun out of whatever fun I initated anyway. She just NEEDS so much from me, needs so much more than the other three combined. Needy, to the point that she hangs on me and I feel like I have to suppress myself and only make small gestures, only give small portions away because she'll just need more and more and more and more and more never ending until I just don't see how I can ever give enough, so I don't want to create any expectations I'll never have enough resources to fill. If I loved her like I love YuYu, it wouldn't feel like work to try to fill her up, but the magic isn't there yet and it still just feels like work. I've been quiet about the slow progress, but there it is, it goes slow, not even steady; just slow and erratic with just a splash of guilt to make it emotionally exhausting.
Well, interesting how that post just got away from me. Hmmmm.