Monday, December 15, 2008

Perspective and Spilled Milk

Another blogger recently posted something that went straight to my heart. The other day she was pouring something into a glass and she spilled a little onto the counter. Her four-year-old observed this and commented, "Mom, sometimes you spill, and I don't get mad at you."

I don't consider myself a scrupulously neat person, but nothing pushes my freak-out button like seeing my toddler spill something. I gasp, I shriek, and I grit my teeth as if the spill was a personal insult to me rather than a mere step in the process of my toddler developing motor skills and learning cause-and-effect (e.g. tilt glass beyond angle x = spill y quantity of milk onto carpet). I'm trying to accept that spills are just part of growing up, not earth-shattering calamities. And I'm trying to remember that sometimes I spill things, too.

For heaven sakes, if I ever hosted a cooking show it would be billed as a comedy.

2 comments:

Cathy said...

I just thought it was about time someone commented so that you'd know we still love you. I liked this story. Reminds me of an episode in a Gary Paulsen book, The Island, where a teenage boy says that he'd decided to make adult mistakes, not child mistakes, for exactly this reason--that mistakes weren't so horrifically awful when committed by an adult. No matter how hard he tried though his mistakes kept being interpreted as kid mistakes. Wish I could convey the charm and humor of the original. I highly recommend it--great book for anyone who loves beauty and wants to notice it in the world around them. It's so good it makes the extremely short list of books Ed and I have read aloud together.

Incidentally, how DID you manage to look so slender in your Christmas picture, while quite pregnant? I'm impressed.

Kimberly Bluestocking said...

I wore black, leaned forward, and held a toddler in front of my tummy. :) Actually, I didn't set out with the intent to hide my tummy - it just worked out that way.

Thanks for commenting, by the way. I try not to let those "0 Comments" chip away at my self esteem, but it is hard to motivate myself to post if no one seems to take any note when I do it. But I suppose that's part of a vicious cycle: few comments = few posts = fewer comments = fewer posts . . . Of course, the fact that it's Crazy Holiday Month probably has nothing to do with this whatsoever . . .