"Are You So, So Mad At Me?"

Dear Laney,

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: silence is the enemy. A loud young'un is an occupied young'un, and I've trained my mom ears to recognize all sorts of noises. In fact, there's probably a game show in having blindfolded moms guess what activity is happening in front of them. For example,  "That's the sound of a three year-old pushing a step stool over to her baby brother's crib so she can climb in and teach him a new game she's invented called, 'BOUNCE, HAGEN, BOUNCE!!!!'"

The other night, your dad and I were sitting on the couch, when we noticed you'd been in the bathroom for a while, and were awfully quiet. When you get tired enough as a parent, you start asking yourselves questions like, "Even if the bathroom is flooded, is it worth getting up?" We decided no. Then I started asking myself what a brilliant three year-old could get herself into, and I imagined you drinking hairspray, so with a sigh, I got up to investigate.

You had set up a mirror, pulled out all of my make-up, and painted the whole bottom half of your face "Coral Reef."

When I opened the bathroom door, you looked up and asked, "Are you so, so mad at me?" And to tell you the truth, I wasn't. I thought it was kind of cool that you had set yourself up a little work station and  started experimenting. So I asked you if you wanted to do MY make-up, and the look on your face was so rapturous that it was totally worth having to wash the heck out of my face when you were done. 

Love,

Mom