Just that kind of a day

You know the one. the one where the fly ends up in your coffee before you even get a sip. The one where your three year old shoves a cup of yogurt in your face demanding you help her "with the end" (meaning scrape the bottom of the cup and feed her) but today it's a half full cup of yogurt which she promptly drops on the floor you JUST steam mopped yesterday....the one where the allergy headache started before you even woke up and you feel like there's been an invasion of tiny gnomes with tiny hammers beating on your head and face....yeah those days.

It's been a challenging couple of weeks....the the rising temps don't really help a lot. Note - I am not complaining about summer. I like summer. I'd rather deal with the sweltering heat than the snow any day of the week.   I'm talking about that "I'm just sitting here in front of a fan and I'm still soaked with sweat" type of day...those are the ones when my toddler screams help like the mutant spiders have invaded with such an edge to her voice that I immediately sprint to the other side of our apartment expecting the worst and instead....
....
....wait for it...
....
discover she can't get a sticker off a page....
spilled a single drop of smoothie on her shirt....
"can't reach" the cup sitting next to her hand.
....yeah those days.

Those are the days when it is so hard to not just sit down and cry and eat my weight in ice cream.

Those are the ones where I tell my darling daughter "Bean if you would just..."  and dispense wisdom about how if she'd look up she'd see her cup, or if she'd tell me with actual words what her problem is I could help, or if she'd watch where she's walking instead of insisting on walking backwards everywhere she might not run into things....
and that's when I wonder if to God sometimes I'm a three year old.

"Eye....if you'd just stop whining and start listening you'd realize I already gave you the answer.  If you'd stop trying to fix it yourself you'd see that I can do this...."

Oh...you mean like when I tell Bean that if she wants me to fix the toy she has to hand it to me?  If she wants me to give her something specific she has to tell me what it is?  If she is hungry she needs to eat the food I give her?  something like that?

My kid is in the why phase.  Every. Single. Thing. gets a "why?"
Here's a gem from yesterday:
Bean: I'm hungry.
Me: ok, let's get some lunch.
Bean: why?
Me: You said you're hungry.
Bean: Why did I said I'm hungry?
Me: You tell me.
Bean: Because I want to eat something. Come on mama let's go to the fridge and figure it out!
Me: Ok, coming.
Bean: why?
Me: Purple. because aliens wear hats.
Bean: that's just silly. why are you silly?
Me: Let's get mommy some coffee while we're at it.
Bean: Why?

Maybe I don't spend all day asking the Almighty "Why" but it kind of seems like I question him without actually questioning him.  Ooh. existential. Go on, what do you mean by that?

Well, if I say "God I trust you to provide. I trust you to take care of..." then I sit there and crunch numbers, or cry, or panic I'm kinda questioning the ability or maybe even the willingness.

I talk about my kid a lot. Yes. I'm that parent.  I adore my child. Yes, there are days when I wonder how many more minutes until naptime, but really - I've got it good.  I have an incredibly smart, sweet, funny, caring, tenderhearted little girl.  She's brilliant (how many three year olds do you know that can read and do math?) and she's got such a sweet tender heart - if I cover my face with my hands, she runs to my side asking what's wrong. She doesn't care if she was in the middle of a class three meltdown over the granola bar being broken.
When we lost our sweet Baby Sprout, she was too young to understand what was happening...but she knew mommy and daddy were very sad.  She responded by being extra cuddly.  One day, I couldn't keep the tears in check - I did not hide my grief from her, but I did try to not cry all day.  But I was at a point where my broken heart and body hurt too much to hold it in. So I sat down, and I let the tears slip down my face, trying to just watch my little girl play. She stopped what she was doing, climbed into my lap, laid her little head on my chest and said "mommy's here. mommy's here"  the same way I've always done for her as I hold her close to soothe her fears and owies....
She's taught me a lot of lessons.
I look at her and I marvel at the miracle.  I helped make a whole person.  I love her more than life itself, and I've injured myself more than twice keeping her from injury, it's just what you do.  You don't think about it, you just do.  and if I can do this, this imperfect human complete with selfish nature....how much more does God love us?
I get why God was willing to take our punishment.
I'd rather be commode-hugging-can't-get-off-the-the-bathroom-floor-don't-even-let-me-smell-food sick than have her have a runny nose.  If there was a way for me to take illness and owchies from her and put them on myself, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Bean knows she's loved. If you ask her how much her mommy loves her, she'll smile and tell you more than coffee.  Anyone who knows me will smile and tell her "that's a LOT."  She knows that it doesn't matter how busy I am, how tired I am, how much I don't feel good - she KNOWS if she needs (and I do mean needs) her mama, I will be there.  She knows that I will stop typing mid-sentence, drop the cell phone, turn off the sink/stove/steam mop and come running.  She knows I will hold, her pray over her, kiss the boo-boo and trap the scary things.  She knows I love her unconditionally and that even when she has a "threenager" day, I'm still going to love her. I'm still going to hold her and kiss her goodnight and pray with her and tell her I love her.

Now take that and multiply it by infinity and we've scratched the surface of how much God loves us.
Astounding isn't it?

If you haven't read it, Crazy Love by Francis Chan is an amazing read on the topic.  Go check it out. I'll wait.

Let's give this a shot!

So, there was a day, I ordered some ink from Amazon.  It came, I tried to install it in my printer and discovered that *gasp* the seller had misrepresented the ink. It not only was not compatible with my printer...it had leaked a huge mess en route to me. I contacted the seller to no avail...and finally filed a complaint and a one star review on Amazon - that got their attention. I got emails asking me to remove my review and they'd replace the product....
um, yeah, it doesn't fit my printer. Just give me my money back dude.
we went back and forth for days - they actually threatened to not give me my refund unless I took down my review - they also said that Amazon wouldn't let them give me a full refund (which is bull).
So I went to Amazon directly.
Can you say amazing customer service??
They took care of it right away - I got all of my money back, including return shipping and the seller....well I don't think they are allowed to sell on Amazon anymore - the customer service rep listened to everything I said and agreed with me that it's not right to ask a customer to remove a bad review.
Bad reviews aren't great for business...but the thing is....they give the fuller picture.  I had another amazon experience - the product was so-so, and I reviewed it as such. I got an email with some follow up questions and a free sample of another size of the product which worked much better.
I was happy to amend that review.  This company said "please try this size and let us know how it works, if you have a better experience would you consider updating your review."  No pressure, no "do it or else"

Reviews...powerful little things...they help us to decide if a product is good or bad, a place has great chicken or really needs a new cook...

So when I heard about Smiley I thought, hmmmm I should look into that.

I'm a frugal mama. I adore coupons, sales and freebies, so of course there are a few websites I keep tabs on - one of which is Stacy's Freebies - and she mentioned this Smiley company - free stuff for honest reviews.  How great is that?
so...I'm trying it.

And if you want to join me, you can too. It's free, they don't seem to demand a lot of info and well for me, I kinda like the idea of having a voice about products on the market!
So click here for more info.