Lip Balm, Togedder, and Tortillas

You may recall from a post the other day that Miss Grier owed me some lip balm. She has been climbing and getting into the cosmetics on my dresser lately and she ruined TWO different tubes of Burt's Bees tinted lip balm. At $4.99 a piece, I was starting to get a little frustrated. Plus, I had a cold and really needed the chap stick! So, I told her that if she continued to ruin my things, she'd have to take money out of her piggy bank and buy me a new one. "But I need money in my piggy bank," she told me. "Then I guess you better not ruin anymore of Mama's stuff," I replied, trying not to explode with the frustration of her "busyness" over the past couple of weeks.

Saturday night, she ended up in bed with me around 1am. Bill wasn't home and I don't usually send the kids back to their own beds if he is gone anyway. So, I tucked the blankets in around us and she snuggled right up close to my face and whispered, "Now us togedder," like she'd just been waiting for the moment we'd be so close. And being the sucker that I am, all the frustration melted away. Maybe it was just a dream that my mother found this child swirling a toothbrush in a toilet of poop last week. Maybe it wasn't this child that ate ALL of Fletcher's Valentine's candy and left wrappers in little piles around the house. Maybe she isn't the one that I heard at 6am getting into the Hershey's kisses that were for the big kids to take to school on Valentine's Day. Maybe it was a different child who came to my bed at 5:30am, when I had just gotten Bristol (the girl with the double ear infection) to sleep after hours of restlessness and started kicking us and then crying loudly when I lowered her over the side of the bed and said she couldn't be with us. Uh huh. And maybe she wasn't going to ruin anymore of my stuff.

Fast forward to Monday morning. Grier came to me with my one last tube of chap stick that I keep in my purse and that I didn't even know she knew about. She asked if she could have some. I don't normally share it, but in this case, I wanted to thank her for asking me first, so I put some on her lips and set it next to the computer. It wasn't an hour later, I noticed that not only were her lips shimmering, but most of the skin around her lips was as well. Wouldn't you know it? My chap stick was gone.

I found it. Spoke very sternly (yelled, if you ask Grier) about how disappointed I was that she wasted another lipstick and how she would have to go to the store with Daddy to get me a new one. "Me hate going to the store with Daddy to get you a new one!" "Yeah, well, me hate when you ruin my stuff. Let's count your money." I texted Bill to let him know he better get home quick because his fourth child wasn't going to make it much longer with me and I dumped her piggy bank on the floor to sort $5.30 from the pieces of tortillas. Yes. Crusty old tortillas. See for yourself.

Maybe I should just stop trying to tell stories about this child with words and only use pictures. There will probably come a day when there are simply no words left. Insert: deep sigh of a decidedly defeated mother.