They pick up on everything

I know they always say kiddos pick up on the little things just as much as the big things. I just didn’t realize how much so until this morning.

I was unloading the dishwasher while H and B were playing. Both armed with fruit pouches…

I walked into the living room to check on them – both riding the rocking turtle together. (His name was Sheldon – how could we not have gotten a rocking turtle named Sheldon!?). But behind them, on their little table, was fruit pouch sauce food stuff all over.

I asked H if B did this, and she said, “Yes.”

But it took me about two seconds after grabbing a rag to clean it up that I realized B didn’t do it – it wasn’t his fruit pouch.

So I said to H, “Did B take your applesauce, mija?”

H: “No.”

Me: “But this is your applesauce on the table, not B’s.”

H: “I know.”

Me: “But you said it was B’s when I asked. Why didn’t you tell me it was yours?”

H got really quiet for a second and then replied, “I didn’t want you to get angry.”

Now, I never yell. The last time I can remember truly yelling was when H decided to run into the road at the beginning of summer. And I don’t know who I scared more – her or J.  I don’t punish her for pretty much anything, there’s a lot of hugging and talking and hippy-free-love around here, though it does go differently on occasion.  That doesn’t mean I don’t get mad or frustrated, I just try my best to hide it from them, and something like a mess really doesn’t get me in a tizzy at all.

What I’m trying to say is; the idea that I would be mad over a mess really threw me off. Messes don’t get me mad. Ever. Annoyed, maybe. Angry, no.

“I wouldn’t be angry,” I told her.

Then she told me that I would say her name, and she said it with that perfect air of annoyance and exasperation that someone says when they sigh and are, well, annoyed and exasperated.

For a second I didn’t know what to say. Do I tell her mommy isn’t mad or annoyed or anything? Do I protect her, at 2.5, from my feelings, when I know she is so small and can hardly handle her own oftentimes?

Well, if you think that’s what I should have done, then I messed up again.

Instead I told her Mommy was sorry if that made her think Momma was angry at her. I’m not. Sometimes Momma just gets really tired of cleaning up, cleaning up, cleaning up, and I don’t know how to handle my own feelings properly, so I say things in a not-nice voice. But I will try really hard to only use a nice voice so I don’t make her feel bad, especially because there is no reason for her to feel bad over a mess. An accident.

Maybe that was too much explanation. I don’t know. But I do know that I never once realized that sighing affected her. That she picked up on it.

I can’t expect myself to always be happy, cheery around my babes, especially if I’m genuinely not. But I also need to check myself before dishing out my emotions onto them.

They’re just babies, after all.

They have their whole lives to figure out other people’s emotions and carry them like baggage.

For now, they can just school me on how to keep myself in check.