My Orange Marker

One of my favorite quotes on Parenting from The Back Up Plan (which I think is a must see for ANYONE thinking of having kids;))

A Dad to be asks a dad who is at the playground with his 3 kids what having kids is really like and this is his response: yes it's grossly exaggerated and no I don't think it's true every single day - but if you have more than one kid, I bet this makes you smile!


"The best way I can describe it is, it's awful awful awful awful, and then, something incredible happens, and then awful awful awful awful awful. "

So, here is the story of my something Incredible from yesterday

I went to a baby shower yesterday that was out of town, so being the multi-tasking queen that I am - I made a few stops to run some errands on the way because we needed some stuff for the house.

So, I searched high and low (as if I had extra time to search) for special bubble bath for Katie, I got Ben a cute toothbrush, (making sure to pick out JUST the right character) I got Dave a new Keurig Coffee Filter as ours has literally disappeared off the face of the earth.

Then I went to the baby shower and won a prize for catching lots of people saying the word Baby and taking their necklaces away. The prize was a cute, hard cover notebook and I thought - This is PERFECT for Katie - she will love it.

After the party, I went to Target and got some yogurt bites for Benny because they were on sale and they are seriously like like crack for kids (both my kids can eat an entire bag in less than 5 minutes) - and I picked up some new markers for Katie because hers were drying up and I thought she'd like them, especially since she was gonna get a new notebook.

I go home, and bring in all my bags and tell everyone that I got treats for everyone!! Katie followed me and helped hand out the treats like a helper elf!

Then I told her about the game I played and how I had won and that I was giving her my prize.
The first thing she did was look at my neck because she understood that I had collected necklaces during the game - so she asked me if I had to give them back. I told her I did, but the true is, I threw them away because it was ribbon with teeny tiny little plastic pieces on them that I knew she would A) need to carry around for about a week and B) Ben would try to chew.

So, she was coloring in her notebook with her markers and she looked at me and said, "But where is your special prize and treat?"

I told her, "Well, Katie my prize was the notebook but I am giving it to you so you can have it"

She looked at her markers and grabbed an orange one and said, "you can have one of my markers as your special prize."


I almost cried. For real.

I mean, she's 3 years old and hoards things. If she gets a package of 4 lip glosses, she will carry around all 4 at all times and freaks out if one is missing. And here she was giving me one of her precious markers... and she didn't even give me a 'boy' color which she was separating out while she was drawing.

She has been particularly mean to me lately - refusing to play with me and only asking for Daddy - so this little quip made that all go away, if only for an afternoon:)

Don't get me wrong, at bedtime - she still cried when I asked if I could read to her because she wanted daddy only but I didn't let it upset me - because she gave ME a marker - not Dave. So, I know loves me no matter how fresh she can be ;) And at the end of the day - I read her 3 My Little Pony Stories when I was only supposed to read her 2 - so that's gotta count for something right?

I love my kids and it's not always awful - and there is more wonder and excitement during any given day than I ever thought possible. But it is hard - and some days you forget about how wonderful it can be and I'm hoping I can check back here and read this when I'm frustrated with something she is doing, and remember that at the end of the day - she gave me her marker:)

Happy Parenting!