just the way you are

One of the hard things about loving someone, is accepting them and loving them the way they are, not the way you want them to be.

Case in point: Annabelle's room.

Annabelle's room is a pigsty. There. I said it. I am not proud of it. I am not sure if this is a bad thing or a good thing, but as people are fond of saying, it is what it is.

She plays with gusto and with heart. She has a big imagination and plays and plays and plays. And her play involves lots of things that have little pieces. It involves scissors that cut off barbie hair and my little pony hair. It involves water, markers, legos, string, ropes, hair bows and play necklaces. All at the same time.

This is not how I played. I played with lots of imagination, but no toys. We had a play room, which was a bit of a mess, but my bedroom was actually very clean. And I never cut the hair off my barbies, only Audrey's Brooke Shields Barbie doll, but that was just to piss her off. I was actually careful with my toys. If someone gave me a pack of stickers, I would put them in a special box I had, and ration them out only for special occasions. I would not stick them all over my body the second I opened the package.

And if I was careful, well you can just imagine how Hyphen played. He actually claims to not have played. His toys are all still in boxes somewhere in the shrine that is his room. Seems about right to me.

So when we walk into her room, we try, very hard not to have a breakdown. We (me) have tried cleaning at the end of the day, mini cleaning breaks throughout the day, and of course, the old tried and true "I am getting out the trash bag" and even letting it get really, really dirty. Nothing seems to motivate her into keeping it clean.

I don't like to correct her play. I don't like to say, "okay, no, you can't wash your teddy bear. This is how you play with a teddy bear you hold it, you don't get it wet," because I really don't believe in stifling my kids' imagination or telling them that what they are doing is wrong, unless of course it really is.

Enter grandma. Now, grandma in her day was a hell raiser, but that was all outside when she was a kid. Inside, as a mom and grandma, you have to color in the lines or she will bite your head off. And now she is here, getting mad at Annabelle for washing her brand new bear in the bathroom sink and at me for letting her and I am realizing that a lot of the ways we parent is in reaction to something our parents did.

I let Annabelle do whatever the hell she pleases, because I never could.

And now I am paying the price.

But I am my mother's daughter. And after spending a good chunk of my day yesterday sewing a Pippi Longstocking costume (from scratch no pattern, I might add) with my torn acl, I was not in the mood to learn that when my mom gave it to Annabelle to hang so it would't get wrinkled, she decided to stuff it in a small box and hide it behind the curtains in the living room.

I don't want to micromanage. I don't want to control. I want her to be herself and to know that that self is loved, adored and welcomed in this house, just the way she is.

But we are tired of stepping on legos. Just the way we are.