Lessons learned

Well. Didn't we have quite a day yesterday.

Back in December, I applied for a govvie job as an editor at the NRC. I got screened in and scheduled to do a pre-interview editing test. McPie came home from work to stay with the kids in the afternoon while I drove all the way out to the NRC for the two-hour test. We'd been trying to get Ruby to take milk from a bottle, with little success. (She'd progressed from spitting it out to chewing the nipple in amusement, but no real drinking.) I left them with a little milk in a bottle just in case, but we knew it wouldn't be much help. So I headed out, thinking I'd be gone about three hours, four tops.

Cue winter snowstorm. It took me THREE HOURS to drive home. I was DYING the whole way, thinking of the chaos that must be happening at home: it's dinner time, McPie home alone with a starving baby and potentially volcanic kid. When I burst in the door six hours after leaving, I braced myself for the worst.

I was met with silence. Then a soft "Hi Sweetie!" from upstairs, and McPie emerged looking completely sane and undisheveled. He ducked back into our room and returned with a very happy looking Doobie-doo.

WTF?

Apparently my child prefers attention to food. She was happy all day, as long as she was entertained. She even went down for a nap. (Of course, Tim threw a bit of a hissy fit because I came home "too early", but we managed to shut him down without too much trouble.)

Then McPie made supper, we put the kids to bed, I shoveled the driveway, and we settled in for a glass wine and enjoying the fact that all was right with the world.

And I learned that I do not want to take a job that reqiures me to commute across the city. Winter storms (and other inclement weather) are not unusual up here, and I do not want to revisit that white-knuckled drive again. Ruby may not need my milk that bad, but my kids need me for other reasons, and I'm not going to live my life that far away from them.

Amen.

While I'm here are other recent milestones:

Tim seems to have rounded the corner from three to four. His crazy tantrums are much less frequent, and they are almost always defusable (is that a word) by way of reason. Thank god. The little personality he's becoming is more and more visible and vibrant. He's truly becoming himself, and himself is starting to put it all together.

We caught Ruby making adorable mouth movements: opening and closing her mouth while smiling. It was new and sweet and very soon a clear indication that she's trying to "talk". She's imitating our talking mouths, and starting to spit out syllables. True baby babble. It's awesome. I will try to get it on video.