A lot of parenting blogs tend to not be good advertisements for the joys of having a child. It’s the exceptional incidents like illness or huge meltdowns that make for good stories, while the day-to-day love and cuteness don’t make for gripping narrative. I try not to play up the poop explosions and such, but even I fall victim to this. Much as people are more likely to repeat the story about the woman who got pregnant spontaneously after giving up treatment than the story of the woman who never had a child or the birth story that involved a week of labor and an emergency C-section over the one of the woman who checked into the hospital at midnight and had an uncomplicated delivery around breakfast time, people are more apt to talk about the night they were up ten times in ten hours instead of the three week stretch of their child sleeping soundly. The outliers just seem to make for better stories, and the good stuff really is better experienced than described.

This morning Margaret and I played for half an hour with a stuffed animal. It was incredibly cute and rewarding, especially the part where she put him in the swing and pushed him while saying “wheeeee!” I can tell you this, but you really had to be there to appreciate it. Margaret regularly requests that we sing Itsy Bitsy Spider by miming a spider crawling up her arm and declaring “Do this!” It needs to be seen first hand to be appreciated though, and I expect people who are not related to Margaret may not find it quite as precious. This morning while I was drying off from my shower Margaret requested a tissue, used it to blow her nose (not particularly effectively, but hey, you could tell what she was going for), and then tossed it in trash and requested another tissues. This went through at least a dozen iterations. I’m afraid you’ll just have to trust me that it was insanely cute, because really, you had to be there.