It’s the little things – as Robert Earl Keen would say. It’s the way Baby Girl thumps her feet on the mattress next to my head when she’s awake at 5:00 in the morning. It’s the way she can destroy a room five minutes after I’ve cleaned it, or the way I find 12 different socks she’s discarded in every room of the house. It’s the way she chooses a bag of chips and then proceeds to pick out every other one as not being worthy enough to eat. Or the way she spits grapes into my hand because she doesn’t want it after she’s chewed it up – same with pancakes, chicken, or whatever …
It’s the way she can and will dump out her pockets of sand into the middle of her otherwise clean bed. It’s how she acts like a puppy 12 hours a day. Puppies are hard to feed and clothe by the way. In case you don’t own one. They don’t listen well and they pant a lot. In your face. It’s the way strawberry frosted mini wheats get ground into every floor in the house, or finding random goldfish under the couch or in her shoes.
It’s the way she can run beside me on the lawn mower while sporting a 100.8 degree fever. It’s the way she falls down and gets right back up saying “it’s ok!” when she feels good and bursting into tears when she doesn’t. It’s the way she climbs up on the tractor and snuggles into me while I drive it back to the barn – tired after running all the way to the end of the aisle. It’s her jumping in the water trough just because she wants to, and then running all over the property stark naked because she’s three. The way she wants me to give her a “shower” in the wash rack with cold water so she can pretend to be a horse (or a puppy). It’s using horse shampoo on her crazy hair, because hey, why not?
It’s the way she always wants to “help” me even when I could do it faster and better myself. And the way that I usually let her – even though I’m dying inside. The way she always want to help feed the horses, especially Muffin, because Muffin’s bucket is pink, and Corkie, because it’s “her” Corkie. It’s the way she takes it upon herself to create a stall in her wagon for her Breyer horses by using shavings that were already in an actual horse stall. It’s the way she genuinely loves all the horses, all the time.
It’s the way she mimics me and tries to wipe her feet when we enter the house. It’s the way we practice saying “hhhhhoooorrse” instead of “force” and giggle our heads off. It’s the way she tells me she can read her own name (she probably can) and that she wants to play with her friend Cora at school. It’s the crazy, undecipherable tales she tells me when she gets home complete with silly faces and re-enactments. It’s the way she takes my face in her hands and tells me she’s little and I’m big.
It’s the little things that are the most annoying, endearing, cringe inducing, loving, silly, best things of all.
