Bossy McBossy Is Back with a Vengeance

Happy New Year to friends and family who read our blog (all three of you). We had a very nice new year's celebration, with Jack being able to take New Year's Eve off. He and I went to dinner about 6:30 at the Butcher Block and returned in time for me to get Brigid to bed. I had picked up some things to make dips and snacks with for our family celebration. We watched "Apollo 13" and waited for the appointed hour where we switched to watch the ball drop, wish each other happy new year then went back to the tension of the doomed Apollo 13 launch. Jack worked New Year's Day, but the girls served at Mass, so that was a nice way to start 2009. We had Matt and Kristen over for dinner Friday night and exchanged gifts with them. I made shrimp pasta, enough to serve as Monday's dinner, too. Then John came over for a turkey dinner on Saturday. Gifts were exchanged, and Brigid was all over her Uncle John, only to drop back into shy mode the next day when seeing him at Mass. Maybe it's the vestments. They can intimidate anyone.

Margaret and Patricia went back to school yesterday after an unheard-of 16 days off at Christmas. I had the same 16 days off for vacation, but somehow it didn't seem fair -- my days get taken off my accrued vacation time. Theirs is just part of their school year. They go for another week and then have a day off for Martin Luther Kind Jr. Day; then another three weeks and then they have a week off in February. If only the real world operated that way. That stretch between February break and April, however, is grueling with very few days off. They can only hope for a snow day here and there in between, and it may actually be coming this week with the nor'easter we're supposed to be getting. However, that being said, none of the huge storms we've been slated for have really hit -- or at least have hit during school hours -- so for the first time in a long time, they haven't had a snow day before Christmas. It's too bad they can't plan snow days the way they can plan regular days off. It would break up the calendar a little more.

We've all noticed an explosion of verbal development in Baby Brigid in the last few weeks. It's impossible to document it all here, but suffice it to say she is carrying on complicated conversations and saying complex sentences with great gusto and meaning. She has also ratcheted up her Bossy McBossy persona a notch and a half over the same few weeks. Being able to express herself with more fervor has given her a new sense of power. She enjoys telling us all what to do in a voice that means business. Nowhere was this more evident than last night when I was trying to get her to bed. I had her asleep five times over two and a half hours and at 11 p.m. she was still fighting going to sleep in her crib when Dad came to the rescue and put her in the big bed in our room. Even though she was falling to the mattress in her crib every time she stood to protest being in it, she was wide awake enough at 11 p.m. to sing and talk for another hour in our bed. She got up with ease this morning. I'll be interested to see how long her nap at Sibley was when I pick her up this afternoon and/or if she's been a bear throughout the day. She may very well save that up for us later this evening.

She did tell me last night when she was in our bed that she thought there were monsters in there. I assume she said monsters -- it's also how she says "lobsters" but I have no reason to believe she thought we kept lobsters in our room. I don't know if the monsters observation was her attempt at stalling or if she has really started imagining things in the dark. She certainly didn't sound frightened or concerned, just pretty matter-of-fact, and when I told her no, there were no monsters (or lobsters, for that matter) she just repeated, "no monsters in here."

Even though her stubbornness last night at going to sleep caused me to have some grumpiness myself, I tried to keep in mind that she's a baby and it won't be long before I don't have to rub her back or cover her up over and over again or hold her in the big chair. It's a time I should actually be cherishing, no matter how tired I am at the time.