Shortly after Donald and I moved in together, we adopted future coyote bait a kitten and bought a digital camera.

At the risk of completely destroying every last shred of respect you might have had for me, Sebastian’s kitten-hood was actually just about as well-documented as Charlotte’s infancy.  Seriously.  I was THAT person.  All that was missing was a glamour portrait with his fur braided in pigtails.

Anyway, we had gift cards to burn so we bought the best point-and-shoot model the shop had on display.  It was a tiny grey Canon.  We both thought it was pretty damned hot.

Unrelated, but I think it’s cool that she can swing by herself.  Ish.  Sort of.  With alot of supervision and help.

That camera served us well for average everyday picture-taking for years, you guys, YEARS, and then last spring it up and went missing.  One day TWO WEEKS LATER my husband was walking through the garden checking out garlic plants and he looked up and was all WHAT.THE.FUCK?

Because there it was.  Our tiny grey magic Canon.  Hanging in a tree.

It was really A MOMENT, if you know what I mean.  The camera must have been hinged together with miracles, though, because it pulled through.  It sat on that tree through a week of torrential downpour followed by a week of an unseasonable heat wave and not even the battery or the memory card were damaged.

A few months after that, Charlotte banged it against a rock and knocked its faceplate off.  We snapped it back, but we never found the screws so it just stayed there through some sort of tiny grey magic Canon force field.  And a few months after that, Charlotte stuck her finger in the lens so that every time it turned on the camera GROANED and MOANED and WHINED and sometimes gave up altogether.

During the holidays this year, my parents gave us a new point-and-shoot camera, presumably because they overheard the old one begging us to put it out of its misery.  This time we have a tiny red Canon.

I am only now beginning to play around with it, mostly because point-and-shoot camera technology seems to have come quite a long way recently and I have felt a little overwhelmed by all this sleek, shiny awesomeness.  Yesterday afternoon, though, I took it with us on an early morning walk through the neighborhood and when I pulled it out, Charlotte was Very.Excited. to see this new red thing in my hands.

What is that?, she asked.

It’s a new camera so that I can take pictures for Daddy when you and I go places, I told her.

Oh, oh yes, she said.  She thought for a minute and then, in all her two-year-old wisdom she announced: DO NOT LEAVE IT IN A TREE, MOMMA!  OKAY?  NO TREES!

Dear Charlotte,

You are two and a half years old now and as testament to the whirlwind life has become with a two and a half year old child in the house, I didn’t even notice you’d hit the big milestone until half a week later.  Sorry, kiddo.

If it makes you feel better, one year I forgot your Auntie E’s birthday.  We all made plans to go out to dinner at a local Mexican restaurant – and I plumb forgot.  Your grandfather left me a series of a dozen voice messages where all that was recorded was mariachi music.

And you weren’t even born then.  I couldn’t even say it was because I was busy stomping in rain puddles or fishing monster boogers out of a pint-sized nose or something equally riveting.

The last month with you has been, as every month with you is, excellent.  You are a firecracker – always telling stories and imagining fascinating things and running around like a wild animal.  You are also hugely in love with singing (you can sing about half a dozen French nursery rhymes now CUTEST THING EVER) and dancing (although strangely not keen on my dancing…) and jumping.  You are silly and clever and wonderful and we love you like crazy.

There are two really big cool things that have happened this month and the first one is this: you can use the toilet by yourself.  At least once a day, you announce that you need to use the bathroom and you do everything from opening the toilet lid to washing and drying your hands all by yourself – except for wiping.  It’s freaking amazing.  When you’re thirty, don’t be surprised if I’m STILL amazed that you can perform basic bathroom tasks without me.

The second really cool big thing is that your father and I made the decision to proceed with adoption through the domestic foster-care system.  It could take a few months or it could take a few years – this largely depends on whether or not we get pregnant in the next six months – but either way you are going to have a sibling.

There are sacrifices that our family will be making to this end and one of those is that we are going to be fixing up the spare room and preparing you for the move into Your! Very! Own! Room!  I would be lying if I said that we weren’t nervous about this.  We are.  But at the end of the day, we keep coming back to this: a sibling.

There is nothing in this world that your father and I will ever be able to give you that will matter as much to you as a sibling.  You won’t always get along.  Sometimes you’re going to royally fuck up (see also: that time when I forgot my sister’s birthday).  But at the end of the day, a sibling is a blessing.  You will always, no matter what, have each other.

In other news, you are totally weird.  And cool.  All at once.

And try as I might, I simply cannot think of anything more beautiful than that.

We love you more than bears love honey, (and everyone knows that’s an awful lot),
Momma and Daddy

P.S.  This month you also figured out not to wake me up on Saturday mornings.  THANK YOU!

Last week, Charlotte and I hit the trails again for the first time since she was diagnosed with whooping cough.  Her endurance and her strength were not what they were before, but I expected that.  What I didn’t expect was how spending two months isolated from the wild would affect her perception of the plants and animals around her.

We spent forty minutes at the trailhead discussing animals and calming her down.  Forty minutes.  Talking about mountain lions.  With a toddler.

Surefire way to lose your mind, that.  In case you were looking for one.

In her make-shift sling from my sweatshirt.  Turns out I should have brought a carrier…

Charlotte was worried about everything.  What if she touched poison oak?  Did I remember that time when she almost touched poison oak?  What if she saw a mountain lion?  She was SO SCARED of mountain lions, Momma.

I told her what I always tell her: there is no need to be afraid.  What matters is that you are aware of what is around you and what the threats of any situation you put yourself in can be so that you can handle it if something happens.  You are a clever and capable child and I am RIGHT HERE to keep you as safe as possible.  There is no need to be afraid.

We talked about how she could recognize dangerous plants.  We talked about the importance of not putting unidentified plants in her mouth.  We talked about what she should do if she were to see a mountain lion, or a coyote, or a bobcat, or a rattlesnake.  (Also: a bear, a whale, a tiger, an alien, or a gorilla.  But I wasn’t really worried about those.)  We talked about what circumstances might make an animal aggressive.

I had her completely calmed down and then about a half-mile in we saw a coyote.

My first thought was: oh shit.  Today?  Of all days?  I’ve been here a million times and never once seen anything bigger than a rabbit and the day my kid is scared out of her mind of wild animals we’re going to run into a coyote?  REALLY?  FUCK YOU, UNIVERSE.

This coyote was rustling in the brush above us and then a group of small birds flew out suddenly and then there it was.  Male.  Older.  Lean, probably hungry.  Probably around thirty pounds of muscle.  Fifteen, maybe twenty feet away.

We were both bewildered and caught off guard, the coyote and me, like neither of us expected the other..  We looked at each other for a long minute and I scooped Charlotte into my arms without stooping or breaking eye contact.

“Baby,” I said, “hold onto me tight, please.”  And then, and this sounds crazy, but without even thinking about it I stood as threateningly as I could and a deep sound came out of me that I didn’t even know I could make, kind of like a grunt, kind of like a growl.

It was supposed to say “back off, yoo-hoo” but it was sort of weird and pathetic, really.  I have chickens who are more frightening than I am.  The coyote probably thought I was inviting him for dinner.

The coyote looked at me one last time and then it trotted off nonchalantly, as if he had completely lost interest in us.  I stood for awhile, listening to the wind, to the sounds of the brush and the calls of the birds.  I made a mental note to start learning more about bird calls because I had no idea if they were twittering warnings to each other or singing love songs.  Then I turned around and trudged down the trail with my daughter in my arms.

“I, I saw a COYOTE! MOMMA!” Charlotte announced proudly when we got far enough away for me to feel comfortable setting her down again.  I nodded.  You sure did, darling.  “It was SO SCARED!” she said.  “I was only a little bit scared but the coyote was SO SCARED of me!”

And with that, all of her concerns about wild animals dissipated.

In the morning, Charlotte demanded milk and she bit me. Last week she lost her balance near me while I was bent over and she grabbed my nipple to steady herself.  For a brief painful eternity, my nipple was literally dangling thirty pounds of toddler.

My nipple is still tender.  I was not pleased about her biting me.  And that set the tone for the rest of the day.

Yesterday, Charlotte:
    -  ran outside into the backyard after I had just told her no, it’s naptime, you can go outside later
    -  found a green sharpie after her nap and colored her hands, her feet, her belly, her nose, the footboard of the bed my husband and father crafted, and every sheet and blanket on our bed
    -  peed on a book not thirty seconds after she told me she did not need to use the toilet
    -  grabbed a cat by its tail and dragged it in a full circle around the house while it yowled and I ran after her imploring her to drop the poor creature
    -  threw four full-blown fits with kicking and screaming and tears (one even included throwing wood building blocks at the wall)
    -  intentionally ripped an unopened envelope in half, presumably to see how I would react
    -  said NO more than any other word
    -  intentionally upset an entire bowl of loose peas on the kitchen floor because she wanted noodles (they weren’t finished cooking)

In the afternoon, I set Charlotte down on the bed and I told her that we needed a break from each other.  I gave her a toy with which to entertain herself, something she hadn’t seen in awhile.  I explained that the bedroom door was open so if she needed something she could come get me, but otherwise I would be back in five minutes.

I came THIS close to calling Donald in frustrated tears during our so-called break.  But I kept imagining how it must feel to be two-years-old and have an off-day and hear your parent, your whole world, complain about you on the phone.  So instead I sat on the couch and felt like a shitty parent and wondered what I was doing wrong and how I could fix it.

In theory, I know that everybody has these days.  I remember reading a blog one time where the writer joked that you aren’t truly a parent until you’ve sat on the couch while your kids tear apart your house and really, honestly not given a flying fuck – and suddenly that makes a lot of sense.  I know that children have bad days and that every parent has moments when they look at their kid and think dude, I love you, but you’re driving me out of my ever-loving mind.

I know this.

But somehow, when it’s me and my kid, it just doesn’t feel okay.

My mother-in-law has this great story from Donald’s childhood.  (Correct me if I get the details wrong, Carolee!)  He was three or four years old and everything imaginable that could possibly go wrong went wrong.  He couldn’t do anything right all day long and Donald and his mother were at wit’s end.

Then something happened and she looked back to scold him and she noticed how dejected and upset he looked about what had just occurred.  And she thought about how little he was and how upset he was and instead of scolding him, she just took a deep breath and asked him if he wanted a hug.

I think about that story constantly.

Yesterday, I thought about it all.day.long.

I also thought about today.  And how today would be a new day.  And how we could start all over again, Charlotte and me, like yesterday never happened.

Today we’re going walking with the trees.  I may never know what went wrong yesterday or what the right solution to it was, but at the very least I know there sure as hell aren’t any green sharpies in the wilderness.

I recently started setting aside one day a week to write letters with Charlotte.  Good old-fashioned letters.  To her two uncles and her aunt who live abroad, to her grandparents and great-grandparents who live too far away, to her aunt and uncle who also live too far away, and to her two darling penpals.

It’s a lot of letters so if you’re family or friends and you aren’t on the list, please don’t be offended.  We’re still trying to find the best way to fit in everyone we like writing to.  It’s going to take a couple months, I think!

She gets the art materials of her choice (yesterday it was glue, glitter, confetti stars, a tin of crayons, and a few sheets of stickers) (this is what she created) and goes hog-wild while I take a pen to paper.  It is messy cubed, but it is also good fun.  When I tell her that we’re going to write letters today, she gets very excited - in large part because she is beginning to understand that when we send mail to other people, they send mail back.  And at the end of our letter-writing, we write a postcard together for her collection.

And OKAY, while I’m on the topic: GLITTER.  Glitter.  One time, Donald and I watched a Demetri Martin act where he called glitter the herpes of the craft world.  AWESOME LINE, that one.  We joke about it all the time.  Anyway, I have always had a rule that glitter is only used outside, but I find it remarkably difficult to write letters outside.  So yesterday I made an exception and let the glitter happen inside.

At first, it seemed fine.  Through some incredible feat of magic, when Charlotte was busy dumping a solid pound of glitter and confetti stars all over herself and the table and the floor some stray bits actually landed on her artwork.  So she was super proud of herself and after I stripped her down and scrubbed her up and then picked up every last speck of glitter, I was pretty proud of how well the whole HERPES OF THE CRAFT WORLD thing went down.  But then the glue on Charlotte’s artwork all dried and as it dried the glitter dust started flaking off and right now I have three pieces of glittered-up paper sitting in my dining room and if a dog ten miles away even thinks about farting ten large chunks of glitter immediately go flying through the air and attach themselves to my hands or my kid’s face or Donald’s clothing.

Glitter was clearly invented for the sole purpose of irritating the crap out of parents.  The end.

But I digress.  So.  Moving on: my goal for this week is to print out some current photographs of Charlotte to include in our letters.  I think she will enjoy writing notes on the back of them and I’m sure that people who haven’t heard from us in two years will be happy to have an image they can hold or prop up against a frame or stuff in a shoebox out of sight.

Tell me: when is the last time you wrote a letter?  And what is the coolest mail you or your kid have ever received/sent?