Anticipation

Several years ago I bought a calendar that was supposed to make me a bazillion times more organized because it came with stickers. There were stickers for dentist appointments, eye appointments, date nights (ha!), sleepovers, tax appointments, road trips and zombie apocalypses.

I always forgot to use them.

Since that first insane thought of organizational nirvana I've bought the same calendar twice, plus a Sandra Boynton calendar with stickers AND a FlyLady calendar with stickers -- so now I have enough stickers to wallpaper the bathroom and no more organization than when I started.

This year, 2010, the year of golden dreams and financial freedom and a Disney trip and peace and harmony and PLEASE DEAR LORD LET IT BE NOTHING LIKE 2009, I decided that instead of buying a fancy calendar with stickers and pretty colors and cutesy animals cavorting amongst the dates I'd just buy a boring, gigantic desk calendar to mount to the wall and use all those stickers from years past.

(Right now there are adorable dancing pigs in top hats dancing across New Year's Day. Am I more organized? Nope. But dancing pigs make me laugh, so it's all good.)

I had the calendar out, inserting basketball schedules into every Saturday from now until Kingdom come and I had the stickers out in an effort to plan for the next few months in a colorful, entertaining way. Kady was reading over this month's birthdays and when she plays ball and when Sam plays ball and I was pretty much tuning her out because OH THE WORDS. THE WORDS! THE CHILD NEVER STOPS TALKING. And yeah, I tune her out sometimes. Just send my Mother of the Year award to Disney World because have I mentioned I AM GOING THERE THIS YEAR?

Kady finished reading the dates and events for January and moved on to reading every. single. sticker. on every sheet of unused stickers accumulated over the last five years. Again, I was tuning her out, inserting a "Oh?" or a "Hmm" where I thought appropriate, but then I realized she seemed to be stuck on a word. I listened. (Shocking, I know)

"P - p - msssss. Ppppppuuummmmmmssssss. Pums. Pums! Pummm-pummm-pmmmmmsssss."

For the life of me, "pums" wasn't ringing a bell for anything familiar to me.

I finally asked, "Kay, what are you trying to say? Spell it for me."

"Okay. P-M-S. What's that spell, Momma? What's a pums?"

After a little chuckle and a clarification that it was initials that stood for something, I explained that it was something that girls who get their period get sometimes, that we get cranky and we feel fat and we get zits and we want chocolate and lots of sleep and Daddy gets very annoying during this time. She listened, her little chin resting in her hand, taking in all the information I was doling out. This whole puberty thing is mesmerizing to her.

When I was done she nodded, sighed and said, "Great. Zits and feeling fat. ON TOP OF a period!?!? Just something ELSE to look forward to!"