Elise and I really enjoy our cuddles. She will often come to me and say "I need some nuv" and then we have a cuddle and I say "I have love for you" or "I love loves." She recently starting reaching for me if we are sitting side by side (like at the table) and now she says "I have nuvs for you" or "I nuv nuv nuvs". Too cute not to share with you.

Today we put a T-shirt on Elise and said, "That's a pretty T-shirt, Elise". She said, "That's not a t-shirt, there's no letters on it!"

...one really long run one sentence that is sometimes spoken over and over and other times just has several different thoughts in it with no particular order or relevance but certainly seems very important at the time though I am not sure why as the topics are quite mundane and uninteresting however Elise thinks they are crucial to the moment and gets quite animated and can hardly get all the words out in time.

Take a walk with my toddler and you'll see things you've never noticed before: A river, suitable for walking in, runs down the side of the road when it's raining; a few trees are a magic forest; landscaping rocks are a mountain to climb. Don't even think about stepping around that puddle. A five minute walk to our friend's house becomes a 20 minute adventure...at least! "Hurry up!" I say. But she doesn't cave. She keeps her pace looking all around her. My mantra on these adventures as my mind is racing ahead to my destination and a hot cup of tea and I'm cold and Daniella is whining and I just want to get there should be "what's the rush? what's the rush?" But "hurry up! I say. And she doesn't pick up the pace. Sigh.

And so...we dawdle. I look again at Elise's big brown eyes and innocent little face that says "mama...what's the rush?" and thank my lucky stars she's with me and I'm with her.

Today I was at the end of my rope. I am sleep deprived as we have not had a good night's sleep since the time change and my patience is short. Elise is 2 and a half and she was every bit two and a half today. Bored, tired, and two. After many offers of going out and asking her what she wanted to do, she eventually agreed to an outing to a new park that we've discovered that we call the Charlie park. It was just the place I needed to go to be reminded of how short this trying time will be and how lucky we are to have our health and our girls. You see, the Charlie Park was built by a family who endured the unthinkable. A tragic accident that happened two years ago whereby Charlie's father backed over him in the driveway, of course not realizing he had gotten out of the house and was behind the car as he was leaving for work one morning. Like I said, the unthinkable.

So today I gratefully took my beautiful daughters to Charlie's park and wanted to take a moment to share this story with you as we should all be reminded once in a while to treasure even the trying times with our toddlers. They will outgrow this behaviour soon and we'll remember with longing the times that we watched our little ones playing at the park and simply wanting to be with us and to have our attention.