People often ask if she’s always as well behaved as she appears and while the majority of the time the answer is yes, for a brief moment today the answer was no. She’s not perfect and I’m aware I’m setting myself up for disappointment time and again if I think otherwise yet more often than not perfection seems attainable. Perfection seems to rest on the end of her eyelashes threatening to present itself with every blink, it seems to be waiting under the embrace of a random hug and if I listen closely I can hear it in the unprompted I love you she’s been whispering in my ear lately. We were warned from several sources the year following her second birthday would be the year to try our patience and test our parenting skills, but for the most part year two has been nothing of the sort (knock on wood).
Today, the toddler came out of her. She pulled a bow out of another girl’s hair. She said she apologized. She said she knew it was bad. She said that girl cried and inside part of me did, too. I know kids will be kids and this is hardly an event to drastically affect the up and downs of the self-imposed parenting success and failure that seem to fluctuate hourly. I know for certain this small act of unintentional inconsideration doesn’t offer a preview of the adult she’ll become, but for a split second I thought about it and I know I’m wrong. She knew she was wrong. Tonight she sat down with her mother and wrote a letter to that little girl apologizing for pulling the bow from her hair. We let her agree upon the message her mother penned before allowing her to sign it herself. A yellow ribbon looped into a bow was tied at the top and after the letter that may seem unnecessary to many, but completely necessary for us was slid into a designated envelope she said perfect. And it was, kind of, or as close as it gets I suppose.
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